Home

We just spent a wonderful week in Kodiak, Alaska! Maybe sometime I'll take time to figure out how to add photos to my blog, but for now I'll leave it to your imagination to picture what I was so fortunate to see. As green as an emerald, Kodiak offers visual excitement at every turn in the road. We saw bears in the wild, the young one playing with fish in the river until he finally decided he'd better stop playing with his supper and dragged a big silver salmon to the meadow and enjoyed the delicacy. (I wonder if bears have a daily limit on how many salmon they can catch.) From the window of Don and Nancy Rush's home we could see life in the bay: whales, sea lions, puffins, seagulls, boats of all sizes, a cruise ship (The Tahitian Princess), barges, waves slapping at the rocks scattered around the bay, the rising and falling of the tide. I took about five-hundred photos, perhaps thinking that if I didn't capture the sight on my camera it might be lost forever!

We stayed with our daughter Katy's mother-and-father-in-law. They have a gorgeous home on a cliff overlooking the bay. Don and Nancy were wonderful hosts and there is not enough we can do or say to thank them for their generous hospitality.

Their home is lovely and comfortable. I kept thinking, "I could enjoy living like this!" To be able to wake every morning to the sound of the waves slapping at the shore, the morning call of the birds, the horns on the boats and barges alerting the world to the beginning of a new day--ah, that would be heaven for me!

I was pondering this on the way home to my small desert home. After experiencing the beauty of Nancy's and Don's world, could I ever really be content again? Then out of the archives of my memory bank came the discussion I had with my grandson Corbin a couple of years ago after we downsized and moved from West Jordan to Grantsville. In the conversation I had made the comment that this house is not big like the one we had in West Jordan. He in his childlike wisdom taught a very important principle to me and it again travels around in my mind sweeping away silly thoughts about what I was thinking I needed to be happy. His sweet comment to me that made all the difference was: "This house is big enough."

How true it is. All I really need I have. I'm grateful that there are wonderful, thoughtful, unselfish saints like Don and Nancy Rush, John and Pat Jarstad, and others, through whom I can experience some of the finer things of life for a moment here and there. But then I need to come home, home to my grandchildren who love the swing Grandpa built for them, and the little yard that is room enough for twenty piano students to have a party and call it "the best party ever!" The little street in front of our house is perfect for little boys to master the skill of riding bicycles and scooters. My grandchildren and I can sing and dance to our hearts' delight in our small living room. We have a nice view of the mountains from our back yard while sitting under the porch roof Tom built to block the sun and keep us dry from the occasional rain. We have a wealth of friends. We have many of our family close enough to spend time together whenever we like. Within these walls we pray, we study the gospel, we laugh, we cry, we share, we play, we cook, we eat, we connect.

So although part of me will continue seeking for new experiences, new people, new places, always being the wanderer, the rest of me will be remembering Corbin's lesson that will keep me grounded: "This house is big enough." Yes, this house is big enough to be home. And so I am home again.

Bogged down by Blogs?

I've spent a delightful half hour reading and commenting on my daughters' and daughter-in-law's blogs. I am learning so much about each one of them. I have a few other blogs I check from time-to-time but I really am trying to limit the amount of time I spent in front of a computer screen. I have so many projects waiting my attention. One reason I had chosen not to do my own blog when everyone else was catching on was that I love writing in my journal and I want to leave them for my posterity. Taking time away from the important things such as that, reading my scriptures, cleaning house, etc., would merely have added to any guilt I felt already for not accomplishing all that I felt I should do. But I type so much faster than I handwrite, and today I tried something I hadn't gotten around to yet and which you smarter and younger women probably already have been doing. I just learned I can print every post I put on my blog! So these are pages that will be added to my handwritten journals where I will write in private the things that I couldn't post publicly. I have a journal in which I write my daily doings along with notes of things I've learned in sacrament meeting, etc. I also have an "extra thoughts" journal in which I expound on things that have really occupied my thoughts and filled my heart. One day all of this will be available to my children and grandchildren if they want to take the time to learn more about this person who passed on the genes that drive them crazy from time-to-time. The blog, I suppose, we could call a "sneak preview."

Gerber Baby

You ask, "Why the baby photo to identify yourself?" Well, since this blog is to make an accounting for the way I've spent my life, I put that photo as a symbol of how I began. As a baby. A cute one, too, I think. My mother told me that people used to call me the Gerber Baby. Perhaps some of you wonder who the Gerber Baby is/was; she was the face on all the bottles of Gerber Baby food. And some of you now may wonder, "Was Gerber Baby food around that many generations ago? Did they even process and sell baby food way back then?" Well, of course they did or no one would have looked at me and thought of that face on the bottle of pureed orange squash!

I was born in Tacoma, Washington, on March 12, 1955. My dad was in the Air Force and at that time was stationed at McChord AFB. Of course I have no memories of Tacoma from way back then. But a few years ago my son, Alan, married a beautiful young woman from Federal Way, Washington. Her family has strong ties to Tacoma, and when we went to Federal Way for the reception I showed Jessica's dad, John Jarstad, the address on the back of my birth certificate. He knew exactly where it was and took my husband, Tom, and me to see the home where my family lived where I was born. He also took us to the hospital where I was delivered and across the street from there was the LDS chapel where I was given my name and a blessing. A wonderful coincidence is that my daughter-in-law, Jessica, was also blessed in that same chapel!
Since Alan and Jessica lived in the Puget Sound area for several years, I was able to become acquainted with the area my parents described as a beautiful place they hated to leave (but still did so willingly because Dad's next assignment was Bermuda!).

Seeing and getting to know the place where I began did something for me. I needed this beginning so I could make better sense of the path that led from there. I wasn't sure that I had ever belonged anywhere. Besides Washington and Bermuda, we lived in Mississippi, California, Minnesota, Nevada, Utah, the Philippine Islands, Montana, and Nebraska. What could I say to people when they asked me where I was from? Where was my hometown? My father had been in the Air Force for nearly all my youthful years, until I was a junior in high school. We never lived in a home longer than a couple of years. Even after I was married it was not meant that I would grow any deep roots.

And now we are here in Grantsville, Utah. Whoever thought I'd end up in a small town populated by country folk who lived in the same home all their lives, shopped at their hometown grocery and hardware stores, sat and chatted with their family next door about the happenings about town, and who wanted to keep their small town small? But who knows--maybe I've finally found home after all....And as you'll begin to see in many of my future posts, most of my life has really been all about coming home.

Did I really just set up my own blog???

One day I will find myself on the other side of the veil, and at some point, I don't know when for certain, I will be asked to give an accounting for the way I lived my life according to the light and knowledge I had been given. (Doctrine and Covenants 72:3 "...It is required of the Lord, at the hand of every steward, to render an account of his stewardship, both in time and in eternity.")

Thus I decided I would begin to take a look at my life and share my perceptions, my discoveries, my lessons with anyone interested in taking a look. Knowing that what I post here will be critiqued by others will make me give careful consideration to the significance of anything I decide to share.

But don't think that this is going to be full of preaching or confessions. Indeed, I would myself become quickly bored with such a venture; I plan to make this as fun as possible or I would be doomed to failure from the start!

So tune in from time-to-time for a peek into the reflections of my life, and hopefully my efforts won't be considered a waste of time for you or for me.