Sunday, April 9, 1995 (Scotland): To Lennoxtown, and a nice meal and conversation with the Richardson family. Our girls stay there with their girls, while Sharon and I go to Edinburgh for a BYU fireside with Pres. Richardson. Apart from the lurchy driving, we have a marvelous time with Pres. Bob. How great to learn all these infinite interesting stories! (Our ward, the church in Scotland, the pleasures and travails of working in the Church Educational System.) We take a beautiful pre-fireside run through stately Edinburgh, especially enjoying the gorse-mad run round Arther’s seat.
At the fireside we don’t actually end up having any contact with the BYUs, as it turns out, but how much better it is to commune with the actual saints than with the colonizers. They have organized a fine, varied Easter program. Looking at these BYU types we see the Provonian, sheltered from the Scottish. We imagine some Scots, envious of the seeming privileges of Cougarness. We find ourselves with the best of both worlds, and bless our good fortune.
At the fireside we don’t actually end up having any contact with the BYUs, as it turns out, but how much better it is to commune with the actual saints than with the colonizers. They have organized a fine, varied Easter program. Looking at these BYU types we see the Provonian, sheltered from the Scottish. We imagine some Scots, envious of the seeming privileges of Cougarness. We find ourselves with the best of both worlds, and bless our good fortune.
That was one car sickening ride home! Apparently while we were gone Sarah (not quite two years old) walked a stroller up and down, quite happily, for three straight hours.
Sunday, April 12, 1998: Extra church meetings are cancelled. The prospect of nine uninterrupted family hours seems an extraordinary luxury.
So—lunch. Nap A strugglesome but successful Family Home Evening. We discuss Easter, and look at painterly renderings by Raphael, Massachio, Giotto and Doré.
Then the girls draw pictures that correspond to the sad and celebrative facts. Musically, we find that crucifixion goes with the conclusion to Bach’s Matthew Passion, while resurrection, of course, goes with Handel. Outside it rains, it snows, it clears. Sharon hides those very beautifully coloured and decorated Easter eggs in the living room. Each girl finds four. Spencer grabs Drew’s favourite and immediately, accidentally, drops it on the floor. He then reaches down to gather it, but instead finishes the job, smashing it completely. Drew takes some time to recover. We do some couch reading to Mahler’s 2nd. Chocolate eggs then get hidden in the family room. The kids' favourite hiding place is up Mum’s shirt.
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| The Arena Chapel, Padua |
We have a nice pork and rice dinner. Spence devours the latter, eschews the former. Caitlin splatters tomato sauce in her eyes and up the wall, which is kind of an unusual thing to do. Spencer shows us all his scary eyes and his scary mouth. We look at a pretty cloudy scene out the front window. “Those are stratus clouds,” says Drew, and then delivers a learned presentation on cirrus, cumulus and nimbus clouds as well, all the while keeping confidently clear their various qualities and characteristics. We read Exodus 10 and 11, to make those Passover connections. A long pleasant day ends with Sarah cuddling affectionately.
Saturday, April 22, 2000: Matt and Spence very happily colour those Easter eggs. Matt (two in June) very happily drops them all. We hear silence. I go into the next room and find Matt neatly applying Caitlin’s nail polish to his toenails, toes, feet, legs, and any nearby bedclothes.
Sunday, March 31, 2002: It’s light early, and the kids all got up to find the living room eggs. Sharon’s got beautiful Easter arrangements all over the house for us. Sarah and Spence and Matt are all inspired to find bowls and vases and make their own arrangements. Caitlin is inspired to persecute Drew.
We try to read the whole Easter story, taking it from the Gospel according to Mark. We’re only somewhat successful. Our long sunny morning, however, maybe from having made that effort, is very nice. Big cousins come over and hide some actual eggs. Sarah (eight years old) wants to play catch with a medium sized football. “Why are you standing way over there?” I ask. Then she throws. I didn’t realize that she was up to consistent, perfectly spiraling twenty-yard bombs.
Our home teacher comes, and brings his three or four year old daughter. Matt takes her into their room to play. After a while we notice a weighty, even sinister silence. We run in to check and find the fish bowl chock to choking with fish food. How many times now? For some reason Matt thinks that the girls are impressed when he attempts to kill our pets.
Friday, April 18, 2003: Good Friday. This, it seems to me, is a very resonant, mysterious and beautiful phrase. There’s too much final exam stuff going on to allow me to quite think about it. We were going to try to discuss it as a family, but when I get back Sharon has taken the girls to the mall. A later attempt does not quite roll forth naturally.
Sunday, April 20, 2003: Easter Sunday. We have our always successful chocolate eggs in the living room hunt. I think we always hide them in the same places. This year’s exciting innovation was to short out a temporarily bulbless lamp by dropping a foil encased egg right onto the socket’s contact points.
The kids have a nice springy playful afternoon. I go to the __’s place. I’m grateful for my benighted friends, for themselves, and for the chance they give to reflect on my bounties. I’ll bet I say that every time, and am I objectifying? Still.
Jessica and the Lamberts and JJ and Erica and Greg come over. They hide the decorated Easter eggs in the back yard. Again, as usual, joyful and harmonious search and finds ensue. I film it, and really enjoy the naturally emerging spatial and visual patterns that, as usual, emerge so naturally. Intersecting planes of action, the shifts of front and middle and back, the thrill of off screen space, which is only that things come and go and are pretty well always interesting.
Other things. Kathryn beans Sarah on the temple with an actual baseball. I’m momentarily frightened: Sarah has a huge-eyed, tear welling, immobile grinning expression on her face. I really thought that she’d sustained some paralyzing traumatic injury. It turns out she just didn’t want to be a baby. She succeeded.
After eats everyone plays whiffleball. (Except me. I chase the perpetual Claire, who likes to go up the neighbours’ steps and beam beautifully at me.) Caitlin and Drew are awful. They’re both poor sports in their own special ways.
Sarah is pitching, and Greg screams a line drive right into her mid-section. She reaches quickly down and flings the ball, hitting Greg square in the back of the head. All rejoice. Greg too.
Sarah is pitching, and Greg screams a line drive right into her mid-section. She reaches quickly down and flings the ball, hitting Greg square in the back of the head. All rejoice. Greg too.
The boys sit in the sandbox all the while. Spence provides droll commentary. Matt just thinks the world is glorious, which, to a sweet child like him, is basically true. After the guests depart Sharon gives a very effective sportsmanship talk. The pertinent parties listen respectfully.
I’ve a picture of little Claire through these days, that exquisitely turned little face and body on the swing, which her siblings kindly push, and all smiling sweetly together.
Friday, April 14, 2006 (Popular Culture Association conference, Atlanta, Georgia): There are events and confabs going on, but today, at the end of the week, I feel surpassingly disinterested. I stroll my way to a simple, practically nonentical alternative. Atlanta’s Olympic park is about halfway down the road. I take a book and my CD player. The night is warm/cool, and very pretty. Lots of locals are down there recreating. I’ve got Bach’s B Minor Mass on, mostly because it’s Good Friday, and I wanted to think about what that meant. I hardly ever do that.
As I listen very intently, and watch very intently, I notice the phenomenon that John Cage observed (John Cage and David Tudor, Indeterminacy, Folkways, 1959) taking place before me. The music, because of the random operations of chance, or because everything connects, provides appropriate and sometimes electrifyingly parallel accompaniment to what I’m seeing. A strapping three year old runs with a football while his sisters, laughing, chase him. Two little brothers have their arms around each other, patting each others' backs. A big family has a foot race. The music rises sweetly over these loving interactions. An old couple holds hands and talk with easy smiles. Someone who may sleep here at night lights a cigarette for a companion. I move around from bench to bench, from hill to shade, and see similar scenes enacted. Unbelievably, impossibly, there’s not a shadow or a harsh exchange, at least that I can see. The profound second chorus and the duet from the Gloria section, surely as beautiful a couple of creations as man can fashion, impress themselves upon me. God’s plenty, those for whom Christ died. I reflect gratefully on my own circumstances, and on my own bunch. I’m very moved.
Sunday, April 16 (back in Utah): The big kids hide the chocolate eggs and the little kids find them. They listen to my Atlanta stories about the aquarium and the park. We have a lesson about all of the small blessings that so add up, and invite everyone to make their own list of precious things. Caitlin and Spence respond especially. Drew won’t participate, but she invites me on a bike ride right afterwards. That kind of thing doesn't happen every day, so I feel it a privilege. It’s lots of fun. I discover that Drew rides a bike like she walks, which is to say quite weavingly.
Cousins come. They go out and barbecue and chat with Mum. Matt and Claire are in the shed. There’s an impressive concreteness to their play here. It appears, from their gestures and creations and intertextual references that they are working in a forge. “That’s cool, Matt. Do you want to learn how to use tools and be a carpenter or something?” “Yes,” he said. “And make weapons.”
Spence is inside creating too. This is Moomin derived, but much more than merely derivative. He’s mapped out a place called Mimkin’s Island. It is charming and detailed and very gentle. Accompanying his stylized map is a remarkable bestiary, with an amazing range of little creatures. They’re surprising, and funny, and so sweet. These miraculous little ones. Caitlin and I have a good hour-long talk. She reiterates the loop that this wrecked knee has thrown her for. This is fair and true. You shouldn't always try to jolly people out of things
Friday, April 6, 2007: I’m thinking of that simple, resonant, bursting phrase. Good Friday. I’m remembering. Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth. Exotic cheeses at (my youngest sister) Sharon jr.’s friend’s Jenny Miller’s house. Rubber Soul, for some reason, the gospels, according to King James, something by Pres. Kimball, a long, cool misty Edmonton ravine walk to think about and be grateful for what he said. Springtime. Good Friday.
I try, not too strenuously/not at all unrighteously, to start a little discussion about the day. No takers, and I have the sense that to push harder would have been to fail anyway. It’s not all a disaster, I guess. They’re all happy together, there in the family room, proposing and counterproposing all manner of inappropriate television fare.
