Elsie's Notes from New England - THEMission edition

  It’s only a pencil School-bus yellow and School-year fresh How many memories Are bound to my soul Through a similar slender baton From my past?   Letters traced on large-lined pages With broken bars to mark the level   Of an a or a c or an r (which touches those hyphens once, then twice on the arc) Childish notes passed Shy professions of infatuation And later, pages upon pages of Self exploration Angry rants Awe-struck revelations   I know everything about that pencil by familiarity with its ancestors The weight and balance in my hand the touch of either end – resilient on one, keen at the other - And exactly how it feels Between my curious teeth; The crunch of painted wood And the irreversible bend of the thin metal band   No matter how many devices I own Nor how quickly my fingers fly Over a keyboard Or my thumbs press that tiny screen There is nothing that can replace A simple stick For expressing thoughts

We've never owned a really large home. We've never had a lot of extra space to store things we don't use very often. Over the years, John and I have grown to appreciate a lack of clutter - we feel better when we are not surrounded by an excess of stuff. We love to purge, and we're training ourselves to avoid the accumulation of things that aren't necessary and don't serve us well (Thank you, Marie Condo, even if I've never actually watched a video or read your book). Sometimes it's hard to let go of things that we have particular attachments to - things we've carried around with us for years. These are things we may have lovingly and carefully chosen with excitement and satisfaction that now sit, unused, in a drawer or hang in a closet still because I can't separate the value of the thing from the happy moment in which I chose to bring that thing into my home; into my life.  This morning I was looking for a place to store three candles I had remo

When John asked his parents if it would be helpful to them for us to come and live with them, his dad was a little reluctant. After some time, though, dad agreed that it might be helpful to have us there to prepare some meals, drive them places, and help with housework and other chores. He had to assert his independence, however, one day when he told John, "You know, I've been making my breakfast since I was six years old!" John assured him that no one was going to stop him from making his own breakfast. When dad (Norton) was six, his mother passed away. It wasn't the first tragic loss in their family. Two Decembers before, while Mary was in the hospital giving birth to Nort's younger brother Cecil, their older brother Malcolm passed away from diptheria. He was six at the time. Because he died of a communicable disease, his body had to be buried right away. By the time Mary got home from the hospital, her oldest child was buried and gone. John received Malcolm'

I want to tell you a story about Martha and Rochelle, and how they changed my life.  Martha Proctor was the stake young women's president in the Columbia Missouri stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints back in the 1970s. I was never in her home. We only spoke a few times.  Rochelle Roskelley was a girl I met my freshman year at Brigham Young University during the second semester. She was mature and gentle and kind, and a very good listener. We talked, we laughed, we colored together, and one April night, she shifted my paradigm. When I headed to BYU in the fall of 1977, I was looking for a new beginning. All through high school, I felt awkward and out of place. I was too loud, I was too pushy, I was too immature … there were too many things that felt wrong about me, and I was looking forward to being in a new place where no one had preconceived notions about who I was. In other words, I was a normal 18 year old, but it didn’t feel normal to me. Everyo

About 18 years ago, I lay in bed next to my husband on a quiet fall night. The room was dark, and we were in that comfortable silent mode while we waited together for sleep to come. It was then that I spoke the words that had been brewing in my heart for several weeks.   “I don’t want my mom to die,” I said quietly, feeling like a petulant child who hates her Sunday shoes and wants to wear flip flops to church instead; frustrated and impotent. The cancer, however, was relentless and irrationally insistent. I knew what was inevitable, and over the weeks that followed, mom and I talked about all of it; life and death, the irreverent and the sacred, the real and the fantasy, and in those phone conversations we said all the loving and trusting words that a mother and daughter might want to say to one another before   goodbye. And even so, she slipped away sooner than I had imagined and before I could get there to say it all in person. I don’t blame myself for that, or her,

Rollercoasters and Reminders My heart was heavy as we walked into the Toronto meetinghouse that Mother’s Day morning. I was a little self-conscious to be wearing slacks rather than a skirt, but I had known that space in my suitcase would be tight on our trip, and had decided that being there was more important than what I was wearing.   Johnny was a little quiet, but I wasn’t going to press him. His sacrifice to come to church that morning may have seemed trivial to some, but I knew that it was mighty to my twelve year-old son. In his concert dress of black pants, white shirt, and tie, I knew that at least self-consciousness wouldn’t compound his disappointment. He looked like any other deacon. I wished that he was feeling more than just resignation, but I was impressed with and grateful for his willingness to be obedient, and wasn’t going to stir the pot. In the hallway, a woman welcomed us and introduced herself. I briefly explained that we were in Toronto for the week