You know it’s a good time when your dinner party guests stay through breakfast the next morning… We love the Withams!
We spent a lot of time together in Arizona. In fact, the Google Maps image of our house included Melinda parking her van in front of our house. Ha!
Timothy whipped out these drawings in a hurry last night for a book report. He is quite an artist… and reader.
Timothy is the child that surprises me the most. He goes about doing his thing very quietly. I am not successful when I ask Timothy to do things related to school or time management. He is independent, quiet, funny, and full of unheralded qualities. And he is successful. He teaches me that some people have a different pace and that he’s actually accomplishing more than I expect; his process just looks different than how I would have him work. He delights in mystery and gives the appearance of just getting by, when really he is working at his own pace on extraordinary things. I think that he makes meticulous plans in his mind before starting anything.
He’s Timothy, my young man of mystery and accomplishment.
We’ve given our hearts to many projects this week. Mark and Richard spent every evening and all day one day working on a pinewood derby car. I once went to a fireside by Noelle Picus-Pace where she talked about coming in 4th place a the Olympics and how you almost want any place but 4th. That’s the situation that Richard and Mark faced last night. Mark didn’t understand how the race was decided, and knowing that he had won all of his races, he thought he had won first place. We tried to explain that it was all about time, but in his mind, he was going to win the grand prize. He was brave, but I watched his heart break when his name wasn’t read. I watched his heart break over and over as he tried to understand what had happened. I know it’s good for kids to learn to cope with disappointment, but it hurts to watch it.
On a lighter note, Timothy played some great baseball this week and he and a partner made a model of an atom. I have never seen students take the electron cloud so literally, but I like it.
And I made quilt squares. I haven’t perfected the art of sewing a “scant” 1/4 inch seam, so 7 of my 9 squares are too small. Surprisingly, I am not too flummoxed about this. I am leaning toward just starting over rather than reworking seven more squares. It’s a good project for me, because the seams are just a few inches and I can step away and come back. Instead of long stretches of time, I have many 15-minute intervals of time in my days. I have a sewing room, so I can walk in and out of my project without having to clean up.
The project room for the rest of the family is the kitchen, and it’s a big mess. Someday I will miss the projects strewn all over the hearth, island, table, and computer desk, but today I am just getting up the courage to face it.
I can tell what my boys have been up to when I walk into the room based on what they leave behind. This morning’s clutter trail included two Bibles that they read independently before setting out on their adventures. All clutter was forgiven immediately.
One day this month, Richard took our boys to Fish Creek for a hike. They met up with Richard’s dad, brother, sister, and their families. I can’t narrate because I wasn’t there (my toe isn’t ready for 7 1/2 mile hikes), but the pictures tell a good story.
The stroller
Spring of 1998 was the first time I watched the Texas bluebonnets bloom along the roadways. We were building a new house. I had time to do projects and I spent some of that time sewing clothing for one-year-old Paige. I bought cheerful flowered fabrics for play clothes and a gauzy organza fabric for her Easter dress.
This time was the beginning of a focused effort to acquire toys for our little girl. I didn’t know then that toys are something you only need to buy for a few years. Once you’ve got a good collection, they seem to multiply magically in the closets and bins.
One day I drove Paige to the mall in Cedar Park to visit the toy store. Paige picked out a pink doll-sized stroller, a perfect size for her to push. She was so excited about it that I let her push the stroller through the mall. She began to move ahead of me and I was left to follow her. I watched her bob ahead of me with her cute short haircut, hot pink sandals, and handmade pink dress. Because I was a few steps behind her, I saw the smiles from shoppers as they noticed this little woman walking so confidently with her stroller.
I can still remember the rattly-scraping sound that the wheels made on the floors and sidewalks. I will never forget the print of her pink dress nor the love she granted to each of her dolls that rode in the stroller.
I don’t know why certain memories stay with me while others are lost. Perhaps this memory of Paige pushing her stroller stays because her little form, pushing forward on her own, became a glimpse of what I would experience again and again, observing her become more independent. I couldn’t have appreciated at the time that this scene was the first of many, where I would watch our children move beyond our reach to become who they are.
Just as I watched the smiles of strangers that day, I’ve seen the delight that my children’s reaching has pulled from observers. I’ve been blessed with friends who have loved our children and doted on them and shown support for their dance, baseball, and piano feats. The feeling I have at these moments when my children perform or move to the next phase is full, sometimes painful, and expansive. My heart races to catch up as my children move ahead with strengths I couldn’t imagine for them.
It’s when I give them the freedom to move out of my reach that I’ve had better perspective of what they can become. But, oh, the ache that comes with my smile!
Milestones at our house mean that you get your picture taken at the front door. We had some big days last week. A 19th birthday, the first days of school, and a piano recital.
Our power was interrupted all day on the last day of summer break. We braced ourselves for the “hardship,” and loaded our cooler with food so we didn’t have to open the refrigerator and we turned off the computers. We cooled off the house in the early morning hours. Then the power went off, and along with it, our internet, phones, and our appliances for 7-8 hours.
We got so much done!
Daniel, Mark and I finished assembling my new bed. I sat down and worked on an important project for four hours, uninterrupted by phone calls, social media notifications, and squabbling over the computer. I couldn’t do laundry or cook, so we ate a simple lunch. Daniel cleaned out his room and we had several conversations. I repeat: we had several conversations. The weather stayed cool, so we were never too warm, and this was important.
Mark read books through the afternoon. I could hear him singing to himself from the hammock outside my window and from his bedroom down the hall. There was no hum from the refrigerator and air conditioner to block out his voice. So I sat, with my boys, my project, and the quiet. This time in our dim house wasn’t a hardship! It was a gift as our summer break came to an end. It was a reminder of how much we miss when we are too connected to our screens. Seven hours of living life unplugged left me feeling happy and connected to my family. What an easy remedy for feeling stressed out, stretched, and disconnected: put down the phone, turn off the screens, gather, work, and talk.
It was a social week for us, with house guests in many corners, a science camp, an art camp, full evenings, and a family reunion. I ate a burrito from Freebirds with Richard and Nancy. Mark and I were stung by wasps and Richard and Daniel came to the rescue, vacuumed them up as they flew around their nest, and sealed up the entrance to their nest beneath our house.
My knowledge and interests have expanded over the years as I have waited in my van for kids at music lessons, school, church activities, and ballet. This week I read a lot at the University of Utah while I waited for Timothy at science camp. My van is almost the only place I could read this week. At this rate, I should finish my book by Christmas. Something I did for myself was attend the New Testament Commentary Conference at BYU on Friday afternoon to hear my friend Julie speak. I stole the photo of Julie from Facebook.
A favorite moment was with Paige and Richard when we took a drive to the Albion basin to see the wildflowers. At sunset, a bull moose emerged between the trees. Its long legs made its leisurely walk as fast as our truck as we moved along the road trying to get a blurry photo. That evening I saw flowers; Richard saw the slopes he normally visits on his skis. We wove two separate themes as we talked. “Oh, look at that shade of pink…and those purple flowers! I’m dying.” To which he replied, “I can’t believe I ski over all of those boulders!” spoken with an equal sense of wonder.
Another adventure we had was weeding and planting carrots at the Church garden. The missionary in charge of the carrots kept handing us carrots for breakfast. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, we rinsed them with our dirty hands in the sprinklers and munched as we weeded. “They taste like carrots,” Richard said. We spent two hours with our whole family, working and laughing together, so I was happy.
The kids enjoyed time with 20 cousins this week, bouncing, splashing, and running. Ours is a family with cousins in perpetual motion. In the kids’ cubbies at Spring Lake, we found notes that Grandma had encouraged the Sanchez cousins to write to one another. Here are a few:
Dear Paige, I love you.
Dear Mortiky, Hi, I’m David. I love you!
To Timothy [puppy drawing] signed DAVID
A top secret note from Hogwarts School, sealed for Mark
Dear Paige, I love you. You’re my budd
iey.Dear Daniel, I painted you a picture. You’re welcome. <3 Paige
We watched the most lingering sunset ever on Saturday night. As the late summer evening darkened, the Payson temple began to glow. Watching this heavenly Changing of the Guard in silence, the light source changing from sun to temple, fed my soul.
Are you in the mood to look at beach pictures?These triennial beach trips have become important markers for the progress of our family. Mark was a newborn and produced his first smile on the first beach trip we made with Richard’s family. Over the years, Paige towered over her brothers in height, until suddenly she didn’t. This is the last family vacation before she leaves home. When we go again, Daniel might be on a mission. The early beach trips with Mark kept me in the waves, holding him tightly because he loved the rush and pull of the water. This year he spent most of his beach time in the water, not needing my hand, and not caring how far the water carried him down the beach from the group. I watched him with squinty eyes from a distance, his jaunty walk and hop over the waves matching the imprint I have of him in my mind. Courage and skill have grown in all of the children. Interest in sand castle building has remained a constant, whether their legs are short or long, and whether they own a cell phone or not. I like constants like that. Some years we can find sand crabs. Timothy’s area of interest is always the wildlife. This year the treasure was sand dollars and on the final night, a tiny octopus in the tide pools. The boys are lucky to have cousins that match their ages and interests, and these cousins gathered for card games, baseball, amusement park rides, and electronics. Richard and his brothers always make me smile when they joke around together, which is almost all the time, except when they are working on a computer issue or shopping for something online. Then things get very, very serious indeed.
Walking on sand with a broken toe is a bad, bad idea, so I didn’t do a lot of that. I sat on the deck and looked out over the palm trees, stitched hair on a doll, and thought about Relief Society. On the days that I ventured to the beach, I spent the whole afternoon there to avoid having to walk back and forth over the sand. I’m normally pretty terrible at doing nothing, but sometimes it’s good to be still.