Category: Life according to Angela

This week brought the first piano lesson for Timothy. His delightful expressions, if bottled, would be alcoholic.

Sardines, when played in the house, is best accomplished if you wear a Batman mask and Mom’s dark bathrobe.

“R-duo D-duo”

The ladybugs

Beowulf with duct tape over some passages

My dentist played 1940’s music while I had my teeth cleaned. All right!

We have a high school, middle school, elementary school, and preschool student in this house.

One of my favorite movies is You’ve Got Mail. I am thinking of the scene where Meg Ryan tells her “surrogate mother” and female employee that she is closing her store. Her s.m. tells her “Closing the store is the Brave Thing to Do,” and then she says stepping off into the unknown “armed with nothing” means Meg is Daring to believe she can do something different. Or something like that.

Tonight I say, “Beginning school is the Brave Thing to Do.”

Here we go.

June is set aside for important rituals like cleaning out the drawers, closets, spraying for bugs and doing whatever we please. We’re having a jolly time of it.

We’re NOT doing the summer reading program at the library but we ARE reading.

We are spending time in the mountains.

We are picking tomatoes, growing grass and watching flowers bloom.

I’m reading educational philosophy from my college files. I’ll share some of my favorite passages from my study today.

On reading:

“…there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation:–talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society…is…the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time. And how can we have access to such a society? Most typically through books, especially the books and personal writings of the great and the wise.” ~John Ruskin, 1864

On the value of unstructured, joyful living:

“Dr? Nehru tells that in India ‘during every period when her civilization bloomed, we find an intense joy in life and nature and a pleasure in the art of living.'” ~Eric Hoffer, from The Ordeal of Change

“…’great’ thinking consists in the working out of insights and ideas which come to us in playful moments. Archimedes’ bathtub and Newton’s apple suggest that momentous trains of thought may have their inception in idle musing…the sudden illumination and the flash of discovery are not likely to materialize under pressure.” ~Eric Hoffer in The Ordeal of Change

One theme I have felt very strongly these five years in Sahuarita is Isolation. People who drive here for the first time call us to make sure there really is something south of Tucson. There is an Indian reservation between Tucson and our home. It feels like you’ve left civilization 10 miles before our house emerges from the cactus (and to be honest, from the shadow of a casino).

This is not to imply that our house is physically isolated from other houses. We live in a densely-packed neighborhood of brown stucco homes that look very much the same. The distance between our house and our neighbor’s houses is about 8 feet. We live in a community that is highly regulated, from how many cars we can park out front to the kind of swimwear we can to wear at the pool. Homogenized and crowded, our community is also very isolating. Our house was purchased during the housing boom of 2005-2006 and the house prices were very inflated. Most of our neighbors work all day to pay for their homes. Much of my street is abandoned from 7-5 each day. This is true for many neighborhoods everywhere. The most isolating places are often heavily populated but disconnected.

Isolation is something I have thought about a lot during my life. Even Dr. Seuss acknowledges that “Alone is something you will be quite a lot.” I have decided that isolation is not in itself the problem. In fact, I think some of my favorite authors, poets and theologians were products of isolation: Robert Lewis Stevenson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browing, William Tyndale, and more. I can relate to Jacob in the Book of Mormon when he talks about being separated from his people and feeling lonesome (Jacob 7:26). Some chose their isolation, and for others, isolation chose them. Through their isolation or because of it, they were able to be more introspective, more imaginative, even more inspired (did I steal that from PBS?); and like Jacob, more solemn.

I feel isolated from my extended family. I try not to complain, but I will always miss the associations that I might have had with my sisters, my parents, my brothers, and their families. On the other hand, if theology has taught me anything, measurements of time and distance are of little importance in the eternities. I will never cease to “Be” and this means by reasonable extension and through temple covenants, I will never cease to be a sister, a daughter, a wife, a mother. Because of this, I feel like I will have other chances to be a part of my family’s experiences someday. I do what I can to remain a part of their lives, but the voice that wants things NOW grows whiny when I miss the good and (strangely) the bad times with them.

On good days I see isolation as a tool in helping me have time to study and think, which are things I crave. On bad days I rival a cactus as I bristle and fight the solitude. I know I am no poet or writer or great anything (thank goodness), but I hope that this isolation serves its purpose in the chiseling of my character and serving God’s purposes. I have a personality that craves isolation, but also longs for very meaningful, direct, and illuminating interaction, too.

Well, I just read this post and I am debating whether I should hit “publish.” I’ve grown so introspective I’ve almost completely turned inside out a long tube sock of pity for myself. And yes, I realize that was a terribly odd thing to say.