Something Missing

I don't know how many times I mentioned to Kirk that something was missing from EYT this year.  Costumes were being sewn, dances rehearsed, set painted, but still - something was almost tangibly missing.

Well, certainly sleep was missing.  But that is my EYT usual.  8 hour rehearsals and a family of 5 leaves very little daylight to prepare for the next day.  Thankfully, the standard day comes with a full 24 hours, and when necessary I have the stamina to draw from the extra eight hours inconveniently placed between 10 pm and 6 am.  

So the lack of sleep certainly wasn't the difference.  Something else was missing.

It turns out that something was STRESS!  While I felt a whole range of emotions during the three rehearsal weeks (frustration, exhilaration, exhaustion, excitement, motivation, disappointment, pride, humor, contentment, worry, preoccupation, distraction, gratitude, annoyance, accomplishment), there was a big, expected chunk missing: STRESS.

I attribute that to being surrounded by incredible people.  You know that Utah pioneer story about the individuals who just know their handcart was too heavy to push alone?  In that time of need, it was clear that angels had picked up where sheer willpower had failed.  In my case, with a handcart full of 72 kids and the unlikely destination of a completed show in only three weeks, my angels came in the form of real people.

Photo credit: Deanne Jones

Some I could see.  These angels surrounded me on a daily basis, toiling away in the EYT trenches.  Not only did Michelle spend her days banished to the lobby to work vocals with whomever I could spare, but she spent hours at home working on projects that needed her careful eye.  Logan split his time between running scene rehearsals and fixing/making/inventing anything I decreed necessary.  Kaylin never once complained about my crazy costume ideas, revisions to work she'd already done, or late nights spent at her sewing machine.  Chris motivated his half day boys, took on the boring job of supervising odd areas of the Empress, and agreed to stick with the show long term behind the light board.  And Perry did as Perry has always done: whatever I asked without complaint.

Photo credit: Deanne Jones

Other angels popped in to lighten the load when it was clear we needed more hands.  Jeff came back several times to make sure we had everything we needed for our set.  Julie adopted the stumps, knowing without her attention they'd never amount to anything.  Kirk lent his height to securing the leaves of the tree.  Amy was there to orchestrate a survival bag full of M&M's, to listen to me whine, or to work alongside me depending on what the day required.  Cindy spent seven last-minute hours creating a beautiful butterfly in a way no one else could.  Jamie donated her time and talents to create beautiful makeup sketches for the full day cast, then donated more time to teach the techniques.

And then there are the countless others who labored in the shadows: running errands, vacuuming the Empress, sewing alone in the toy shop, and picking up whatever slack needed picking up.  Countless costumers who helped Kaylin survive.  Dedicated families of EYT kids filling in wherever possible.  And my mother, whose huge contribution was to watch three crazy grandsons and one beautiful granddaughter so Michelle and I could live at the theater.

And this doesn't even scratch the surface of all the people who just continued to make the same sacrifices for the theater they make during every show.  Jake.  Marie.  Michele.  Amy.  Curtis.  Devin.  Front of house.  The board.  

If I made a comprehensive list of adults whose volunteer hours contributed to the success of this year's EYT, it would easily hold 150 names.  And so, something was missing this year as I hoisted the responsibility of this huge program onto my shoulders.  

If I missed the opportunity to recognize and thank you in person...

If your name doesn't appear on this blog individually...

If you were one of the real-world angels lessening my stress...

Thank you.

Because I didn't really miss that thing that was missing!

5th Grade

If I was going to teach 5th grade:

I would spend much of the previous June considering the next year's motto/theme, choosing something that hit that perfect combination of wit, motivation, and connection to my personal interests.  If possible, it would also tie into my core curriculum, and in the best of all worlds would be a quote from an author whose work my students would be studying.

I'd put my marketing degree to work, using the time spent in the dentist's chair, at the organ bench, and in the bathtub to mentally lay out coordinated bulletin boards, newsletters, and recognition notes that corresponded with my carefully selected theme.

I'd jot down notes about policies and procedures in my phone.  I'd mentally pen my introductory letter at stoplights.  I'd consider visual and verbal signals, memorizing the decisions I made as I slowly eliminated viable possibilities.

I would plan my classroom.  Where to put the red pencils.  How to organize my desk.  Which side of the bulletin board would house the daily schedule.

I'd buy a physical grade and planning book.  I'd check out as many materials as the school would allow and start mapping curriculum, first by month and then by week.

I would remain indecisive, despite hours of consideration, on the best way to pass back papers, keep up with missing and late work, and encourage my students to take responsibility for themselves.

I would finally arrive at the teacher inservice dates, pen in hand with a list of questions and to-do's ready to cross off.  I'd be equal parts excitement and determination to conquer the world.

I would defeat my insecurities with preparation.

Well -

I would do ALL of those things if I found out in June.

If, instead, I showed up late to the first day of inservice and found out on the lunch break that I would be assigned to a 5th grade classroom (team-teaching with a new teacher who will take over in the afternoons when I leave to teach music), I would approach it a bit differently.

I would panic.

I would have a migraine by 2 pm.

I would regroup and start making lists.

I would get to know my new team-teacher.

I would make more lists.

And then I would go home to consider a motto/theme, throwing all previous requirements out the window and hoping to come up with something unifying for a class who gets to split their instructional time between two teachers.

I would re-evaluate what are the most important elements of a successful classroom and start there.

I would ask my husband for a blessing so I could have some divine guidance in making decisions far faster than accustomed.

I would count my lucky stars that I get to teach three of my favorite subjects: grammar, writing, and math.

I would feel incredibly blessed to get to continue to teach some of the wonderful students that I student taught at the end of last year.

I would take the huge compliment of being entrusted with 26-ish students only a week before school starts.

I would take meds for the migraine and try to get some sleep.

And I would go at it tomorrow with equal parts excitement and determination to conquer the world.

Perhaps there's still time to mask my insecurities with preparation?

Because guess what...

I'm now a 5th grade teacher.

Wonderland

From the Alice in Wonderland, Jr. playbill:

One of the few things that rivals my passion for the performing arts is my lifelong love of literature.  Although I will read just about anything, I have always been particularly drawn to books in the fantasy genre, losing myself for hours or days in the worlds created in an author's imagination.  As the conflicts reach their carefully designed resolutions, I can't help but feel a sense of loss.  Not one to reread books, I may  never meet those particular characters again.

Photo credit: Deanne Jones

That sense of loss becomes more acute when I consider the fantasylands created in the imagination of children.  One of my favorites is the fantasyland created by my middle child.  We lovingly call it "Alexland," an amazing place where leftover crumbs are brown sugar bugs.  "Alexland," we recently learned, is reached through a portal conveniently located in the sun.  Unlike the fantasy novels I love, "Alexland" and its innumerable counterparts have not been immortalized on paper, and each day that passes increases the likelihood that they will disappear forever.

Photo credit: Deanne Jones

With this innate passion for imagination, I approached Alice in Wonderland, Jr. as a chance to explore Lewis Carroll's original playground, looking for creative new ways to immortalize his already iconic characters.  In the original book, Carroll writes, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  It is my desire that as you watch the scenes unfold before you that you'll be able to mentally return to that imagination of youth, the free spirit and whimsy that make the unbelievable become the reality and make Wonderland such an exciting place to discover.

Poet Oscar Wilde wrote, "I can believe anything provided it's incredible."  Well, I think incredible is 72 kids learning an entire show in three weeks.  Incredible is costuming each of those kids in 14 days.  Incredible is family members who are willing to come vacuum the rehearsal space at the end of a long day, just to help make the EYT program a success. So if it has been awhile since you exercised your imagination, get ready to believe in Wonderland, because EYT is nothing short of incredible! 

Andrea K. Fife
Director

And in case you don't get out to see the show, at least take the quiz: (it turns out it's a lot harder to write a vocabulary quiz than I would have expected).

Oh, and I have a spare comp ticket that I'd like to share with somebody dedicated enough to still be reading this post.  If you're interested in coming to see Alice in Wonderland, Jr. at the Empress and would benefit from a free ticket, comment with either:

• A description of your own childhood Wonderland  -- or --
• A vocab word that you missed

I will do a random drawing from the comments for the comp ticket (sorry EYT kids and families, I want to give this to an outsider).  Thanks for the support!!

Stories from the Bathroom Drawer

This story isn't mine to tell.

If it was, you'd be sorely disappointed to read about a life you've no doubt experienced.  Maybe not firsthand, but if I'm not just like you, I'm probably just like your sister, or your neighbor, or your best friend from 3rd grade.

My story is too typical for setting to matter and too bland to invite figurative language.  Were even the greatest of authors to try, you'd read nothing but cliche'.

For all it's predictability, however, my story could be told by anyone.  It belongs to the world - to all the people who've lived it before and to those who don't know they're living it now.  And it could be told, I could never say, "Wait.  That was mine alone to tell."

But this story?  It happened only once.  To her.  And it is hers to tell.  Or it is hers to keep.  Or so it should have been.

This story isn't mine to tell.

-- CHAPTER 1  --

Even though the houses sit too close together, elbows touching at the neighborhood table, each house is its own universe.  Everyone was given the same set of building blocks but no plans, and so every universe is unique.

Some universes have both father and mother.  And together or apart they built with jobs and kids, pets and hobbies, religion and culture and mistakes.  Truths and lies and a whole lot of in between.  It all came from that same construction set, but no two are alike.

In her universe, she is the mother.  The wife.  And they built their universe around her.  She connects the father to the children.  She connects the children to the religion.  And more literally, she connects the dog to his leash, the lunch to its box, five sets of teeth biannually to the dentist.  She connects the money to the creditors, the children to their beds.  It is overwhelming, but she built it this way.

Before she came here, she was the daughter.  In that universe were two islands: the father with his work and his money and his friends, and the mother with her purses and her society and her depression.  On a tenuous tightrope between the two stood the daughter.  To walk toward one was always to walk away from the other, and so she stayed.  Switzerland.  She sat in the middle with her homework and her boyfriends and her insecurities, and she rarely got so much as a sideways glance from either island.

So she built her universe carefully, like a web that flowed outward from her.  And she never left it.  When she moved, her universe stretched and bent and moved with her.  And when she stayed, she wrapped a protective arm around it to make sure it could not grow beyond her reach.

Three times a day, the universe stretched.  At 7:45, she drove the 15 minutes to drop the boy off at his charter school.  Again at 9:50, she headed out, this time to drive the preschool carpool with the girl and her two best friends.  At 3, she picked up the boy, and she felt secure knowing most of her universe was safe.  At 5:00 pm sharp, the husband returned, and the universe felt whole.

And one evening a month, she ventured out to book club.  But the universe followed her there in the form of texts, "Should the boy know the sight word, 'do'?" and "Come home soon.  The baby will not sleep for me."

And while the other wives complained, "I can't believe he can't just take care of it," she was glad.  She was the center of her universe.

Hm... kind of wish I'd finished that, since now I'm dying to know the story!

Also kind of glad I left it in a notebook in my bathroom drawer (which probably means I wrote it in the bathtub one day) so I could rediscover it years later.

Collecting Sentiment

I don't know when I started collecting porcelain dolls, but I know that once I'd received one, Christmas and birthdays required little thought on my parents' part.  My dad built me shelves, and my mom picked out dolls to fill them.  I named them.  I counted them.  I had favorites.  One of which, interestingly enough, was Michael: a toddler dressed in baseball pinstripes sitting on a red and white rocking horse.  Maybe some part of me knew I'd better learn to love baseball and red.

As I got older, my mom's choices seemed more purposeful.  She chose dolls to expand my Christmas collection, dolls she thought looked like me, or dolls for special occasions.  I have a doll from my high school graduation and my last doll - the one from my wedding day.

When I got married, I carefully packed my dolls and moved them to our tiny 620 square foot condo.  There really was no space there for 20 dolls, and in my mind they were just waiting to be displayed in my daughter's room.  Aside from the few that sat atop my piano, the rest collected dust and matted hair in a box.  So when we moved to our home nine years ago, I decided to keep only a small collection.  Michael and his horse, five Christmas dolls, and two tall dolls in beautiful golden dresses for my living room.

And then I had three boys.  Obviously, my remaining dolls will never be displayed in my daughter's room.  And if I was sentimental enough to keep them for a granddaughter, I am fairly certain my future daughter-in-law would keep them merely out of obligation.

And there is the issue that a stray ball in the living room broke the foot of one my remaining dolls...

Not only that, but I have grown up.  My decorating style is a bit more contemporary than gold-clad porcelain, and the dolls have never even fit in here.  Once a friend of mine confessed that she thought it was creepy that my huge dolls were staring at her in my living room.

While I once loved my dolls, now I love my dolls for what they represent.  I could easily give away the porcelain and curls.  But it is hard for me to give up these gifts from my mother.  It is hard for me to give up a last remnant of childhood.  It is especially hard to let go of the doll from my high school graduation.

But if I put her in a box for the next six months, she's going to get ruined anyway.  So I feel like now is the time to make the decision.  Do the dolls come with me to the next house?

I'll keep my Christmas dolls for sure.  No one has ever called them creepy in that context.  And I will keep Michael forever.  My first little boy, and the perfect representation of my childhood and motherhood combined.  But is it time to gift the other two to a little girl somewhere who would name them and display them proudly in her bedroom?

I'm not generally a sentimental person, so it surprises me when my daily path past the dolls in question has me reflecting daily.  Are those dolls a part of my next journey?

If you have any thoughts on items from your childhood or any suggestions of beneficiaries of a potential gift, please share.  Even better, if you have a way I can somehow collect the sentiment without keeping the actual dolls, that would be amazing.  But I can't seem to make this decision on my own.

Morning with Dylan

Dylan woke up before all the others today, which meant I got to enjoy some one-on-one conversations with him while I mixed up the morning's muffins.

Conversations with my other going-on-four year olds never seemed particularly notable.  But as I considered that at this time last year I was still very concerned about whether Dylan would ever really talk, I always find myself grateful for every word.

Words like "Spongebob," "Patrick," "Gary," and definitely for cute words like "Squidward."

Complete sentences like, "You stir it fast, and I stir it slowly?"

Logical thought progressions such as, "My brothers are sleeping?  We really should wake them up."

Especially for proclamations like the one just shouted at me in passing: "I'M GOING PEE, MOM!" as he heads independently to use the toilet.

His vocabulary is huge, considering he's only spoken for a year.  My favorite is observing as he adds a new word to the pile.  He heard the word "nervous" in context when a friend asked her small son if the fireworks made him nervous.  It was almost like you see him turning the word over on his palette before trying it out himself.  It wasn't long before he proclaimed himself to be nervous as the biggest of the fireworks flew into the sky.

Another of his/my favorites is "frustrated."  I am frequently accused of having a negative influence on his mood.  "That makes me sad," he'll say when I tell him not to do something.  That one drives me crazy.  But I think he saves, "That makes me frustrated," for the times when he knows a bit of cuteness will go a long way.

He's still not one to speak in a crowd or to answer a direct question (example: "How old are you?"), and his diction is still catching up to his vocabulary.  But if there's a lazy moment of silence - such as a muffin-mixing morning - his soft spoken voice will fill it.  And in a house where most of the time I just want people to stop talking, I love it every time he starts.

Oath and Covenant

If they covered it in Young Women's, I was probably talking to Emilee Anderson.

If they covered it in Sunday School, I was probably passing notes with Brant Frank.  (Wish I could have texted back then!)

If they covered in Seminary, there's a good chance I was in the practice rooms helping Topher Affleck throw together a last minute solo and ensemble piece.

Institute?  Yeah... dropped out of college.

Or just as realistically, it could just be that I learned it and forgot it.

But according to Carlos E. Asay of the Seventy, “Of all the holy agreements pertaining to the gospel of Jesus Christ, few, if any, would transcend in importance the oath and covenant of the priesthood. It is certainly one of the most sacred agreements, for it involves the sharing of heavenly powers and man’s upward reaching toward eternal goals.”

And somehow, I didn't really know about it.

I'm betting its because I'm a girl.  While I was busy studying faith, divine nature, etc., the boys were being instructed in how to use and honor their priesthood.  And whenever that token priesthood lesson came up, I swear it always about how to support the boys in their priesthood and how to sustain church leaders.  I really can't quite say I ever grasped this idea:

“The blessings of the priesthood are not confined to men alone. These blessings are also poured out … upon all the faithful women of the Church. … The Lord offers to his daughters every spiritual gift and blessing that can be obtained by his sons, for neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord.” -- Joseph Fielding Smith, President   Conference Report, Apr. 1970, 59

Though I didn't say so in my Gospel Doctrine lesson today, I think it's kind of like how the women do all the work of growing and birthing a baby, but the men still get to have all the blessings that come with being a father.  I don't get/have to do the work that goes along with exercising the power of the priesthood.  But I still get to have all the blessings that come along with being a daughter of God.

In other words, I get my own fair shot at promises outlined in Doctrine and Covenants section 84.  Guess I have some studying to do!

Aside from my new-found understanding of my role in the priesthood, my unique, BoyTrapped life makes me listen closely when Spencer W. Kimball says, "This priesthood is... about the most important thing in all the world."  I thought about the picture of the Salt Lake temple and my family proclamation that have hung proudly in my home for almost 12 years.  But nowhere in my home do I have something to specifically represent that the priesthood really is the big deal.

So I decided to change that.

I purposely designed it to mimic the family proclamation, and I included the great truths I've learned in the past weeks of study for my future reference.  My four guys willingly donned suits (at least from the waist up) for a quick photo shoot yesterday, and I framed it all up.  Cost me $12.  

I'm hoping the visual reminder will help keep the principles and promises a bit more in the forefront of my life.  I'm hoping the framed scripture may spark missionary moments in my home.  But more than that, I'm hoping that I can start to live up to the full potential of what Heavenly Father has in store for me.  

I had provided class members with their own printed copy of the quotes and scriptures but promised to make them available online if anyone wanted to share with friends or family.  So if you're interested in printing your own Oath and Covenant for family home evening, for a church lesson, or maybe to display in your home, feel free to download and print as many as you like.

Oh, and did I mention teaching Gospel Doctrine is awesome?  I don't get all splotchy from nerves anymore, and I seem to be getting better at controlling my run-away-train pacing.  I even finished everything I had prepared today at just 3 minutes past the ending time.  

But mostly, I am loving getting to relearn the gospel as an adult.  I'm sure many of you are shaking your head at my lack of spiritual maturity, but as long as I keep uncovering amazing "Hey, I never realized that!" moments in each lesson, I know I am right where I need to be.