My Not-So-Little, Little Brother

16 years ago Dayna and I waited by the big tires on Paris Elementary playground waiting for my Grandma Connie to come pick us up. From my 8 year old memories, I feel like we waited all day, but still her white Buick with the Jensen Lumber license plates never pulled up. When I got older I realized my families lumber yard didn't actually design their own license plate...

We were so sure my mom was going to go into labor with my little brother, and the plan was that Grandma Connie would come pick us up. So we waited...and waited...and waited. Well, at least in my mind I felt like we waited for days in increments of 15 minutes at recess. I'll be honest, all I can remember is waiting to hear that we were going to make the hour and a half drive over the canyon to the hospital for Theron to be born. I actually can't remember the much anticipated pick up by my grandma or the drive. Obviously the waiting made a much bigger impression on my 8 year old self than the news and drive did. Sorry, bro.

However, I do remember getting to the hospital and finding out that he wasn't actually born yet...what?! This baby thing took waaaay too long for me! Dayna, Holly, my grandma and I sat in a waiting room watching day time TV and flipping through old issues of Highlights. What felt like an eternity later, my sister Natalie walked in, and, in true Natalie-get-crap-done attitude, walked down the hall to find my mom's delivery room. Cracking the door open a bit we could see my tiny, little brother laying on the scale screeching. I should've known then that he would never be the quiet kind.

Now, I actually wasn't very excited for my little brother's grand appearance. In fact, I wasn't very excited for my little brother at all. When I found out my mom was pregnant I locked myself in my bedroom and cried. I cried because I was afraid I wouldn't be my dad's little buddy anymore, but, rest assured, I am still his favorite.

16 years later, that screeching, little creature on the scale is now a very handsome, 6'4" young man. He's incredibly athletic, and I can't tell you how many over-the-door hoops, indoor, outdoor, every imaginable hoop has been in our house. He pounded a ball through the kitchen a hundred times and then some. He bounced a baseball off an exercise trampoline on the rare occasion my dad couldn't sit on a yellow bucket and coach his pitching. Even I stood on the front porch and threw him football passes as he ran across the front yard.

When he was little he tagged along with my dad and I as we did chores. We got pulled over once for not having him in a car seat in the old blue truck. This wouldn't have been a big deal except for the fact that my dad had to have a middle seat belt installed specifically for a car seat because they'd all been taken out earlier. We called him Pud because of his little puddin' hands. He couldn't say 'L' very well when he was toddler, and my dad would crack up every time Theron would ask him to take the "nid" off the coke bottle for him. But I think my favorite story of him was when we picked up Henry.

We'd traveled down to Logan to buy a new buck for our sheep herd. We picked him up when he was just a young lamb, and on the way home we asked Theron what we should name him. Theron thought about it for a minute and then said, "Hmmmm, Henry." We knew nobody named Henry, no cartoon characters called Henry or any connection to a Henry, but the name stuck and Henry it was. Speaking of Henry, a short while later Theron decided he was going to ride Henry. He dressed up in his cowboy shirt, hat and boots. Put on his chaps and spend the day walking around the house asking when dad would get home so he could go ride Henry. When dad did get home, we went over to the barn, pulled a halter around Henry and put Theron on him. I'll always remember my dad and I laughing about Theron's shirty thumping as his heart beat so hard from the adrenaline of his first ride. Unfortunately, Henry wasn't much for mutton bustin' and just trotted around a bit. Theron eventually slide off and hung up his hat on the rough stock.

A slightly less macho memory of Theron is when my mom, Theron, a few sisters and I were driving up to the elk ranch to do some sewing. As we were winding our way up to the ranch, toddler Theron began to sing. He had a bag of honeycomb cereal, yarn and a needle, and he'd been told he would spend the day with us making honeycomb necklaces. Apparently he was quite pleased with this as he began singing, "I don't know but I've been told, my mama's taking me to sew." He was quite the seamstress, and I had that very honeycomb necklace he made for me hanging on my bed post until this last summer when I cleaned out my room to move east.






He's grown up a lot, and has a great personality. He is charismatic, kind and righteous. I've always been proud to hear that he is kind to everyone and a good example. I hope that is as true as I hear and never changes. He makes his family proud.

Love you, little brother, and happy birthday!!

Bianca and The Homeless Man

Oh, Boston is a funny place, and today was no different.  It all started with a homeless man yelling at me… 

I went down Boylston Street today to grab some lunch and run some errands. Boylston, like all streets in Boston, is marked with multiple sites of historical importance—both old and new. Because of these important landmarks (Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, and Boston Marathon Finish Line to name a few), Boylston is usually filled with people. If you take the minute to look up from your electronic device, you see a melting pot of people. There are the tourists that are easily spotted with maps in hand and cameras around wrists; the fancy business woman power walking down the sidewalk in her pumps as she sips her Starbucks and talks on her cell phone. If you’re lucky you’ll see a man in a full bear costume playing a keyboard, and he plays it quite well I might add! There’s a smattering of homeless people around the corners and always in front of the Apple Store. One of these homeless men is what brings me to write this today. 

As I was walking, I heard a man yelling. In such a short time in Boston I’ve come to ignore all the random yelling and horn honking that goes on around me because it is literally happening all the time! However, as the yelling continued I realized it was coming up behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see a man trotting up behind me yelling about my hair. Yes, my hair of all things. I’m not entirely sure what his argument was, but apparently my hair had drawn his attention. I told him I had to keep going because I had to go back to work, but he was fairly persistent. He was also hard to understand. I tried to pretend I knew what he was saying and told him it’s called ombre, and that I had it done in Utah. Now people were starting to slow down and watch. I told him thank you (again, I’m not sure for what) and that I had to keep going. He continued to yoller at me as I walked away, but he was quickly replaced by a woman.  

As I tried to keep weaving my way through cameras and strollers and Starbucks cups, a kind-faced, blonde woman stopped me and asked me where I did get my hair done. I told her Utah and she mentioned how it must have caught the man’s eye for some odd reason or another. I gave her a polite smile and laugh and tried to keep on my way. I’ll be darned…she followed me too. However, she was slightly easier to understand as she asked me why I had moved to Boston. I told her my husbands job and we had just graduated. She asked if I was liking Boston, and I told her it was good but a bit of an adjustment. She then tells me that she is a card reader and that I have a lot of energy around me. Hm, well, that’s funny since it is Friday afternoon, I made the mistake of wearing boots that pinch my toes and I’d just really like to go home where I don’t have to talk to people—unless you count Steve as person. At this point I really wondered if I had a crazy magnet stuck to me today, but then she surprised me.  

She told me that she senses a lot of confusion in my life right now. She said I was confused and sad about my career, but very happy in my marriage. She said it may seem like there’s emptiness in my life I’m trying to fill with something important, but I haven’t found it yet. She said she sees a lot of people, but I was different because there was a lot of happiness and contentedness surrounding me, but also a lot of confusion. She said that’s a very rare combination.  

I’ll be honest, I was impressed! I am happy in my marriage, and the longer I am married to Steve, the more I realize there is literally nobody else in the world I want to annoy for the rest of my life. However, I am very confused about my career right now. I worked for 6 years to get my degree, and the more I try to get certified in Massachusetts the more discouraged I get.  I like my new job and can see myself here for several years, but I also feel that I only have a few years before I pass on my amazing genes to a baby and that I want to make these next few years really matter! I want to teach! I also want a baby! But then I think about how much I love sleeping till noon on Saturdays with Steve, and I think, better wait on that baby. But I am confused and a little bit empty inside, but I also have a wonderful husband who makes me very happy. And I have an incredible kitchen that I don’t have to share with roommates which also makes me happy! I am very happily confused!  

I was pretty surprised at how right Bianca was about my life, and I started to really think that maybe she could “see the past, future and present” like her business card said. Maybe I really had met a psychic! But come to think of it, maybe she just repeated my answers back to me in a slightly diff 

Steven Doesn't Know It, But We're Becoming Vegetarians!

Since moving to Boston, I have come to find that, well, it's incredibly weird out here. Contrary to Steven's belief, I hold me tongue about most of them (The word "wicked." The fact that there appears to be no 'r' in my name out here, or people's inability to follow simple cross-walk etiquette. The infuriatingly disorganized grocery stores...seriously, who puts the Crisco in the dressings section? Or the indescribable state of their driving).

However, I just cannot keep my mouth shut about the newest shock I've had. This one would appear to be the most appalling and disgusting difference between my dear Idaho and Massachusetts (by the way, I still can't spell that). 

I don't think I fully appreciated all the perks of growing up on a farm. Of course I understand that many people will just never know what it's like to run across the top of the haystack and have your leg fall into a hole. For a split second, you're sure you'll fall straight to the bottom. I never misunderstood those small heart attacks. Some will never know what it's like to peel hay chunks apart with fingers so cold they can barely grip the strings...which is why my dad would find so many littering the fields in the spring. I did not take for granted the chance to watch my mom pull a clumsy lamb out of the frozen water bucket, wrap him in her own coat, lay him down in the front room and use Olivia's medicine syringe to drip milk in his mouth. Don't misunderstand me, I wouldn't be who I am today without those experiences. I did take one thing for granted though...

In our basement, we've always had a big deep freezer that was always full. I see now that we were far more blessed than I ever realized. Snuggled in at the top you'd find little treasured jars of homemade freezer jam--the cloves sticking to the lid. The rare nights my mom wasn't home to make dinner, we'd fish a Totino's Pizza out--still today I'd choose that 99cent pizza over any Regina's Pizzeria dish! It usually held a whole turkey or two that I saw more than once my dad place on another's doorstep. Please just roll over the milk jugs and diet coke bottles filled with opaque liquid--waste not, want not; colostrum is a precious commodity on a farm.

Now, beneath the cheap pizza and bottles of milk, there are stacks of meat. Meat that we raised on our own farm. They're all wrapped in white butcher paper with the blue ink stamped across the top categorizing the beef from the pork. I will always giggle at the memories of each new college roommate awkwardly asking me what the white packages in our freezers were. You honestly have not tasted bacon until you have it fresh from the white wrapper! And this is what brings me back to my original topic of outrageous differences between Idaho and Massachusetts: the price of meat is insane!! I am serious, meat is so expensive! Today I bought a roast, a simple Sunday roast that would sit in the corner of the freezer till all the better meat was used up, and I was shocked that a piece of roast that was 1/4 size the ones my mom would give to me to take back with me to college would cost 13$! I am not a math major, but I'm pretty sure my mom has given me hundreds of dollars in Sunday roasts!

I admit, I took for granted those 23 years of glorious farm-raised meat. I did not realize that my mom and dad spoiled me with so much free food, and what a blessing it was to have that freezer downstairs with the incredibly expensive meat inside and the bag of salt I'd put on top the lid to make sure I was never the one in trouble for leaving the lid open.

Send Me Home

Occasionally something will hit me and I immediately go back fifteen or ten years to that little farm girl I once was. It's has happened twice this week, and both times I am transported back in time to very distinct memories from  my childhood. Since both of these memories were about my dad, and his birthday is tomorrow, I thought I would write him a post about my week of memories.

Earlier this week on Monday, I was walking out of American Fork Junior High after a long day of teaching my incredibly irritating, beloved 7th grades, and, as I was unlocking my car door, my head whipped up to the sound of geese. I will always associate those first honks I hear with the end of winter and the heaviness of winter immediately leaving me. I was very young when I first learned about the geese coming and going each fall and spring. Ironically, I learned about their journey because of a mistaken journey.

I couldn't have been very old, maybe 10, when we had a fluke week in the middle of our very cold Bear Lake winters. We were feeding the cows with the sleigh as usual, which meant every day at 4:30pm my dad and I would hook up whatever team we had at the time, load the sled up with hay, and trek down through several fields to feed the cows waiting in the bottoms. Now, I have too many stories just about those trips, but this one in particular is one of my favorites. This fluke week was a fake spring in about February, where it gives you hope that the snow will melt and the sun will start shining every day, and I won't have to scrape the outside and inside of car windows anymore. This happens most every year, and it always fooled me (and still does) that we really might have a short winter! This year, it did fool a flock of geese. As we drove down on our sleigh we crossed through the second field, and found a whole flock of geese had come home early for this fake spring. I distinctly recall my dad saying how they were going to regret their mistake next week when they realize winter isn't over yet. Each day during this fake spring we would drive through the flock and see them moseying about in the field, and, sure enough, the next week winter resumed. The flock of geese were now out of their element as the ground filled back up with snow.

One day my dad came out of the horse barn leading the two massive horses as usual, but in his hand he had the old grain can with the dented side, which was not usual. I asked him what it was for, and he replied it was to carry grain. Thank you, father, for always pointing out the obvious. As we neared the winter geese, he hooked the reins into the V of the sled's front (again, I have several stories about how at other times this form of autopilot has gone terribly wrong), picked up the dented grain can, walked to the back of the sled (again, I could tell you many ways this could have gone wrong), and started flinging the grain onto the hard-packed snow. The geese ran for it, and lined up just like the cows did for their hay. My dad was feeding these disoriented geese. This just proves my point that my dad likes to feed things. It doesn't matter if it is a crippled work horse, a frozen Ronda lamb, an Agnus half steer/half bull, or a flock of lost geese--he feeds it...unless it happens to by my pet cow, Curly; then he sells it.

Each day for the rest of the winter we carried our Grinch-like sled of hay and dented can of grain down through the fields stopping to feed the young bulls, Jock the retired work horse, Clyde and Toby, the geese, and finally the cows.

Several years after our geese winter, I mentioned something about it to my dad, and he denied this ever happening, so either this entire story is a figment of my imagination (it isn't), or my dad was trying to act like he would never be so soft as to waste several sacks of grain on a flock of geese who were so terrible at being birds that they flew back in the middle of winter.

A few days later after hearing those signaling honks of geese fly over my head on Monday, I was sitting on the cold ground watching Steven play an intramural football game. This is a familiar evening to me as I have watched him play the last couple years, and on a cool evening a strong smell wafts across the busy road and floods the field. Usually my company remarks that it smells horrible, but, to me, it is the smell of home and spring time.

I can really tell spring is on its way by the smells in my home valley. I wouldn't trust the geese; they aren't the best judges of seasons... After the first couple of true warm days, a smell begins to take over. Thawing crap. Literally. My home is just across the street from my families own farm, and, even better, it is surrounded on both sides by more farms. But as soon as I smell my neighbor's dairy farm thawing, I know Spring is here to stay. I have these randoms memories about my dad saying spring was here because he could smell the dairy farms. So even though my football spectator companions may dislike the smell of the dairy farm across the road from the field, it sends me home instantaneously.