Sleep Tight, Baby Jack

Shhh...  Whisper please.

I just got back from the hospital. Our grandson was born earlier today. Right now he's sleeping peacefully in his mother's arms. Sweetest little thing ever. You forget just how beautiful and precious a newborn baby is. When it was my turn, I held him close and kissed his tiny velvet head. Then I kissed it again and again. I couldn't help myself. He screwed up his little face and struggled to open his eyes. Couldn't pull it off though. He's  exhausted. He worked hard to get here.  

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
     Hath had elsewhere its setting,
          And cometh from afar:
     Not in entire forgetfulness,
     And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
     From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

            -  by William Wordsworth

Sleep tight, Baby Jack. 

Jack Douglas Sargent

Stranger Danger? What's That?

When I was a little girl, I was so embarrassed when my mother would strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. I was an extremely shy child. It was hard enough for me to talk to people I knew, even relatives, family friends, and neighbors. I knew how I would feel if a complete stranger spoke to me in a grocery store line - horrified! And here was my mother, horrifying people everywhere we went.

Of course as I got older, it stopped bothering me quite so much. I realized that most of her victims were okay with it. Rarely did any of them appear horrified.  

 Okay, I admit it: Never did any of them actually appear to be horrified.

I began to see it as an eccentricity.  My mother was an eccentric, I decided.  As a teenager I learned to roll my eyes and use other body language that was sure to let the victim know that I thoroughly disapproved of my mother's forwardness lest I be branded eccentric by association.

By the time I was in my twenties, I had pretty much come to grips with my mother's problem. I still thought it was weird to engage total strangers in conversation, but by now I realized that it wasn't so unusual. Other people did it, too. And I was over my shyness enough to respond pleasantly if they did it to me.

One evening when my first child and her first grandchild, Carolyn, was a year old, my mother and I had tickets to a play. As we drove to the theater, I issued a challenge to my mother.

"I bet you can't go the entire evening without showing a picture of Carolyn to a complete stranger."  

She laughed and kind of rolled her eyes. How ridiculous, I knew she was thinking. There's nothing wrong with showing pictures of my grandchild to complete strangers, she was thinking.

"No, really," I continued. "I bet you can't do it."

When we got to the theater we had to stand in a crowd until the doors opened. She didn't last ten minutes. Within ten minutes, she had struck up a conversation with a woman and, as it tends to do with women of a certain age, it had quickly turned to the topic of grandchildren. She looked at me and huffed a bit. Frustration was written all over her face.

"I don't care," she said to me after about ten seconds. "I'm showing her the picture."

Since those long ago days, I have become much more tolerant of my mother's odd behavior. In fact, and this may be hard to believe, I actually initiate conversation with total strangers myself from time to time.

I'm sure my children disapprove.  

This summer my husband and I attended a Three Dog Night concert.  We got there early, before the warm-up band had started. A couple came and sat by us. They were in their mid-fifties. The woman immediately engaged me in conversation. Before long, I knew her whole life story.

But guess what?

She knew mine, too!

She was just one of those exceptionally friendly people who makes you feel comfortable, shares her own information, and manages to draw out yours, as well.

 Hey, I thought at one point, I do have that mini photo album in my purse.  I could supply some faces to go with the names and stories I've given her.  I immediately thought of my mother and the challenge I'd issued to her all those years ago.

 Too bad, I thought. We all turn into our mothers sooner or later.

 I admit I did try to hide what I was doing from my husband. He caught me though. I think he rolled his eyes. His mother didn't have a habit of talking to complete strangers. She was much more normal than mine.

Normal's okay.

 But I've come to realize something in my middle age.

Eccentric is much more fun.  

Sunday Night Scooter Rides

Two of our sons, Kurt and Joel, have had scooters as their main modes of transportation this summer. Our other son, Jeff, owned an actual motorcycle after he graduated from high school and before he served his L.D.S. mission. He replaced it with a car after he returned, but he misses his bike. When Kurt went to Oregon for a month or so this summer, he left his scooter at our house.  This made Jeff very happy.

On the first Sunday evening that Kurt was gone, we sat around the table as family dinner wound down. Our daughter Carolyn and our son-in-law Brock were over, and maybe Grandpa Byron as well. It's our habit to stay at the table and talk long after we've finished eating. At one point, I realized that Jeff and Joel were gone.

This is how I imagine it happened:

The rest of us were busily engaged in not-so-important but very lively conversation about who knows what. Jeff caught Joel's eye. He raised his hands slightly above the level of the table top, discretely made revving motions, and very slightly pointed his chin in the direction of the door.

We didn't notice they were gone till they came back.

The following week, the same thing happened.  This time, when they reappeared, we asked them where they had been.

"Sunday Night Scooter Ride," they announced.

And yes, the words were capitalized. You could tell. The Sunday Night Scooter Ride was now an official institution. On Sundays in a predominantly L.D.S. community, the roads are more or less deserted. Perfect conditions for a leisurely scooter ride with friends. This week they had invited our neighbors, Weston and Stuart, along. By the third week, seventeen young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one hit the Sabbath streets of Utah Valley on their bikes. Seventeen squeaky clean biker guys, some of them probably still wearing their white shirts and ties from church or home teaching appointments (a Mormon thing). They ride in a pack consisting of mostly scooters, a couple of actual motorcycles, and even a couple of dirt bikes (probably not street legal). They spread the word via Facebook. Meet at the H.S. parking lot at 7:00. Some weeks they have more, some weeks less. Sometimes as they cruise along, total strangers on scooters will join them. Last night they met up with a couple of real biker dudes at a stop light. Harleys and leather and the works. They joined them for a while and felt really cool.  The scooter boys joined the Harley guys and felt cool, that is. I'm not sure how the Harley guys felt. I can only imagine.

Summer is winding down. Within the next couple of weeks all of these boys will be back in school, serving missions, or off to college.  I'm sure the ones who are still around will try to keep it going while the warm weather lasts, but their numbers will dwindle. But what a memory for them. And for me. As the evenings get cooler and the leaves start to turn and fall, I'll imagine that I hear the not quite substantial hum of a gang of scooters out in the cul-de-sac and I'll be reminded of the coolest, cleanest, cutest biker gang ever to ride the streets of America.  

Maternal Instinct

Our daughter,  Carolyn, is expecting our first grandchild. It's so exciting! He's due any day. I'm trying to figure out the best way to help her once the baby is here.

I admit I am a little nervous.

I was actually born with maternal instinct. When I was a little girl, I loved to play with baby dolls. Pretty sure I got a new one for Christmas every year. I loved to change their little clothes and pretend to feed them from those little plastic bottles that looked like they really had milk in them when you tipped them up to those little doll lips. I'd wrap them in receiving blankets and I'd rock them to sleep and then lay them down in their little toy beds.

My sister and I loved to take our dolls out in the front yard and do their laundry. We'd wash their tiny clothes in tubs of water and hang them on the fence to dry. Drove our dad crazy. I guess he thought laundry of any size drying on the front yard fence was tacky.

By the time I reached babysitting age, however, the maternal instinct had dissipated. I didn't have any experience with real babies. Real babies made me nervous. My parents had had the three of us kids within about four years, so it's not like I helped with younger siblings. I did quite a lot of babysitting for one particular family, but when their son was a little baby, he was usually already in bed when I got there.

Phew. Lucky for him.

I remember once when Kent and I were dating. We went to see my cousins' new baby. They offered to let me hold him. I declined and they laughed. Kent, however, swept that little guy right out of his mother's arms and bounced him around. He was perfectly comfortable with a newborn baby. Knew just what to do.

When Carolyn was born, Kent had to show me how to hold her. I know, huh? I was pathetic. And after I took her home from the hospital, and Kent had gone off to work, I had to call up my mother-in-law and ask her to come over and help me bathe the baby. I was terrified to do it myself. Trust myself handling a living, breathing, wiggling little ball of soaped up skin? I was sure I would drop her and the baby people would take her back. Of course my mother-in-law was thrilled to come and help me. She had maternal instinct and she had put it to use raising seven children.  Probably why Kent is such a natural. He did have practice on younger siblings.

But I wasn't hopeless. I soon caught on and managed quite well with my new little daughter. The maternal instinct I had experienced as a little girl with my dolls reemerged.  And when the boys came along, I did just fine. Still, Kent was always better at calming our babies down when they were fussy and they all seemed to prefer him to me. Did this make me feel bad? Maybe a little bit. But it did come in handy at times. Like in the middle of the night. I could walk that crying baby around and around for hours and not be able to settle him down. I knew that if Kent would just try, he'd have him asleep in ten minutes. Worked every time and we were all able to get some sleep.

 And when our babies were big enough to indicate, I'd ask,

 "Who do you want to change your poopy diaper - Mommy or Daddy?" 

They always chose Daddy. And he acted like he'd won a prize every time.

 I tell you, I am married to the King of Maternal Instinct and the Best Dad Ever. All rolled into one.

It's been a while since I've had to take care of a new baby. I'm really counting on the old maternal instinct kicking in again so that I can be a real help to Carolyn. I want to feel confident as I take that baby boy in my arms, burp him (I forgot about burping a baby!), and change his tiny diaper.  I want to be able to keep him soothed and happy as I cradle his warm little body against mine so his mother can get some rest.  

 I want to be able to reassure her that motherhood is something she can do.

Then again, maybe she won't need much help.

She just might take after her dad.  

Carolyn when she was just a few days old

                             

Carolyn and Kent

         

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Peach Fairy

Back when Kent and I were first married and lived in Provo, there was a certain yard I passed most days as I walked through our little neighborhood. In this yard grew a peach tree. It was a small, young peach tree and it had only produced a handful of peaches. I watched throughout the summer as these peaches grew larger and larger and eventually began to ripen. They were big, beautiful, perfect peaches - golden pinky-yellow, kind of like a sunset, with deep rosy overtones, kind of like a sunset. The hot August sun beat down on them as their weight bent the thin branches of the young tree more and more each day. I imagined their sun-warmed peachy insides, ready to burst the skins at the least bit of pressure from, say, someone's front teeth.

What would one of those peaches taste like? I wondered every day as I passed by.

What if, while I'm watching, one of the peaches, overcome by gravity due to its plump juiciness, let go of its branch? I wondered.

And what if I reached out and caught it as it fell?

I was convinced that a peach straight from this tree, on a hot sunny day, would taste far better than an ordinary peach. Its sweet and tangy flavor would be infused with warm summer sunshine.  Have you ever thought about what sunshine would taste like? I just knew that biting into the warm, sweet, tangy, juicy flesh of that peach would be like nothing I had ever experienced in a grocery store peach that had been sitting in the refrigerator for a while.

Sigh.

I never did get one of those peaches.

But I imagined it so well that twenty-seven years later I can still taste it.

We used to have a peach tree in our backyard. It was absolutely huge for a peach tree and we got bushels of fruit off it every summer. And they were the best peaches I've ever tasted.

In real life, that is.

We got so many peaches off that tree that I had to play Peach Fairy and leave bags of them on doorsteps around the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, peach trees aren't blessed with longevity. Ours contracted a peach tree disease. Every year Kent said,

"Well, this will probably be our last year for peaches. This tree is dying."

 And every year he'd cut off more limbs. But it was so unusually large for a peach tree that this went on for several years. Finally, when there was only a small part of the tree left, he and our boys cut the whole thing down and ripped out the stump. I took the video camera out back while they were working and tried to get my son Kurt to say "Father, I cannot tell a lie..."  But he refused to humor me.

So what did we do with all those peaches every summer when we harvested them?

Dalliene Jessop's Sour Cream Pie 

(Dalliene is one of the best cooks in our neighborhood.)

Crust:

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup (one stick) butter

Filling:

4 cups sliced fresh peaches

1 cup sugar

2 1/2 Tablespoons flour

1 egg

 1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup sour cream

Topping:

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/4 cup (half a stick) butter

Crust: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour and salt and cut in butter with a pastry cutter. Press into a nine inch pie plate.

Filling: Put peaches into a bowl and sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar. Set aside. In another bowl, combine remaining sugar, 2 1/2 Tablespoons flour, egg, salt, and vanilla. Fold in sour cream. Stir mixture into peaches. Pour into crust. Bake 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 20 more minutes.

Topping: Combine all topping ingredients until crumbly. After baking the pie for the additional 20 minutes, sprinkle topping over pie. Turn oven temperature back up to 400 degrees and bake pie for 10 more minutes.

I used to freeze a lot of the peaches to use in the winter. Many people can peaches, but they get cooked in the process. I prefer a fresh peach taste. When you freeze them, they still taste like fresh peaches.

How To Freeze Peaches:

Peel the peaches. Ripe peaches are easy to peel. Just run them under water and pull the skins off with your fingers. If they're not really quite ripe, you'll have to use a paring knife. Or better idea: wait till they are ripe. Then slice them. When you have four cups, dump them out on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle 2/3 cup sugar and a little Fruit Fresh over them and toss to mix well. Let them sit for a few minutes while you peel and slice the next batch. Then put the peaches and their juice into a quart-sized Ziploc freezer bag. Place all the bags in the freezer when you're done. (Duh)

When the kids were young, we had a Sunday Night Crepes  tradition. For crepe filling, thaw a bag of frozen peaches in the microwave for about five minutes. Using a fork, mix about 3 tablespoons of cornstarch with about 1/3 cup of cold water. Strain the peach juice into a medium sauce pan. Bring it to a boil and add the cornstarch mixture. Stir as the juice thickens and becomes translucent. Stir in the peaches.  Yum.

I also used to make Frozen Peach Cocktail with some of the peaches. It is the most refreshing thing ever. Whenever I'm really thirsty - so thirsty that even an ice cold can of soda won't touch it - this is what I want. No, it's not a drink, but it is a thirst quencher. I got the recipe from my friend Judy. She's another fabulous cook. You should check out her recipe blog.  http://afoodieinutah.blogspot.com/

Frozen Peach Cocktail

12 large peaches, peeled and sliced

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups orange juice

1/2 cup  fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 (20 oz.) can crushed pineapple

Mix sugar and peaches. Cover and let sit for a few minutes. Mix together all ingredients. Freeze in Ziploc bags. When you want to use it, partially (only partially!) thaw and serve.  I serve it in little bowls as a side dish. Or I just eat it.

And guess what!

It's my favorite time of year - Taco Amigo has their fresh Peach Shakes going on! I watch their marquis every August, waiting for the big announcement. Last Thursday was the day. Kent and I got one (each) the other night.

I really miss our peach tree.

Peach Fairy? Are you out there?

 I could use a visit.

Red Hair - it's a blessing, not a curse!

my niece Emma

I recently saw a whole family of redheads at Costco.  A redheaded mom, a redheaded dad, and four little redheads either in or hanging onto the outside of the cart. Did you know that two redheaded parents can only produce redheaded offspring? (Think of Gregor Mendel and his pea plants.)

I love red hair. I think it's beautiful. Apparently not everyone agrees with me. It's really popular right now to refer to a redhead as a "ginger." Do most Americans  know that in England, where it originated, this term is often used in a derogatory manner? In England, redheads seem to be targeted more often than others for bullying and abuse and even hate crimes. Hate crimes. How crazy is that? People even talk about "gingerism" like they do "racism." I read about a family of redheads who were driven out of two British neighborhoods after being abused and bullied simply because of their red hair. They actually had to move. Twice. 

I've seen a poster depicting a redheaded child and containing text about "finding a cure." I suspect it was produced by the British.

Prejudice against redheads. Ha. I think it's more like jealousy. Red hair is so beautiful.  And it's rare. That should make it extra valuable, right? Only one to two per cent of people in the world have red hair. Two to six per cent in America. We're rich in redheads.

I love all shades of red, from strawberry blond to auburn. When I see a girl with red hair, I always tell her how much I love her hair color. (I don't bother with boys. They'd think it was weird. And yes, I've become like my mother as I've gotten older. I have no problem striking up a conversation with a complete stranger. )

I've always thought it would be fun to have red hair. I could dye it, but dyed red hair never looks quite natural. It's pretty, but not as pretty as the real thing. 

I wish I could have the real thing.

I have twin redheaded nieces.  They love their red hair and so do I.  I was talking to one of them, Emma, about her red hair one day.

"So what are you going to do if your hair fades as you get older?" I asked her. Often red hair does fade with age to more of a brown. "If you have to dye it, it won't look the same."

"Oh I already have a plan for that," she said without missing a beat. It was evident that she really had thought about this.

"I'm going to grow it out, cut it off, and have a wig made."

Brilliant!

And maybe, just maybe, she'll let me borrow it once in a while. 

Beth and Emma as one-year-olds

Camping - and the difference between men and women

This morning my husband and our youngest son left for a camping trip with a group of teenage boys and their leaders from our L.D.S. congregation. This is their big outing of the summer. They decided on a location a few days ago and completed the prep last night. This morning, actually. And then they left.

Simple. As. That.

Last week I went to camp with the teenage girls. We take them every summer. It's a huge deal. We begin planning in January. We have a theme, we design and order matching t-shirts for everyone that represent the theme, and we're on the lookout everywhere we go for cute things that relate in even the smallest way to said theme that we can buy and take to camp with us.

The food, of course, is very important. We coordinate the meals, divvy up the shopping, prep, and cooking responsibilities and involve the girls in all of this as much as possible. 

Treats are important.

As are crafts. Cute crafts.

 And we actually have a complete set of miniature mailboxes screwed onto a wooden frame that we haul up to camp each year. We take along an assortment of cute scrapbook paper and other supplies so that we can write notes to each other during the week and deliver them to each other via the cute little mailboxes.

The leaders plan inspirational messages for the girls. These usually involve a cute little handout or trinket. 

Have I mentioned cute?

We do some traditional camping activities at camp as well. The girls have a set of skills they are required to pass off each year, according to their age. They have to learn first aid, start a fire using flint and steel, identify plants, tie knots, observe the stars and cloud formations, and go on a five mile hike, among other things.

And we are roughing it to an extent. Yes, we have A-frame cabins we sleep in, but there's nothing in them. We take cots and sleeping bags. There's no electricity at this camp and only a bit of running water. Cold running water. We cook on camp stoves and don't really bathe.

But we do our best to make our camping experience comfortable. And cute. And it takes six months or so to pull it off.

So last night as I was helping my husband get ready for the boys' camping trip, naturally I had a few questions for him.

"Do you have a theme?" I asked him as he printed off permission slips for all the boys.

(Our permission slips were completed and signed by parents one month prior to departure.)

( Did that sound smug?)

 No, they didn't have a theme.

"Cabin decorations? Oh, no, you'll be in tents. But have you printed out and laminated inspirational quotes to hang around your camp?"

Nope, no quotes, he informed me while we cruised the aisles of the Winco,  gathering enough food for the entire group for the entire campout. I did mention that this was last night, didn't I?

"I guess you don't do spa time..."

He looked at me. Spa time? I could see it in his face.

"Well, are you going to at least sit around the campfire on the last night and have the leaders tell their First Kiss stories or their How I Met My Wife stories?"

Probably not.

Ah, the difference between men and women.

It's okay though. They're going to have a great time. Maybe not quite as great a time as we had.  But hey -  they're guys. They do what they can.

How to Wallpaper Together and Stay Married

Kent and I wallpapered last night and we're still speaking.

Of course we only put up three pieces.

Kent's doing a remodel in the basement. He's creating a Man Cave. It's going to have a projector and a big screen, space for the ping pong table (which I'll be happy to move out of the living room), and a huge map of the world. He ordered the map online from National Geographic. It's actually wallpaper. It came in three sections. Last night we put it up. I was a little nervous when he asked me to help him. I've heard that wallpapering together can mean the end of an otherwise happy marriage.

I was a little worried because Kent and I are classic miscommunicators. Sometimes we just don't get what the other one of us is talking about. Over the years, we have had to learn how to deal with this.

"This map is really cool. It goes on just like wallpaper only it has this feature built in so that you can line up the seams perfectly without any overlap. You lay one piece over the other and then you take something really sharp and you make a cut," Kent said.

Hmm. But how do you...? I tried to picture what he was saying. I pictured us ruining the wallpaper map.

But rather than say anything, I sighed audibly and stared at him.

This is how we deal with our miscommunicating. The audible sigh, the silence, and the stare means,

"We're doing it again."

 Miscommunicating.

"You don't get what I'm saying, do you?" he asked me.

"No, I don't," I told him.

"Look," he said. "See how on this piece, you have all of the word Boston? And on this piece you have Boston over as far as the letter s?"

"Yes, so you can overlap and line it up exactly. But you said they're not going to overlap."

"They're not. You have to cut some off after you put it up."

I looked at him, didn't say a word, and sighed audibly.

I was picturing what I thought he was saying, and I was seeing him overlap the wallpaper, line it up perfectly, and then cut it and ruin it. How do you cut it? The wallpaper is on the wall. It's lined up perfectly. You cut it, you ruin it, right? 

 " Okay, just watch and you'll see."

We'd already succeeded in getting the middle section of the world on the wall. We'd smoothed it out, pushing the air bubbles out one side and the other. It looked pretty good.

It was time for the big overlap that wasn't going to overlap.

I watched, and helped. We placed the western-most section over the middle section, carefully overlapping to line up the letters in Boston and the letters in lots of other place names and the lines of latitude. The wetness of the wallpaper paste kept the paper pliable as we moved it around on the wall. We got the bubbles out. With this section we were also dealing with an outlet. We had a little problem with wrinkles at the bottom.

Then it was time for the big cut. Kent got out the razor blade and I shut my eyes and held my breath.

I peeked.

He was cutting right along the eastern-most edge of the western-most piece, through the middle piece. Then he did something he hadn't told me he was going to do. He peeled back the eastern-most edge of the western-most section and removed the strip of the middle section that was now severed from its main body.

He never told me he was going to do that.

Then he replaced the part he peeled back. The two sections abutted beautifully. Then he took this little seam roller and rolled it all nice and smooth.

"You never told me you were going to peel back what you already stuck down," I said.

If he had told me he was going to peel back part of what was already stuck down, I'd have understood.

But all is good. We completed placement of the eastern-most section of the world. It worked out just as well as the western-most. Again, a few wrinkles toward the bottom, but only people with bad manners would notice.

The important thing is that we're still married.

So how do you wallpaper together and stay married? It's all in the communication skills. You just sigh audibly, don't say a word, and stare at the other person.

My Mother and Her Ocean Antics

It's summertime and I'm 2400 miles away from the ocean. The Atlantic, that is. It's the one I feel connected to. Did you know that people who are born and raised by the ocean have body rhythms that are in sync with it and that no matter how far away they may travel or even resettle these rhythms are always a part of them? 

Okay, I made that up, but it's a theory I have.

 Could there exist in another dimension an umbilical cord of sorts that reaches from me to the Atlantic?

Just another theory. 

 I know that your sweat and tears are salty, but I'm convinced mine are saltier.

My mother was neither born nor raised near the ocean. She's originally from Indiana. She moved to Cape Cod at about the same age I was when I moved away.

But let me tell you about my mother and the ocean.

My mother is so at home in the ocean that you would think she had slipped out of a fish egg case at the bottom of Cape Cod Bay.

When she's ready for a swim, there's no pussyfooting around, no matter how cold the rest of us may think the water might be. She plows through until the water reaches just above her knees and then immediately performs her signature shallow dive into the oncoming waves.

At our neighborhood beach, we usually swam in a boat channel that leads out to Lewis Bay. My mom would do the signature shallow dive, surface, turn and tell the rest of us how beautiful the water was, then proceed to swim across the channel. When she got back, she'd swim in far enough that she could touch bottom. The rest of us would be swimming around or just treading water. If you watched my mother, you might notice after a while that her shoulders would alternatingly (pretty sure I just made up a word) move to and fro, to and fro, to and fro. Just slightly. Then suddenly she would bring her feet up to her hands. And you knew she had one. Yes, my mother is expert at digging quahogs with her feet. I don't know anyone else who can do it. (Except possibly my Aunt Peachy, her sister, who also slipped out of a fish egg case in a strange rebirth as a young adult.) Then she'd drop her haul into the top of her bathing suit and finish her swim. She'd take the loot (yes, loot, because shell fishing is only allowed on Sundays) up to the house and put it in the fridge.

From the time we were babies, our mother took us to the beach every summer day. She'd pack a lunch. We'd spend the entire day swimming, playing in the sand, eating, and napping on the beach. We'd go back up to the house at suppertime.

This is me with a strategically placed shovel.

my big sister and I at the beach

She took us to Nauset Light Beach, part of the National Seashore, in Eastham. The water is cold on that side of the Cape and the waves are big. She taught us to body surf when we were just tiny children. She was perfectly comfortable playing in the undertow and so were we.  

When the grand kids came along, she spent hours in the water with them. She made sure she had enough of those foam noodles for everyone and she'd ride the current down the channel with them. They loved to swim through her legs. Over and over. They also loved to have her throw them from her shoulders. She would completely submerge herself. While underwater, a grandchild would climb up her and sit on her shoulders. Then she would rise up out of the water, sometimes with a handful of seaweed she'd found under there for the child to put on his or her head. She'd bend at the knees, and on the count of three, hurl the little swimmer off. She would repeat with each grandchild until they all had had several turns. She allowed them to do this until they were way too big. 

My parents began spending their winters in Florida after they retired. (They eventually sold their home and moved there.)  My mother took up snorkeling in the Keys. She loves it. But swimming around looking at the beautiful tropical fish is not enough for her. She likes to explore.  She takes a stick with her when she snorkels. She calls it her tickler. She pokes at stuff and turns things over. She's looking for those warm water lobsters they have in the South.

"I just tickle them out," she says.

She just tickles them out.

She doesn't keep them. It's just for sport.

Sometimes she likes to relax in the water. She has an inflatable raft that has arms like a chair and a cup holder, I think.  She likes to take it out a ways, moor herself using a rock tied to a line, and just float in the swells and read a good book.

But she'd better not get too comfortable. Her first two great-grandchildren are due this summer. They are currently practicing their swimming in utero.  Just a few years from now, they're going to want her to swim with them. She'd better stay in shape because I'm not sure any of the rest of us, born and raised by the ocean as we were, will ever be up to her speed. 

Nine out of ten grandchildren.

                                              

This one's for you, John. Ten out of ten.

(Somewhere I have a picture of my daughter Carolyn on my mother's shoulders in the water, with seaweed on her head, right before being hurled off. Of course I can't find it.)

Summer Nights

I love summer nights. All winter long I dream about them. I have a few stock memories that I draw on.

When our kids were little, the boys used to sleep out in the fort in the backyard all summer long. I'd go out back, climb up the ladder and check on them after they'd been asleep for a while. I remember one particular very special summer night. I'd awakened in the middle of the night to moonlight streaming in through our bedroom window. It was brighter than I'd ever noticed before and I was drawn to it. I slipped out of bed and down the stairs and made my way through the not-very-dark house and out into the backyard. That night was not even pretending to be dark. It was almost as bright as day only with a different kind of light. It was silver light and it was reflecting off of every surface. The lawn was silver, the flowers were silver, the trees and the trampoline were silver. The air itself was sliver. I could see it all around me. I could touch it. I walked across the grass, cool and silver underfoot, and began to climb up the ladder to the fort. I glanced down at my arms. They were radiating silver light. I was silver. Was the moonlight making my skin tingle or was the thought of the moonlight on my skin making my skin tingle? I wanted to soak up as much of it as I could.

I tried to wake up the boys.

"Come see," I whispered. If whispers were visible, it would have been a wispy cloud of silver breath floating around my face.

I think one of the  boys woke up enough to stand and look out the doorway. I think he even said something about the shimmering light. But in the morning, he didn't remember.  

One summer way back when I was forty, I was training for a marathon. In order to work my weekly long run into one busy weekend, I had to get up and start at about 4:30 in the morning. Technically still night. Again, it was almost as light as day. The full moon lit up the running trail as I began at the mouth of Provo Canyon. The air was perfectly still. I listened to the river as I ran alongside it and watched the moonlight twinkle and dance on the surface, as if trying  to dip only the very tips of its moonbeams into the icy water. A family of raccoons crossed the trail up ahead of me, the mama stopping briefly and turning her head to look at me, eyes glowing, then hurrying her babies off the trail and into the bushes.

Moonlight is magical, but I also like to see the stars. The best place to see them is up in the mountains, away from the light pollution of our towns. Up in the mountains on a summer night, you can see billions of stars.  Some twinkling and some steady, densely packed into an endless blue-black universe. And you can see the Milky Way. And the constellations make so much more sense.

I remember another summer night, back when the kids were young and before our town installed obnoxiously bright street lights. We were all sleeping out on the trampoline. It was a relatively dark night. We were watching for a special meteor show that was supposed to be visible that night but that we would sleep through. We did watch the steady progress of a tiny satellite across the sky. I like to think about us sleeping though, with silver meteors showering down around us.   

A friend of mine once told me that sometimes when she can't sleep at night, she goes out and rides her bike around the neighborhood in her nightgown. I'm fascinated by this. Can't you just feel what that would be like on a summer night? Finish this thought: As free as...(riding your bike around the neighborhood in your nightgown in the middle of a summer night.)

I'm waiting for the sun to go down so I can go out for a mid-summer night's run. I've been running at night on and off for decades. I like running at night for two reasons: in the dark, it feels like I'm going faster than I really am, and I've had all day to warm up. Our neighborhood block is a nearly perfect half-mile track. I've run a lot of miles around it over the almost twenty years we've lived here. I could smell popcorn coming from the Barretts' house most summer nights. The extra buttery kind. And the Daltons' house always gave off a fabric softener smell. Vern Henshaw was always out watering his front lawn at night. Did he ever water the back lawn? Barretts have moved. Henshaws have moved, and the Daltons' kids have all grown up  and Linda has retired, so she probably only does laundry once a week now and probably during the day. But some things are the same. You can still smell the honeysuckle over on Main Street. It smells sweeter in the dark. The scent seems to be magnified at night, sweet and thick in the evening air. But I miss the popcorn and the fabric softener.

I have a plan for a staged valley-wide blackout. Imagine if at two o'clock in the morning on a specified summer night, we shut down the lights. All the lights. All over Utah Valley. We could see the stars. Billions of them. The same ones we see when we go up in the mountains. They're still there, I remind myself. We just can't see very many of them.

There's a fire on a mountain across Utah Lake. It started a couple of days ago. We can see its red glow from the front porch at night. It starts up high and snakes its way down and across the mountainside in a wide path. My son Joel told me today that he got up on the roof last night to watch it.

Why didn't he get me up?

Apricot Pepper Jelly

I made a batch of apricot pepper jelly a few weeks ago. I meant to make apricot jalapeno jam, but the peppers I used obviously weren't hot enough. I was a bit disappointed, but it's still delicious.

My neighbor, Amie, came over while I was in production. While I was telling her what I was making, my son, Jeff, came into the kitchen and heard me.

"What, Mom? You're not really doing this, are you? Again? Making a whole bunch of some weird thing that's going to turn out disgusting and go to waste? I can't believe you're doing this."

"Jeff, apricot jalapeno jam is not weird," I defended myself. "I'm not making it up. It's very gourmet."

And then

"And what do you mean again? Jeffrey, name one time I made a whole bunch of some weird thing that turned out disgusting and went to waste? I defy you to name one thing."

He still hasn't been able to come up with anything.

Apricot Pepper Jelly
(makes nine half pint jars)

4 cups smashed apricots (use potato masher)
1 cup yellow and red bell and some red chili peppers, finely chopped
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
7 cups sugar
1 box pectin (like Sure Jell)

I bought a box of apricots at Costco and let them get nice and ripe.

No need to peel the apricots. Just slice in half to remove the pit and then smash them with a potato masher.

Roughly chop the peppers and put them in a blender with some water. Pulse six or seven times and then strain.

 Sterilize half pint jars by running them through the dishwasher. Keep them hot in there until ready to fill. Place lids in a small saucepan of water. Bring to a boil and then turn down to low heat. Have rings ready.

Measure exactly four cups of smashed apricots and one cup of peppers into a large pot. Stir in lemon juice.

Measure the sugar carefully and have ready in a bowl.

Add the pectin to the fruit and pepper mixture. Stirring constantly, bring it to a full rolling boil on high heat. Quickly stir in the sugar and return to a full rolling boil. Boil for exactly one minute. Remove from heat and skim off foam.

Use a large measuring cup with a pouring spout to quickly fill the hot jars. Fill to within 1/4 inch of top. Wipe any spills from the rims with a clean, damp paper towel. Put lids on jars. Screw on rings using thumb and two fingers. (Not too tight.) Immediately turn jars upside down on the counter top. Time for ten minutes, then turn them right-side-up. Lids will seal.

Next time, I'm going to use HOT peppers. My friend Judy has a recipe for a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with apricot jalapeno jam. I want to make one for Jeff.

Because guess what.

Jeffrey loves the apricot pepper jelly.

Ha!

Really.

He and I have already gone through three jars and a few boxes of Wheat Thins.