Kids say the darndest things . . .

So we're reading The Diary of Anne Frank, and we are going over vocabulary.

And the word is "fatuous" - and one boy eagerly waves his hand as the class nods in agreement.

"It means, like, passing gas." Look of triumph on said boy's face.

After the laughter subsides, and I give the correct definition, the class looks somewhat doubtful, although they do know that I have a real facility for vocabulary. They believe me, but I think they are disappointed.

That they are wrong? That they weren't able to "put one over on me?" That "flatuence" won't figure in the story?

I'm pretty impressed that they know the meaning of "flatuence!"

The 26th of September

Mothers remember some strange details - like their due dates! Probably especially women like yours truly who was 11 days late for the first 3 kids, 13 days late for Eliza, and 2 days late for Noah. (Let's have a big shout out for Hannah, who came two days early!! Thank you very much - in August this is very significant!)

September 26th is the birthdate of T. S. Eliot. One of the first items in my memory bank when the doctor said the due date was September 26th. ("in the room the women come and go")

And it was the due date for Miss B. Brae!! (Whose b-day is October 5th!!) And frankly, even with the babies that were late, we were delighted with their arrival!

Better late than never could be the Terrill anthem - if someone put it to music!!

And I used to say to Dad, when I had figured out the connection to old Thomas Stearns, "If it's a boy, we could name him Eliot Stearns Terrill."

Not an idea that ever took hold with him. But I always liked it. Obviously never got to use it!

I saw a man who had no shoes -

Okay, does anybody else's husband line up his shoes like this??

It drives me nuts - that's what closets are for, right?

Oh well, if that's his worst vice, I guess I should be counting my blessings.

And now that he's the one out of bed after me, he's getting pretty good at making the bed and putting the pillows in the right place.

Either that or I'm getting a lot less picky in my old age.

We're practicing being retired!!

In honor of Grandparents' Day

I'm pretty sure Hallmark just makes up these holidays, but they are a good impetus for a post or two! This is my Grandpa Stevens as a young man. I have fond memories of my Grandpa Stevens. He was a crusty sort, but I remember one Christmas day, when we were living in the "little house" and I got roller skates for Christmas - the kind you tighten with a key - which you would wear around your neck on a string. My grandpa walked around and around the house with me, holding my right hand while my left hand held on to the wall of the house. He did this until I felt comfortable skating by myself. I'm not sure I have that kind of patience!

His wife was my Grandma Stevens, shown here in her younger years also. She taught me to play cards. She had a drawer in her hall with toys you could play with. She had the most wonderful jewelry - which I thought was real and so I thought she must be as rich as the Queen of England. When I made a jewelled Christmas tree years later, and my mom gave me her old jewelry to use for it, I discovered it was all costume jewelry. But it was still beautiful to me! And she would bring us random gifts - I think they were things she bought on sale, but they were lovely - one was a gold colored corduroy jacket - I loved it - and felt very stylish and cutting edge in it. I think I wore it until it fell apart!

This is my Grandma Connie and my Grandpa Clayton. She was his third wife and the only Grandma Clayton I ever knew. She was wonderful - and I was so grateful that she lived a long life so my kids got to know her too. She was truly "forever young." She came from a large family herself, so she was never put off by the clutter and chaos of a houseful of kids. She was stylish and appreciated a good joke - her laugh was infectious. Alice and I would go to her home each year for two weeks in the summer - she had daughter our age from a previous marriage - and she gave us so much freedom - I loved it! And she gave good advice. Once when I was moping around about having cramps, she said, "Go take a walk and quit complaining." So I did - and I felt better too!

This is the first Grandpa and Grandma Clayton - but Agnes died when my father was 17, so I never knew her - but my dad treasured her memory and truly kept her alive in our memories. My middle name is Agnes - and I did not appreciate until a few years ago when I realized what a tribute it was. Although my dad was fond of saying that they should have named Alice Agnes because Alice took after her more than any of the rest of us.

My grandpa was the sunshine of our lives. He was a magician, among other things, and would come over and pull quarters out of his ears and give them to you! He was a snappy dresser and always wore a hat. He died his hair red and combed it over on top! He used to call me "the little Relief Society President." He hobnobbed with presidents of the church and general authorities when the came to SoCal to escape the Utah winters. I wish I'd appreciated him more when he was alive - and by appreciate, I mean I wish I talked to him more about his past!

Here's Grandmother Taylor - holding a baby Karen - and this is the only Grandparent your dad ever knew. By the time I met her, she was somewhat senile, but she was gracious and charming and showed a lot of the "real" Genieve Taylor quite often. If I get old and very forgetful, I hope I do it with as much panache as she did!

I love being a grandma - hopefully on a Grandparents' Day many years from now, someone will have fond memories of me and Dad - that's our goal!

1976 - a very good year!!

Some of the biggest memories of 1976 don't have documentation - it's a good thing I'm writing them down - I may forget them by next year!

1976 was the bicentennial of the United States - and it was a really big deal. Babies were born and named Liberty. Stamps were issued. Billboards blared the news. The media was steeped in it. The church got on the bandwagon too. We had special programs - and I was on one in our ward Relief Society. We did some kind of tableau or pageant - and I was Molly Pitcher! I went all out - made a dress with apron, shawl, bonnet - I was authentic! We were in SoCal for the 4th - and it was a Sunday - and women all over the church wore their Colonial dresses to church. It didn't seem irreverant at all - in fact, it was pretty cool. And I don't have a single picture of me in that dress!

We had moved to Harris' house in December of 1975. They were a couple in our ward who were going on a mission. The house was somewhat furnished, but we put some of our things in . There were two fireplaces, 3 bedrooms upstairs and and a finished basement. It was glorious after years in Spartan rentals and old stone houses full of critters and mold! And we reveled at being in a real neighborhood with a real yard. The babysitter lived next door!! My visiting teaching route was literally "up the street."

Harry had his 4th birthday - love the Mr. Roger's cardigan and U.S. Mail lunch pail - his pride and joy - along with the Fuller Brush hair brush - I think he still has it. You can see Elizabeth in the background.

I made clothes for Bonny all the time - I can remember them clearly but I don't have pictures of very many of them. I also made lots of matching doll dresses. Dad used to say, "Are you making those for Bonny or for you?" I sewed a lot for myself too. I made a new dress every month to go with my Relief Society lesson!

One dress was a mauve wool jumper - kind of tweedy - with a matching cape! I'm not sure why I never took a picture. When the kids went to Primary - in the afternoons on weekdays then - I would go to the fabric store and look at patterns. I loved it!

Alice came over a lot - Frances and her kids came. I took classes at the U. Charley and Jeannette came for a visit too. We were across the street from Julie's mom and dad.

And we had a blue Pinto - and we don't have a photo of that either! Elizabeth disappeared - and we feared she was gone forever - we had lost Amado a few years earlier. Then one day as I was lamenting her disappearance, Richard, who worked for Dad and was at our house, said, "She's out on the hood of the Pinto."

Sure enough she was. And she had a healed wound on her side - she had apparently been injured - probably by a dog - and gone away to heal - and then came back! (At least that is what all the neighbors claimed.)

Bonny and Harry both got whopping cases of chicken pox. Harry was very ill one night - we took him to the emergency room. The verdict? A huge bubble of gas in his stomach.

I became good friends with a Danish woman who lived in our ward - she was not a member but her son was. She taught me to make abelskiever. We had them a lot.

And we had a Scandinavian Christmas - even had goose - but it wasn't all that good. Kind of dry.

I think Dad worked a lot. And was in the Elder's Quorum Presidency. I taught Cultural Refinement. He and I spent Sunday nights watching "Masterpiece Theater" - loved The Pallisers and Danger UXB.

It was a pretty good year - and got better soon thereafter with the promise of Phoebe coming into our lives. We had wanted more children for a while, and it wasn't happening. Bonny would tell people at church that we were going to have a baby - thinking I guess that if she said it, I would make good on it!!

Lessons from school today

I am reading No More Words by Reeve Lindbergh, daughter of Charles and Anne Morrow, about the years of taking care of her aging mother - when there were indeed "no more words."

It is pretty thought-provoking - and I wanted to share some lines from the book that caused me to get out my highlighter during SSR today:

When she reflects on her day:

"I think I have other things, so many that they spin in my head and churn in my stomach, making me dizzy with a kind of backward self-importance. I think I have myriad responsibilities and burdens, each one distracting me from the other, all of them multiplying so fast that there are more and more in motion around me all the time, like the nightmare of breeding broomsticks in The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

On finding herself caring for her aging mother:

"Oh, yes indeed, I am overwhelmed, overloaded, and traveling over my weight limit, dragging with me my treasure chest of daily obligations. I guard them jealously - mine! mine! - I take them with me wherever I go, cling to them so tightly that I am grinding my teeth and hunching my shoulders as I drive over the back roads of northern Vermont this very morning."

When she went to see her sister who was dealing with brain cancer: (note, her sister died.)

"Yes, I turned up. That's what I do. That is my family job. I turn up, often bearing flowers, but always bringing myself, and words. Words are the family legacy and the family habit, and they are what I have to offer, whether anybody pays attention to them or not. If somebody doesn't want to listen, he or she can go to sleep. I don't mind. I'm just doing my job."

When she started reading the poetry her mother and sister had written: (maybe like we re-read blogs and letters)

"I look again for words, not for my mother or my sister but for myself. I search for words as if for traveling companions on a journey I did not expect to be taking alone, and I look first in the family collections."

When she was looking at the stars: (something her parents did with her all the time - they had the constellations memorized - not too odd for the daughter of pilots.)

"So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight.I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us - invisibly."

I recommend the book.

Defending the faith

This photo has nothing to do with the post - I'm just excited that Harry William is willing to come to someone other than his mother - I did baby duty Sunday while Dawn was in Primary and Harry had to go home to sleep (he'd worked all night.) I mean, a grandkid who doesn't want you to hold him is a Grandma's deepest sorrow!!

But on to my task at hand.

I was recently "embroiled' in some blogging repartee that got me thinking.

Eliza had posted about her two week vegan adventure she was going to try. And she got a lot of responses. Like any good mother, I warned her of the perils involved in such a foray - mainly because mothers do that sort of thing. And also because I have a close friend whose daughter-in-law was a vegan and was even under the care of a nutritionist while pregnant, but had to start eating meat and dairy because they just couldn't get the volume of nutrients into her in any other way.

So then another respondent cast some aspersions on my concerns - and "them's fightin' words" in my book. So I actually went to her husband's blog, because she suggested it in her comment, and was a bit taken aback at the guy's comparison of Michael Vick to omnivores!

So I commented - and he commented back - and I commented back again - and I haven't checked since then.

But the upshot of all this is that it reminded me of how I feel when people move away from Monrovia or LA or California. They can't just say how much they love their new home. They have to say something bad about Monrovia or LA or California.

Does it occur to them that Monrovia or LA or California is my home? And even with all it's flaws, I love it.

Grandpa Terrill understood this concept. He was talking with Dad once and said something to the effect that "Well, Harry, it's large, and crowded, and smoggy, and over-priced, and even dangerous in some places. But it's home!" (I think it was when Grandma was trying to get him to move away.)

I think when we are excited about something we can go overboard with our recommendations that everyone else should get excited about it too. And I think we could be a lot more sensitive. I've been offended more than once by ward members who've moved away and when they come to visit they go on and on about Monrovia's deficiencies. We know about Monrovia's deficiencies, but we've chosen to stay!

This is not to say that Eliza was trying to convert anyone - I think her respondents were though. I think Eliza was just being informative. As she often is; that is what makes her blog interesting to read.

I'm going to try to take my own advice too.

If I fail, you can remind me what I said!

Belated Birthday Greetings to my Brother Bill

It was Bill's birthday yesterday - and I'm not even sure which one it was - I lose track after Charley!!So, hope it was happy!