Four generations. My mother is 82 and barely blinked at the four mile Stewart Falls hike last week. Makayla barely blinks at anything. I think she’ll be a little busybody.
I’ve been away, helping with my new grandbaby, Makayla, who is alert and friendly little thing. We had such a nice visit with all our loved ones in the Provo area. The day after we drove 17 hours home, I had a hysterectomy. I let the Percoset wear off long enough to get this story down. I think you’ll see why this symbolic story came to mind.
The Surrogate,
“It’s so incredible!” Melinda said as she painted daisies on her long, blue fingernails. “Technology just gets better and better. Who’d think that we could have painless AND drug free childbirth.” The women sat on their hospital beds, their nine-month tummies contracting in the natural rhythm of labor.
“I know it, sister. I didn’t think my OBGYN was going to write me the prescription to have her here. He’s of the mindset that the pain of childbirth is part of the bonding process.” The women in the final stage delivery ward laughed.
“So admit it. You bribed him. Don’t be embarrassed, we all did.”
“I do wonder how it works,” one woman said. “I know that the surrogate has a chip implanted that answers a signal from the chips we have, but how does it actually transfer the pain to her?”
“What difference does it make? I hired a nanny, I hired a housekeeper, I hired a doctor. Why shouldn’t I hire a surrogate to take the pain of childbirth?”
“But I thought the surrogates were volunteers. Isn’t that true?”
“Well, if they’re dumb enough to volunteer to be a surrogate, they must not be intelligent enough to feel pain the way we do.
“Why do they do it? That’s what I can’t understand.”
The woman with the blue nail polish moved to paint her toes, struggling to reach around her belly. “It’s some sort of ‘right to life’ group. They thought if they took away the pain of childbirth, more mothers would carry their babies.”
The women laughed again. A woman that didn’t use a surrogate was rare, and the total effect was that many more women had babies to sell to adoption agencies.
“Well, what I want to know is when is the surrogate going to come in for me? I’m really starting to hurt.”
“You won’t know. I think it’s done via magnetic field.”
The blue-nail-polish woman knocked the open bottle onto the floor, splattering the contents across the hospital room floor. The painter pushed the call button three times. “I need a janitor!”
A moment later a woman wearing a blue scrub uniform entered with a bottle of solvent and a roll of paper towels. Her long, grey braid reached her waist. She wore no makeup. Her mouth, clamped in a perpetual grimace seemed incapable of smiling.
“I spilled my nail polish. But while you’re here, that bathroom could use another wipe down. Someone let her husband use the bathroom while he was here.” She looked meaningfully at the girl in the bed nearest the window.
The old woman nodded as she wiped up the polish. When she was through, she removed a bathroom caddy from under the sink and sprayed down the bathroom. She moved stiffly, painfully, as though arthritic in every joint.
“The thing I don’t get here is if they don’t pay the surrogates and they charge us, why don’t they hire better people. That woman,” she nodded toward the open bathroom door, “must be seventy years old and she moves like a snail.”
“Miss,” another expectant mother said as the woman emerged from the bathroom. “I need my water refilled and I could use a foot rub. Do you mind? My surrogate hasn’t come in yet. My legs ache. I wish she’d hurry up.”
The woman of the blue nail polish snorted. “I can’t believe you’re asking a janitor to rub your feet. I wouldn’t want her touching me. She just cleaned the bathroom, after all.”
The woman of the grey braid looked into the face of the speaker unsmilingly as she handed the woman of the aching legs a pitcher of ice water. They’re hands touched in the merest brush.
“Thanks. Now my feet.” She turned to the nail-painter. “A friend told me they’ll do anything you ask. How often do you get a chance for a foot rub?”
The elderly woman moved slowly to the foot of the bed and bared her feet. She rubbed in long, measured strokes.
“Oh, Jill, you’re right. It must be done remotely. All of a sudden the pain’s all gone. It’s about time.”
And the slow old woman blew out her breath in a long puff. She breathed in through her nose and blew it out through her mouth. When at last the young mother nodded and recovered her feet, the woman staggered a little as she moved, unnoticed through the heavy, swinging doors.
Remembering Pam George
May 26, 2012Pam was my first friend when we moved to Colorado. It seemed instantaneous, as though it had been concocted in advance and just needed the last ingredient of actually meeting to be complete.
I have a feeling that Pam was a first friend to lots of people. She has the knack of making others feel interesting, and entertaining and important. I don’t think it was possible for one full minute to go by in an average conversation with Pam without her laughing. So, for an average length conversation with Pam George, that’s about 180 incidents of laughter per conversation.
My son Chris loves her so much, when he was mad at me, he always told me he was going to run away to the Georges. I told Pam about that one time and she laughed and said “Send him over. He’ll be back pretty soon when he finds out that I’m not that nice.”
But he never did find it out. Nor did I. The younger boys stayed with the Georges while we went on our house hunting trip to OK. That only made it even harder for them to leave Colorado.
Pam was the first to deliver a bench baby. (See earlier post about Jeffrey Meacham.) She guessed I was pregnant with Thomas before the test was fully dry. She figured it out when she announced her own pregnancy and saw the look on my husband’s face. Nobody has a nose for news like Pam’s.
She calls herself nosy and it’s true. She’d ask bold questions that everyone wanted to ask but was too shy. But she was fun to tell ‘my business’ to, because she was so vitally interested. She actually wanted to HEAR the details of my news. I always knew what a rare friend she was.
I have a feeling that Pam was a first friend to lots of people. She has the knack of making others feel interesting, and entertaining and important. I don’t think it was possible for one full minute to go by in an average conversation with Pam without her laughing. So, for an average length conversation with Pam George, that’s about 180 incidents of laughter per conversation.
My son Chris loves her so much, when he was mad at me, he always told me he was going to run away to the Georges. I told Pam about that one time and she laughed and said “Send him over. He’ll be back pretty soon when he finds out that I’m not that nice.”
But he never did find it out. Nor did I. The younger boys stayed with the Georges while we went on our house hunting trip to OK. That only made it even harder for them to leave Colorado.
Pam was the first to deliver a bench baby. (See earlier post about Jeffrey Meacham.) She guessed I was pregnant with Thomas before the test was fully dry. She figured it out when she announced her own pregnancy and saw the look on my husband’s face. Nobody has a nose for news like Pam’s.
She calls herself nosy and it’s true. She’d ask bold questions that everyone wanted to ask but was too shy. But she was fun to tell ‘my business’ to, because she was so vitally interested. She actually wanted to HEAR the details of my news. I always knew what a rare friend she was.
I was thinking about Pam yesterday afternoon. I remembered a promise that I made her when she heard that my first book was about to be published. She said, “When you go on Oprah, you’ll have to take me with you.” I promised her I would. So as I pulled weeds, I mused on the fact that I’d have to make it up to her by taking her on a book tour when the time comes, since Oprah no longer has her show. It’s the kind of promise I’d LOVE to keep!
Pam is a gifted teacher. She meets her students where they are without worrying about where they “should” be. She would have made the ultimate kindergarten teacher.
She adjusts herself to those around her. Her living room was full of Precious Moments figurines and her husband’s taxidermied trophies.
But as relaxed and unworried as she always seemed, she ran the book fair at Wolford Elementary like a seasoned business woman. Her favorite calling in the (Mormon) Church is to teach the three-year-old Sunbeams, but she’s been an outstanding Primary president and later, seminary teacher and lots of other things, too. She did well with everything she undertook.
If you want to draw Pam’s ire, just do something harmful, hurtful, or wrong against an innocent person, especially a child. She wasn’t laughing then. Jesus said that those who harm “his little ones,” would be better off drowned in the depths of the sea with a millstone around their necks. If I’d harmed a child, I’d rather have the millstone than Pam around my neck!
Pam was proud of her family. You could see the tenderness in her face as she looked at one of them. They seemed to be the one subject that she worried about.
Pam fills a happy place in my heart.
But Pam’s heart gave out yesterday. She woke with what she thought was indigestion and by evening, died of a massive heart attack.
I laid awake all night, thinking of her, alternating between smiles and tears and prayers for her family. I wonder about the strange phenomenon that brought me to muse about her just hours before her death.
My friend Pam is another one that I will rejoice to see when the time comes. She’ll laugh and say, “How did you get here?” And I’ll have to tell her the details and she’ll tell me all the latest on our mutual friends that live in the Paradise neighborhood.
Or perhaps I’ll be caught up into the air to meet the Lord and his attendant angels. She’ll be in His entourage. She has been for years.
We’ll miss you, Friend, until we meet again.
The Least
May 22, 2012All the sentimental, sweet fiction in the world can’t match the power of one true story.
It was Olia’s (Oh-lee-ah) baptism day. After several delays and four months of heavy slate gray skies, the February 2004 morning dawned sparkling clear, with the snow shattering the sunlight into rainbows. The young woman was ready for the covenant. She wanted to be a disciple of Christ.
But the Ukrainian city of Gorlovka had only primitive facilities. The people of the city were paid only irregularly for their factory jobs. They live in the old socialist, tenement houses, built in rows of identical cinderblock boxes. The apartments are uniformly infested with cockroaches and every other type of vermin. The water, when it runs at all from their taps, comes out orange.
The mission rented a minibus and hired a driver so that anyone from the branch who wanted to attend the baptism had a ride to Donetsk. Only the wealthy mafia had private cars. The minibus is about the size of a twelve passenger van, but about twenty people wedged in for the big event. But they were used to the crowding. Sometimes the sister missionaries were given seats on Babushka’s laps on the city buses.
Among the travelers were three young boys, ages twelve, nine and seven. They were from a recently baptised family, but their parents couldn’t go that day.
Misha (a nickname that would translate into English as Mikey) was the seven-year-old. Whether he was eager for the spiritual feast of observing a young woman committing her life to Christ or was just along for the holiday, I don’t know. The baptism went off without a hitch, and after the spiritual feast, the missionaries offered abundant cookies in celebration. Misha was good at celebrating. Misha may not have had anything else in his stomach. Misha was warned by the sisters that he’d get a tummy ache if he ate too many cookies. Misha was seven. He took his chances.
As the happy members piled into the van, Misha didn’t say too much about his belly ache. The heater in the minibus battled the sharp Ukrainian winter resolutely, fending off every gasp of cool air within its walls. The bus rocked and bumped and swerved on the rough Ukrainian roads.
Cookies bubbled up and out,return-to-sender from Misha’s mouth and bathed the front of his clothing.
A middle-aged Brat (Brother) Vasily, whose anti-Mormon wife had drawn his two daughters away from their baptismal covenants, called for the hired bus driver to pull over and stop. He carried Misha out of the bus into the frigid cold. He helped him out of his vomit-soaked clothes and scrubbed him with clean snow. Brat Vasily removed his only coat and wrapped the boy in it. He wiped as much of the foulness off the clothing with snow and then carried handfuls of clean snow into the van. He scrubbed the seat and floor with the snow, pushing it into his bare hands so he could dispose of it outside.
When the van was a clean as it could be with limited resources, the man called for the driver to start again. The man sat beside Misha with his arm around him, comforting him and reassuring the child that everything was fine and nobody minded the odor or the delay.
I am left to wonder how often I demonstrate the covenants I have made to be a disciple of Jesus in the way I treat others. When I observe this sort of gentle kindness, it makes me think I need to be more proactive. I don’t need a public cause, I just need a private commitment to be a little more like Him every day.
It was Olia’s (Oh-lee-ah) baptism day. After several delays and four months of heavy slate gray skies, the February 2004 morning dawned sparkling clear, with the snow shattering the sunlight into rainbows. The young woman was ready for the covenant. She wanted to be a disciple of Christ.
But the Ukrainian city of Gorlovka had only primitive facilities. The people of the city were paid only irregularly for their factory jobs. They live in the old socialist, tenement houses, built in rows of identical cinderblock boxes. The apartments are uniformly infested with cockroaches and every other type of vermin. The water, when it runs at all from their taps, comes out orange.
The mission rented a minibus and hired a driver so that anyone from the branch who wanted to attend the baptism had a ride to Donetsk. Only the wealthy mafia had private cars. The minibus is about the size of a twelve passenger van, but about twenty people wedged in for the big event. But they were used to the crowding. Sometimes the sister missionaries were given seats on Babushka’s laps on the city buses.
Among the travelers were three young boys, ages twelve, nine and seven. They were from a recently baptised family, but their parents couldn’t go that day.
Misha (a nickname that would translate into English as Mikey) was the seven-year-old. Whether he was eager for the spiritual feast of observing a young woman committing her life to Christ or was just along for the holiday, I don’t know. The baptism went off without a hitch, and after the spiritual feast, the missionaries offered abundant cookies in celebration. Misha was good at celebrating. Misha may not have had anything else in his stomach. Misha was warned by the sisters that he’d get a tummy ache if he ate too many cookies. Misha was seven. He took his chances.
As the happy members piled into the van, Misha didn’t say too much about his belly ache. The heater in the minibus battled the sharp Ukrainian winter resolutely, fending off every gasp of cool air within its walls. The bus rocked and bumped and swerved on the rough Ukrainian roads.
Cookies bubbled up and out,return-to-sender from Misha’s mouth and bathed the front of his clothing.
A middle-aged Brat (Brother) Vasily, whose anti-Mormon wife had drawn his two daughters away from their baptismal covenants, called for the hired bus driver to pull over and stop. He carried Misha out of the bus into the frigid cold. He helped him out of his vomit-soaked clothes and scrubbed him with clean snow. Brat Vasily removed his only coat and wrapped the boy in it. He wiped as much of the foulness off the clothing with snow and then carried handfuls of clean snow into the van. He scrubbed the seat and floor with the snow, pushing it into his bare hands so he could dispose of it outside.
When the van was a clean as it could be with limited resources, the man called for the driver to start again. The man sat beside Misha with his arm around him, comforting him and reassuring the child that everything was fine and nobody minded the odor or the delay.
I am left to wonder how often I demonstrate the covenants I have made to be a disciple of Jesus in the way I treat others. When I observe this sort of gentle kindness, it makes me think I need to be more proactive. I don’t need a public cause, I just need a private commitment to be a little more like Him every day.
Saturday Morning Short Story: Black Forest Cookies
May 19, 2012We used to live in the Black Forest of Colorado, and the names and details were NOT changed. Until today, I had pronouced the name of the elementary school Wol-ford. Now, in light of the fact that it’s in the ‘Black Forest’ I think it should probably be pronouced, “Wolf-herd”. I don’t mean to frighten you little Academy School District kidlings, I’m just sayin’. . .
Black Forest Cookies
Hans believed in magic. The evidence was too overwhelming for his sensible lobe to overcome. In fact, his powers of reasoning brought him to the conclusion that the world was filled with hundreds of varieties of magic. Pollywogs turned into frogs, caterpillars turned into moths and butterflies, and seeds as small as a fly turned into apple trees.
Nobody in Hans’ family ever thought to correct his ridiculous belief in magic, since his parents and grandparents on back through the generations had come to the same conclusion. They rather encouraged it. A few frowning teachers said to each other that the Andersons had carried it a bit far when they discovered that the boy’s middle name was ‘Christian’, but what business was it of theirs? The fact that the Andersons lived in the “Black Forest” just outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado had nothing to do with magic. Hans Christian’s Anderson of fairytale fame didn’t live in the German Black Forest. That was the Brothers Grimm.
But Mr. and Mrs. Anderson plied their son and his twin sister, Gretel with fairytales from the time they were no bigger than their thumbs. They held nothing back. Hans had nightmares for a week when they read him the grim “Fitcher’s Bird” at bedtime. Greta was vastly afraid to wear red to her grandmother’s house after a thorough perusal of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ But they mostly got beyond the side effects of the more ghastly tales as they graduated from their woodland school of “Wolford Elementary “ and moved on to the aptly-named terrors of ‘ Challenger’ Middle School.
The Anderson children each joined a scout troop and so it happened that the Boy Scouts began their popcorn sale at the same time as the Girl Scouts began selling chocolate covered mint cookies. (Do they have any other types? Perhaps they do.) It made sense for the twelve-year-olds to go out together and though the houses in the Black Forest are very far from each other, they set out on foot.
They had walked only a few hundred feet when they saw their next-door neighbor cutting wood. They offered their wares, and though the man was diabetic, he understood his neighborly obligation and bought a package of popcorn and a package of mint cookies.
The next neighbor was also outside, repairing a bat house in advance of the miller moth season. He also succumbed to the social pressure and bought one of each.
But the social pressure to buy from door-to-door-selling neighbor kids diminishes as distance from their residence increases. With the houses each on at least five acres, they found social pressure did not avail by the third house from their’s. “NO! I don’t want any of your overpriced stuff! I’ll go to Walmart if I want a treat,” the man snapped.
But Hans had great belief in his salesmanship after two consecutive successes. ” Wouldn’t you like to help out the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts? We’d sure appreciate it.”
“I don’t think so,” the bearish man growled. “What have the Scouts ever done for me?” Now this was an unanswerable question. The children had sledded past when they saw him shoveling snow. They were glad to be on fast-moving bicycles when they saw him hauling slash. The man continued. “How about you kids help me weed my garden for an hour and then I’ll buy some cookies and popcorn?”
Neither Hans nor Gretel was a mathematician, but they did know their share of the profit from the cookies and popcorn and they each happened to know the current minimum wage. They turned away, murmuring of the man’s ‘rudeness’, which is what being honest out loud is often called.
The next three driveways were marked with ‘no soliciting’ signs, and they were beginning to weary of their long walk in the woods when they came upon a driveway with a mailbox designed to look like birdhouse. The house was hidden in the trees, but they reasoned together that such a friendly little mailbox hinted a generous, cookie-and-popcorn-liking resident.
An ancient log cabin huddled in advanced ruin just behind the first curve. “It’s probably one of the original cabins from the days when they lumbered for the Santa Fe railroad,” Hans said. Gretel could see the black widow spider webs even from that distance and didn’t much care what its condition implied.
The A-frame house at the end of the quarter-mile-long drive was painted white with red trim. Some unemployed carpenter had decorated it with elaborate filigree and elaborate woodcuttings builders call ‘gingerbread.’ Alpine strawberries laden with tiny fruit adorned both sides of the walk. Gretel pointed to one, almost as big as the end of her thumb, that lay like a jewel against the green leaves. Hans picked it and popped it furtively into his mouth.
Hans nodded toward an ancient Cadillac parked behind the house. “I bet you an old woman lives here,” the boy said. He rang the silver bell that hung beside the door.
An ancient female, bent almost double and rheumy eyed, pushed open the screen door and squinted at them.
Gretel pitched her cookies. The old woman cupped her ear. “I can’t hear you, dear, in all this wind. Come in please.” They knew better than to go inside a stranger’s house. But they were too well-mannered to refuse.
The house smelled of mothballs, mildew and wood smoke. A fire burned low in a corner wood stove. “Cookies did you say? Yes I have some for you. It’s been a long time since children came asking for cookies. But I always keep some, just in case.”
“No, Ma’am,” Gretel said. “I’m a Girl Scout and my brother is a Boy Scout and we’re selling cookies and popcorn. Or rather we’ll taking orders to be delivered later.”
The woman bobbed her head and smiled as Gretel spoke. She hadn’t bothered to put in her dentures that day. ‘I think I have peanut butter cookies. Do you like peanut butter?”
Hans raised his voice very much louder than was polite. “We’re not here to eat your cookies! We’re SELLING COOKIES and POPCORN!”
“If you want popcorn, you’re going to have to build up that fire good and hot. Boy, will you put in another good log into the stove? It’s chilly in here anyway.”
Hans had noticed the woodpile as they came in. He sidled toward it, keeping watch on the old woman at the screen door. Sparks burst from the dying log when he added the fresh one.
“Thank you, boy. Now you’ll have to keep watch until it’s hot enough. I’ll see about your sister’s cookies. You should try a few yourself. You could use a little fattening.”
She shuffled to her dank little kitchen at the back of her gingerbread cabin.
When she returned with four-year-old chocolate covered mint cookies on an ancient china plate, the door stood slightly ajar but the room was empty. She shuffled all around the room, feeling with her arthritis-knotted hands in case her eyes deceived her. When she certain that there was no other human life in her parlor, she sat beside the stove and folded her hands in her lap.
“Well, I suppose they forgot something and will come right back. I don’t think this fire is quite hot enough for that boy yet, anyway. What a treat to have unexpected visitors! ” And she waited and rocked in her creaking old chair until the daylight had fled.
One reason my stomach is too knotted to eat!
May 16, 2012Do self-destructive behaviors constitute insanity? If they do, I think I have it! I took my youngest son, Thomas, to get his drivers permit. We had to make four trips because they kept running out of numbers before 3:00 in the afternoon. (I can just imagine what it will be like when the government is running my health care, too…”Just take a number and if you bleed on anyone else, you might be arrested for assault. Oh, there aren’t any numbers? Well, you’ll have to come back after the Columbus Day long weekend and you’ll have to get here before noon if you hope to be treated.”)
But I digress. I’ve taught my six older children to drive. It’s horrible. I have to consciously summon my zen so that I don’t bark out in fear and startle him.
Yesterday I took him to a big park with nice empty parking lots after school.
I wanted him to get the feel for steering, and to learn how to park between the lines. It’s harder than it seems!
He knew to accept my instruction humbly and to be resolutely obedient. (That might have had something to do with the lecture I gave him right after he got his permit and I let him drive in our neighborhood. He argued with me about the need to use a turn signal at a tee, and lost the day’s driving priviledges.)
The essential difficulty in teaching a teenager to drive, is that they’re just at the age when they think they know everything. It’s like living with the embodiment of Wikipedia on steroids. I am not sure if I can convince a kid that age of anything if my life depended on it. And whaddaya know? My life does depend on it!
After going through it six times, I knew to lay down the law. No radios. No temperature adjustments while moving. No sightseeing. And you’ll never drive a car I own again if I find out you were texting, reading texts or responding to your phone while driving. I know I’m oblivious when I’m on the phone and you can’t convince me that the fellow careening around the construction pylons in front of me while talking on his cell isn’t also.
I was listening to a radio show about using a cell phone and driving at the same time several years ago. A driver called from his car to brag about his ability to drive and talk perfectly safely at the same time. All of a sudden, the radio listeners hear a crash and a long pause. “Oh *&^%$!” the caller finally said.
“Was that what it sounded like?” the talk show host asked.
“I have to call you back,” the caller said as he hung up.
But I digress. I’ve taught my six older children to drive. It’s horrible. I have to consciously summon my zen so that I don’t bark out in fear and startle him.
Yesterday I took him to a big park with nice empty parking lots after school.
I wanted him to get the feel for steering, and to learn how to park between the lines. It’s harder than it seems!
He knew to accept my instruction humbly and to be resolutely obedient. (That might have had something to do with the lecture I gave him right after he got his permit and I let him drive in our neighborhood. He argued with me about the need to use a turn signal at a tee, and lost the day’s driving priviledges.)
The essential difficulty in teaching a teenager to drive, is that they’re just at the age when they think they know everything. It’s like living with the embodiment of Wikipedia on steroids. I am not sure if I can convince a kid that age of anything if my life depended on it. And whaddaya know? My life does depend on it!
After going through it six times, I knew to lay down the law. No radios. No temperature adjustments while moving. No sightseeing. And you’ll never drive a car I own again if I find out you were texting, reading texts or responding to your phone while driving. I know I’m oblivious when I’m on the phone and you can’t convince me that the fellow careening around the construction pylons in front of me while talking on his cell isn’t also.
I was listening to a radio show about using a cell phone and driving at the same time several years ago. A driver called from his car to brag about his ability to drive and talk perfectly safely at the same time. All of a sudden, the radio listeners hear a crash and a long pause. “Oh *&^%$!” the caller finally said.
“Was that what it sounded like?” the talk show host asked.
“I have to call you back,” the caller said as he hung up.
(It’s also not safe to drive while laughing hysterically.)
To be fair, Thomas did very well. He’s naturally cautious and I think that will carry over into his driving. That doesn’t mean that my legs won’t get stiff from pushing imaginary brakes, my stomach won’t knot, and my arms won’t fly up protectively over my face.
I need to keep reminding myself that if I live through this one last student, I’ll likely live as long as my grandmothers. One was 96 and the other was almost 98. But then again, they only had three kids apiece. And I don’t think either of them taught their children to drive.
Do you suppose I’m pushing my luck? I must be insane!
Make your tummy purr!
Carla’s Magic Healing Muffins
May 15, 2012Almost six years ago, we moved to Oklahoma. On our first Sunday after our furniture was delivered, the Bishop asked me into his office. It was a newly formed ward, meeting that day for the very first time. He didn’t know many of the members of the new ward, though he’d been Bishop for a year already in the old Cedar Valley Ward. He came to the point. “I have been praying to fill some of the leadership positions and have received the answer every time that I had not yet met the person for one of the callings Tell me about yourself and bear your testimony.”
So I did. Three days later, the Bishop waded through our boxes, enjoyed a piece of my son Daniel’s birthday cake, and called me to be the Relief Society president.
“How do you recommend I go about choosing councilors and a secretary? (In the Mormon Church, (more properly called by its name, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”) we have a lay ministry, so nobody gets paid anything for Church work.)
He gave me a list of names and said to call all these women and say that the Bishop recommended that I get to know them, since I’m brand new. All seven of them were strong, capable women with strong desires to serve the Lord.
My councelors were Carla and Tracy and my secretary was Kathleen. All three of them proved to be good friends, faithful in Church work and insightful of human nature.
The only way I could see to manage the task of setting up the huge visiting teaching network that must include every woman in the ward, (well over 100), was to visit them all. We divided into twos and got started. One woman on our list had been offended by someone in the Church and had asked not to be contacted. Carla said, “I’ll go see her. I’ll just take her some muffins.”
Carla had a delicious pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe. (find it under “magic pumpkin muffins” in the archives of this blog) She took some to the woman, and the woman explained what had happened but invited Carla to visit her again. I soon realized that Carla would arm herself with muffins and go to anyone, despite how unwelcoming they seemed on the surface. We nicknamed Carla’s muffins, the “magic muffins.”
The wonder of it is that Carla’s attitude, “Who can shut the door on muffins?” is absolutely true. Muffins are just different enough to pique the recipients sense of friendship. They’re non-threatening and they’re not as cliche as cookies.
Recently, I had surgery to remove a broken bone from the ball of my foot. When Carla heard about it, she showed up with a nice dinner and a plate of muffins made from a different recipe. These are so healthful that they’d heal just about any hurt. I think the world needs this recipe, too. Arm yourself with the shield of faith and the sword of Muffins!
Carla’s Magic Healing Muffins: Preheat oven to 400
1/4 cup milled flax seed (I was out of flax seed, so substituted 1/2 cup navy bean flour I had ground in my wheat grinder. This upps the protein.)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup white flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
(I added 1/2 cup of rolled oats, but the recipe didn’t call for it.)
1 1/2 cups finely chopped apples. (I left the skin on)(raisins would work too)
3 TBLS vegetable oil
1/2 cup of milk (I added a little extra because of the extra dry ingredients.)
1/2 cup chopped nuts. (I didn’t have this many, so they were skimpy)
Mix well. Batter will be thick. Fill muffin pans 2/3 full. Bake at 400 18-20 minutes. (Works fine to double this recipe) As it is, it makes a generous dozen.
My substitutions and additions worked fine, and everyone enjoyed them. (the originals were delicious, too) I served them with ham and bean soup and since I doubled the recipe, we’ll have them for breakfast, for a couple days, too. (Note: Navy bean flour makes any the raw batter taste funny. That goes away when baked) I estimate these have about 150 calories each. Flax seed has omega three fatty acids and are super high fiber. These muffins have a serving of whole grain, about half a serving of fruit, and with the beans and milk, they also have a nice shot of protein. Super nutrient dense! Enjoy!
Great new blog on the list!
May 14, 2012You’ll have to scroll down the sidebar to find the updated bloglist. I took off a couple that are not active enough to justify the link and added a facinating one called Kelsi and the Brain. (one is a genius and the other’s insane). It’s written by my exotic adventure-loving daughter-in-law and perhaps sometimes my son. They’re currently in Alaska. . .but follow the link on the list and read the blog. You’ll love it!
This story is based on a true incident I heard through a friend who is involved in helping orphans in Haiti.
Trust in the Lord with All Thine Heart.
Sister Anna lay on her cot as long as she could. The children must not be wakened. Any slight movement from her could raise their hopes and make it doubly hard for them to wait.
They were waiting on the Lord. He was their only resource now. Every grain of rice, every ounce of cornmeal or flour, even every weevil had been cooked and eaten with thanks. The last had gone the day before yesterday. Yesterday, they had filled their bellies with water and chewed the stems of the grass. The Padre that carried food to the orphanage was two weeks late. He had sent no word.
But at last, the youngest of the children began to cry. They tapped her door and whimpered of their hunger. Sister Anna searched her tiny cubicle for the tenth time. There was not so much as an ant.
She dressed and opened her door. The children had assembled in the hall. The little ones sat on the older ones’ laps, their large eyes full of trust.
“We must pray, my dear ones. Only God knows that we are hungry and have no food. Perhaps He will send manna or a flock of tasty quail for us. But He will send something if we ask.”
The children shifted to their knees and joined hands with each other. Who had taught them to do that? Their dark heads bowed, waiting for her to speak. Anna searched through the memorized prayers she knew. There were none that were right. She prayed from her heart. “Dear Father, we are hungry. The Padre has forgotten us, or he is sick or injured. Please send food before the sun goes down today. We had nothing yesterday. We ask this in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, amen.”
The children chorused ‘amen.’ The oldest orphan child, Marie, stood up. Hermanos e hermanas, come! We must boil the water so that when the food comes, we are prepared to cook it! Jose’ you build the fires up. Miguel, take some boys to the spout and bring lots of water. Pedro, take Hermana Anna’s butterfly nets and her small rifle and take the little ones to the upper field to catch something to make soup. And all of you take off your dirty clothes so we can wash them. Put on your oldest things so that our best will be clean in time for dinner.”
The children obeyed Marie without question. When they had dispersed to their various assignments, Marie turned to Sister Anna. “Come Sister. We will clean the bedroom and wash the clothes so that when the Lord sends the food to us, we will be clean and ready to receive it.”
“Yes, Marie,” Sister Anna said. But in her heart she thought that it would be nice to be buried in clean clothes. And it would be a shame to leave the orphanage dirty, even if they all starved.
Some of the hunger-weakened children fell asleep in the meadow, but an old farmer passed through the village and saw the older ones hunting. He took the rifle from the children and told his dog to find the rabbits. The dog knew the ways of rabbits and the farmer knew the ways of rifles. By the time the sun was at its zenith, the hunters brought three young rabbits to the orphanage kettles.
A young woman from a village lower down the mountain came to visit her sister. She carried twenty pounds of dry beans strapped to her back. When she got to the orphanage on the edge of town, she called Sister Anna to come out. “Sister, I found that bugs got into my beans and I was about to throw them into the garden. My little girl told me that I should bring them to the hungry children here. I’m sorry to offer you beans that are full of bugs, but you may throw them into your garden if you don’t want them.
Marie overheard and answered the woman. “We already have the water boiling for them. Give them to me and I will wash them before I put them in. We will thank God many times for them.”
The beans and the rabbit meat boiled in the caldrons when the clothing on the line was dry and Sister Anna called the children to put on their clothes. The miracle supper would be ready in an hour. They would not starve that day.
She was interrupted by the rumble and rattle of an old truck. The hungry children roused themselves and gushed from the building in a tide with Sister Anna. The Padre examined the bubbling cauldrons in front of the house.
“Padre, you came!” Sister Anna cried.
The children carried the bags of rice and beans and flour and bushels of carrots and potatoes into the kitchen. A ten-year-old named Sylvia opened a bag of rice and measured four cups each into the caldrons.
The Padre stood close enough to Sister Anna to explain. “I had no money for gasoline after I picked up the foodstuffs. Old Miguel, who usually donates the money for it, is dying. I didn’t know what to do. So I prayed to God using a prayer I made up and I heard an answer in my heart that if I would start up the mountain to you, He would carry me safely. I left town with the yellow fuel light already warning me. I drove all thirty five miles up the steep road with the fuel light on.
“It’s much less expensive to run a truck on faith!” The Padre laughed.
“Yes, as you see, we knew you were coming. Or we knew that someone would come, so we boiled water to be ready when the food arrived. Today our bellies ran on faith, too. We had nothing yesterday, but today we started with prayer and tonight we will feast.
“Come and wash and make ready to receive the Lord’s feast!”