blue & white wedding

Pictures from Jane's beautiful wedding.
It was fun to help with the flowers.

The ice cream parlor was such a hit.

Congrats, Jane & Blake!

{Flowers by Mayflowers SLC, UT. Full album here}

You're the Top!

Happy birthday to these two.

Grandma is 91 today*. A few weeks ago I watched her do sit-ups at the gym. Shouldn't surprise me. This is the woman who had 11 children, flew planes, was licensed to drive semis and served two missions. Oh, and has a posterity that now reaches well into the triple digits. That's quite the family tree. I'm lucky to be a small part of it.

Thank you for reading "Winken, Blinken and Nod" in the upstairs bedroom before bed. Thank you for making hootenany pancakes and washing my face in the morning when I slept at your house. Thank you for making bridesmaid dresses and bags to carry my violin music in. For letting us ride backwards in the mint green Ford and for a freezer-full of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Thank you for lovely dinners on your ivy plates at the dining room table. For mashed potatoes, dup, and limpa bread and poems before dessert. For letting me watch Jeopardy with you and Grandpa in the family room. For introducing me to Doris Day and James Garner. Thank you for not getting angry when I broke your ostrich egg from South Africa. Thank you for teaching me where I came from. For Brigham City peaches. For bean bags and dress ups. For being a faithful blog follower. Thank you for teaching me to love art, summer days in Iowa, and pearl rings. Thank you for letting me sit on your lap in church and for teaching me that a measuring tape can entertain fussy children during sacrament meeting. Thank you for keeping the secret of a lifetime on June 25, 1991. Thank you for marrying Grandpa. Thank you for taking care of him. Thank you for the cabin and family reunions. Thank you for teaching me that family comes first and for being the reason my cousins are my best friends.

I love you, Grandma. You're the Top.

*Grandpa would have been 95 last week.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity

I'm sitting on the striped sofa, laptop perched at a 90 degree angle on the ottoman. My notebook and various colored pens are on my lap. Dad is in the red chair across from me. His hair goes sideways, slantways, longways, and backways. (He's a bit under the weather and working from home.) I cue Alabama's, "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down," and tell him it's his theme song. I'm studying the velocity of ants along a graph and my father is working on something legal -- in the sense that he's not doing anything illegal, but also in the sense that he's working on a current case or two or five. How many, I don't really know. What I do know is that with hair like that, he looks a lot like Albert Einstein. Truthfully, I wish he were. Just for an hour. Only because I've got math assignments looming large (I've had my limit of limits) and velocitous ants are busily building hills at my feet. And while I don't know their velocity, (yet) I know they mean business.

Or...

I wish my dear cousin Ellie lived in our study like she did one summer. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I'd thought that these first few weeks of school. I could build a mighty high tower of nickels, which, as long as we're on the subject of science, would defy gravity.

At Ellie's wedding dinner Dad dressed up like Albert Einstein and spoke in his famous German accent and drew equations on the board as a toast to Ellie and Jeff and their future. He promised them their increases would be exponential. Just like Einstein's Theory of Spatial Relativity, dad was right. So right, in fact, that even if I tried to lure Ellie with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (her famous recipe) and a Meg Ryan Movie Marathon ("I don't like how you say with your nose all schrenched, 'You're French, aren'tchoo?'") she couldn't be persuaded to leave her darling (and smart) children. So, although I saw her just one month ago, I am wishing she would come again because Ellie makes math better and numbers bearable and just saves the day in general. (I have a feeling Miss Anna would be rather happy to see her, too.) Until then, I've got Dad here. If I squint, he looks like Einstein, and I know if I asked he'd speak with a German accent. Growing up he spent many a night at our round kitchen table explaining algebraic equations one step at a time. For that, for him, I am exponentially grateful.

when spending the weekend in a small town...

• Drive to the end of the canyon with the top down at dusk with David's Bob Dylan cassette tape turned up full blast. Also, play some Bruce Springsteen.
• Introduce yourselves to the city boys at the market while they fasten a canoe to their truck. Tell them you're local. They'll buy it.
  
• Consult the H.A. Rey guide to constellations with a headlamp at midnight when it's so dark you can't see the hand in front of your face. Trespass a little -- the view will be heavenly and the getaway scene will give you an adrenaline rush like you haven't had since high school. When you sike yourself out about recent bear sightings (thank you Ranger Matt), jump in the car and listen to A&J Stone.
  
• Take a trip to the hardware store one town over, past the big red barn with the American flag and the 100 year old Cottonwood trees. Sing Johnny Cash with the store owner while you shop for light bulbs and a garden rake.
• Grill dawgs and eat s'mores like it's the last weekend of summer. (It basically is.)
• Walk along the Weber River and tell stories about Moose-sightings.
• Eat french toast with fresh berries for breakfast.
  
• Take lots of pictures.

{more photos on flickr}

Remember

Stars and Stripes in Spring City, UT 9.11.10

Yesterday

At the tip top of a winding canyon, outside a cabin with very narrow stairs and a wraparound porch, we sat alongside a fire pit watching the coals turn from orange to white to black. Abbey Road tracks spun round and round next to the player piano.

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right
It's all right

He made me tell the story about the time I had to climb a tree on a blind date. I wanted him to tell me about the room with the yellow wallpaper, his sister's secret pizza dough recipe, and life in the city with bridges. I wanted to know if he has a favorite. I wanted to ask him if he remembered the time he ordered me sugar free lemonade and then let me eat his sweet potato fries. I wanted to tell him that the gate down the road looked perfect for swinging our legs over. That we could hear the river from there and see the big dipper between the pine trees.

But the coals were turning colors, slowly fading out like a dying sun. Cold air was floating in from the forest behind us and I had to go home and learn about instantaneous velocity. So we drove down the hill to the gate, opened the windows to hear the river, and headed home. The faint smell of campfire trailed us like a shadow.

sweeping summer out the door

Here we sit in the space between summer and fall, where one season breathes in and the other breathes out. Keats called it the "season of mist and mellow fruitfulness," when the peaches are plump and the plums turn sweet. We step with flip flopped feet, peeling toe polish, and fading tans on sidewalk that cools by evening, passed sheep grazing in pastures soon-to-be-gold as their coats thicken with wool to cover our toes with the first sign of frost. We watch trees become kaleidoscopes overnight, turning too many colors to name, and we gaze as the big dipper dips and bows in preparation for the return of Orion to the night's sky.

{photo from Labor Day adventuring}

The Fly. But Why?

I spent the better part of a half hour this afternoon losing a battle to a stubborn fly. He managed to dash his way through the open deck doors when I was letting the dog out. I welcomed his presence at first, the low hum of his hover like the last echo of summer. I shut the deck doors to make sure he didn't go all Lord of the Flies on me, inviting any and all of his fly friends inside, and went about my business.

Slowly his wings picked up cadence and his forceful flapping became incessant and rather urgent. He went from flitting friend to persona non grata. No longer was he like the soothing sound of a refrigerator at night when the all else is quiet. He'd become like Rachmaninoff's "Flight of the Bumblebee." Don't get me wrong I heart all Rachmaninoff. This however, is not exactly what I had in mind for study music. (Although it sets the scene for quite a duel which is exactly what this was becoming.)

Deck doors wide and gaping, I ushered him out politely at first, like an air traffic controller, hands motioning his obvious and safe exit strategy. When he didn't follow my lead but rather sat himself down on the windowsill for a siesta, I had to take a different approach. Reaching for the first swatting weapon in sight, I picked up an envelope and was ready to have at it. Creeping towards the sill, I prepared to lower the boom and bam! I missed. He was off in flight (cue the Rachmaninoff) and I was up in arms, chasing him around the room like a crazy person.

I wish I could say the white envelope ended up with a very obvious black spot and that the afternoon consisted of a post-victory Ali-style float like a butterfly sting like a bee lap by yours truly. Sadly, or not so sadly I suppose, the fly finally stopped flying into windows and flew out of one. Hopefully he's safe somewhere out there in the wide blue yonder.

This whole thing reminds me of a poem by Ogden Nash which dad and I like to quote. It pretty much sums up my feelings about this afternoon:

God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.