What it's like

February 3, 2019

What it's like. What is it like living in the in between? The beginning of the in between was so stark but the ending seemed so murky. What would end it? Death? We all die eventually. A diagnosis? But a diagnosis is just the beginning of another in between.  

Monday evening. Carla and Daniel opened the front door. Nelly was standing behind the kitchen counter, still. That stood out to Carla. Her mother was always moving in the kitchen; stirring the soup, chopping the vegetables, cleaning. Busy. Carla would have to stop her for a hug. But today Nelly stopped what she was doing when the front door opened. She was wearing a white sweater.  

"Guys, I'm not feeling good. I can't breathe."  

It was true, almost. She was breathing, but struggling. It sounded like someone had punched her in the gut.   

"I called the nurse and they told me to come in and get a blood test and X-ray." 

Daniel and Carla immediately thought, "Stroke." But that was ruled out by them, by the nurse.  

And the in-between began. So delicately, a slight slope towards what you were not planning. The evidence of the slip was small; a nagging itch, a pound of panic before you got a hold of your senses. Further into the in-between Carla would look back at this moment in the kitchen and pin it in her memory as the start, but she still didn't know what it was the start of. She imagined her life now as a function whose direction she didn't know. As she had been trained, she tried to find a model for this overly-complicated situation. Was their life function one whose slope would soon shoot off into the abyss, with no minimum in sight? Or where they on a gentler decline, slowly but monotonically decreasing? Of course the day to day was too complicated to try and generalize. Full of small swells of hope and drops into despair. Carla's first day in this new school of oscillation started Tuesday.  

Nelly spent her day in the ER on Tuesday, by herself because they could not risk baby Charlotte being in the germ covered hospital and the men were off at work. "They took out 1.5 liters of fluid from my lung. It was clear, which was a good sign," her mom texted. A bubble rose in Carla's chest which had been clenched tight all day.  

Another text. "I need to wait a couple of hours until they discharge me."  Neutral. No new information there.  

Carla went to pick her up with Charlotte in the back. The ride to the hospital was strange. "I'm going to pick up my mom from the hospital who could be very sick or not. We don't know. This could be the first of many rides or not. And I need to find a playground for Charlotte." The last fact was definite, so Carla focused on it. Carla had left early to beat the afternoon rush so she had a dead half hour with baby girl.  

Nelly called when she was done. The hike back to the car from the park took longer than Carla remembered, so Nelly stood out in the cold for a few more minutes than she had to waiting for Carla. Carla felt bad; her mother hated the cold. But Carla also felt like this was a small inconvenience; like they couldn't worry about these things now. She had to pull into the round-about at a funny angle because of all the cars parked around, so the nose of the car was pointed directly at Nelly. Like a car accident put on pause. Carla honked. Once, twice. People everywhere looked at her. Finally she phoned Nelly. "Oh! I didn't see you." Carla was so sad, the bubble gone. This felt very ominous.  

When they passed IKEA Nelly cried. The clear fluid became a bad sign. It meant no infection. Which is good if you think you have infection. Bad if you don't think you have an infection. Then why is it there? The fluid seemed so sinuous now, creeping into her mother's lung like a stupidly perfectly crystal clear poison. Carla gave her mother a quick glance, and hand squeeze.  

"Mom, we don't know yet. I know, it's scary." Tears slipped down Carla's face. And she dropped further into despair. Her mother did not waste fear. If she was scared, then their world was changing.  

Feb 9, 2019

Breast cancer in her lungs. "This is what it's like," Carla thinks, "to have a mom who is dying."  

What is it like? 

It's awful not knowing how bad, how long. Two more weeks of waiting until all the tests are back and have been analyzed. Carla feels a high-pitched electrical sound turn on in her life. You know the sound, when the radio is first turned on but isn't quite playing music. Not white noise, but a pressure, a silent sound that pushes against your eardrums and makes you want to shut the radio off. Carla feels like she hears that sound all the time now and everything else around her is muted because of it. The sound of cancer, a silent, pressurized scream.  

How are we all doing. How is everyone feeling. Carla wonders why she isn't crying every second, why she isn't spending all her time cherishing every memory and mourning the loss of futures ones. Not yet, she tells herself. I can't do that yet. Time yawned in front of her. Two weeks of waiting appeared as a chasm they would never cross. She couldn't give herself up to her weeping passions just yet.  

The night she found out she sent her bat signal. It was urgent, everyone needed to know. Now three days later she wonders why. They had no details about the cancer, nothing to satisfy people's craving for answers. She wasn't even in Berkeley. As a recipient of the email, she wouldn't know what to do with it except express condolences. But she told her whole world. Lori, Alicia, and Laura, Ali and Sarah, office mates, the Primary presidency, her two bosses.  

Carla was always a nesting creature. Whenever she went on a trip she unpacked her bag first thing. Carefully laid out her clothes in the dresser, set her shoes in the closet. Like a dog circling and circling before she laid to sleep, Carla circled and circled her new location to feel settled. Here she did the same. The rapid fire emails and texts with the same message to so many people,  

"We found out today that my mom has breast cancer and it has spread to her lungs.  At this point the cancer isn't curable, just treatable which means the doctors try to prolong her life as much as possible while still giving her the quality of living she desires. We don't know how far it's spread or how aggressive it is, so she could have a few months to many years to live. We'll find out more when she meets with the oncologist later this week or next week.     

Everything is very up in the air about what life will look like for us for the next few months, but I will keep you updated. I'm planning to fly back to Berkeley soon to try and be there for the oncologist appointment. Depending on the treatment plan I may or may not go back to Seattle.   

My mom is feeling very good physically; she has been watching Charlotte every day and doing her usual routine. She is incredibly grateful for the life she has had so far and the piece that she has left to live. We are all slowing down and taking things one day at a time." 

With this message sent again and again, Carla was running the same grooves in her brain that solidified this new fact. Her mom has cancer. Her mom is dying. Carla was turning this every which way, slowly peeling one finger at a time from her eyes as she watched this frightening scene unfold before her. In the coming days she read these messages anytime her mind wandered. Running these sad streets until they reverberated in her bones, until she recognized this new gloomy neighborhood and its forlorn landmarks.  

Feb 15, 2019

Yesterday I thought my mom would rot from the inside out before anyone at Kaiser told us anything. Today I'm feeling so much better.  

I assumed a fighting stance and sent out a blitz of phone calls yesterday. Guns and ships was playing in my mind as I wielded my phone weapon. "I will organize you information, rise above my station SIR!"  

We have located her Utah medical records and had them sent over to Kaiser. We've talked to her case manager three times since yesterday. We got the results from her bone scan and CT scan. All clear except for her lungs which we already knew. The worst has not come, not yet, and for that we shed tears of joy. I laugh when I hear myself say, "Cancer has ONLY spread to her lungs." But that is the best news I have heard for awhile.  

Yesterday, before this good news and after my exhausting attack, I sobbed in my pillow thinking of everything that would be lost when my mom is gone. I read unaccustomed earth, bad idea, first story was about a Bengali woman raising a two year old son after her mom died. Her mom cooked, cleaned, was warm, filled the room with her presence. So I cried and cried and cried. Strangely I read a whole other short story before the tears hit. I surprised myself by how passive I was during the first story which was unfolding my future life.  

The things I'm the most sad/scared about 

1) Her cooking. I know this sounds stupid. But I suck so much at our and my mom is so good at it and it's how she tells us she loves us. And it's how she takes care of us. And it makes me feel Peruvian. It symbolizes the kin keeping my mom does for us. So without it I would feel pretty unmoored.  

2) My Dad being alone.  

Strange things. I haven't really missed anyone while in Seattle. I've been going crazy because I feel out of the information loop, but I haven't ached to see anyone except my mom a little. I feel like a robot. I've enjoyed my mornings sleeping in, coming home to a clean apartment, slipping into bed when it strikes my fancy. My life in Berkeley feels like too much. Too many responsibilities, too many people trying to arrange things. And every time I see Daniel we just talk about crap we have to do. I feel like I hear static all the time when I'm in Berkeley. I need to learn how to take a step back, to turn off my brain. More walks alone. 

I'm on my way to Berkeley right now.  

Feb 21, 2019

"How are you liking Amazon?" 

"I like it a lot. It's really fun."  

"And how you working things out with Charlotte?"  

Carla catches her breath. Charlotte and her mom were supposed to come to Seattle last week. The fact that, instead, Carla was in Berkeley was a sign that everything was amiss. Laura didn't know that, but the incongruity felt so glaring to Carla she could no longer gloss over it. And Carla felt Laura's presence pulling the words out of her, because although Laura didn't know, Laura knew. She knew what it was like to have a sick mom, a dead mom. Her mom had passed away three years ago: brain tumor.  

"I don't know if you've heard, but my mom was diagnosed with met-"  

Carla catches her breath again. She can feel the pressure in her nose, eyes, and throat of tears trying to push themselves out. For a split second she considers how surprised she is that she is about to cry. She has told so many people without shedding a tear. But she puts aside her surprise and stumbles on.  

"with metastatic breast cancer last week."  

Laura gasps. Tears immediately well in her eyes. She shifts Nadia to her hip and extends her arm while saying,  

"Carla, I'm so so sorry. I'm so sorry."  

Carla has buried her head in Laura's shoulder and was now letting out small hiccups of weeping.  

Carla felt like in this moment she was perfectly understood and perfectly expressed. What a relief to tell someone who knew. Who knew that it was terrifying. Who knew you've already counted all the ways you'll miss your mom. Who knew your anxiety over grieving too soon because you don't know a lot yet. Who knew it was confusing to still be happy sometimes. Who knew that when you told people you were almost emotionless while other times you wept. 

Books I've Read This Year

One of my 2019 goals is to read 50 books. I did that quite easily last year--I think I read, like, 80. But probably most of those were audiobooks, and another part of my goal for this year is to read more books in print instead of audiobook form. I love audiobooks, but I find that I tend to rush through them, listening to them in every spare moment, and at the end feel like I thoroughly enjoyed the book but didn't absorb much of it and couldn't really come up with anything new to say about it if pressed. I feel this 50 book goal (most of them in print) will provide me with a healthy challenge, especially considering that I'll have a baby to care for.

Another of my goals for this year is to teach myself some marketable skills that I think will help me get a job I (might) want. Some of these skills include things like: content marketing, blogging, InDesign, SEO, technical writing, etc.--skills that most job postings that show up when I search "writer" or "editor" require, but which I feel I have not learned. Today I began an online video course on the exciting topic of blogging! Therefore, I would like to use this blog post as a place to bring together my two New Years' resolutions by 1) practicing blogging, and 2) writing a review of the 2 books I've read so far this year.

(In a more general sense, I would also just like to be better at writing book reviews, since it seems like this is also a skill required of people who want to be writers and good literary citizens, so we can say I'm practicing 3 of my goals right now! I would love your feedback on how good you think my actual reviews are.)

(And I've already broken one of the rules of blogging by writing a very lengthy preamble to the actual content of my post. I suppose this is inevitable because the venue I've chosen to write this post is perhaps at odds with my goal of practicing blogging, since you, as a friend who knows me and is obligated to read my words, are quite different from a general internet meanderer who will want me to deliver engaging content that tempts them to continue reading. Or are you???)

Without further ado, my books:

Gone Girl
In a revolt against my nature (or my conditioning), I've made a conscious effort recently to seek out and read more "plot-heavy" books. There is a certain distrust in the literary world to stories that rely too heavily on plot. There seems to be a dichotomy that assumes a book that serves its plot cannot serve its characters; because tidy plots are rarely found in real life, a plot-reliant book cannot be a good reflection of reality. Nevertheless, I feel that in my own quest to write a novel, I need to have a good feel for plot, because the fact is that this is what the majority of people read for. I need all the help I can get making my current project into a series of events linked by cause and effect (i.e., plot). I have this idea that I'll write a novel with a super-tight plot, and then as I revise I can go through and muddy it up a little to make it more literary. LOL.

Anyway, Gone Girl, as a bestselling crime-thriller, certainly falls into that category of books defined by their plots. Reading it, I find that I somehow distrust its quality because of this even as I thoroughly enjoyed and tore through it. The question I now have to ask myself in order to determine whether this book was "good" is this: Do the characters remain with me even after the book has ended, or do they feel like slaves to a plot that, once I've reached the end, leaves me with little to think about?

I feel that Gone Girl, for the most part, passes this test. There are a few aspects of the story that feel a little too tidily calculated to make the ending "sting," but for the most part, I felt as interested in the people telling this story as I did in the story itself. This is a book that's very propelled by voice; it's perspective switches between the two main characters, a married couple named Nick and Amy Dunne. For the first 1/3 of the book (approximately), we find out almost immediately that Amy has disappeared and Nick falls under suspicion for her murder. The perspectives alternate between Nick narrating the events of the investigation and Amy's diary entries in the years leading up to her disappearance (which certainly do give reason for Nick to be suspected). While I have an inherent distrust of books that incorporate perspective shifts like this--there's something about it that feels inorganic and contrived to me--I admit it worked masterfully here. As Nick comes to look more and more guilty, there's a part of me as a reader that feels like "But I've spent so much time listening to him talk--surely he would have told me if he'd killed his wife?" This is utilized to great effect.

There are some major twists in the plot that surprise and push you through the book, but the challenge for the writer is that up until we reach the twists this is in many ways--speaking strictly of its plot--a very straightforward murder mystery story. How to ensure that we continue? It is the voice and perspectives of the characters that pull us through and make the reading experience a delightful one.

There is much more to say on this book's representation of "women," though I can't do that without spoiling it.

Have you read this book/watched the movie? I watched the movie last weekend, which I found astoundingly similar to the book, especially given that I couldn't guess how they would depict the alternating perspectives on screen. I was interested to learn that the author, Gillian Flynn, also wrote the screenplay for the movie. I would recommend both.

How Jesus Became God
My choice of this book was motivated by the fact that I've recently realized for someone who has spent my entire life as a Christian, I really don't know much about Christianity--particularly its first 1000 years. The thesis of this book by scholar Bart Ehrman is that Jesus during his lifetime was an apocalyptic preacher who believed in the impending end of the world and never claimed to be the Savior or the Son of God--these were perspectives that evolved after his death and sort of wormed their way into the Bible's narratives of his life. A lot of the evidence is very compelling, though some is difficult for me to understand, even though this book is written in a really accessible way even for laypersons like myself.

This is a book that would have frightened me to read a few years ago, for fear that it would convince me of something I didn't want to be convinced of. The one thing I found kind of annoying about this book is that Ehrman seems to anticipate an audience who doesn't want to be convinced of his arguments and in fact is hostile toward them. Because I am now in a less scared space, I found some of his defensiveness to be excessive--I wanted to say You're the scholar here--I trust you, okay! He actually does this less when presenting specific arguments and evidences than when trying to explain the nature of historical scholarship itself. There are just a few too many times when he seems too keen to explain things like, "I'm not saying here that Jesus definitely wasn't resurrected, or that he couldn't have been resurrected, or that I don't believe he was resurrected--only that we cannot know, as historians, from reading the surviving historical sources, whether he really was resurrected or not." I feel that I fully understand that principle, and I imagine most of his readers will too. Maybe I'm just imagining that most readers are like me--if they don't want to agree, they're going to be reluctant to read the book in the first place.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the book for me was the portion where Ehrman talks about debates that raged within Christianity about the nature of Christ himself (and everything else) in the two or three centuries immediately following his death. The things that the majority of the Christian world now believes were decided simply by which sects won out in these debates.

Now I feel reasonably well-acquainted with the questions that inspired more recent religious thinkers to break off and establish their own faiths (Martin Luther, Joseph Smith). But reading about these very early debates caused me to realize that there are some answers established so early in Christian history that neither Luther nor Joseph nor I have never even had occasion to think about them. Ehrman summarizes some of these early debates this way:

"Some Christians maintained that there was only one God. Others argued that there were two Gods--that the God of the Old Testament was not the same as the God of Jesus. Yet others argued that there were twelve gods, or thirty-six gods, or even 365 gods. . . . Was the Hebrew Bible--the Jewish scriptures--part of the revelation of the true God? or was it simply a sacred book of the Jews, of no relevance for Christians? Or even more extreme, was it authored by a lower, malevolent deity? . . . What about the world we live in? Was it the creation of the one true God? Or was it the inferior creation of the God of the Jews (who was not the God of the Christians)? Or was it a cosmic disaster and inherently evil?" (p. 286-87)

Reading through this section caused me to realize that there are some theological/existential questions that my religious upbringing and culture have taught me to ask (or have encouraged me not to ask, but by that very misdirection have inadvertently motivated me to ask). And then there are some that I have literally never ever wondered about. The Nicene Creed, as much flack as it may get among Mormons, actually played a big role in teaching me what is worth pondering and what isn't. I have literally never wondered whether the Old Testament was written by a malevolent deity. There are plenty things I've believed and do believe are true, but not by explicitly thinking through and dismissing every other possibility. Some other people hundreds of years ago that I've come to think were misguided apostates actually did a lot of that thinking for me. Their conclusions not only established what was true and what was false, but also what was even worth asking. Which feels kind of weird to realize.

And that's what I've read this year! I guess that's what happens when you're sitting around just waiting to go into labor.

What are your New Years' resolutions? Do you believe in them? What have you read lately? (This is my call to action, which I've just learned blog posts should always end with.)

The meaning of life response

First of all, I am so so sorry this took me so long to get back to you. I have been thinking about your post for weeks now, gathering thoughts and musings, but I have just not written them down yet. First the stories.

The Pew

I think this story creates an interesting feeling of discomfort. There are a lot of things in the Church that are divisive, like women and the Priesthood and gay marriage. This story is about a more nuanced tension that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable but you can't really say why. The story is an interesting exploration into the many ways people feel about authority. The typical phrases like, "It's the Lord's work" and the deference of Helen's husband to the stake president's authority ring a bit hollow in this story, as they often do in real life. The destruction of the tabernacle is not a tragedy, disaster, or heresy, but the community certainly does not have their "hearts knit as one" about the whole situation. It's a subtle feeling to pick up on and you captured it well. 

My church building was torn down and we were very sad. I think this story resonates with a lot of people who saw their unique, historic chapels replaced with cookie cutter types. 

Berkeley's church building is in the registry of historic places or something like that. I love that building, but I have mixed feelings about how much other people love it because I think it is symbolic of how the Berkeley ward is DIFFERENT. Like somehow the Gospel is more true, more accepting in Berkeley and we have a special, historic building to show it. It's proof that the Berkeley ward refuses to be homogenized in waves of Church orders from on high. 

I like the character of Inez. It was really powerful to learn Helen is Inez's emergency contact. It's unusually for neighbors to have a bond like that. It adds to the small-town feel of the story. I would have liked to know more about Inez. Why is she alone? What has she done with her life? I was wondering if Inez influenced Helen in more ways than just spurring her to head the "Save the Tabernacle" committee. 

Songs to Sing

When I was reading this my first thought was what a terrible person Clinton was to steal a car with a baby in it. Almost immediately my next thought was what kind of terrible person leaves their baby in the car? And just like Clint, I was passing judgment on the parent and not feeling guilty about Clint stealing the car. And at the end of the story, I'm mad at Clint for driving like a crazy maniac with the baby in the car, but I'm still more mad at the parent who left the baby in the car. 

Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about Clint at the end of this story. If I had just heard the story about someone stealing a car with a baby in it, I would think, "That person should be locked up. They are crazy." But I feel bad for Clint. He's not a bad person or a crazy person, he was driven to a moment of insanity like all of us. He just happened to have a perfect combination of circumstances (needing money, being angry at his father, being driven crazy by this mother, being shown how to steal a car) that culminated in him stealing a car. 

This American Life episode about Chick-fil-a openings. Have you heard it?

Blog post discussion

I'm really glad you wrote about this. I have wanted to bring it up when we Skyped, but as you said, it always feels so awkward. Why?? I don't know, but it is. I think we are better at writing some stuff to each other than talking about it. I guess talking about the Church makes me feel kinda vulnerable and I know I'm not quick on my feet when I talk, so writing gives me more comfort that things are going to come out sounding the way I want them to sound. 

Your sentence "But basically, I've come to a place where I feel like I can't possibly know if it is true. I hope it is, and I want it to be true (most of it)" didn't surprise/jolt me as it would have, say at BYU. For a few years now whenever I hear the phrase "one true Church" or "fulness of the Gospel restored" it grates against me a little bit. This is totally cliche thinking, but I think "What about village tribes in Africa?" (disclaimer, I have a completely stereotypical view of `villages in Africa.' I actually have no idea what they are really like, which kinda proves the next point I'm going to make) How can this possibly be the one true Church for them? This church is completely different then their culture/traditions. Why is this Church more right? It just seems more .... white. Haha, I just came up with that phrase. Not that the Church is completely white, it just rhymed nicely. Anyways, now my mode of thinking is more like the apostle Paul's, Actually, I just tried to find a direct scripture, but I couldn't, so who knows. Maybe I have just constructed my own sense of thinking and given it scripture cred which I cannot currently verify right now. Anyways, my Dad once told me that the apostle Paul taught that we should be flexible in most things, but keep some moorings, which are stated in Phillipians 4:8 "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Not sure where my Dad picked up on the being flexible part. I think it had to do with the fact that Paul was a missionary and preached to lots of different people of many cultures. But I guess this has become my mantra. I believe God exists, I believe the Gospel teaches us principles that make us truly happy. Some other things I'm not so sure about. And those principles I hold fast and true can be universally adopted (I think!). The Church as an institution, not so much. It's a different place than where you are at, but I think we have similar strains of thought. 

On the topic of children. Yes, this is terrifying!!! Daniel and I discuss it all the time. How do you convey nuance without just throwing up your hands in the air and saying "Do whatever you want!" For example, Daniel and I were listening to the radio today on the way to his grandparents house (which in some households is already a no-no on a Sunday). A pop song came on that was basically about sex, like most pop songs these day (ugh. Kids these days, listening to such trash. Hehe, Do I sound like an old person?). Daniel and I were discussing about how we weren't too troubled/offended by the lyrics, but when we thought of our future child listening to this song, we thought, "No, we don't really want our kid to feel ambivalent about this song. We want our kid to NOT want to listen to this song." But we don't want our kid to be a total prude, offended about everything, and afraid of the wicked big world. So how do we balance that line? Daniel and I aren't going to be the type that impose really strict rules, such as only EFY music at home or whatever. But how do you teach your kids to avoid pop music if you don't have ridiculous rules like that? This is the toughest mental exercise I have done in a long while. Also, things like swearing. I don't swear, but it does not phase me at all now (except in song lyrics, which I still find really offensive most of the time because it's usually pretty degrading to women. But not in everyday conversation). I don't want my kids to shun people who swear and immediately think of them as sinners because then they would have no friends if we didn't live in Utah and that is also a kinda rude thing to do. But I don't want my kids to swear. Hmmm... Tricky tricky. 

On the topic of death. I haven't pondered death too deeply. My uncle just died and saying that he is now with his brothers and father in heaven is as natural to me as saying tomorrow is President's Day. Maybe I will be more unsure of the concept of eternal life when I am faced with the end of my life? Not sure. I love hearing your thoughts, I just don't have too much to contribute in this area. 

I like your last idea about the Church not being perfect because it can't be perfect given the setup we have here on this earth. I know you said it doesn't help much, but I think it does. I think it's important to have convictions, which we can develop through religion and worship, but I think it's dangerous to have too many convictions because then we become antagonizing. And I think viewing the Church through the perspective you stated helps us find the balance. And in a way I feel like this idea of striking a balance can be more uniting for a people than absolute agreement about everything. Because that is basically impossible. If as a people we agree that God and Jesus are important and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves and as a people we concede that we are in different places regarding other aspects of the church, then I think we are hearts are more "knit as one" because we are trying to understand each other rather than trying to conform each other. This is all very abstract. The only concrete example akin to this that I have experienced is my friendship with Sarah, which is a kinda dumb example because we are both Mormon so how different can we be? Anyways, continuing with this example. Sarah and I don't think the same things are fun. We don't prioritize the same things, but we understand that we are different and we accept that. And since that is out of the way, we can spend our time actually caring for each other. I know to ask her sisters what to buy her for Christmas because I will always guess wrong. She knows that I really don't like to go shopping with her. 

(Sorry, the next topic was going to be a new blog post, but then I just kept writing, so now it's on the same blog post)

One thing that I think relates to this idea of a good thing turning into a bad thing if you go too overboard is the topic of motherhood. I think about this alot because I'm pregnant, I know a lot of people who are pregnant, and I know people who are struggling to get pregnant. Mostly on my mind is the topic of infertility. I swear that the people who want to be mothers the most struggle the hardest to get pregnant. This could be causal, the longer you try, the more you want it, but the infertile people I know have wanted to be mothers as long as they can remember. I think one thing that can be damaging to Mormon women is how much emphasis the Church puts on being a mother. And when you are infertile, the floor can fall out beneath you because you feel like you've done something wrong which keeps the blessings from you. This view drives me BATTY. Why would you feel GUILTY if you can't get pregnant? Thankfully I have not had to deal with this experience first hand, so everything I say here will be extremely insensitive. And if you deal with infertility down the road know that I will want to hear ALL your feelings because you are my bestie. I think all women who deal with infertility struggle emotionally, but I think the guilt might be more common to Mormon women. Because Mormons are taught that families are blessings from God. And when do we not receive blessings? When we aren't following the commandments. I've never felt this way, I certainly don't think the Church teaches this perspective, but I think the culture leaves women susceptible to this type of guilty feeling. My sister-in-law who is currently undergoing IVF wrote a blog post about being an infertile Mormon women here: https://hopebeyondhope.net/lds-and-infertile-an-introduction/ which is what got me thinking about all of this. 

Sorry this post was so overdue. And it is very long. But I do love writing to you. 

Also, here is a plug for the History Chicks podcast! I just love it so much. It's okay if you don't, but I'm doing my duty as an avid listener by spreading the word. 

the meaning of life???

I realized today I have come to a point in my life where I take all of my notes in the same notebook. Spiritual thoughts, class notes, story ideas, personal musings--they all go in the same notebook, because I see them as being all part of the same thing. I see this as a sign that my life is approaching what I want it to be. I see it as a sign that I am becoming a person of greater integrity, wholeness. But who knows?

A couple of weeks ago I started bringing this notebook to church, which I realize is a popular thing to do but I haven't actually done it much. But in my notebook, unfortunately, I am not waiting to record inspiring quotes I hear at church. My plan was to draw a chart of three columns: in one I listed things I liked, in one I listed things I disliked, and in one I listed things I am just wondering about.

I felt the need to do this because I feel that attending church has become an increasingly stressful experience for me. In order to fully address this, I guess I need to backtrack a little bit. Part of the reason I am writing this post is to update you on the Church problem that I brought up many months ago. It's something I've wanted to bring up with you when we chat, but it's always the most awkward thing to address for some reason, and on top of that my thoughts on the subject are always so jumbled that I feel like I would either talk for five hours about it or I wouldn't be able to come up with anything to say at all. So this post is my attempt to update you on where I'm at, I suppose.

So, since this began with Derek, I'll start with him. He has developed something of an obsession with post-Mormon (that's the best word I can use to categorize all of these) podcasts, blogs, etc. And that used to bother me. But I'm becoming okay with it. (But even that kind of worries me? Ha ha). We still go to church every week, we still say our prayers together every night, nothing really externally has changed at all. I don't think he plans to leave the Church, but who really knows what will happen. I have no intention of leaving the Church either! But basically, I've come to a place where I feel like I can't possibly know if it is true. I hope it is, and I want it to be true (most of it). I honestly feel like I have had spiritual experiences that confirm this stuff to me, but on the other hand I realize that many people in many traditions have had similar confirming experiences and that my upbringing has been such that I'm primed to interpret my feelings as spiritual experiences. Nevertheless, I feel like if God is real, and He is going to talk to me, it's probably going to be through spiritual experiences, so it's not very fair of me to discount the ones I've already had. Basically, I'm okay with the idea that this Church stuff might mostly be made up--that alone would not be reason for me to leave it behind. I feel like it's given me enough good in my life that it definitely isn't worth it to leave it behind. Also, I figure that even if all religions are equally true/false, this is the one that's "mine" and it would be good for me to "bloom where I am planted" and try to give to/get from this tradition as much good as I can, and I can feel fine with that.

But there are scary things that come with this. Mainly, children. I would be okay with raising my children in exactly the way that I was raised and then letting them come to the point in their adulthood that I have come to now. What I am afraid of doing is raising them in this relativistic wishy-washy way that teaches them it doesn't really matter whether you believe in God and what you choose because it's allllll good. Because more than anything, I just want them to know that it does MATTER a LOT. And they can choose their own path or whatever as long as they've put a ton of thought and effort into it. But how are you supposed to do that??

Also, death. In the past, I have pondered for a brief instant the concept of eternity and then backed off, as if I were coming around the edge of a doorway and, seeing that that doorway leads to another doorway which leads to another and another and an infinite sequence of doorways, get frightened and recede back past the edge of the first doorway (does that make sense?), because it's frightening. Because to think about a life without an ending is mind-boggling. Now, the opposite is a very real possibility for me: what if this really is ALL there is? What if when I die I really just don't exist anymore? And I'll never see anyone I knew ever again and I'll never even think about them because I just won't BE? This is, like, the most cliche existential worry. And yet I have honestly never considered it until now. Also, it is crazy to think that so many people just expect this. Why do they even attempt anything in their lives? What is the point? (How can I express this without cliches???)


Anyway... back to the notebook. My very first Sunday with the notebook, I came to a conclusion of sorts that isn't actually helpful at all. But it makes these two things fit together for me: 1) God is real and wants us to learn from our life experiences, and 2) the Church is wrong in many regards, or at least unhelpful, and other churches could be just as true. I mentioned earlier that church has become a stressful experience for me recently; I expected therefore that my "dislike" column would get fuller than my "like" column. Nevertheless, I found myself putting things in my "like" column that I wouldn't have expected--things besides the obvious "service" or something. I wrote down things like "repentance/continual improvement" and "the idea of trusting in something (God) outside of yourself." And yet at the same time I realized that these very things could be negatives--for example, a focus on repentance could quickly lead to overwhelming guilt or feelings of inadequacy. And it connected with an epiphany of sorts I'd had months ago, the last time I went to the temple. Okay, first, who knows if Adam and Eve were real. Who cares. It's a great story. And if it's real and/or the story was inspired by God, how interesting that the lesson of the very first story in Judeo-Christian scripture is "Sometimes you have to break a commandment." So here's what I was thinking. If the purpose of life was to learn to do what's right and not to do what's wrong, God could have presented us all with a two-column chart, with one column labeled "Right" and one column labeled "Wrong," and all the actions would be in one of the columns, and then we would know. But instead, we have to live life, right? And in the process, we learn that things that are sometimes right are at other times wrong, and things that are sometimes right are at other times wrong, and the only way to learn this is by experience, and maybe actually you'll never learn which is which but at least you'll learn that it's hard to tell which is which. And therefore, maybe the Church not only isn't perfect but it CAN'T be perfect and never will be, and sometimes it's not even good, because its purpose is just to provide us with a lot of dilemmas where we have to choose between "principles" and people and how to strike a balance between everything, and that's also the purpose of every church and every other organization and every thing in the world.

Anyway, I like this idea, even though, like I said, it really doesn't help anything.

Thanks for reading; you're the best.

Thoughts on your stories

I would just leave comments in the Word document and then send that back to you, but we are cheap and don't have Microsoft Word on our computer. So I will leave my comments here.


Party Planning

Should I know what a Moynihan is? I'll wait and see. :)

Oh, I see now. It's important to know she is a Moynihan because her brothers have disappeared.

Yesss. Enter Ringo Starr.

"He has seen that I don’t want to talk about it anymore. But as I lie there in the dark my mind is laboring hard to churn out the final word. I can feel the time passing, the moment slipping away, after which it will be too unnaturally late to say anything else on the subject." I do this with Daniel all the time. It's amazing how you are able to capture the intensity of that tiny moment in time. especially in the dynamics of a couple relationship. 

I'm at the end now. Woah! Riveting. I'm still trying to figure out what it is about. Her relationship with her parents? Her relationship with her husband to be? Class differences? Her parent's relationship with each other? The fact that she and her mother have moved on and her dad hasn't? The moral wrestling Harrison subjects her too when he questions her moving on? The many things in life that don't resolve but we each deal with in a different way? For example, her brothers' disappearance is not resolved and each family member deals with that in a different way. She and her mother move on, her dad continues obsessively looking for them. Her parents have an unresolved disagreement about how to deal with the disappearance but both seem to exist in each others' presence well enough. How do humans do that? Her mom drives him to dialysis. Her dad seems to accept that his wife has given up. These are both pretty big sacrifices to make for one another, and they are able to do both of them despite their fundamental disagreement on the purpose of the rest of their lives.

It is interesting that this story is centered around a party celebrating another year of life for her father? To me this provides a stark contrast to the ghost status of her brothers. Also, her father is on dialysis. He soon will fade away. Death for her parents seems very distinct especially because her father appears to be terminally ill. Her mother states at one point, "Someday we are going to be dead, and you're going to have to sell this house...." The author confirms "few things she could say would have been truer." But it is so uncertain whether her brothers are dead or not, that this statement seems ironic when you go back and read it. And with the death of her dad dies the search for her brothers.

Also, how did you know my grandpa and his brother were named Peter and Ollie? Did you scour the Johnston history books for those names?

For having such a highly unusual event occur in this story, you introduce it very convincingly. I feel like this type of gut-wrenching event could happen to everyone. By the time the fire rolls around I don't bat an eye. Yes, naturally, the house was consumed by a fire and they never found remains. Factually it makes it even more unlikely that her brothers were kidnapped, because the whole kidnapping plot seems elaborate at this point. Why light a house on fire to kidnap two boys? But as a reader you don't think that, you just take this as another element to the story which as already unfolded before you. I think the flash back structure of this story helps with that. Maybe I'm just super creepy, but I was on a kidnapping Wikipedia kick the other month and I happened upon this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance. Did this inspire your story? The reason for my kick was because I watched the movie Room. Have you seen it? Really good, depressing, and hopeful all at once.

After writing this commentary, it seems strange to me that Harrison is so classy and a concert violinist. This story has so much going on that the class distinction between her and Harrison seems more of a distraction than an addition to this story. I know Harrison has to do something for a living, but I honestly thought he was an athlete or management consultant of some sort because of the allusion to traveling all the time. The leap to violinist seems too far.

House Shopping
 "Levi suggested they come back home, where they could be lost again in middle America just like they had been at the start of it all, and Levi’s parents could watch the children days." Do you  mean to say watch the children during the day? 

When I sat down to write my thoughts on this story I was feeling a little dissatisfied. I had the feeling you have when you might have said something mean to someone and you are waiting to see how they took it. You are uncertain of their feelings and how your next interaction with them will turn out. That's how I feel about this story. I feel like I don't really know how the marriage between Levi and Celia is and I don't know how they are both dealing with the blowout of his plagiarism. Do they still like each other or have they just settled into a rhythm of married life? It appears that before the plagiarism was exposed they both just orbited in their own worlds. Levi knew nothing of Celia's yoga and she knew nothing about his struggles with writing. Now I wonder if their worlds are overlapping a bit more because they have to push and pull for one another in their current situation or if the utter but brief penance of Levi was not enough to bring them permanently closer. And why is Celia not worried about Levi having an affair still? I left this story with lots of questions. Gossipy questions, haha. 

One thing that really struck me about this story is how much Celia's voice is coming through. I can really envision Celia. I can guess how she would react in certain situations and I am looking at the world through her eyes. Then I realized the reason I am probably confused about Levi and Celia's relationship is probably because Celia is confused about it as well. She doesn't know exactly where they stand, or where they are going. She seems to have lost her ability to meaningfully communicate with Levi, as evidenced by her explanation of yoga and why she likes it. I see the situation through her hazy lens and that is probably why the relationship dynamic seems confused. You've really stayed true to the narrator's point of view. But I think if Celia were a rational person she should still be concerned about Levi having affairs. Obviously it was on her mind a lot in the past since her first gut reaction when she sees her husband and the realtor is "Oh no! He seduced her," but then the doubt of Levi's fidelity completely vanishes when his plagiarism is revealed. If I were Celia I would still be obsessing about my husband's possible philandering behavior. Maybe she is not worried about it anymore because she knows he feels really sorry about his plagiarism and would never have an affair after the news broke because he already has hurt her enough. 

Things we would do if you came to visit

I've kept a running list in my head of things we would go do/see in Berkeley if you were here and now I'm going to write them down for the next time you are here.

Day 1:
1. Go to this place: https://universitypressbooks.com/ It's a bookstore called Ten Thousand Minds on Fire. Apparently it is one of the few academic bookstores left in the whole country. They do awesome stuff like read essays of Montaigne around a dinner table on Saturday nights, while eating and drinking. It appears to be the nerdiest of nerd bookstores. I couldn't hold my own there, but with you by my side we would be alll right.

Our minds would be alight with new ideas after we visit this bookstore!

2. Then when we would feel like we need a spot of tea, we would pop into The Musical Offering next door. This place is a cafe-bistro that always has "early music" playing. I think that is a fancy way to say classical music. They are also a CD and records stop, so we could peruse their music collection once we've had our lovely hot drink.

3. The in the evening we would put on our best frocks and have a night at the theater! There are several old, historic theaters to choose from in Oakland. One of them is the Paramount Movie Theater which shows movie classics for $6, Wurtlizer organ included! Other fancy theaters include The Grand Lake Theater and the Alameda Theater. Grand Lake Theater has $5 movies on a Tuesday night and the Alameda Theater also has a movie classics series.

 Alameda Theater. This theater is from the Art Deco period.

Classic Movies shown at Alameda Theater.

 Grand Lake Theater. It's 90 years old.

 Paramount Theater.


3. Depending on how late our movie got out, we would take a stroll around Lake Merritt in Oakland, which is nearby the Grand Lake and Paramount Theaters. Aah. Isn't it heavenly?

Day 2: Beach!
1.So far my favorite beach has been Ano Nuevo state park. It's rather isolated and not that far from Santa Cruz. Also Ano Nuevo State park has elephant seals, and during the mating season apparently things get pretty crazy. Bull fights, pups being born, mating. Tour guides take you to various vantage points of the beaches and you get to see the circle of life before your very eyes. There is a beach free of elephant seals that seems fun to hang out on and have a picnic, and unlike Monterey or Santa Cruz, it is not overrun with human tourists.

Tourists getting some sun.

2. If we wanted to grab some lunch, we could stop in Pescadero and get tacos at Mercado y Tacqueria De Amigos. This place is THE BOMB. It doubles as a Mexican mart and tacqueria, and believe me, only the most legit tacquerias are run out of mexi-marts. I know from experience. This is because in order to find the tacqueria you have to know that tacquerias sometimes exist in mexi-marts (or you Yelp it, like me, haha). This way the tacqueria weeds out all the hipsters who only go to places that are aesthetically pleasing and would never go to a convenience store for their one of a kind culinary experience. No my friend, in Mercado y Tacqueria De Amigos you will only find construction workers, old white people who popped in to buy a soda and then stayed for lunch once they realized "Why, yes. I think a taco sounds good right now," and us. Do not be fooled by the unassuming store front! So many people pass Mercado up for the Pinterest-inspired "country market store" down the street that has artistic chalkboard menus and sells $12 kale sandwiches or whatever trendy people are eating these days.

 Say what, there is a tacqueria in here?

Oh yeah there is! And they have the best tacos ever!

Avoid avoid avoid! Don't be fooled by it's cuteness. Pescadero Country Store will charge you out the nose.


Day 3 (Pretending we have infinite days together, let's keep this vacation going).
1. We would take a secret stair walk detailed in this wonderful book:

We would walk up stair cases that look like this (this is literally 1/2 mile from my apartment!)

And see views like this once we get to the top of the staircases

So fun!
2. Then we would take our ease and go to Bette's for a late brunch:

or if we were feeling in the pie and pastry mood, swing over to Fat Apples, a bakery that sells apple pies that look like this.

3. In the evening we would revel in civic engagement and attend one of Albany's free "Music in the Park" nights. Sadly, they don't have bagpipes, but they do have this really cool band playing on Sept 21 (so if you could make it by then, that would be great). https://www.reverbnation.com/kickinthemule
From the program:
Kickin the Mule is "Old school New Orleans R&B witha  twist of blues and '50s rock 'n roll."

Aa! So much more to do, so little time. But for now dear friend, here is an idyllic three day itinerary of all the little nooks and crannies I've been wanting you to see. Come visit soon!

Music

There is this guy in my ward named David Bradford who loves music. He writes a music review every couple of months on his website and it reminds me of that Jazz class you took in college and how wonderful you were at writing music reviews. So here is his April's music review. I was so pleased at how it held my interest. https://dbradmusic.com/2016/05/02/five-quality-tracks-april-2016/

This lady popped up on my Pandora the other day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Kent
She also seems pretty cool.

In other news, I decided I'm going to write on this blog more often because I like talking to you. But not just talking to you, writing to you.

My mom is in Cuba right now. She decided she wanted to go, so she found a tour group to go with and left my dad and brother at home. Hahaha. Whoa Nelly.

Daniel and I watched Going Clear this weekend. It's a documentary about Scientology. I had mixed feelings going in. The way other people view the LDS church (I use the LDS acronym because later I talk about the Church of Scientology, so things can be confusing) has been on my mind almost obsessively because of my cousins leaving the Church, so I wasn't too eager to watch a documentary that lampoons a church and casts it in a bad light, even if it wasn't a documentary about the LDS church. But I have come to the conclusions that Scientology is actually pretty bad and also profiting unfairly off of people. But I did ask myself some questions: 1. Am I purposefully ignoring unpleasant aspects about the LDS church that are harming people currently? 2. Is my membership in the LDS church harming people? They are kinda the same question. I know the LDS church does not have a spotless history, but I believe it's progressing towards good. I don't think the LDS church is on a power trip or harming others through its practices or doctrines. So I feel like the answers to those questions are no.

I really like what you had to say about agency the other night when I was in Provo. Even leaders of the LDS church have agency and sometimes they use it to make poor decisions on the church's behalf. One reason the church isn't perfect is because God gives us humans the ability to choose. I feel people often demand a perfect institution and also members who have complete freedom to choose anything. I think those two requests are a paradox. If the institution was perfect, the members of the Church would have to be controlled. But people should not be controlled, so the Church is imperfect. Some people are displeased with this conclusion, so they abandon religion all together, which is what I feel was my cousin's thought process.

On a different note, have you listened to Hamilton? I know I'm a few months behind the Hamilton boat, but I am BLOWN AWAY. Daniel and I listened to it while we were driving to and from various places at my family reunion in Seattle. By the end I had a few tears rolling down my face and I was trying really hard not to let anyone know I was crying because we were in the car with my cousins who were not aware the most amazing piece of work had just ended. I looked over to Daniel and he was crying too. Hahahaha. Oh my gosh, but it's so good. Daniel says he feels like it's like the Book of Mormom when you are on a mission. You try and tell people you have just found the BEST THING EVER and you want them to experience it themselves. And the people you are telling this to don't understand you until they actually read the book. And then they are converted. You cannot comprehend how wonderful Hamilton is until you have listened to it yourself. Now I understand missionary work better. The musical moves me on several levels. It really evokes strong emotions of patriotism and rekindles belief in the American dream: "How does an orphan, bastard, son of a whore... become one of the most successful people in American history?" ( I couldn't remember the whole line, so I just ad libbed.) And when you think about the Revolution and the odds they were up against your heart starts to beat a little louder. And you realize that the Founding Fathers did not all get along, but they all had a dream of the United States, so they worked through their differences and accomplished something amazing. And when you think of politics today, some tears escape your eyes and you wonder how it's been reduced to bickering parties with no common goals (and Donald Trump!). And the story is so moving on a personal level. Eliza and Alexander! Phillip! Oh, it's so good.

Last thing. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Have you read it? I read it for Berkeley book club and I really liked it.