This week we are in the Czeck Republic for a speech to some terrific parents along with their adorable children, all of whom spoke at least three languages fluently!
We spent the past two days at a mountain retreat about two hours away from Prague. These parents were eager to learn and very smart, but the stories they told us about their memories of living under communism blew me away! How things have changed since The Velvet Revolution in 1989 when Baclav Havel stood in the square along with 200,000 Czechs and declared independence from the iron rule of the Communists who took over Czechoslovakia after World War II. Talking with these parents who were teenagers or young adults at the time of revolution was enlightening an inspiring!
Last night we had a remarkable dinner prepared by a chef that has received a Michelin Star for excellence, which apparently is a BIG deal in Europe. Front page news in Prague! We had a five course meal to die for! How in the world the chef and his team served 85 people without the equipment he usually has and in a kitchen he isn’t familiar with was truly remarkable. It was a meal to remember! Talk about a different world than when people were literally starving under the communist rule!
We went back to the beautiful Radisson Hotel owned by one of our hosts and had a few minutes to discover the famous Wenceslaus Square which was a block from where we were staying.
It was fun to see the crowds and hear the chanting of hundreds of young people who were marching up the street and celebrating the bronze medal win in the World Cup Ice Hockey by the Czech Republic. They were so excited! Their “brother” Slovakia beat them in the semi-final but they seemed to be okay with that and are cheering them on, hoping for the gold!
Delighted to be invited, we were asked by one of the couples at the retreat, along with their twin teenagers (almost 17) to drop by their home for a quick visit within a coule of hours after we arrived back in Prague. They seemed like a stellar family but we learned just how stellar when we arrived at their home, which just happened to formerly belong to a leader of the Communist Party when the Russians moved in after the war in 1945 and took over Czechoslovakia! The house had originally been owned before the war by a wealthy Jewish family who managed to escape Hitler’s horrors by fleeing to England and then on to Brazil.
The completely restored and refurbished home was stunning and in a beautiful neighborhood filled with embassies and stars. Angelina and Brad lived in the neighborhood when they were making a film in the Czech Republic.
Take a good look at this gorgeous family because these two teenagers (who are twins) are about the cutest kids you would ever want to meet! The mom was nice enough to offer us a lovely light Swedish dinner (the mom is Swedish) with fresh bread, smoked salmon, herring, fruit and an array of beautiful cheeses. How in the world she managed that after only being home from our weekend retreat together for an hour was beyond us but it was delicious and we were so grateful!
Those teenagers who both spoke several languages fluently and can understand another two sat with us for about an hour and amazed us with their knowledge of the world. Their daughter figured that she had visited about 50 countries and was leaving for a study abroad program next year in France. The son gave us a very mature look at what it was like to live and attend a private school in Prague. As we were leaving, I mentioned how lucky their parents were to have such good kids. He immediately responded that he and his sister were the ones who were lucky to have such amazing parents! What 17 year old would say that? It was really an inspiring evening with a beautiful family! We learned so much!
Truly an event to remember!
We are sometimes mystified by the power of the Internet. Sometimes it seems no one is out there and then suddenly we learn what it means when someone says, “it went viral”! As those of you who follow Deseret News Blogs know that our oldest daughter Saren and her dynamite mother friends power up the Motherhood Matters blog. This sprang out of an organization that can be found at powerofmoms.com. It is a web site for deliberate mothers! Saren and her co-founder April Perry have created this website that enriches, comforts and inspires moms to be better, do better and get over it when they don’t!
After Saren and April have worked tirelessly for about five years to make this website fly, suddenly one of April’s articles “went viral”. It apparently touched a nerve amongst mothers because it generated ONE MILLION HITS! If you want to take a look, click here. What a great gift to these amazing women for Mother’s Day!
As of last weekend, Saren and April have completed 17 weekend retreats which is job training for mothers all over the United States. Last month they did two retreats in Australia! Their readership covers the globe and they are thrilled to be part of this movement to train mothers not only for their hardest and best job, but also for their lifelong most-important career.
Last weekend Richard and I hosted a Power of Moms Mother’s Day Retreat at our home. I must say that the power of deliberate mothers was bursting at the seams of our home in Park City. On Friday we talked about specific ways moms can take care of themselves as well as some family systems that helps a home run more smoothly. On Saturday April gave instructions for keeping your mind (and stuff) organized with a system she has created called Mind Organization for Moms.
One of the best things about these retreats is being able to break up into small groups so that moms can help each other with specific problems and needs at home. Every mother brought her own gifts and powers. Comments, questions and suggestions from those present always makes us realize that they could do their own retreat….many of whom are! It was a gorgeous day so some of the groups were able to meet outside.
We were all moved by Macy Robison who is a extraordinary talent with a gorgeous voice and a special talent for touching and lifting up mother’s hearts. She has produced her own delightful CD called Children Will Listen which you can access here.
Snacks and a lovely lunch were served to keep our brain power at maximum power!
After a long and thought provoking day of mother training, about a dozen brilliant women who serve on the Power of Moms board stayed on and were able to put their heads together during an evening dinner/meeting where they brainstormed about how to help the website run better and reach more mothers.
Since there is basically no instruction manual for mothers to enable them to be the best they can be, The Power of Moms is looking to create something that will power up those who are working in the most important job in the world. They’d love have a million members! To be one of those excellent moms go to powerofmoms.com.
Three years ago our little two-year-old granddaughter Lucy (the youngest child in her family of five) was diagnosed with a rare syndrome. Last weekend our daughter Shawni (who is Lucy’s mother) and I traveled to London to attend the LMBBS Conference. The syndrome is named after the scientists who discovered it (Lawrence Moon and Bardet-Biedl) The name is usually shortened to BBS or the Bardet-Bield Syndrome. The conference is held once a year in Northampton about an hour north of London.
The President of the organization is Professor Phil Beales who accidently discovered the syndrome in a patient that no one knew how to help. He is a researcher extraordinaire and has since found an amazing group of parents who have been helping collect people from all over the British Isles with this rare syndrome. In 2010 he was the force behind opening clinics in four location in the UK where families effected with BBS.
Those who have BBS can go once a year to see physicians and researchers who know exactly what they can do to help. Since it is so rare it’s hard to find a regular doctor anywhere who knows anything about BBS so this is an enormous advantage for those who live in the British Isles.
Professor Beales has really dedicated his life to discovering what is needed to help people affected with BBS and other rare diseases and the genes that cause them. After many years, they found 10 BBS genes and within the last few years they have boosted that number to 17. Here he is with Shawni and his darling wife Helen. They have two girls 15 and 19 and live in Greenwich although he travels the world with his work.
He had treated almost everyone at the conference at some point in his career and those effected with BBS and their parents and families come from all over the British Isles to hear his updates and feel his concern for their issues. They all think of him as their second father or brother and the festive atmosphere with a hotel full of these people who meet once a year felt like a family reunion.
Here is the darling lady, who has a 30 year old son with BBS who organizes the event which included about 300 people this year (including social workers and scientists). He has found about 200 people who have been effected with BBS in Great Britain, although we’re sure that there are many undiagnosed cases waiting to be found. What a sweetheart she is!
Phil Beales and several other world-renowned specialists in BBS were there to speak to us, review new findings and give us the bad news along with the good. The first clue that children have the syndrome is usually extra fingers and toes. Lucy had an extra toe but doctors assured us that it was common and no problem to remove. Little did we know the signifigance of that toe. The most common effects of the syndrome is loss of vision at a wide variety of ages. The photoreceptors in the eye don’t receive enough of the crucial proteins it needs to survive so the light receptors begin to die. The bad news is that retinitis pigmentosa, which is the condition that many people have that causes similar blindness is not exactly the same as those with BBS. Even though they are doing a myriad of test groups on various methods to save vision, vision loss manifests itself a little differently in BBS kids so it requires a little different care to make it work. Figuring all that out is that is the rub!
It was hard to see so many very large people affected with BBS there of all ages walking around with white canes and guide dogs…..until you hear them speak. There was a man there with a guide dog and a master’s degree in music. He plays in a band nightly and says that he wouldn’t change his sight status for anything. He’s learned more from being blind that he ever could have with his sight.
The last speaker was a terrific young woman from Australia named Kathryn Murphy who has BBS, is a registered nurse and who lost 11 stones (over 150 pounds) through sheer will power the past couple of years. She still has her vision at 34 and that is GREAT news!
The other good news is that those with BBS can lose weigh with lots of knowledge of the way their own bodies work and a grundle of will power. The bad news is that the pituitary gland which controls appetite usually sends out a substance called leptin. Here’s the definition from Wikepeidia: Leptin(Greek λεπτός (leptos) meaning thin) is a 16 kDa protein hormone that plays a key role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure, including appetite and metabolism. It’s a hormone that BBS kids have but it’s so weak that it can’t tell the body that it’s full. Therefore, these kids think they are hungry, even when they really don’t need more food. They just mostly always feel hungry.Thus the weight gain.So unfair!
The good news is that they are working on a way to create a way to send stronger doses of leptin messages to the gland; but the bad news is that it will be a while before they expect they can figure that out!
We learned more than we can possibly put in one blog post and probably more that you want to know but here are a few pictures of the wonderful parents and kids who are dealing with this syndrome which manifests itself differently in every single case. Many have heart and kidney problems and other don’t. Some have learning difficulties but many have extraordinary gifts that others don’t have. They are finding that many BBS kids have remarkable memories. Some lose their vision early and others’ eyesight lasts into their 40’s.
Since our granddaughter Lucy is already showing signs of night-blindness at age 5, we are thinking this is going to be an issue with her. Weight is also a problem which she will have to fight all of her life. As the geneticists showed us the delicate balance of proteins and cilia which is still greatly unknown, we felt both encouraged at their discoveries but more and more anxious about what they can do with the results they find in order to make things better for families who deal with BBS.
The room at the Hilton Hotel in Northampton was filled with people who are trying to work out how to help their family and patients with BBS.
This dad below has three boys and then a darling little two year old daughter just diagnosed with BBS. He is from Austria but living in Zurich. He and his wife have been in touch through Shawni’s blog (71toes.blogspot.com). He was jet lagged along with us and just happened to sit right by us in the audience of 300 when he arrived. He had just returned from Dallas, TX the night before, flown home to Zurich and had gotten up on Saturday morning to fly to England to join us. What a great guy he was! One of the real perks of this “job” of keeping up with BBS is meeting other parents who have the same issues to deal with!
These parents have two BBS daughters with entirely different symptoms even though the same gene is affected. They are incredible people who kind of “run the show” at the conferences. They do everything from child care (many BBS children come and are taken care of by saintly care-givers to fun places while the parents learn about their syndrome) to being the treasurer of the organization!
There were so many families dealing with similar issues, only different! This cute boy is blind and has the cutest smile ever!
This young man has somehow managed his weight beautifully. We keep wondering what makes the difference in size. Body type, genetics, the amount of leptin that ‘s getting through and food portions are all factors. One cute mom from Ireland who has five children said she has, “one wee boy of eight with BBS and actually slender and a wee girl of six with BBS who is enormous.” (not her word) and that they eat exactly the same things. Such a mystery!
A dad with his 10 year old whom he obviously adores!
This little three year old has BBS. Her mother died 20 months ago of epilepsy (which she also deals with) and her dad is nowhere to be found. She is being lovingly cared for by a darling grandmother in a wheelchair and a caring uncle.
And here are a couple of teenagers who have been able to control their weight very well. Darling girls with their support team:
These wonderful people rely on each other for help and support!
So the good news is that we have so many new friends who are all dealing with similar issues although they have a wide degree of variation. The other great news is that we have people like Phil Beales and many doctors and researchers who are gathering information to help. The bad news is that research takes such long time to test before it can become a real help.
The best news of all is that we were told that possible solutions to the numberless problems that these BBS kids face are being worked on and possibilities are jumping in leaps and bounds!
After the meetings we spoke to Phil and Helen briefly about how excited we were about the conference and they actually offered us a ride home (to Saydi’s house). Even though I know it was a little out of their way, we jumped at the chance to spend a precious extra 90 minutes with them getting to know them better and asking a few unanswered questions from those swimming in our heads from the conference. Serendipity! Or maybe purely love from a kind Heavenly Father who knows we need help!
We are so grateful that our little Lucy is on the good end of the BBS spectrum! She is absolutely adorable with remarkable language skills and incredible art abilities.She reads a little book every night before bed and is so excited to go to a mainstream kindergarten next year. Her parents are doing a stellar job of keeping her weight under control although they are aware of every bite that goes into her mouth. She does hold things that she’s working on very close to her eyes and her glasses seem to help her see better. Although she doesn’t wear them much at home she always has them on at school.
Remarkable teachers (she’s been in pre-school for three years with help for her special needs) and care givers (the state has provided speech therapists and physical therapists as soon as she was diagnosed) have brought tears to our eyes as they have helped her to improve her skills tirelessly! We adore this little girl and are so grateful to all those who are helping her with special needs along the way!
Probably her biggest asset and the very best news of all for her is her amazing family! Supportive parents and siblings have given her a jumpstart on everything from her remarkable abilities to win the memory game to her mastery of language to jumping on the trampoline, swimming and dancing! Extended family are pouring out love as well. What a lucky little girl!
There is such a good spot in our hearts for lifelong friends! I (Linda) was born and raised on a little farm in Montpelier, Idaho. There were seven of us girls in our high school who loved being together on weekends. We mourned for those in our group who occasionally got dates because we girls would be having so much more fun. We called ourselves “The Gang”, a term our children giggled at once they were in high school. To be politically correct, they would much have preferred the use of the wildly popular acronym BFF (Best Friends Forever), but that would have been “Chinese” to us farm girls. Even though we mostly scattered after high school, went to different colleges, married people with widely different backgrounds and occupations and have different lifestyles, we have loved staying connected. On June 1 and 2nd we’re having a reunion and we are all atwitter about the prospect of being together again.
Another group of lifelong friends began with music in Boston. Four friends, with spouses sometimes cheering us on, got together occasionally to play string quartets while we all lived there. The first violinist, Jeff and cellist Tony, were doctors getting degrees at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and the violist, Kathy was a premier musician working in the Boston Area School system. Kathy got me my first job there, even though she didn’t know me from Adam before we arrived. She was already established in the music scene and I will be forever grateful for her recommendation and support. Richard and I had been recently married and he was attending the Harvard Business School. Kathy and I were helping to put our husbands through school. That next year, we got pregnant the same week and we often stopped by the roadside on our way to school so Kathy could throw up, a feat which I never quite accomplished even though I dearly wished I could! She gave birth to twins and I delivered our oldest child within three days of each other.
All of us moved hither and yon after graduation but as serendipity would have it, our quartet members have all landed back in Salt Lake for about the past ten years and have loved getting together to play, reminisce and talk about politics. Jeff is an internationally known heart specialist, Tony, a widely acclaimed urologist and Kathy is a fabulous music educator. Both Jeff and Kathy (husband and wife) play in The Orchestra at Temple Square. How lucky am I? Last week we played a couple of movements from the Beethoven Quartets for a class on Beethoven at the University of Utah. It required actual practice, which we relished and we had so much fun performing!
My book club also contains 13 best friends forever! The richness of their friendship has given my life depth and breadth. We’ve been through hard times, challenging assignments and joyous events, not to mention wonderful books together. Once we counted the number of children we had among us. With the average being about seven per mom, the number was astronomical. Last week we watched a short video of a picnic with the kids many years ago when everyone was just starting their families. What a delight it was to see all those babies and toddlers who have now grown up and have myriads of children of their own!
Best friends create such delicious memories! I happened on to a poem by the great Christian writer C.S. Lewis in a comment on our daughter Shawni’s blog (71toes.blogspot.com) after she had a recent high school reunion with six dear friends. It pretty much sums up how I (and hopefully many of you) feel about Best Friends Forever.
“In Friendship…we think we have chosen our peer. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances.
A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.” The Friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of others.”
–C.S. Lewis
Our daughter Saydi and her husband Jeff have just moved from Boston to London for six months. Jeff is working with a client in London who needed him full-time for their project so they packed up the kids, 7,6,3 and 1 and moved on over to London in January. I must admit that most of Saydi’s siblings are green with envy as they would give their eye-teeth to be living in our second home!
We lived there for three years when Richard was called to be the Mission President of the London South Mission many years ago from 1976-79! When we left, our four kids were about Saydi’s kids’ ages…..almost 6, 4 ½ , 2 ½ and Saydi who was about to celebrate her first birthday. Three years later we came home with two more who were born in Britain. Ten years later, after having three more kids we went back for six months so that the younger kids could experience a little of what the older kids had done. We were determined to have our kids fall in love with England.
In our wildest dreams when we took off for our first adventure in England all those years ago, we could never have foreseen that two of our kids would go back for a study abroad semester with BYU, three would return on missions of their own there, one would have the chance to study as a high school student at Oxford for a summer and one would be living there with her four kids 35 years later!
When Saydi and Jeff arrived in mid-January, there was no space in any of the nearby schools for the kids so home-schooling was there only option. And what an option! Saydi is a gifted teacher and loves what she is learning as she teaches! They are all having the time of their lives and last week we had the delightful opportunity to visit them in their suburb of London called Wordford Green.
On the “schoolroom” wall in their home, they have a time line for English history. They learn about it and then go see it! They have visited a plethora of historical spots in London central where they resided for the first three weeks of their adventure. They learned about Lord Nelson as they climbed on the magnificent lions at Trafalgar Square.
They have learned more about the Tudors from visiting numerous castles, all visited by King Henry VIII than we will ever know in a lifetime. When five-year-old Charlie is asked to describe the fate of Henry VIII’s six wives he says, “Died, Divorced, De-headed, Died, Divorced, Survived.”
While we were there we visited the wonders of Cambridge University, which is only about an hour from their house. We learned the history of the King’s College Chapel where the cornerstone was laid in 1444 A.D. as we were “punting” down the river in a fun little boat.
Maybe rather than home-school, we should call it On-Location-School. What a lot of fun they’re having living in the middle of all that history! Hazel can speak with a perfect British accent and she and her younger siblings are champions at negotiating their way through the subway and bus systems of London with their mom.
As with anything else in life and along with the enchanting experience of living with history also comes the real world. They bought a used car that breaks down on the motorway frequently (including with us on our way home from Heathrow Airport). As always, the kids save the day with their common sense way of looking at things. As we were ending our evening with the tow truck and Saydi was thinking of all the woulda, coulda, shoulda options for buying that car, Hazel piped up for the back seat with, “Mom, you’re over-thinking this!” With each new thing that complicated our situation with the car she just kept reminding us that “it’s all part of the adventure of England.” I think that sounds very much like something her parents would say….in a rational moment!
There was also sickness, which is inevitable. The night before we left there was an emergency run to the hospital for Jeff, who couldn’t turn his head with a swollen gland and Baby Peter who had a fever and could barely breathe. Such is life. Those siblings of Saydi’s who are wishing they were there with her may not have thought about the inevitable hard stuff that comes along with a move, a new country and the daily details with kids.
Still, could there be a more exciting adventure for kids as well as parents? Home-schooling in this case was totally different than what I had envisioned when all our kids were home. It reminded me that home-schooling should be a part of every child’s life, whether they are actually being schooled at home or are in the school system full time and being taught after school at the dinner table or in the car or during moments when we teach values and creativity. When it comes to schooling for our children, especially outside the “Three Rs”, the buck stops with us!
If any of us goes back through our ancestral lines we realize that we are all immigrants. Richard and I are thinking about writing a new book, mostly for our own children and grandchildren about who we call The Right Angle Ancestors. In other words, the four couples amongst our ancestors who decided to come to America (from Sweden, Denmark and two from England) in every case because they had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. They came for many reasons: 1) they were horrifically persecuted because they were now “Mormons”, 2 )they wanted to follow the admonitions of their prophet who were calling them to come and settle the west and 3) often also because they were living in relative poverty and could see a better life in a new world.
In perspective, all these years later, seeing the impact their decision made as they took a right angle turn in their lives and traveled to an unknown world in perilous circumstances is mind-boggling to us now. Little did they know what their decision would mean, not only to their own family but to the entire parade of children and their children and their children who would follow.
Recently our ward Primary president asked me to come into the Primary and tell a story about an ancestor that made a good choice which had made a difference in my life. I chose to tell about “right angle” Grandmother Elisabeth Jacobson who was born in Denmark in 1825. What amazing good she did even through devastating losses as she changed the story of our own family forever.
She had six children when they joined the church and immigrated to America. The family lost their oldest daughter Anne(!3) before they left for America and then someone carried measles on board the ship they sailed on from Liverpool and three more of their little children (Engerline, 9, Sarah 6, and Elizabeth 3, contracted the disease, died on the way and were buried at sea. Just as they sighted the Statue of Liberty Jens, 11 died and they carried him to land for burial. Undaunted and with only one son left Peter 14, she got pregnant again and walked 1000 miles across the plains beside their covered wagon and then gave birth to the famous Osmond Family’s great, great Grandmother Amelia. Her last two children were born in mid-winter in a little log cabin in Bloomington, Idaho and her last child was my great grandfather Frederick.
What an amazing story of courage and fortitude! Her blood was “thick” and her heart was undaunted. Through all her misery and wo, she created a new life for literally hundreds of her modern day descendants. I can’t help but shed a tear when I hear the song, “God Be With You ’til We Meet Again.” She will be one of the first “Right Angle” Ancestors I will long to hug when I reach the other side!
Several years ago we were with two of our grown children and their young families in Southern Utah. Eight of our sixteen grandchildren at that time (all under 10) lived next door to each other amidst the splendor of the red cliffs in St. George.
Picture this: Breakfast with our oldest daughter’s Saren’s little family. The two year old identical twin boys Oliver and Silas, who had just graduated from their high chairs were eating an enormous breakfast at the bar. With their little elbows barely able to reach the top of the bar they were inhaling their food with great satisfaction and were begging for more. Four year old Eliza had already dawned her purple velvet princess outfit and was eating an enormous bowl of oatmeal (these kids’ metabolisms just kill me!) Five year old Isaac was giving everyone hugs and asking for help on reading his book before he left for school and precocious seven year old Ashton was on the computer in an adjouning room. He was hunched over the computer like a mad scientist when I went to get him to join us for breakfast and asked him what he was doing. Staring at the screen as though he was hypnotized and without looking up, he said, “I’m learning about Antarctica.” Sure enough, he had googled a map of the world and was looking at the amazing size of Antarctica. Obviously in another world!
When I finally coaxed him to join us, his mom asked him to tell us what he had learned the day before about black holes (he had been studying the Universe in his spare time). He matter-of-factly explained that black holes are enormous places in space that suck in everything around them. Whatever goes in never comes back out, nothing can escape…not even light!” Then he added as an afterthought, “No one knows what happens to what goes in there,” and quickly said in his most incredulous voice, “and who would want to anyway?!”
After a spontaneous laugh from all the adults, I was struck by the fact that “from the mouth of a babe” had come a perfect description that sounded exactly like the journey of parenting on some days! While trying to train them we are sucked in by crisis after crisis as we deal with the needs of each child all the while also being sucked in by responsibilities at church and in the community in addition to being a chauffer, chef and coach.
Sometimes it feels like a black hole as we mothers struggle through getting the kids out the door every morning with their backpacks….and shoes. We parents pour time and effort and money into our children’s music lessons and soccer and basketball leagues not to mention helping them progress through weird stages in their childhoods. I remember wondering in those “in the trenches” days of parenting if all I was pouring into them would ever come out!
Even though we may feel totally sucked in by parenthood, unlike that black hole, things DO come out, although sometimes in ways that we can’t anticipate. Nothing can compare with watching the delight on a teenager’s face when he or she goes to an orchestra concert and really appreciates the music, even though his/her own violin progress had been dismal…because this kid, through his painstaking hours of practice, knows what it takes to produce such a wonder! Nothing is better than seeing your child be kind to another child who is sad or left out because you taught him somewhere, sometime, how important it is to watch for those who look like they could use some help.
The next time your challenges seem too hard to bear and you wonder “who in the world would want to be a parent anyway”, remember that “The most important thing you will ever do will be in the walls of your own home” (Hugh B. Brown)… one gritty day at a time. Though the thousands of hours spent training children may sometimes seem like a black hole and there are days and even years when we could say about a child’s mind,, “No one really knows what’s in there,” we’re here to testify that light does eventually come out and nothing is better than when you see it!
Following up on the last post, I thought it only fair that I include the daughter that we visited this week….a little closer to home. Our oldest child, Saren is the only one of nine who lives close enough to visit frequently. Although she has spent part of her life in Boston, California and St. George, she has recently moved to Ogden with her terrific husband Jared and their five adorable kids to whom she gave birth in five years!
Going along with the theme of the previous post about not being able to guess what our children, our little seedlings, will become…as a child Saren was the boss of the house by the time she was three. However, we were told by her pre-school teacher that she never spoke to anyone in class. She was very shy and kept to herself. After becoming alarmed the teacher disclosed that there were 19 boys in her class….and her.
Saren survived that class with flying colors, and went on to graduate from East High School (as did all of our children) and attend Wellesley College, an all-women very fine liberal arts college near Boston. From there she went on to get her Master’s Degree in Education at Harvard. We probably should have guessed when she was struggling with all those boys in her nursery school class and though she certainly grew to appreciate men, her leadership “nitch” was with women. She has been become an extraordinary leader of women….mothers to be exact!
Saren has always had a gift for looking over a difficult situation, assessing what is needed and figuring out a solution with great judgement and wisdom.
The interesting things is that, having been the oldest child in our family, she had many years to really soak in all the often crazy methods that we used with our kids. Some she didn’t realized were “methods” until she had children of her own. Adding her own good ideas to raise children, her ability to rally Mothers, to help them take care of “the person inside the mom” and give them the inspiration to be deliberate about their careers as mothers by developing important family systems has astounded us! She has been able to gather thousands of other Mothers to a website that she has established with her co-visionary mother April Perry, called Power of Moms. You can access the website here and her family blog here.
Exceptional mothers who are also great writers, photographers, thinkers and workers have flowed in to help and Motherhood Retreats sponsored by Power of Moms are held regularly across the county as well as next week in Australia. Many of you may have read Saren’s posts along with two other stellar moms who are manning the Motherhood Matters blog for the Deseret News.
I am not saying these things to brag (because Saren came who she is) but only to explain what a joyful thing it is when you see your children “take the baton” and pass you up! How blessed we are to have this remarkable person in our family…and to be able to go out to lunch with her on a regular basis. Here she is yesterday, sitting across the table from me at our favorite sushi restaurant called the Tona Sushi Bar in Ogden. It was so fun to catch up and feel her strong, capable spirit! After many miserable days in nursery school, it so fun to see her fly…higher.
One of the most fascinating parts of being a parent is seeing kids who were once little seedlings grow up, branch out and become who they are! We always say, “We have nine kids, one of every kind”! And indeed we do! The past two weeks it has been so fun to observe four of our children’s adult lifestyles. One in San Francisco, two in Phoenix and one in Hawaii. The oldest son and youngest daughter are still single. The other two are the parents of nine of our grandchildren. All four are our children and all four love each other but they couldn’t be more different.
After feeling for many years that we would be parenting children in our home forever, our “baby” Charity walked out the door to Wellesley College nine years ago and suddenly….we were empty nesters!
Because we had a speech in San Francisco where Charity now lives we had a chance to be with her for a couple of days. She has always been driven and definitely a “Type A” personality. She was so smart that as a teenager, sometimes it was pretty hard on her to live with such dumb parents. So we watched with interest as she got straight A’s,in school, rejoiced with her through her tears when she got her first B in college (we were all so relieved) and enjoyed watching her become a stellar missionary in the England London South Mission, the same mission where Richard had presided thirty five years ago. Then about a year and a half ago, she took off for the love of her life…..San Francisco…and struggled to find a real job while working four part-time ones. Recently she did find a job in Palo Alto at the Innosight Insitute, an education think tank for Clayton Christensen’s company based on his book called Disrupting Class. What a joy it has been to see her figure out who she really is. Her life in summed up in the title of her blog called Dripping with Passion which makes us smile because she truly is…dripping with a passion for life. It can be accessed here. It was such a pleasure to be with her as she joined us in our presentation and gave some credibility to our speech.
Our next stop was Phoenix where our oldest son Josh and second daughter Shawni live. Continue reading
My favorite new book of deep thought and delectable quotes in beautifully written essays is John Tanner’s Notes from an Amateur: A Disciple’s Life in the Academy. Because this blog is about thoughts on A World of Good, I especially liked his essay called Grave Thoughts on Greatness and Goodness that makes a case for importance of just plain goodness. He suggests that it’s good to be great but it’s even greater to be good. We see that this was both environmental and hereditary for him as he followed in his father’s footsteps. He said that his dad spent a lot of time making sure that his children succeeded at school, in sports, and as leaders but he had this engraved on his tombstone: In God’s divine plan, all achievements will fade into oblivion except personal righteousness.” Apparently righteousness translates to goodness in the Tanner family as John proceeds to expound on the importance of goodness. He refers to Jim Collins’ book Good to Great and says, “Morally, good is not the enemy of great. Goodness is the enabling condition of true greatness.” It’s a terrific article!
It made me think of how much of our time is often used to “get things done”. The “to do” list is endless and pretty meaningless unless the list includes doing something good for someone. The good old Christian hymn, Have I Done Any Good in the World Today means more in the context of our complicated, demanding, often frustrating and stressful world. Yesterday I got an email from an old friend whose mother was dying. We have loved this woman since before we were married and hadn’t seen her for many years. We were leaving the next day for a two week trip and madly packing and trying to tie up loose ends before our exit. Because getting it done was my first priority, I was driven. My initial thought after I read the message was that I had way too much to do to drop everything for a visit. Then this article which I had just re-read that morning flashed into my mind.
When I thought of the two options: 1) drop everything and drive an hour out of my way for a short visit with this dear old friend or 2) leave several things hanging (urgent but not really that important) while we were gone, the decision was clear. This was a chance to do something good. Not great but good. In the end and although the visit probably did more for me than for her, I was so glad I went. She was sheer inspiration!
In this world of good, it is important to remember that creating the “good” in our own lives is our own responsibility. If doing something, though it may be small and insignificant, for someone every day isn’t on my list, it isn’t a good day! Actually I’d like to see a book called, From Great to Good!