Dreamer, Part 1

I had that dream again.  I was downstairs in the Tabernacle women's dressing room, wearing the Olympic blue dress, sparkly necklace dipping out in front as I bent to ease my heel into one of my black concert shoes.  The air was electric, full of spirit and positive energy in the bustling and chatty wardrobe room.  I strode forward and towards the stairs, music in the crook of my arm, dressed and ready to perform.  I grabbed a portion of the skirt of my dress, feeling the texture of the solid and durable crepe in my fingers as I walked up the stairs. I headed toward the library, very aware of an almost effervescent happiness and sense of belonging in my soul.  My task was to ask for a recording for rehearsal purposes of the new numbers I had heard the choir singing at a recent concert with the American Choral Directors Association.  I put my music down in front of me on the library window counter and stared hard at it as the thought process played out in my mind---wait, why didn't I already know the music? Wasn't I singing at that concert, and--oh no.  Is this real or is it a dream?

I woke up to the darkness of my room, crickets singing outside the window.  I gently tugged the light bed cover over me for comfort and burrowed my face into my pillow as the feeling of intense sadness washed through my body once again. I silently prayed for the Comforter to come and bring me the peace I sought in this moment. 

18 months ago I was released from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir after a "career" of 21 years.  One third of my life I served with them.  It is past tense.  Often when people ask me about the choir, I answer the question using the word "we" and now it's "they."  I'm still transitioning, after all this time. When kind friends ask me questions like, "Wow, it must be hard for you after all that time spent with the choir to not be able to sing with them--how are you doing?"  I tell the truth.  "Bad," I say.  "But it's getting better. Most days.  Other days it's still like a bad divorce." I compare it to going through a mutual break up with a boy friend.  I am sad and dealing with it but know it's necessary.  Then I see him on TV a week later, happy and singing his heart out with his new group of admirers, not even missing me and doing just fine, while I am in shock and feeling so betrayed he could go on without me because I can barely function through the grief.

Trying to analyze just what it is I am missing is difficult as there are several layers.  One is the flat and empty place where there used to be incredible spiritual highs. Some of the music we sang sent my heart borne heavenward and beyond. Music sung by a choir of people who have consecrated their time, talents and energy to the mission of that choir is hard to describe, it must be experienced. And experience it I did. The spirit blessed our work, and I felt it and I am missing the filling of my soul by this music.  

I  miss raising my voice in unison with those surrounding me, combining with my own personal praise.  I miss the genius of our directors with their intelligent and well placed quips and lines of correction and encouragement. I  miss the growth coming through the challenges, intellectually, spiritually, plus socially. They were my family, a special choir family.  I saw pictures of their students, children and grandchildren, and knew their stories of life and challenge and love and laughter.  I traveled with them, ate with them, laughed with them, and sang with them. We hugged and cried and performed together.  We experienced some of the most incredible times of our lives together, leaving no challenge to try to explain why it was so amazing, because we all were there, together.  


I miss seeing the "Men in Black," our nickname for the stage crew, one of who was my husband, creeping around during broadcast, trying not to be seen as they placed a harp for an upcoming number or removed a group of metal stands, trying to avoid clanging them against each other as they shuffled them offstage. There was a certain sense of satisfaction having Wally close, working together on such a magnificent project.

Honestly all of the choir experiences weren't heavenly--some were downright hard and bordered on scary.  Like the first time we performed a whole concert, two hours' worth of music, from memory.  Or like the many times I missed family events because I had made a commitment to this organization and I just couldn't skip.  Late nights at recordings and long rehearsals before and after broadcast challenged my abilities to stay dialed in and fight off weariness and sometimes sleep.   But I still miss it.

Something must be said about the identity the choir became for me. I understand the choir is famous--I wasn't. But many friends and family introduced me to others with: "She sings in the Tabernacle Choir" and I found it was enough to make me popular and remembered. As my retirement time grew closer, I began asking, "Will you still like me even when I'm not in the choir?"  It was a tongue-in-cheek question but there was some underlying shadow to it, coupling a little fear with desperation as I couldn't turn back the calendar.  

Now the time is indeed passed, and I am depending on time to help me heal. I don't know how long, and I don't know what to do except let time go by--until my experience last night. This time it was not a dream. 

Keep the House Clean or Sanitary, You Choose.

Last post I wrote about a book I thought about writing when I was younger and taking care of a young but large family.  My second chapter was titled,  "Keep the house clean or sanitary, you choose."  Here is what remains of the effort:

My first five children all came within a couple of years of each other, then there was a silent break and we got two more—but that’s another story.

The fun thing about having them all quickly is they were usually excited to do the same project.  There was a time when the youngest was old enough to enjoy the activity and the oldest was young enough to really have fun with all the sibs.  I called those the golden family years.  I loved going places together, because they were all excited and they all helped each other and I felt like the Pied Piper, happily leading this group of children off to fun times. 

The hard thing about having children close together was the mess.  I’m talking about the place where we ate, slept and played—our house.  It was impossible for me to keep it all organized and picked up, let alone the wash done and the meals on time.  Cleaning windows was just a dream. I never really did get the hang of it.  I don’t really know what I expected but I thought I could have done better. 

There were times when I would dig in and spend a few concentrated hours in a bedroom, deliberately and mechanically sorting each Lego and bristle block, marble and hot wheels car, until all were placed in their labeled and color-coded bin on the closet shelves, meanwhile ignoring all the racket and/or suspect silence in the rest of the house.   I would accomplish something—for me, it was a place well organized in my mind’s eye when I walked out of the room, and for the kids it was a clean slate to begin new play.  Within moments, the tidiness would be discovered and out it all came, for a rousing game of “garbage man” or else a new and improved project to be abandoned once again when it was meal time. 

There were some things that drove me wild—like honey or syrup on the counter tops or a toilet seat that needed cleaning. I would drop everything to take care of those problems, but inevitably something else would suffer.  I had a patient husband who didn’t complain very often about moving the Rocky Mountains disguised in unfolded clean clothes off the bed at night so he could go to sleep, or never blamed me when he had to step through the wild toy night-party in the hall on his way to the bathroom, even when it meant he would probably be prying a Lego or two out from between the toes.  His kind patience with our messy family touched me and I tried to think of what I could do to make it better for him.

One day I heard the car drive up and I knew he was home.  The table was set for dinner, and there was actually food ready to eat, but the kitchen floor was a mess.  Several different kinds of cereal were concentrated under the table; bread crusts and cracker crumbs paved the rest of the floor between the stacking rings and super balls randomly rolling across the floor.  I had sudden inspiration and I grabbed the broom and quickly removed the debris from the path he would walk to the table and where his feet would rest while eating dinner.  It was great, and it worked.  No tell-tale crunching underfoot!  I felt very successful that night, and often repeated the same quick clean up just before he walked in the door. 

One Clean Rag

Once I thought I would write a book, entertaining, humorous yet filled with bits of wisdom type of book.  Well, I have written, or rather co-written, several books about my ancestors, but those were not the kind I originally had in mind.  I'm in the process of moving files from my old computer to my new one, and took the challenge from my computer consultant (my son) to "clean house." This metaphor nicely segues into my topic I had chosen for a book I found when deleting old files: One Clean Rag.  I read it and slightly revised it, but for the most part, here is the first chapter and opening:

Now why would someone like me who is homemakingly handicapped want to share with someone like you, or anyone at all, tips and experiences from my life as a homemaker, or to use a more up to date term, “stay at home mom?”  (Both of those terms are misnomers anyway.)

Good question.  I can’t answer it except for my mind just keeps going several hundred miles an hour while I fold clothes or pull weeds, etc.  That’s my idea of dove tailing my tasks, thinking about other things while my hands are doing something else.  That’s the only way I could ever get through a toddler’s diaper change while pregnant and expecting the next one, that and an orange peel.  I learned how to change one handed almost while the other hand held the orange peel up to and covering my nose, then I discovered I could hold it gently between my teeth so the peel would curl up towards and sometimes over my nose.  It really works!  So there’s tip number one: the orange peel trick.  Use it and you will have no gagging. 

Anyway, back to what I am thinking about while I am vacuuming, etc.  My mind goes and goes and if I wasn’t so busy then I would write down all the things I think about. I am lucky if I even remember what I was thinking about a few hours after completing the task. But that is how I came up with a title for this book.  I remembered wishing this once---if I just had one clean rag. 

I don’t know what it is about kids, but when I clean the bathtub, toilet, sink and mirror, I use two rags, a wet one and a dry one.  I clean the mirror first because I have tried to clean it last and it doesn’t work, the dry rag is too wet.  Anyway, when my kids had to do the job, they used all the rags in the cupboard, plus most of the towels (and apparently some of the washcloths, because eventually those that used to be blue or green had white spotted areas on them).  Once after an army of small people helped clean, I ran to the bathroom cupboard for a rag to soak up something awful, and there was not one to be found.  Just a pile of soaking wet towels, rags, and washcloths on the floor, with the smell of cleanser in the air. My wish in that moment was to have one clean rag. 

A hard thing it is to teach a child what a real rag is (as opposed to nice kitchen towels) and use real rags to clean up things like oil, grease or paint.  Oft times they confused the dishtowels and dishrags with real rags, and I got real grouchy when I walked out in the garage, spied one of my newer  kitchen towels, tried to pick it up and found that it was permanently stiff and shaped in the position it was last used.  Sometimes I was not able to even pick it up because it was stuck to whatever someone tried to “clean up.”  If that happened, I went in the house and played solitaire on the computer until dinnertime.  It’s important to have outlets for  frustration and anger besides ones that damage stuff or make big messes, because guess who has to clean it up???? Or else buy a new something??? (My cousin Joan lays down on the couch with a spoon and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and watches TV.)

Something needs to be said about the fact my children tried to clean up after themselves, and also complete the tasks they were given.  "A" for effort kids, and also for cooperation.  And I also get kudos for teaching them and then stepping back and allowing them to learn for themselves, regardless of the risks of unraveling greater messes than the ones they were cleaning up. 

Now, later in my life, things are much different. I look at mothering from the perspective of a grandmother and I don’t really care so much about the rags--I finally have enough.  They are all stacked nice and neatly, folded even, some under the kitchen sink, some in each bathroom, and a kitchen drawer full of matching dishtowels and hand knitted dishrags, just waiting to be used.  Wally can even find them without asking me where they are.  Things change when the kids leave home.  I guess I'm one of those things.