Peace, Love and a little Rock n' Roll

Arizona River Runners, our river outfitter, did an amazing job of sending out information to prepare us beforehand for our trip. Early on, I received the pamphlet, How to Prepare as a Senior Citizen! So I faithfully hiked around my island, did my squats so I could get up and down in the boat, and bought an expensive jar of CBD cream and a cheap bottle of Advil to soothe my aching muscles. I carefully scanned their website looking for pictures of people who looked as old as I am and were smiling. What Arizona River Runners failed to mention and prepare me for in all of their pre-trip literature was just how much fun I was going to have!!

Perhaps it is just me or maybe it is just an occupational hazard of growing old, but we do lose a little bit of our “plunge into a cold river and float around for a while” zest for living in the whole unraveling process! But, deep in our souls, we still desperately want to be young. We all want our twenty-year-old bodies back. We all want do-overs. What I did not know about our river trip was that our daily hikes would take us up magical slot canyons where warm water comes pouring out of rocks. What I found there, for a glorious week, was the mystical fountain of youth.

It didn’t hurt that I was traveling with my grandchildren. Hard to act too old and crotchety surrounded by the good sense of humor that accompanies the junior high and college years. Maybe a favorite moment was when a big wave knocked me off my feet, literally, and everyone saw me, feet straight up in the air, clinging to dear life, and they were laughing hysterically. For a moment, we were all in this giant, unpredictable ride of life together… and it was going to be a good one. I was the Nana of the trip to everyone in the boat. Everyone took such good care to make sure I got hauled up rocky trails and my camp was set up each night. But when everyone fell asleep, I looked at the stars and dreamed of the ghost of vacations past and felt some of the body aches slipping away. I lay on a cot under the stars and felt young again. (Hey, it was good CBD cream!)

Being back in Arizona, where I grew up, and where I have so many fond memories of my childhood, it is easy to feel youthful. The hot Arizona sun, the red rocks, the cactus, the tan river guides with their turquoise pendants, the optimism, the jokes, the talk and laughter around the fire about dating apps, college courses, and future dreams, the Spotify playlists of amazing music—all of it combines together to transport me to a more carefree time of life. It all becomes an elixir, taken daily to temper the pain of my advancing years.

In late January of this year, I made a page in my journal for the Year of the Snake, with the words, Shed, Renew, Rise. Coincidentally, I did this around the same time I received my “preparations for seniors” literature. As I type and look at the skin peeling from my feet this week (the only part of my body that got a serious sunburn), I smile. The Year of the Snake has allowed me to Shed, Renew, and Rise. I am grateful that in the same week I became Medicare eligible, I also took a plunge in an icy river and shed a few pounds of elderly! (I am also very thankful that no late-night bathroom runs had any year of the snakes crossing my path.

I am blessed to have good health still, but I think I will keep noticing other ways to maintain a bit of my high altitude breathing skills while living at sea level. Maybe just changing up my Spotify playlist will be a goal, or laughing uncontrollably when my feet get swept out from under me. And, I will start blogging once again “like it’s 1999!”

Floating down the Colorado river, time quickly began to fold back on itself. Within just a few miles, I was entering Marble Canyon, named by the man with one arm who had first explored these waters in 1869, John Wesley Powell. A few miles into our adventure, my iphone, packed at the bottom of my duffle bag was of no use. I was now in the land of Big History, measured in Eras, not years, with names like Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. We began to speak of millions of years ago, not last century. The small history, I had been so accustomed to basing my life on simply vanished. For this stretch, in a land barely touched my modern civilization, election cycles, breaking news, monthly bills, algorithms and daily schedules simply vanished into the ether. For the next 185 miles, I would watch as geologic formations pushed their way upward, the sands of times forming deep canyons and magnificent mountain formations, one layer at a time.

In the scorching August sun, we floated and in the icy cold water of the rapids we cooled off. Our concerns were now measured by the number of ounces of water we consumed and the electrolytes that kept us balanced, instead of the appointments that needed to be kept or the calls that should be returned.

Hours measured by a clock simply lost all meaning. The Sun ruled the day and we all became experts on how to protected ourselves from his rays. The Moon helped us find our way as we navigated our campsite at night. The stars continued to rotated and orient us to the cardinal directions we were traveling. We awoke each morning to a rousing, “coffee is served” as the very first pink rays struck the highest canyon walls, and we fell asleep exhausted, just as the bats filled the sky, heading out for their nightly feast. The only measurement of time we brought with us from our outside lives were breakfast, lunch and dinner, and stops to communally pee in the river.

The miles along the way were marked by Blue Herons, each standing sentry to their little piece of the river. These liminal birds, always standing on the edge, between water and land, between the stillness of fishing and the freedom of flight, reminded me that I, too, was standing at the edge of something so much bigger and more powerful than my own time bound life.

The shores were also occasionally punctuated by the Big Horn Sheep, those masters of climbing precarious sheer canyon walls and surviving under very harsh conditions.

Gentle reminders pervaded the trip as we hiked to ancient ancestral pueblo ruins, that nothing lasts forever and civilizations, even great ones, come and go leaving only traces of the communities that once existed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But here amid the ruins, a reminder that love has a much more enduring quality.

Perhaps the hardest part of our adventure was plugging my phone back into the 21st century when we reached Page, Arizona.

We fell in love at Provo Craft. We had been together for a long time already, but the fall in love part happened on a corner, in a brick building on Center street. It had been a long relationship…twenty years actually, but I was so much older, well three years anyway. Three years when you  are in school just doesn’t allow for much time to socialize. We missed spending the junior high years together, then I was out of high school before she started and I married and moved away from college before she arrived as a freshman. We just kept missing each other, except for the summers we spent in Phoenix, when by default we watched The Price is Right and Gilligan’s Island while eating cinnamon rolls cooked in that newfangled microwave, that only the wealthy and Dad owned. In the afternoon, we dumped each other off of rubber mats in the swimming pool and splashed each other on our beach towels-not exactly the best way to grow a relationship (unless of course your are my Dad and Carol, so it works sometimes). So we waited and grew and matured and then we bonded, at Provo Craft on Center street in Provo, just up from Jimba’s sandwich shop and a hop skip and jump from the old Tabernacle! 

Life had taken me full circle, from the campus of BYU to Northern California and back again to Provo with a new baby in tow and another one on the way. I needed a friend and I found one in my sister, Cathy! We had one car, it was blue and it only went one direction…forward. If you needed to go backwards, you stuck your foot out the door and pushed-hard. And most of the time, that one car was going forward with Steve inside. So Cathy would come to see me (I have no idea how she got there). We would load Heather in the stroller and we would walk to Provo Craft in the big brick building on Center Street. It was magical in there. So many ideas…I don’t know if we ever bought anything…we were much too poor to spend money, but we looked and dreamed of glass vases full of silk flowers filling the foyers of our dream houses. We looked at glue guns and wooden frames crying out to be decoupaged. We strained our creative impulses so that we could recreate these homey scenes with the sparse supplies we already owned. 

A couple times we even went clear to Salt Lake City, in the car that only went forward to the Relief Society Building, where on the third floor they had a display of so many arts and crafts projects that would whet our appetites to go home and produce homemade Christmas gifts…the only kind we could afford. When we weren’t together we would share magazine pictures and ideas, long before Pinterest, even longer before Instagram. We were homemakers at heart and we yearned to make our homes as Cottage Core as the pictures in the old Better Homes and Gardens we got second hand at the library. Then life got crazy. I had three kids, then four, then five. Cathy moved to California….we shed so many tears, we shared letters, but it wasn’t the same. I stopped crafting and Cathy crafted for two. And then came Geese season.

Geese took over the world, A blue and mauve world covered in white geese with little yellow bows around their neck. Peace had arrived. It was barnyard Nirvana and Cathy was there to help usher it in. She goosed us both. The day my wall hanging arrived, I was in heaven. A lovely quilted picture with a mauve ruffle…the statement piece of my new decor. I could be cool like the rich ladies further up the hill who had geese on their front doorsteps, geese on their countertops and goose feather down comforters on their bed. The geese were followed by the Carousel horses and the terra-cotta flower pot toy soldiers at Christmas and the crossed stitched Valentines for my wall. Then came the ultimate gift, the knitted Santa stockings. The gifts, like the stockings, arrived seasonally, filled with soul, filling places on my mantle and walls, bestowing on me homemade love and making me feel special…it’s why I can’t let them go. 

The years have passed…forty to be exact from the time we fell in love at Provo Craft on Center street. We have established those homes we once could only yearn for, we have filled them with love and children and happiness and sorrows and deep pain and lots and lots of laughter. Through it all we have been co-creators, sisters and best friends and we have shared ideas and recipes and kitschy crafts that have long ago fallen out of style. We have used our combined talents to decorate buildings and houses and weddings and funerals and offices and to make holidays special. And in our dark days, late on dark nights, with goose feather comforters pulled over our heads and cell phones in our hands with my silly screensavers in the background we have reminded each other that we can’t go in reverse, we can only go forward. And when she has helped me to clean and organize and pulls out that wooden carousel horse and raises an eyebrow and wonders why I still have it…I remind her—we fell in love in the aisle with wooden cutouts at Provo Craft when we both desperately needed a friend. 

Happy Birthday Cathy!!

The first time I read the article, The Last Children of Down Syndrome, I had the same visceral gut reaction as many others who may have just skimmed over it, “What?? Don’t the people of Denmark know the blessings that people with Down Syndrome bring into your life? I will need to educate them.” The second reading, I was less emotional and more impressed with the depth of the journalism in covering a sensitive subject. By the third reading and after talking to several people close to me, I had my “aha” moment. This story is not about a few parents in Denmark having to make a heart-rending choice. It is the cover story in The Atlantic Magazine, in December of 2020, because it is a metaphor, a much deeper “story” that affects every single one us and how we respond to choices, choices that everyone of us will or have faced. It is not a story targeted at a small select group of parents, it is aimed at the heart of every single one of us, who, perhaps, have faced one of the most difficult years of our lives. It has been a year that has disturbed our foundations and made us realize what things really are important.  With that realization, my response comes from a much different place, a deeper place. It is a subject that after 60 years of living, I am only beginning to understand myself, but still, I can speak confidently about.

Unlike most of the families interviewed in this article, my son, Andy, was born before genetic testing was the norm. I was not faced with any “choice”  to make while I was pregnant. I was 24 years old, prime child bearing age.  I learned of Andy’s condition about an hour after his birth, when my husband came into my room holding our first born son in his arms and told me that the Dr. said he had “Down Syndrome.” Any “choice” as to whether to continue the pregnancy had left the gate. I still remember my words, as my eyes welled up with tears. “Who cares, we will take him home and love him like the rest.” Because whether to take him home was not really a choice either, I had nursed him, I had bonded to him, he was mine. As far as the “choice” as to whether to keep him, that ship had sailed too, even though some parents were still given an option of institutionalized care at the time. A nurse came in my room and spoke of a genetic anomaly—whatever the hell that meant—and told me that these kids could dance and knit like no other. With that helpful advice packed in my diaper bag with a sample can of baby formula, I wrapped him in a blue blanket and headed home. At home, I had an almost three-year-old, a one year old and a birthday party waiting to greet me. I didn’t have any time to ponder what his disability would mean. I had very little time to grieve or even sleep. I was too busy taking care of three babies. It has pretty much been the same for the past 36 years. More siblings eventually arrived and Andy just blended into the love and chaos. We were The Down family. We stood out and we stood up for each other. We all had Down Syndrome to some degree or another. Although, Andy is quick to remind all of us, that he is the only one with the secret line across his palms, a Simian Crease…common to most people with Down Syndrome. In an argument he would always raise his hand, to show he was the one with the true secret superpower. 

 Over the years, imperceptibly, Andy changed us, he defined us. If you ask any one of my children they will tell you that having Andy as a brother, helped make them who they are. All of my children are kind and caring and look out for each other and for those who may be the underdog. I am now seeing these same traits in my grandchildren as they look out for their “Uncle Andy” as he looks out for them. They are who they are because of the homes they have been raised in. We would not be the same family or the same people without him. He has made us better.  Did I know any of this in that hospital room on that cold, dark January day, so many years ago? Of course not! We are never given the luxury of seeing the end from the beginning in this adventure we call life. We see through a glass darkly. Most of the time we just muddle through. The Universe has a sense of humor, sometimes a twisted sense of humor. We know, we are the Down family!!

This is the dilemma, the dilemma laid out in the magazine article. What are we supposed to do today, when we don’t know what tomorrow brings? How do we make life altering choices with  very little information? In the case of Down Syndrome, the primary information that expectant parents are given comes from Doctors who have very little real life experience in such matters. So what are we to do when faced with decisions, decisions with real, life changing consequences. I know now what you do…you roll with it, you muddle through, even if all the info you are given is “hey, they can really knit…and dance.”  And you alway choose love. And that is pretty much it my friends. It’s easy.

Fortunately, I learned this early from my Vacation Bible School teacher who sat with us in a circle, under a palm tree in Phoenix, strumming her guitar singing, “Everything is Beautiful…in it’s own way.” and “What the world needs now, is love sweet love,” as a bunch of nine year olds swayed to the music. The hippie generation I was born into have really screwed some things up, but the main message that my generation was sent to share has withstood the tests of time. In the words of our modern day apostles, John and Paul…Love is all there is. 

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

There is nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need!

When asked about this song, later, John and Paul  said “it was inspired and we didn’t want the message to ever get lost, ever.” Love is all you need.

And you can look to the the other modern prophets too…the words of the prophets written on the subway walls.  They all say the same thing….Rumi said it….”“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Joseph Campbell said it, ““The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” And Leonard Cohen said it in another way. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” So when you are “wounded” or “cracked” or find yourself in a dark cave…as all of us will—you wait and the light will get in…it always does. Always! 

Thinking that we are going to have some Utopian society without disabilities, without illness, without poverty, without challenges, without viruses, is the Brave New World that none of us want to live in…for it would be very dark indeed, with no cracks letting the light in. But Aldous Huxley already laid that out for us much more succinctly than I can. The Atlantic just stirred our memory and reminded us. Instead, we must once again come to terms that we will never know the end from the beginning, regardless of what a well-meaning nurse or doctor or teacher or politician tells us…that is not how it works.  We must take what life gives us, wrap it up in a blanket, learn to roll with it, love fiercely, and then crank up the music and dance.  Andy and my Yellow Submarine album taught me that!

I was seventeen, a senior in high school and flying cross country to visit my dad and stepmom for Christmas vacation. I had a layover in Chicago. The times were so different then, no TSA, people milling around the airport like it was a shopping mall. My dad always warned me before a trip not to talk to the “Moonies,” the tambourine playing, robe wearing hippies of the seventies who panhandled at the airports. I kept my loose change securely in my purse in case I needed to call one of my parents, collect from a pay phone. That was my only safety net on these adventures. This trip, I had entered the ladies room and encountered a very long line, as often is the case in airport bathrooms. While standing in line, the door opened and an elderly gentleman pushed his wife in a wheelchair into the restroom. Seeing so many people, she said with a worried look on her face, “Oh dear, you can’t wait in here in this line, we will need to leave.” Another older woman towards the front  immediately took control of the situation. “Of course you’re not leaving, everyone step back and you help your wife get to the stall.” We obeyed and both of them looked relieved that the situation solved itself. He pushed her chair past all of us to a handicapped stall. We patiently stood and waited for them to leave.

That day, I made a mental note to myself. “I am going to be like that lady when I grow up, a take charge person.”  She knew just what to do. She taught me, an awkward restroom wallflower, that sometimes kindness requires stepping out of your comfort zone and being the one to solve the problem. She taught me that you can learn to be kind by watching what other people do in hard situations. She taught me that kindness often means you break the rules….even silly public bathroom rules.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. The truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen; room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” —Pema Chodron

We made the drive for Mother’s Day, my sisters and I. We were going to take her out for a nice dinner. We knew there would not be too many more Mother’s Days with her in our future. We arrived in town and called her, she was at the hospital. She was in the emergency room and before the afternoon was over she was in ICU. The nurses taught us the drill, wash your hands, put on the rubber gloves, put on the face mask, no visitors except family. She slept mostly, except when they came in to poke her with a needle. So many needles. So many bags of fluid. So much blood being drawn. So many different nurses. We tried to stay out of the way. We sat at the foot of the bed. We tried to blend into the wallpaper as doctors came and went. Because we were also dealing with him and he was confused and when he was confused he was angry. So we let the professionals talk to him, to calm him, to explain to him, to help him try and make sense of all the bags, all the blood, all the needles. We, the sisters, the granddaughters, the womenfolk sat at the back of the room, laughing occasionally, behind our masks, with our rubber gloves on….like we were going to catch death or in this case, like she was going to catch life. It was all absurd. It was all surreal. Mostly though, I watched the monitor, the monitor at the head of the bed. Three lines, rising and falling: her heart, her respiration, her saturation. I watched the numbers rising and suddenly falling, beating out time. The end of time. “You can’t die in a hospital anymore, they won’t let you,” I thought to myself. There is always something else they can poke you with to keep those waves cresting. And at night, after he left, I moved closer. I fell into breathing along with her. I dozed and I remembered. There were so many things I wanted to tell her in the silence, but only two did she seem to understand. “You were a good mom and we will take care of “him.” And she would respond with one word- “Really?” Until one morning she woke up and told me to skedaddle.

Things fell apart quickly after that for all of us….he did, then she did, then she was gone, then finally, I fell apart. Grief is funny that way. It takes a while. Yet, life goes on. The sun rises and sets. People need to be fed. Lawns need to be watered. Dogs need to be walked. The moon quarters, halves, gibbous and fulls… and your heart does too. But a grayness settles in and you slow down while life speeds by. Tears fall at the strangest times and you yearn for a mask. And you can’t find your words. You fall asleep with grief under your pillow and in the morning it is still there. You want to blend into the wall paper to disappear and you want to shout, “Hey does anyone know I am here!”

*******

The phone rang early in the morning, before the sun was up, in the middle of a meteor shower. “She needs you can you please come.” I hadn’t planned on being there for the birth of my new granddaughter, but of course I wanted to be. I hurried to the car and raced to the hospital and a large meteor streaked across the sky, just as it was turning pink in the East and Venus was rising. Soft music filled the room and calming voices reminded her to breathe. The contractions were coming regularly now, one followed another, breathe, relax, rub her back, wipe her brow. The hours passed. The pain was intense. Pain that was going nowhere. We moved her, this was not going as planned. Doctors and nurses surrounded the bed. I looked in her face and reminded her to breathe. I looked at the monitor. Three lines, going up and down in so many different directions. Three lines assured me this was labor, hard labor and the baby was still o.k. Finally, she slept and they became more stable. The lines began to look like waves not an erratic stock market. I sat quietly at the end of the bed as she slept. A bed now holding a very young mother. A bed ready to usher in life not to usher it out. We spoke in whispers the nurses and I, we listened to the regular beat of the monitor. This time her he was also next to her, this time he was sweet and loving and attentive. So much the same—so much different. The sun set outside the window and the lights came on. Finally, just like death, a threshold opens, a crowning, blood and water, tears and pain, silence and moaning. But this time the end brought unspeakable joy.

And then things began to come together—a baby, happiness, new life. We swaddle her in love. And as the days and the weeks have passed we have spent time together under the trees, watching the sun rise, seeing her first smiles. The seasons are beginning to change. Today there is calm. Nothing has been solved, but I have grown. There is room for it all, the healing and the grief.

They come, just like the ubiquitous hot flashes of middle age springing out of nowhere. They are as unexpected as the minutes of intense heat- rising and burning away the dross of guilt, regret, mistakes made during the childbearing years. They come without warning and can be triggered by anything, a song, a poem, a sunrise, a fading photograph. It happens when I least expect it, escaping one drop at a time. I don’t sob, my face doesn’t get red, there is no tell-tale noise, no runny nose. Most often no one even sees them, they are quickly wiped away. What I can’t seem to do is stop them or predict them. They just happen. One teardrop at a time, rising not from my body but from my soul. A tiny drop of salty water escaping from my heart. Sometimes, it is so full of pain,  my being simply cannot hold it inside anymore and it must be absorbed by the universe. At other times, it contains a drop of joy that falls in gratitude upon the ground. Most often, it is a drop of love mixed with a memory or a hope. It is the only form of prayer I know these days. It pleads for nothing, it doesn’t pretend to know anything, it just is. It trusts, it accepts, it let’s go and it falls to the ground, leaving an almost imperceptible trail on the path where I have walked. Perhaps, like the small droplet of rain falling high in the mountains, these soul drops will gather with those shed by others, forming a small stream and then a great river until they are combined in some mysterious ocean to wrap us in the love that will one day welcome us all back home. Perhaps, as we die we will smell the salt water, run into an ocean of love that we have helped create and realize that this has been the meaning of our lives. Perhaps.

The yellow legal pad is open on the table. The opening paragraph seemed pretty good, rough, but I had what I thought was a good opening line.

“What are you afraid of? My spouse practically yelled the words at me from the driver’s side of the car. We were arguing-although as in most of our arguments he did most of the talking and I sat staring ahead, silently, trying to find my words. It has been so long ago now, that I have no recollection of what we could have been fighting about. I just remember the question. The question that has been frozen in time, like a cartoon bubble over my head, a question followed by dot, dot, dot. “What are you afraid of….?

I turn the page over on the pad and draw four columns.1) What was I afraid of as a child 2) What was I afraid of as a teen 3) as a young mother and 4) what am I still afraid of. I smile as I make the first list watching each childhood fear float away like a bubble and pop. Fears that once gripped me, now cause me to smile. My early fears of thunder and lightening, now comfort me as I fall asleep. The fear I had of my neighbor’s rose bush, which grabbed my coat and would not let me go, brings back a fond memory of a childhood home. A fear that turned into one of my passions, gardening and roses. I look at the yellow pad, the words lie there on the paper, the thoughts and memories spin in my head. I stand up and walk to the kitchen to fix a cup of coffee. Why is this so hard? On second thought, forget the coffee, maybe tea will settle my stomach. On third thought, maybe I should get some fresh air.

Standing outside, I see my beloved mountains, so firm so unchanging. Each morning, for the thirty plus years I have lived in Utah, I wake up and walk to a window to look East. With the Psalmist I say, “I look to the mountains, from whence cometh my strength.” My God has changed over the years, but the mountains they have remained firm. This morning, the clouds finally parted and when I looked east to the sky just beginning to turn pink, I saw Venus, Jupiter and Mars-all lined up in a perfect row-the only lights in the pre-dawn sky. As I look down the street, it is in full blown splendor. The reds, oranges and yellows form a tunnel for the cars. The pines the only green left now. It is my favorite time of year, but it always brings a sense of change and uneasiness that only the sound of the geese flying overhead seem to articulate.

I have to get something written. I sit down again. Teenage fears, start swirling in my mind. Fears of embarrassment, embarrassment from not wearing the right clothes, hanging with the right friends, saying something stupid, fears that accompany moving to new schools and new cities. Fears that have turned to strengths as I have sought to be aware of the new neighbor, the new employee, the new kid at school. Fears that have helped me venture beyond my comfort zone. Teenage fears of dating and rejection have been replaced by a long, comfortable relationship. There must be words to express this, maybe I will just write a paragraph. I grab my pen and stare off into space while my hand draws circles, round and round. Tea, yes tea, the tea will calm my stomach.

Focus, Colleen, focus! I am already past the day we are supposed to send in our writing. And this was an easy prompt. “What are you afraid of….? “ I am practically shouting at myself now. Well, I am certainly not afraid of the long list that used to haunt me. Like Dorothy, I have thrown a bucket of water on so much of what used scare me along the yellow brick road of life. Lions, and tigers and bears, Oh my! Satan, and sinning and hell, not really! Dorothy and me, we have pulled back the curtain and figured out a few things along the way. Maybe, I should find a Rolaid or Pepto Bismo. Maybe I will scroll through FaceBook again, then I will finish this! Write for ten more minutes, just ten more minutes, don’t you dare click on FaceBook!

Why didn’t I ever read Alan Watts before? How is it that some people can connect with us over space and time and speak to our very souls? I pick up one of his books off the coffee table The Wisdom of Insecurity and begin to thumb through its pages.There it is underlined with a little star by it. “If we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen and death comes at the end.” It is one of the few books I have marked up. I have always had an aversion to writing in books, maybe for two reasons. My mother always taught me to respect books and treat them very kindly. I had a hard time marking up college texts. Second, you can always tell what “issues” people have in their life by what they underline in a book. I hate being that transparent and I lend out a lot of books! But this book is different, and I won’t ever lend it out! This one is mine! It is now marked and underlined and yes, I have issues!!

What am I afraid of now? Hmmm. Maybe it always boils down to a phone call, the phone call. The one in the middle of the night. The one about “the accidents that will happen.” The one that involves my children. The phone call that I am yet to receive but still haunts me. The phone call my best friend received when my boys found Jeremy’s body at the bottom of the canyon, next to his crumpled car. The phone call Anne received when her husband ran to his office to pick up some papers on his motorcycle and never came home, where “death came at the end.” The phone call to meet my daughter at the hospital where her husband was being rushed with a broken neck. The phone call that requires me to live everything that Alan Watts teaches, the phone call that requires the wisdom to Let it Be, to Let it Go, to Let Them Go. The phone call that I have absolutely no control over. I walk outside again. There are dark clouds over the mountains. I watch them move. The shadows are lengthening. There is an eery glow to the sky, beautiful, black clouds and an orange sunset. It is October. A few roses still cling to the bushes, beautiful bushes with thorns. Oh how I love them, oh how I hate to see them go.

I need to finish writing, I need to get my thoughts on paper. I need to find something to settle my stomach. The phone rings, my daughter is on the other end. “Mom, I had another terrible night, I am so sick, I need to check myself into the hospital, there is a large dark spot on my chest, they are doing a CAT scan, we get the results from all the blood work at the end of the week, I see the oncologist again on Monday. Mom, I think I am going a little crazy. Please don’t tell anyone, yet.” I switch on my Mom voice, “I will come as soon as you need me, We are in this together, this will all work out, everything is going to be o.k., please let me know as soon as you talk to the Dr. again. I love you.” I hang up the phone, today, just today, I know what I am afraid of….

There is a lot of talk these days about the definition of marriage. Even Supreme Court justices have been confused as to its meaning. Perhaps, like light, it can never be fully defined. Is it a wave or is it a particle? Is it an institution or is it a space to grow. Do we pass through it or is it eternally binding? Who owns it, the church or the state? Is it simply a piece of paper and a way to file taxes? Are there two marriages– Marriage with a capital “M”—signed, sealed, delivered and registered at the courthouse, ritually recognized and contractually binding, and then another marriage—with a little “m”… the one set apart with a possessive pronoun…my marriage, our marriage, their marriage that involves the laughs, the tears, the shared bedrooms and dented fenders. This marriage, with a little m, is the wave, the word that SCOTUS will never define, the one that only poets have been able to capture with a pen. This is the marriage that I have been thinking about quite a bit lately.

They were married young by today’s millennial standards. It was an arranged marriage of sorts. Arranged by a culture that places the utmost importance on couples being bound together for all eternity and having lots of babies along the way. He said, “I noticed her when she came to our door working for a Right to Life campaign—she was articulate and ambitious—and cute.” He asked her to dance at the first church dance of the new semester. She said, “I noticed his car, a baby blue Corvette Stingray—he must be going places.” And so they danced and dated and she quit wearing high heels so they were equal in height and six weeks later they were engaged. And six months later they were married by a slightly senile farmer in Sanpete County, in a temple on a hill while their parents sat outside on a park bench and waited. Married with a capital M in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the State of Utah. They were madly in love, hormonally anyway, and so they began their adventure in marriage with a small “m”, young and naïve, which is probably best in cases like this.

“And they twain shall be one” …or so all the Sunday School lessons on marriage seemed to espouse. Is that what marriage is really about? Two separate people with different personalities, interests and views becoming one amalgamation. Is oneness and sameness the goal? What if he likes life in the fast lane and she likes to stop and smell the roses or at least to take pictures of them? What if he likes living on the edge and she likes staying securely behind the yellow line? What happens when he is a night owl and she is a morning person or he prefers his food hot and spicy and she…well you are starting to get the picture. There is no way two different people become one. That is biblical baloney, just like the rules about not wearing an outfit made out of two different types of fabric or eating a tuna fish sandwich with a glass of milk. It’s passé. It’s metaphor. That is not what marriage is, marriage with a small “m,” the marriage that poets sing about. Two people don’t become one person, except for those couples on FaceBook who think it is ok to share an account. No, marriage does not mean becoming one. I have been “M”arried long enough to know that.

So what is marriage? I think I have a definition that even SCOTUS can get behind. Marriage is about sharing. Marriage is sharing your life or even part of your life with another person. Sharing everything. Sharing your home, sharing raising your children, sharing your heart, sharing your joys, sharing your pain, sharing your name, sharing your fears, sharing your money, sharing your bed, sharing it all, whatever your orientation. It is having one person in your life that you can share the sickness and the health, the richer or poorer, the triumphs and the failures, “til death do you part or for time and all eternity—I guess we will see.

They have been married for a long time now, especially by millennial standards. He still thinks she is beautiful and she still is attracted to guys who drive in the fast lane. They know each other now and they aren’t as young or naïve as they once were. She knows how important his work is and he knows how important her art and books are. And they both have learned how to share and they have shared almost everything. They have shared the birth of children and the deaths of parents. They have shared the joy of toddlers and the angst of teenagers. They have shared a small window to a delivery room watching their twin granddaughters being born, grasping onto their mother’s hand and then taking their last breath and they shared the hot tears that followed. They have shared the accolades of successful business ventures and the closing of doors on those not meant to be. They have shared the flu, hotel rooms stuffed full of children, broken down cars and first-class flights. They have shared child rearing and in-laws. They have shared the stares of people counting the kids on flights to Disneyland and in crowded restaurants. They have watched ballet recitals and Broadway plays together. They have listened together to late night phone calls from the police and excited phone announcements of “It’s a boy” and “It’s a Girl.” They have shared sitting up all night in hospital emergency rooms and the anxiety of surgical waiting rooms. They have shared the sweet letters from grateful employees and the bitter gossip of neighbors. They share the title to houses and cars and the stock in companies and the stress of jointly filed tax returns. And they have shared the bills and the paychecks and the dings on credit reports and car doors. And now they share the fruits of their labors. They have shared the care and shaving and driving of an adult son who also shares their bathroom and date nights and heartspace. And late at night, they have shared their bodies, their love, their dreams and fears and somehow they have made a marriage—with a small” m”—the marriage that the poets write about.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the words, “Play nice,” but I am sure it was when I was toddling around the house. I vaguely remember being told to “Be kind” while playing with cousins in the sandbox. I am sure by the time I reached Kindergarten it had been engrained in me by my mother, my aunts, my Nana, by Sunday School teachers, treat others like you want them to treat you. By elementary school, I had learned to not exclude people, if someone wanted to play Jacks or Tether Ball you simply made the circle a little bigger or waited a little longer for your turn. It wasn’t until Junior High that I learned that everyone didn’t “Play Nice” and everybody wasn’t always “Kind.” Sometimes, there are “Mean Girls” and “Mean Guys” who don’t open their circle big enough for everyone to join.

Fortunately, junior high school is just a glitch in normal human development and most of us look back and cringe at the whole experience. We are embarrassed about how we may have been treated or even worse how we might have treated others. Life marches forward and we grow up and become mature adults who reach out, are inclusive and seek to understand. We become the mothers and fathers, aunts and teachers, reminding the next generation to “Be Kind.” Which is what I feel I like I need to do in response to the events of the past week in my community. I want to remind everyone to “Play Nice.” Lately, I feel like I am stuck watching a bad reality T.V. show, waiting to see who will be voted off the mountain; voted off by the very people who claim to “care for the soul.”

Two current events go hand in hand, and they both need to be called out for their ludicrousness. I am speaking of the Press Conference where the LDS church claimed to support non-discrimination laws while in the same breath proposing legislation to protect the rights of the “the religious” to continue to discriminate in the public square. The second is the excommunication proceedings of John Dehlin for acts of apostasy concerning his stance on LGBT rights and supporting Ordain Women. Both of these events have been sufficiently and thoroughly covered by the press, bloggers and a lot of random Facebook posts. So why can’t I, in the oft quoted cliché, “leave it alone?” Because both of these events have a ripple effect that impacts real people, real people whom I care about. Real people who should not be forced to live in the borderlands.

John Dehlin has chosen to put himself in the public spotlight for his own personal reasons; you may or may not agree with these reasons, but in so doing he has put the entire church disciplinary process under public scrutiny. Most outside the culture have been surprised to hear that such an archaic process till exists in the twenty first century. This is because in the majority of cases, these disciplinary courts are kept private and confidential. Mercifully, excommunications (what a vile word) are no longer announced over the pulpit like they were during my teenage years—where victims become the subject of gossip for years to come. However, for every John Dehlin or Kate Kelly there are thousands of others who suffer the shame and alienation of these sexist, abusive courts, Shame is still a powerful psychological motivator for those who are in power Public shaming is held over the head of the community as a method of control.

Fortunately, John Dehlin has had the support of hundreds of people this past weekend as he faced disciplinary action. Many waited outside the church holding candles and signs and offering support. However, the vast majority of LDS members face their accusers alone. As has often been touted in the Dehlin case, church courts are “a local matter.” This is what makes the process so insidious. This means that a person struggling with any number of human frailties is judged by a group of “friends” and neighbors with equal human frailties as to their worthiness to be part of the “in” group. Just like Junior High—on steroids—and even crazier and crueler! Should you be “excommunicated” you are then forced out of your social network and church participation in a public manner. Ask any deacon passing the sacrament…who is part of the “in” group and who has been forced to wear the Scarlet Letter of shame? All in the name of a loving God, behind closed doors in a “court of love.” I call it bullshit!! I call it bullying!

So, many may say of the John Dehlin matter or the Anti-anti-discrimination legislation being debated by on the hill—“not my circus, not my monkeys”—except that is where we are all wrong. It is our circus! It is our community and it is our people, people we love. It has become a sideshow for the rest of the nation to point fingers and laugh at, because it is not kind, it is not good and it is time for this to end. All this casting aside of humans in the name of God, all this marginalization, while shaking hands and patting each other on the back and calling each other brother and sister is hypocritical. Starting feel good campaigns saying, “I will sit by you” while supporting legislation with the words “except when it interferes with my deeply held religious beliefs” is Orwellian Doublespeak. Both the recent news conference and the Dehlin court are black eyes for Utah, both are absurd and both should be left in the past.