Gravel with the Kids
I had sixty tons of gravel brought to my home in two dump truck loads. There is so much mud around my place that sixty tons probably won’t be enough. The dump trucks left the gravel in two big piles. And they were big piles, especially when you stand in front of one of them with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Levan, where I live, is a small country town where everyone seems to know how to take care of themselves. The people have big pickups and trucks, trailers and tractors, front loaders and backhoes—everyone, that is, except me. I have a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
I know that most men in town would have borrowed a front loader of some type from a neighbor and made short work of the gravel. My problem was that I didn’t know anyone with a front loader and I didn’t want to go begging around. Instead I thought I would just dig in with a shovel and wheelbarrow and see what I could do. It ends up you can do a lot with a shovel and wheelbarrow—it just takes more time.
Some may see the extra time to get the job done as a drawback big enough to go begging around for a front loader. If I had a deadline to meet I might see it that way also, but I didn’t. And as it turns out, the extra time it took me to get the job done was well spent. I have eight children. One of them is a teenage boy just perfect for helping on a job like this. I asked Rory, my 15-year-old, if he would come out and help. He wasn't the picture of enthusiasm, but he agreed to help. I didn’t have any idea how the job would go. I just thought we would work for two hours and see how far we get.
Clorinda, my nine-year-old, came running out of her own accord. She wanted to help and took the rake and spread the gravel I brought in the wheelbarrow. She enjoyed being out with us and listened to our talk and contributed to the conversation now and again. I didn't know how long she would last, but I would let her help while she was able and willing. Jory, my five-year-old son, came running out too. Short of beating him there was no way I could have stopped him from helping in his own fashion. He came to the job with all the enthusiasm in the world. He grabbed a plastic shovel at first and tried to take individual scoopfuls to where Clorinda was with the rake. He eventually found his Tonka Toy dump truck and would fill up the bed and push it over to the dumping area. Finally he found a shovel with a broken handle and helped Rory and I fill the wheelbarrow. His energy and enthusiasm was inspiring. He worked the entire two hours. It was quite a stretch for his attention span.
Rory was a real pleasure to work with. He is a teenager, just on the edge of getting his driver’s license, whose world is getting larger than the one his Dad used to fill. Lucky for me he is still willing to talk to his Dad at times and that is what he did the entire two hours we worked together. We would fill the wheelbarrow scoop by scoop, each of us in our own rhythm, and he would be telling me about his life. Then, when the barrow was full and I wheel it to the dumping spot Rory would put his shovel down too and walk with me so that he could keep talking to me. I almost held my breath for fear of scaring him away. What a pleasant experience that was for me. The blisters on my hands and the ache in my back weren’t troublesome to me—I recognized them as a by-product of a wonderful activity that put me in a situation where communication with my children, especially one of my teenage children, happened naturally and beautifully.
Across the street a young construction contractor was building his own house. While I was shoveling gravel and wheeling the wheelbarrow he was driving a front loader around pushing the earth around the foundation of his home. I suppose I could have approached him about how much it he would charge to help me spread my gravel. It would have taken all of 20 minutes to get the job done with that machine instead of the many hours it was going to take me with a shovel. But the truth is that I was actually afraid he was going to come over and offer to help. I was afraid because I would have had a hard time turning him down without seeming crazy and his help would have robbed me the wonderful time I was having with my kids—that wonderful kind of time that you can only have when it happens unplanned. He didn’t come offer to help and even towards the end of the job when I was exhausted I wasn’t sorry. My kids were still there and still talking at the end. It was the sweetest hard work I had ever done.
Books the Family Read in 2005
For fun I decided to keep track of all the books the family read this year. Here is the list of books read by someone in the family this year (I wish I would have kept track of the author's too):
- On the Beatch
- Pastoral
- Indigo's Star
- Sallies Crossing
- Yokota Officer's Club
- A Gathering of Days
- John Diamond
- Master and Commander
- View from Saturday
- Sang Spell
- Inkheart
- Life of PI
- Harry Potter--Order of the Phoenix
- Harry Potter--Half Blood Prince
- Ella Enchanted
- High Country
- Lake Woebegone
- Dog Friday
- Diary of a Fairy God MOther
- Surviving the Applewhites
- Dog Friday
- In Flander's Fields
- Project Mulberry
- The Amber Cat
- Pride and Prejudice
- Aragon
- Harry Potter--Prisoner of Azkaban
- Raggety Ann
- Because of Winn Dixie
- Matilda
- Sign of the Beaver
- Steal Away Home
- Project Mulberry
- Rodgina
- How to Eat Fried Worms
- Family Raised on Sunshine
- Elvest
- Every Woman a Homemaker
- Litle House on Prairie
- Little House in th Woods
- Little HOuse on Plum Creek
- Farmer Boy
- Redwall
- Dante's Inferno
- Canterbury Tales
- As You Like It
- Einstein Factor
- Secret Language of the Mind
- Moving to Stillness
- Wuthering Heights
- Chaos Theory
- The Two Towers
- Return of the King
- Book of Mormon
- A Rhetroic for Fiction
- Wich World
- Web of Witch World
- Year of the Unicorn
- Once Upon a Time
- Peace Like a River
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Huckleberry Finn
- MacBeth
- Hamlet
- Heart of Darkness
- Antigone
- Legacy
- If You Forget I'll Remember
- Sabriel
- Lirael
- Guitar Book
- Lots of Short Stories
- Cinderella
- Beauty and the Beast
- Cam Janson
- One Monster After the Other
74 books! Not bad.
A Snow Day
When I was a kid my dad used to take us for outdoor recreation all the time. There were cookouts and campouts and river trips and just daytrips to various natural sites of interest. Unfortunately this wonderful part of my childhood hasn’t been passed on to my children. I’m not sure why. In 20 years of raising eight children I have been taken them camping twice. But it isn’t like I neglect my children. We do many things together, but these things don’t include the outdoor activities of my childhood.
I guess a little nostalgia got into me on Saturday because I took four of my five younger children sledding. My 15 year old came along to help me out. We drove up the mile lane next to our home to a hill that sits at the end of lane where the road Ts off . It’s a pretty sorry sledding hill, but it’s the only place I know of. Between the weeds and sagebrush there is a little trail going up the hill made my four-wheelers. It’s plenty steep enough for one of those $3.00 plastic saucers to get up to speed with a rider or two. The problem is the bottom—after leveling out a little there comes another steep incline into the road. This would be much of a problem except that there is a little ditch about a foot deep beside the road and the road itself is gravel and mud. There is a chance that the kids won’t slide all the way to the final incline to the road.
Off goes nine-year-old Clory for the first run. She has a fun run and doesn’t make it to the final incline. Then off goes seven-year-old Lory. She stops right on the edge of the little incline, but then with a giggle she gives a little jerk of her body and slides down the incline and crashes into the bank of snow and mud that fills the ditch. She wasn’t going fast and thinks its fun. Next little five-year-old Jory scoots on down the hill. He flies over the final incline, hits the muddy snow bank where the saucer stops and he does several of those horizontal rolls out into the road. He looks up at me with wide eyes and I’m wondering if there are going to be tears. Then he grins and with an exuberant yell he runs back up the mountain.
I can see that something needs to be done about the bottom of the run. Someone is going to get hurt. I could call the whole thing off, but then I would the saddest kids in Juab County. Instead I go home and get a snow shovel. When I come back the kids are still making runs, but they are dragging their feet at the bottom or bailing out of the saucer at the end. This is ruining a perfectly fine run. I shovel snow into the ditch so there isn’t a sudden stop at the end. Clory’s next run works perfectly except that skids out onto the gravely, muddy road. This isn’t good for the saucer.
Rory, my 15 year old begins shoveling snow onto the road to give more sliding room at the end. Lory comes scooting down the hill, misses the usual path on the final incline and crashes into the bank of snow giving herself quite a whiplash and hitting her back on the ridge of snow. Ow. If that had been me that crash would have ended the outing right there. Lory cries a little and moans and asks why she had to miss the path, but she does all this as she heads back up the hill for another run.
Rory makes adjustments to the angle of the snow path going into the road and I stand at the point that Lory left the main trail to help keep the next rider on track.
Finally we start to get it right. The kids come shooting down the hill, level off, hit the final incline, and then scoot out across the road to the point where our hand made snow trail ends and they crunch to a stop on the gravel. We did have a crash or two when they missed the main trail on one side or the other, but Rory was there to catch them.
We tried riding the snow shovel down the hill, but had a hard time keeping it pointed down hill. It was fun anyway. Before I knew it we had been there for three hours and it was time to go home. On the way to the van there was a massive snowball fight with all the young kids against Rory. In spite of being outnumbered Rory had the snow shovel and was able to do massive damage. We finally got home where we ate homemade bread and drank hot chocolate. It was a perfect end to a great morning!
Been Awhile
So it has been awhile since I have posted. Funny how priorities change from time to time. I have been working hard on my web site. You can see it at
Taekwondo-Toad I even put up a bulletin board although no one has noticed that yet. Gotta love taekwondo.
I only have seven children at home now. My oldest left for his mission. He is going to the Dakotas. He's in the missionary training center right now. He will arrive in South Dakota in February. I understand it is a little cool up there at this time of year. We got our first letter from him the other day. We read it together as a family. He hasn't been gone a week, but we were all excited. It was a nice letter. He'll be gone two years. His little brothers and sisters will really miss him. I will too.
I recently added six more chickens and six guinea hens to my collection at home. It's fun to see them running around the back yard. The roosters are beautiful. The guinea hens are stupid, but funny. I'm looking forward to getting some rabbits and another goat. It's fun to go home to my farm life after dealing with the telecommunications business all day.
Just Because it Rings Doesn't Mean I Have to Answer
I’ve always thought I like people in general. I enjoy a good joke and a good conversation, but still, in the end, I think I’m anti-social. I get this because of my response to phones. I cringe when my phone rings—especially my mobile phone. I’ve never gotten over the discomfort of people being able to reach me in places I have previously enjoyed solitude. Whether I am in line at the bank lost in my own thoughts or in the car during my daily commute to or from the office enjoying a book on tape when that phone rings-- I cringe. I don’t want to answer. How dare someone interrupt what I’m doing when they aren’t even in my presence. Most people seemed pleased when their phone rings. They answer quickly as if they are afraid the person calling will hang up. They answer loudly as if the caller is deaf or as if they want all the strangers standing around to know that somebody loves them enough to call them. Me? I always check first to make sure it’s someone I want to talk to or at least someone I have to talk to (boss at work who knows I have a cell phone that he is paying for so that he can reach me anywhere). Then I answer quietly because I don’t want intrude on the others around me with my personal conversation with a person they can’t hear. I will not hesitate to hang up if I get into traffic or if it is my turn in the line I have been waiting in. I will not talk to two people at once and the one on the phone always loses and one calling on the second line always loses.
At home it is much easier. Since normally I am home after work hours I turn my mobile phone off. If perchance someone at work wants to reach me after hours they have to call my home phone. Why? Because after work hours I won’t don’t want to discuss work. If someone needs me badly enough they can call my home phone. Of course I don’t answer my home phone. Why? Because I am usually busy at home on personal projects and don’t like to be interrupted by outsiders. My eight children have picked up on this a little. When the phone rings and there is no scurry to answer. They do not feel obligated to answer the phone just because it is ringing. They will go look at the caller ID to see if it is someone they want to talk to, but if they don’t recognize the name or feel an attachment to the name on the screen they let it go to the message machine. I often won’t even look at the screen. I will just wait to see if I recognize the voice. If I do and it is a family member I will often pick up during their message. If it isn’t family or an expected call I will let the machine take the message and then call back later when it is convenient or necessary.
I know this sounds like I have a disdain toward people, but I really don’t. I just have a disdain toward the interruption telephones create in my life. I enjoy talking face to face with people. I like making eye contact with the bank teller or fast food worker and catching the name of the checkout lady. Recently I chatted for 300 miles with a friend who was traveling with me. No, people are fine, but the idea that I have to answer someone who is not present and has no idea what I might be doing at the moment irks me. I will not become a slave to a tool that just happens to ring. Thank heavens for the ignore button and the answering machine.
Story -- A Home Birth Story
For pictures of Story's home birth click
hereAt 1:30 am on April 27, 2005 my wife awoke me with these words, “Unless you want to deliver the baby yourself you better call the midwife and have her here in thirty minutes. She used rather stern words to bring me out of my sleep, but I learned later that she was in the middle of a contraction. I got up and called our midwife. It’s something of a luxury to call someone at 1:30 am with complete authority and having every moral right. Joyce picked up on the second ring sounding eager and ready. She asked some initial questions that she had to ask and then said she would be right over.
Barbara had gotten through her contraction and reminded me that I needed to get Clorinda up. Clorinda is our eight-year-old who has been present at all three births that followed hers. We never planned for her to be at these births, but she was always insistent and seemed to take them very well. Also she seemed to be a comfort to her mother in some small, but important way by being present. I had difficulty in waking her and by the time she was conscious Autumn, our six-year-old, had also woken and was determined that she was going to be a part of this also.
We filled the tub up because Barbara seems to prefer water births and got all the birthing supplies out and ready. Barbara was already in the tub and Clorinda was perched on the side of the tub, elbows on knees, chin in hands, keeping vigil with Barbara as she went through her preparatory contractions.
Joyce arrived in about 20 minutes and gently took control of the situation. She told us that her backup, Cathy, was on her way. The girls took turns keeping lookout at the front window for Cathy’s arrival which occurred about 15 minutes later. It’s always a wonderful thing for the husband (and I’m sure for the wife also) to have the midwives arrive. I’ve been involved at all four of our homebirths, and my wife’s deliveries have been relatively straight forward, but the thought of having to help my wife by myself is an unhappy thought and one to be avoided. In the homebirths I have experienced the midwives don’t only bring their experience and expertise, they bring a sisterhood with them that fills the home and birthing experience with warmth and hope.
Joyce had checked Barbara in the tub and found her to be dilated to a 3. Barb had gotten a little too warm in the tub we all went into the bedroom. For the next hour we all chatted between Barbara’s contractions. I enjoyed getting to know the midwives and Barbara found the talk a pleasant distraction to what her body was doing. During the contractions Joyce would apply pressure to various points of Barb’s body, depending on what position Barb happened to be in—on the birthing ball, on her hands and knees, leaning against the ball, standing up—as Barbara tells me, it gets to the point where you can’t find a comfortable position.
At some point, I think about an hour-and-a-half since Barb had awakened me, we moved back into the bathroom. Barbara felt she had to sit on the toilet quite often. She had chosen the standing position now with her head against the wall and her legs spread a little so she could move her pelvis. Her contractions were much harder now and lasted longer. Things were moving along as quickly as usual with Barbara. Eventually Barb replaced the wall with me and leaned against me with her head on my chest. Barbara has never been one to take pain well. The accidental bonks and kicks and elbows that occur in a family of ten (a family of ten involved heavily with taekwondo) never go over well with her, but I have always been amazed at Barbara’s calmness and courage in childbirth. Her focus and faith that she is going to get through this is inspirational to me. I felt such a heightened love for her as I held her and did what little I could to help her through the contractions.
At two hours into this birthing experience Barbara got back into the tub and finally found an acceptable position. On previous births she had squatted in the tub, but on this birth she stretched out as straight as she could. We found a nice pillow for behind her head. Little Guppy (Autumn—she was our first water birth) asked me how long it was going to take. I referred to my experience from the other births and told her maybe 30 minutes. We were right next to Barbara and she heard my answer. She gave me a brief, but unhappy look. It was clear she wanted this over long before 30 minutes was up. And it was.
Her contractions suddenly got much more serious. I moved out of the way so that Joyce could check her. She was now a 7 with a lip of the cervix still in the way. Barb told Joyce and Cathy that she had to push now, but the midwives successfully helped her focus and breathe through the contractions instead. Twice more they did the same thing. Finally, when I don’t think they could have stopped Barbara any longer, they let her push.
This time of crisis, when the veil between life and death seems to be very thin for the mother, has always intrigued me as a defining moment. As Barbara cried out in her pain I could tell that there was no emotional baggage, no outside motive, no outside thought other than her pain. I am not trying to compare my pain to that of childbirth, but the closest I have ever come to the state of mind my wife was in at that time was during my black belt test when the tester, through an endurance test, was trying to make me quit. He had come so close to making me do so that when it was over, and I hadn’t quit, I cried openly in front of the testing board and the spectators. I knew how close I had come to quitting and it was emotionally overwhelming. That experience seemed to link me to Barbara at this of her crisis.
Clorinda, even with her experience of three other births, was distraught at her mother’s pain and hid her face in my chest. Autumn wasn’t nearly as distraught and was at the edge of the tub. “I see the baby’s head!” she yelled. That was all Clorinda needed to pull herself together and she and I stepped to the edge of the tub to see. It seemed to take forever for Barbara to push the head through (it ended up being a 14” head), but finally there was Story. Compared to the head it was a simple thing for the shoulders and body to follow. The umbilical cord was wrapped twice around the neck, but it was loose and didn’t appear to have caused any problem. This was at 4:00 am, two-and-a-half hours after Barbara had woken me.
They laid Story on Barb’s chest. He was so blue. I had never seen a baby so blue and I wondered if he was okay. The midwives showed no concern and that eased my apprehension. Story cried a little and I could hear him breathing as they cleared his nose and mouth. The placenta came out soon there after along with a lot of blood. We wrapped Story in warm towels and put the placenta in a plastic sack and I took him and the sack to the other room while the midwives worked with Barbara. It took them about 30 to 40 minutes get the bleeding controlled and had them worried. I held Story during this time in the rocking chair. He was wide away and so alert. He looked around, moved his hands and bent his fingers. Every once in a while he would cry when I moved him too fast. I could tell he wanted to nurse. Cathy came and instructed me on how to cut the cord and assisted me in doing so. She then did the well baby check and weighed and measured him. He was 9 pounds 8 ounces and 21.5 inches long. Story was by far the largest baby we had ever had.
Little Glory (age 2) and Jory (age 4) had awaken during all this. Glory came in in tears, but quit crying when she saw the baby. She sat on the bed next to me while I was holding the baby and when Cathy walked by she looked up and said in a low, but determined voice, “My baby!” Jory ran and got one of his blankets and insisted I use it or the baby. I did, but Story messed it. Jory laughed at that.
Finally Barbara was able to get back to bed and I was able to hand Story back to her. She put him to her breast and he went to work letting Barb’s uterus know that it was all over. We cleaned up and Joyce gave me instructions on how to take care of Barbara (who had lost a lot of blood) and the baby. Joyce and Cathy, both nearly strangers to me except for the intimate experience, both gave me a warm hug when they left. It was about 7:00 am then.
We had the usual rush of kids (seven others) to see the baby. As usual they tried to love Story to death. Finally I was able to get the little ones to sleep on the couch while the older boys went about their business. Barb, Story, and I were able to lie down and finally get some rest. This is the eighth time we have brought a child into the world, but the wonder and beauty of it has never waned for me.
"It's like being in the Penny"
In The Penny
In the Penny
I was standing at Lincoln's feet in the Lincoln Memorial getting a picture. Even though it was after dark the memorial was full of people. An eleven-year-old girl who I hadn’t noticed, but who was standing nearby, turned to me and said, "It's like he looking right at us, isn't it." She was a complete stranger to me, but had lively brown eyes and a look on her face that suggested she was really enjoying her visit to the Lincoln Memorial.
I said, "It sure does. I think he was the greatest American that ever lived."
She said, "It feels like I'm in penny." I gave her a puzzled look and she went on, "I used to look at the Lincoln Memorial on the back of pennies through a magnifying glass. You know you can see Lincoln in there. But now I feel like I am in the penny."
That was such a wonderful thing for an 11 -year-old girl to say. I asked if I could take a picture of her in front of the Lincoln. She smiled a little embarrassedly and said hesitantly, “I don’t think my dad would want that.” I understood and respected her answer although I was disappointed. I wanted something to remember her by. Not wanting to end our meeting yet I told I had eight kids. She asked me their ages. She wondered if I had one who was eleven like her. I found out her name was Kimberly and she was from Indiana and had three sisters. I would have enjoyed talking to this happy, intelligent Kimberly more, but her mother apparently was worried about her daughter talking to a strange man and suddenly appeared and put her arm around her and took her away. I did get a picture of her, though, when her mother was getting a picture of her in front of the Lincoln. In the picture she is looking right at my camera and smiling.
