Tales of Indiana

This post is totally out of order, but...

While I was in Chicago, I got to go AWOL for an afternoon! My niece Heather picked me up, and we drove to West Lafayette, Indiana to spend Heather's birthday with Michelle and her baby Matthew. We had a lovely time, chatting and laughing and telling stories. Taking turns holding Matthew. Eating the wonderful food that Michelle prepared.

I was hoping for some pictures from Heather--see, I hardly ever have pictures because I am a horrible photographer. I usually even break the camera--I am not satisfied, apparently, with just ruining pictures. So I rely on others to supply me with pictures. That is not fair, I know, but seems to be my reality.

So, here is a picture that I was happy to see and borrow from Heather's blog--isn't she a pretty birthday girl?


And here is a picture of me and a very cute boy!

Two Random Stories

Story 1

My friend Lysa is in Las Vegas for the weekend. She is having a little reunion with some of her high school friends. I find this totally amazing, but in Lysa's class at Provo High there were 13 girls who were really close friends (THIRTEEN!! GIRLS!!!) and they have stayed reasonably close through the years...thirty-two years to be exact...since they graduated. That is an amazing feat of friendship, I think!!

So one friend, Debbie, turns 50 this weekend--the rest will have turns at 50 later this year. Debbie's husband, in honor of her big day, decided to get all the girls together. All 13 of them. About 6 live in Utah, the rest are scattered around the U.S. He is flying them all to Vegas for the weekend. He is paying for their hotel rooms. He got them tickets to his show, which is where they are right now, I am guessing. Lysa says they have all been as excited as...well, as High School girls! E-mailing each other to ask "What are you going to wear?" and stuff like that.

I am taking guesses about who Debbie's husband is.

Story 2

In other news, viola friends from Kentucky/Texas and New Zealand are HERE for this weekend. Claudine invited Bruce and I (and Josie, too, but she made other plans with her friends) out to dinner at Little Italy so we could all visit. Tomorrow, there will be master classes and concerts, but tonight was just for fun.

When Claudine was telling me how to get to Little Italy, I didn't pay much attention. Maybe I paid no attention at all! Because I know where it is, after all. So, since Patrick needed a car, he and I drove to Bruce's work, and Patrick took the Sunfire, and I waited for Bruce and we headed for our destination.

We drove into the right place, but there was no Little Italy. We had no cell phone, and the phone book that was in the car just sliding around in an annoying way--that I threw away about a week ago. So we drove to a near-by motel, where the clerk informed me most politely that Little Italy had moved to the corner of University and Center. I should have listened to Claudine!

So we were late. But, wow! Nancy and Andrew won't believe it! It is in probably four times the space, with lovely murals. And all the tables were full, pretty much constantly. There are two musicians, a harpist and a vocalist, who take turns performing and sometimes perform together. David Dalton is friends with the owners, so he came out and visited with our table. The vocalist brought her song sheet over and let us choose what she would sing. It was great. The food was as good as ever. It was fun to listen to Dwight's stories, and Donald told a great story about the Holocaust Requiem which he recently performed with the Wellington Symphony. It was a great night. But quite the change in the physical space of the restaurant!

Art Institute of Chicago

I was in Chicago on Feb. 18-22 for the annual convention of the Music Library Association, and since it was wintery, cold and blustery, mostly stayed in the hotel. But on Saturday afternoon, we had about a two-hour break, so Janet, Annie, Anita and I hopped in a cab to take advantage of "Free in February" at the Art Institute of Chicago.

I had two favorite exhibits of what we saw--we didn't really have enough time at our disposal to do justice to this fabulous museum--but of what we saw, I really liked the impressionism exhibit upstairs, and the miniatures exhibit downstairs. Annie was kind enough to take a couple of pictures of me.

Here I am with a Renoir:


This is called "Two Sisters" and was painted in 1881. I really like it! The girls in the picture aren't really sisters, but I don't mind imagining that they are, and I thought the colors were fabulous. I think this was my favorite of all the paintings I saw, truthfully.

And here I am with a Monet:


This is "Water Lilies." It was my favorite of the Monets on exhibit; but I liked all the water pictures, with their lovely shades of blue and pink and violet. I wanted to have a picture taken with a Monet especially for Patrick, because of all the things he did and saw in France, Monet's Garden was among the most memorable for him.

When Janet said that she and Anita were going downstairs to see the miniatures, while Annie and I stayed upstairs in the Impressionism Gallery, Annie and I both thought that miniatures meant really small paintings. We were surprised to see that they are very small furniture in tiny sets that were created in a very realistic manner. My favorite was the cathedral--it was so awesome. Annie didn't get a very good picture of it because of lighting and other technical difficulties. But here are some of its stain glass windows:

In the picture, it looks like an ordinary big stain glass window, but was really only about 8 inches tall or so. I loved the cathedral's little organ and all the meticulously precise pipes!

Here is Annie's hand next to one of the displays, just to give you an idea of the size.

I have always been a big fan of dollhouses, and these were really amazing dollhouse-size rooms. If the rooms were leading to the outside, the doors or windows would show you a yard also to scale, and there might be stairs leading up and other details to lend them a sense of reality...well, they were quite wonderful. If you go to Chicago, I highly recommend taking in the Art Institute, and especially the Thorne Miniature Room.

We were thinking about taking a cab back to the hotel, but Annie tripped off to take pictures of things near the skating rink, and we followed her. It was really not so bad, with the wind at our backs, so we actually also got some fresh (really fresh!) air and exercise as we walked back down (or perhaps up) Michigan Avenue on a lovely Saturday afternoon.


I asked Annie to take this last picture--I am always interested in random signs that are unusual. Like in Australia, I wished we had taken pictures of the "Give Way" signs. So in Chicago, I really wanted a picture of the "beware of falling ice" sign.

Because that is just not a sign you see every day! She missed the one with that exact wording, but this one is close enough--both kinds of signs lined the sidewalks near the hotel.

Friday the 13th

If you think this is going to be a post about what an unlucky day Friday the 13th is, you are so wrong. That may be true of some Friday the 13ths, but not of this one. This has been a very lucky day--more than lucky; a day of great blessings.

Let me back up to the 12th. I had way too much going on. Besides ordinary work pressures, I was worried about the 13th because Kelli was getting married that day. That shouldn't be something to be overly concerned about, but when you have watched a much-loved daughter get married more than once and have her heart broken each time, you can't help but approach the day with some amount of worry. Hopefulness, yes, and happiness, yes, but a modicum of worry as well. And Josie had a huge assignment or two due at school on the 13th, and as you must all know, Josie and homework are not the best of friends, so I was worried about how she was going to be able to get it all done.

Added to that was Abra's cry for help via Facebook. Her babysitter for Friday had fallen through, and if she is to be independent and strong, she needs to go to work. If she has no babysitter, she can't do that. I really wanted to help her, but I am a thousand miles away. Nancy really wanted to help her, but she is thousands and thousands of miles away. Kelli really wanted to help her, but she had distance and a wedding day to worry about.

My advice to Abra was to calm down and pray about it. Meanwhile, Nancy and I did what we could. Even David pitched in and contacted Alberta friends. You see, Abra doesn't have a phone, and so Facebook was her only way of asking for assistance. I had Facebook, e-mail and a phone.

All our leads turned up blank. I didn't want to give up, and was still praying hard, although I did give some advice about possible ways to handle the situation if nothing worked out babysitter-wise. But I really, really wanted it to work out. I really, really, want Abra to know that she can do these hard things: she doesn't need someone to bail her out and then walk all over her like the rug under his feet.

I had contacted all my best friends and cousins in or near the community Abra lives in. The responses I got were all kind and considerate, but let's face it, my generation are all grandmothers and kind of out of the babysitting loop. Just as Patrick and I were leaving campus at the end of the day, I had an e-mail from my dear cousin Lavon, with a suggestion of a person who could babysit, and Abra's new bishop and RS pres's contact information. I made sure that I sent this information to Abra's Facebook page, but I didn't know how soon she would get it, or what she would do with it, since she had no phone.

Then I went home, and we don't have long distance at home; I usually call long distance at work. So I couldn't help by making calls for Abra. So, I mentally set that problem aside, and moved on to helping Josie with getting all her homework done. Then, before going to bed, checked online to see if Abra had received the message. She had, but it was late, and she had just arrived home from work, and her children were in bed, so how could she contact any of the phone numbers anyway. She couldn't.

I went to bed, where I had to advise myself to calm down and pray. I am much better at dispensing such advice than following it, even if I am the one advising myself! The next day needed a solution to Abra's problem, Kelli to have a good wedding experience, me to go to BYU and finish up some loose ends of work, me to go to UVU and teach a class, including making a bunch of photocopies since I was handing out a take-home midterm--I had a pretty sleepless night, but did arrive at some conclusions. I knew that I had to get up early and go to work and do what I needed to at BYU before 7:15, when I needed to leave for UVU in time to make the copies and be prepared for the day's lecture.

I arrived at BYU at about 6:05, and walked around to the west side of the library where the early entry door is. I swiped my card. The light was RED, not green like it is supposed to be! I tried it a couple of times, but it wouldn't let me in the door. (Everyone at BYU is getting new ID cards, and I think that technically I am already supposed to have my new one, but I don't--I think they may have changed the computers to recognize the new IDs already, thus rendering mine useless on the early entry door.) I silently prayed, standing out in the cold of a winter morning at 6:10 AM. I felt that I should just stand there and wait, and someone would let me in.

I stood and waited. No one was coming. I started the negative self-talk "This is stupid. No one else is going to come to work this early. It's too cold. You should just give up." But I still felt a strong urging to wait there. At about that moment, a man came walking toward me. He walked toward the door without saying a word to me. I stepped out of the way of the card reader, and said, "Will you let me in with your card?" And he said "Yes."

That was the conversation--and I have no clue who this man was. I totally did not recognize him. As we went inside, he asked me no questions, he just let me in. I felt silly, so I told him my idea about why my card didn't work. He said very little. I walked away saying "Thank you, thank you, thank you." One small miracle to start the morning right.

I went to my office, did the necessary work, and saw that it was 7:00 AM. I had pre-determined to call Abra's new RS president and explain her situation. I called and got a message machine. I left a long message, and hung up. I felt a strong urgency again, this time to look at Lavon's message again, and get the phone number for the person, Kristi, who might be interested in babysitting. I called her. She answered on the first ring, in a bright, chipper, fully-awake voice. She listened to what I had to say, and said, "Of course, I would be happy to help." This is a person who is fully a stranger to me, a person who Lavon doesn't even personally know! Another small miracle!

I called back the RS president, explained that we had found a solution, thanked her for listening to my long messages, and went online in hopes that I could actually talk to Abra and let her know that she was in business. And miracle of miracles, she was online! I told her the information about Kristi. Then I called Kristi back, so she would know that Abra knew that she would help. Kristi said "Oh, I am so glad you called back! I forgot to get your daughter's name and your grandson's name!" I told her their names--DUH! What a thing to forget to tell her! And she said, "Now you can go teach your class and not be distracted wondering what happened." I totally like this girl even though I have never met her. She is a sweet, sweet person!

My class at UVU went well; I went home and got some work done; Dad and I drove in and picked up Grandma and Grandpa and met Kelli and Johnathan and his family and the bishop (and Rose) at their church, and had ourselves a wedding. Kelli and Johnathan seemed pretty calm and serene and the bishop had good advice, and I felt good about what was happening. We all went to eat at a polynesian restaurant owned by the parents of one of Bruce's friends from work, and sent Kelli and Johnathan off on their honeymoon.

We came home, bringing Rose with us to spend the weekend with her dad, and I went downstairs to the computer because I wanted to know how Abra's day went. She had posted a message that Kai had a wonderful day, that he was so happy at the babysitter's that he didn't want to go home. When Kai is happy, it is easier for Abra to be calm and happy! I looked to see if Abra was online, so I could talk to her about the day. And that is when she told me the kicker, which brought tears to my eyes after what seemed to me to be a day of miracles. Abra said that when it was time to leave, and she was trying to pay Kristi, Kristi said, "No, you don't need to pay me. I decided when I hung up the phone after talking to your mom that I was not going to take any money for this, because I had a strong impression that I was answering somebody's prayers." And Abra cried, and Kristi hugged her. And I am crying again while typing this, because so many people were praying.

Our family was praying, Kelli's family was praying, Nancy's family was praying, some of our friends and relatives were praying. And Kristi got to be an answer to all those prayers. What a wonderful Friday the 13th it was!

Hindsight is 20/20

Since my daughters have been blogging for the past few years, I have learned a lot of things about them that I wish I had known sooner. I have learned small details and really big serious situations that I was clueless about at the time they happened. And I wish that I had been more in the know, because maybe I could have helped them to have a better day, or a better week, or a better year...or a better life.

On Saturday I learned something that I wish I had known about 43 years ago. I learned that the song "Hi Lili Hi Lili Hi Lo" came from an academy award winning score! Indeed. The feature film "Lili" won the academy award for best score in 1954, and this song was the headliner. Why does this even matter?

Well...it's a long story...as a child, I was blessed with a fabulous singing voice, and had parents who wanted to see all their children develop their talents. My sister Arlene and I both sang a lot; we sang in festivals as soloists and in duets, and we just pretty much sang all the time. In 1965, when I was almost eight, my Mom was so excited because a voice teacher, Mrs. Legge, was going to come to Taber one day a week and teach voice lessons. She signed us up.

Mrs. Legge was a real, conservatory trained teacher...not just someone who liked to sing and wanted to make money on the side, like you might expect in a small town like ours. We had so much fun at voice lessons! All of us from Taber who took lessons from Mrs. Legge participated in an operetta, Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel." Mom sewed angel costumes and these fabulous skirts, pink for me and blue for Arlene, for our costumes as gingerbread children.

Sometime in the Spring of 1966, there was some competition that we all had to prepare for. I don't remember what I sang--it was no big deal to me. I loved to perform, and I never got stage fright. (Yes, I know--some of you are wondering if this is the same person as the present person I am! I wish I knew how I did it back then!) I was actually probably pretty excited about singing for a big important audience.

This competition was kind of like the American Idol of 1966 eqivalent, only Canadian. They chose a top male and female vocalist for our province. Mrs. Legge was THRILLED, because two of her students were chosen: the male was Kim Hall, and the female was me. As winners, we were given an assigned song to prepare to sing on national TV. Can you just imagine how excited my mom was that her child was chosen?

Now here's the bad part: the song I was assigned to sing was "Hi Lili Hi Lili Hi Lo." I was MORTIFIED! Like, how embarrassing to sing THAT baby song. I knew it really well, because it was on on the Shari Lewis "Hi Kids!" album that we had. I had been listening to that album my whole life, until I got to be a big kid. I mean, really, that baby album?

I was the youngest child in my family, and my brother Bruce and sister Colleen were teenagers; they knew the cool music, and that was what I was listening to now, at the ripe old age of eight. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Herman's Hermits...I was listening to cool stuff, not silly Lamb Chop and Wing Ding and Hush Puppy.

So, AS IF I was going to go on national television and sing some stupid baby song! Seriously, that was probably the dumbest song on the whole stupid Shari Lewis album...thus went my thinking. And so I told my mom I wouldn't do it. She was shocked and disappointed and probably had quite a few sleepless nights over the way I was throwing away a fantastic once-in-a-lifetime opportunity...but she wasn't surprised, because I was not the easiest child to raise!

Mom told Mrs. Legge that I wouldn't do it, and they should let the runner-up sing the song. Mrs. Legge was horrified. She said, "Oh, let's just have her prepare the song, and on the day, she'll do it." My mom said, "You don't know how stubborn she is. She might prepare the song, but then on the day she WON'T do it, and they will have no one to sing the song. I am sorry--I want her to do it, too, but she has made up her mind, so you'd better tell them to have the runner-up do it."

So I lost my one shot at fame and fortune. I felt like a winner; I was really proud of myself for getting out of having to sing that song on TV. How dumb was that?

And then I find out, just on Saturday, that "Hi Lili Hi Lili Hi Lo" was an Oscar-winning song! It wasn't just a Shari Lewis song for little kids, it was a way-classy song. What if I had known that? Would that have appealed to my snobbery enough? I hope it would have.

Maybe my mom told me, but I was just too stubborn to care. I don't actually remember what she said to me; I know she tried really, really hard to convince me to cooperate. But I wouldn't listen. I, in all my eight year old wisdom, thought I knew better.

And now, I just wish I had known then what I know now. And I wish that I had known enough to recognize a spectacular opportunity and be grateful for it!

Alias

I have an alias.

Not my maiden name; not one of the words instead of grandmother that my grandchildren call me: Naunie (which should really be नानी -- usually transliterated as naanii), Nana or Grammy.

It's Molly. I bet you never knew!

You can blame it on Taco Bell. I occasionally go there to get a double beef burrito for 89 cents, if I am really hungry. They used to assign you a number, "That'll be number 28." I liked that. If there were a lot of people waiting, and they called out "Twenty-seven!" then you knew you were next.

But apparently most people don't like numbers; they prefer names.

That is okay if your name is Julie. Everyone knows how to say that; everyone knows how to spell that.

But my name is Myrna. And people can't quite wrap their minds around that. There aren't many Myrnas around. The people at Taco Bell can hardly say it, and they certainly can't spell it. Once they do spell it, they surely can't figure out how to pronounce it when it comes time to say it again.

I struggled with it for a long while. I even told them that I wished they would just go back to numbers.

Then one day, my son Patrick said, "Just make up a name." After all, they don't say "What is YOUR name?" They just say "What name would you like us to call?" So, that is permission to tell them anything, isn't it.

So now, I say "Molly." Usually it works just fine.

"What name would you like us to call?"
"Molly."
and a few minutes later: "Molly!"
We're good. We communicate.

But sometimes, if it isn't busy, they talk to me, like "That'll be right up, Molly."

And I have to remember they are talking to me! I am just waiting for someone I know to overhear, and wonder why they are calling me Molly and I am answering.

I decided on Molly in honor of my second cousin Molly. I was incredibly stupid, and didn't realize she was my cousin. Unlike my children, who accept any and all cousins as simply cousins, no matter how they are connected to our family, I thought that Molly and her sister Linda weren't really my cousins. They lived with my dad's cousin Charles and their mother, Isabelle. I thought that they were Isabelle's children from another marriage, and since she and Charles weren't married, that made them NOT my cousins. Years later, when the marriage did take place, then I guess I thought of them as step-cousins, but I was pretty much grown up by them.

One day I was chatting with my mother about this and that, and somehow this family came up in the conversation, and my strange idea about no kinship with Molly came up, and my mom stared at me like I was the stupidest person on the planet. "Myrna," she explained patiently, "Molly is your real cousin. She is Charles' daughter. You only have to look at her to know that!"

Oops. Yuppers. On reflection, Molly is very much my cousin.

And I am very sorry for not feeling or behaving more cousinly toward Molly and Linda. Therefore, my alias. And upon occasion, when I go to Taco Bell, and they ask me what name to call, I think of Molly. And I shamelessly use her name, which I happen to like. It's nice to think about her for a moment or two.