Books Read February 2021

 Only four books this month, all fiction, two fiction for the younger reader. So a pretty lightweight reading month for me! (Rest assured, I am whittling away at three or four nonfiction books and one classic novel, so this was not all the reading I did, just all that I finished.)

1. The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey -- this was the book that Bridget recommended highly late last year, but I read the first book about Perveen Mistry, Esquire, before remembering to read this one. It was good--it is always a treat for me to spend some time in India, the land of Bollywood. This story took place in one of the little princely states that was not under British rule; so I learned things I did not know. I imagined that when the British were ruling India, the whole subcontinent was under their rule, but not so. 

2. Maloney's Magic Weatherbox by Nigel Quinlan -- this was the first book by this author, born in Ireland but living in England at this time. This book had an interesting premise, that the weather is controlled by these weathermen scattered around the world, and it was really a good story filled with thrills and chills and spills. Initially, I got off to a rocky start because I did not read the chapter headings, so I did not realize that two characters were telling the story in alternating chapters. I was thinking that the proof-reading was off, until I realized that MY reading was off--once I realized that the brother and sister were taking turns narrating, it all made sense. Still, the story would have been better if the two voices were more different--then I might have clued in even though I neglected to read the chapter headings.

3. The Isabel Factor by Gayle Friesen -- Canadian author -- B.C. author, to narrow it down more. This will be Anna's first time at summer camp without her best friend Zoe. Anna doesn't realize how much she has been in Zoe's shadow for years, and so she finally learns to know herself a bit better, with the help of Isabel, a girl who is very much an individual.

4. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear -- And now in London and Kent (and France) for the telling of this tale. Maisie Dobbs goes from being in service to Lady Rowan, to being a student at Girton College, University of Cambridge, overseas as a nurse in the great war, and then ten years into the future after she has graduated and is working as a psychologist/investigator. I learned more than I really hoped to know about how gruesome the battlefield was in France, and did not realize that horses were also conscripted into the army. I will read more of these books. (This is the book for April in book club--the one for March is A Tale of Two Cities, which is also a bit gruesome, and I am about 2/3 of the way through it. But I can only take it in small doses.)

Raymond Recreation Hall

Thanks to the Raymond Discussion Group for this piece of family history:

Roller Skating in the Rec Hall -- by Jeanne Nalder McInelly

Roller skating was a great activity for people of all ages but sometimes we forget the faithful volunteer work force behind the scene that made it happen.

First of all were the Stake President and the Councilors who gave permission for metal roller skates to carve up the beautiful varnished hard-wood floor. The basketball purists were aghast at the idea but others were for it. Fay Walker, "If roller skating ruins the floor, we'll just put in a new one."

Ted Salmon and Jerry Fawns' grandpa, Charlie Fawns, who had managed a skating rink in Lethbridge which folded, donated the big supply of boot skates. Rayo Wolf was willing to produce the whole operation: unlock the doors, run the music, skate around to help the fallen, announce "change direction", and lock up afterwards. He sponsored "club night" and helped us learn to do "edges" and backwards turns.

When it was launched in 1957, Frank and Celia Navratil accepted the call to operate the skate rental. Always cheerful, these folks greeted the skaters and fitted them with equipment for 25 cents per person. It amazes me that they served the community this way for free every Monday, Wednesday and Friday night for 27 years! In the meantime, they had 9 kids which trotted along each night and helped out. One night little Priscilla, age 4, got tired and fell asleep under the bleachers and they didn't notice her absence 'til after they got home and counted noses. Woops! Quick trip back. Priscilla, "Is it time to go home now?"

Two benches were set aside for able volunteers, Stuart Nalder and Morris Fromm who came faithfully to help tighten the laces of people's skates. These men were glad to help out for years and were a welcome addition to the fun.

The Raymond "Roll-o-Rays" were a group of roller skating dancers who practiced Monday evenings and sometimes at 6:00 a.m. weekdays if they were preparing a performance. This group entertained at big dances, festivals in Calgary and Montana and at Honored Guest parties. One year Rayo affixed tiny red and green flashlights to the bottom of the skates, turned off the house lights and we skimmed around the floor in the dark with only the little lights illuminating our formations. Deanna Fairbanks, now Hardy, was our choreographer while her boyfriend was on a mission.

As a special demonstration, Gordie Christiansen, wearing his Air Cadet uniform, thrilled the crowd when he would skate so fast that using his momentum, he could jump high over four metal chairs. The flying roller skater!

Folks came from towns all over Southern Alberta to skate in Raymond and had a great time.

That was her; this is me:

This was so much fun! We would go as a family, with the Navratils, after a day of visiting in Raymond. When I was in MIA, our ward would go to Raymond for this activity a couple of times a year--except by then, I would not go, because I never learned to skate!! And was too embarrassed to go and sit on the sidelines. When I was a child, I spent most of my time sitting on the sidelines just watching, and that was fine, but when I was a youth, I was too embarrassed by my clutziness. 

Bruce talking about his Grandma November 29, 2020

 Bruce’s younger cousin Jolene has no memories of their Grandma Duggar—she was too young. But Jolene’s mother, who is in her nineties, is determined that she will not die until Grandma Duggar’s history has been written, and she asked Jolene to do it. So Jolene called me one night to get contact information for Bruce’s siblings so she could ask them for their memories of Grandma. She was also going to ask her older siblings and other Duggar cousins. When I first asked Bruce to share memories so that I could get them to Jolene, we were in the car driving home from somewhere, and I was the one driving, so I had no way to record them or write them down! I tried to write down what I remembered, but it was not good enough. So, a few weeks later, we sat down one Sunday so that I could record him talking about his grandmother. Then I sent the recording to Jolene.

Mary Gladys O'Neal Duggar

Bruce: She lived in a alley type cul-de-sac, just off State street and 4^th south. Her house was—it had a basement that she never let us go down. The main floor had a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room and a kitchen, all very tiny. And then it had an attic with a really steep staircase, so she didn’t like us to go up there. But that was the only place we could go play, so she made sure we were very careful going up and down the stairs cause they were so steep.

She was a small lady; stood about 4’10”, 4’11’. And my mom said that when she [grandma] was born, her head would be at the tip of your fingers, and her feet would touch the palm of your hand. [Motioning] So her head was here, and her feet were here. And she had to be put in an incubator, but at the time they didn’t have an incubator, so they stuck her in a quart jar and put her in a wood-burning stove, and it was a miracle that she survived.

She was both the sweetest lady you’ve ever met or the meanest old lady that you ever met. It depends on what you did and if she caught you or not.

I don’t remember much when I was little rather than where she lived, and my mom would take us there to be babysat every now and then. But when I was in junior high, so that would make it between 60—let’s see, three years in junior high, graduated in [mentally calculating]—so it would be about 65 or 66. Grandma came to live with us, mainly because she was getting old and she had some sort of ailment that caused her body to swell up with water in the mornings. And I remember helping her get out bed, and her eyes would be so swollen that she couldn’t open them. And she couldn’t do anything for a couple of hours until it dispersed throughout her body, and then she was able to do things.

When she caught me doing something wrong, she literally kicked me in the shins so I could bend over and she could tweak my ears. She was kind of like Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies, with the way she talked and her backwoods remedies for ailments. She taught us how to make butter out of cream. We had some cream that was going bad, and so she stuck it in a quart jar and had us all sit around and shake it until it turned into butter. It wasn’t bad except we should have put salt in it; it would have tasted better.

I was told when I was born my Mom lost her southern drawl. And when I started talking, I started talking with a southern drawl. And I would come up with words I’d never heard before, and Grandma would ask me where I heard those words, ‘cause [in backwoods accent] “she never heard them words since she’s moved from Florida.”  And it would just be simple words like “down yonder” and simple slang like that.

Myrna: She probably said them, and you heard them.

Bruce: She probably said them. Oh, she was a fantastic cook as well. I just loved her Southern Fried Chicken, and other things she would come up with. Gumbo Soup. And…

Myrna: You were telling me about the earthquake? [referring to our conversation in the car that earlier time]

Bruce: Oh, yes. When we lived on—back then it was 8^th West before they changed it to 9^th West. We lived in a little house in a field, and I remember one year, we had an earthquake. And Grandma was walking across the kitchen floor—trying to walk across the kitchen floor—but a boulder or something must have rolled underneath it, because there was a buckle in the floor about a foot high, that she was trying to walk over, and it was moving as fast as she was, so she could never get over it. That was pretty funny.

And she got after us all the time because we were mischiefs. We would pile pillows up in front of the refrigerator, and climb up on a kitchen chair, on the kitchen table, across the kitchen counters, up on the fridge, and jump off. And she was afraid that we were going to break our necks.

And the last few weeks of her life, she ended up in the hospital in intensive care. And I was about 12 when she passed away. And I can remember sitting on our stairs, and my mom saying that “Grandma’s gone,” and I just looked up at her and said, “Good,” because of the way she was suffering every morning, it just broke my heart. And the way she looked, and she couldn’t do anything, it just—I was glad she was gone, ‘cause she was in a better place. And that’s about all I can remember.

Me again: A couple of weeks later, Bruce had another memory, and asked me to email Jolene to add this, so here is what I emailed to Jolene on Dec. 13.

“Bruce just said that he has no memories of Grandma ever wearing pants. She was always in a dress. And she always had a smile on her cute little face, until she was not able to smile because of the swelling. And he loved her southern cooking.”

I realized that I had not transcribed this "interview" so I am fixing that oversight!

BYU Miracle

 I don't think that I have ever blogged about this, but a person only gets so many miracles in a lifetime, so it is important to remember them and recognize them for what they are. I am sure there are many small miracles that happen that I do not even notice, but this one was big and miraculous, so I want to record it.

First some back history: some time after Nancy was born, in 1985, when we were living in Raymond, Bruce made the trip to Calgary to the US Consulate to obtain Nancy's certificate of birth abroad. He took all the required documentation with him, and for some reason we decided that he needed to take my US Green Card. Sure enough, the person he met with asked him if I had a Green Card, and Bruce said that I did. The man asked innocuously, "Do you have it with you?" Bruce said that he did. The man said, "May I see it?" And Bruce got it out, handed it to him--and he never gave it back. Which was at the time pretty shocking. (Not shocking to me now--the US can be pretty perfidious.)

So basically, this made it so I could not return to live in the US. We had only been in Canada for a couple of years; we had been back to the states and even lived there for a couple of months in 1984, so I had not done anything to forfeit the Green Card. And yet, it was forfeited. 

Obtaining a Green Card was a long and expensive process. The first time around, it took over a year. I don't remember what it cost. But in 1985, we were pretty poor, and we were also feeling pretty insecure in Raymond because we were so poor. Bruce was working here and there at this and that, and I was working as an aide at the High School, but it seems like our monthly income was around $800 per month for a family of six. Not very great. So the allure of moving back to the US was there. And now this Green Card hurdle.

So, I crossed the border as a declared visitor in 1987. Bruce drove across with the kids, and my parents drove me over to meet him. We returned to San Diego, from whence we came, but it just didn't work out. So we went to Utah, and were living in Provo, Bruce working for his dad, and my brother-in-laws chiding me for not having a job when clearly we needed the money. (Hello! I couldn't work! I had no Green Card!)

So, for me, obtaining a Green Card was always complicated by the "you are a US citizen" thing. Before they would issue a Green Card, they had to make sure that I was not already a US citizen. The first time, they had found that I was NOT a US citizen, so as we began the paper work for the second time, I hoped to speed things up by telling them that they already did that before and found I was not a US citizen, and so we could skip that part this time, but no. They insisted upon it.

I was still pretty starry-eyed back then, but I had been married to Bruce for seven years by then, and it was becoming clear to me that being a strong provider was not his forte, and that I had really wasted my time at BYU, really making no clear headway to graduating, and graduating would have been the really smart thing to do. I was beginning to appreciate how very fortunate I was that my parents had the means to provide an education for me...and how incredibly stupid I had been NOT to work really hard and graduate. I even had a very firm prompting that I was going to be the breadwinner of this family, so I NEEDED to complete my education. (I thought that I would be an early widow when I got that prompting. And Bruce constantly had health problems, so I guess that is where that thought came from. But I was not right about that--I am not a widow.)

So, there I was, in Provo, with BYU right there. I should mention that I had tried to transfer to the University of Lethbridge while we were in Raymond, but when they assessed my credits, I had next to nothing that would transfer, so it would be basically starting over. So, I wished that I could attend BYU while we were playing the Green Card waiting game. But I couldn't because I was not eligible for a Student Visa! Since I was married to an American, my only option was a Green Card. And first they were making me fill out all these forms to determine if my mother was a US citizen--my Dad was--so they could decide if I was a US citizen before they would even get to the nitty-gritty of the Green Card. 

Well, I was wishing I could go to BYU, but I never did anything like pray about it, because it was clear to me that there was no way it would happen. I was a Canadian; I needed a student visa or I couldn't become admissible to BYU. Like, I made calls. I talked to people in offices. I read all the things. There was no way.

And then, one day, I got the mail, and there was a letter for me from BYU. It was an acceptance letter to begin classes in January 1988. I was like--what? I called my mom, and she said, "Oh! It's a miracle! You register for classes and we will pay your tuition." (My mother was never a cynic like I tend to be. She saw a miracle, called it, and was ready to sail on the wings it offered.) 

Registration for classes was by phone. You had to use a touch-tone phone so you could punch in numbers. We only had a rotary dial phone, so I went next door to our neighbors, the Carters, and asked if I could use their touch-tone phone to register for classes. I fully expected the system to boot me out, because CLEARLY I could not really be accepted without a visa. And without, you know, applying. Which I had not done.

And yet, the system allowed me to register for classes. I took 21 credits that semester. Me, who had never been able to handle 12 credits, honestly, without tanking in some classes, took 21 credits! (And the only class that lowered my GPA was Physical Science 100, which I tested out of and got a C- because I borrowed the too-expensive-for-us-to-buy book and only studied for a week before taking the test. But a C- is okay when push comes to shove!!)

When I went to pay my tuition for Winter semester, I still felt like I was a cheater--I mean, how could I be admissible to BYU under the circumstances?--so I told the cashier my story of how I got accepted to BYU even though I hadn't applied, so I had registered, and here was the money, but could I really attend? She looked at me like I was totally nutso. Because, seriously, you only get accepted if you apply, and if you have an acceptance letter, then you really are accepted, you idiot. 

I attended BYU that winter semester and spring term, and took all the classes that I would need to graduate with a degree in English that were not offered through independent study. (Except for one class that was in development for independent study that was never ready in time for me, but they let me substitute a different class for it.) 

And then we moved back to Canada, because the Green Card process finally, after a year, decided that my mother was not a US citizen, and rather than start the expense of the actual Green Card again, we prayed about it and moved to Vancouver. Which was actually really good for us. Bruce got a good job with the government of Canada, and I started working in libraries. Our children became swimmers in the awesome Canada Games Pool in Burnaby, and with the PoCo Marlins swim club. We had the best schools imaginable, and really great neighbors both in Burnaby and PoCo. We were where we needed to be.

It took me a long time to finish my degree. Patrick was born. I worked. The kids were growing up. Josie was born. And finally, when Josie was four months old, I graduated from BYU in August 1994. I had started in 1975. And it was made possible by those miraculous six months in 1988 when I cranked out 30 credits that allowed me to finish the English classes slowly over the next six years.

Too bad that I had been such an idiot so that I needed that miracle!! If I had been a better student in the first place, I would have only been a semester short from graduating, and I could have also done the MLS at BYU. By the time I was ready for that, they were closing the program. So I didn't get around to finishing that degree until 2005. (I did the masters in Humanities first, finishing it in 2001.) 

And then, when we decided to move back to the US in 2000, suddenly I WAS a US citizen. When Bruce went to start our request for a Green Card that time, and they said, "Your wife is a US citizen," he was like, "We have done this twice before. She is not a US citizen." But they made us do that paperwork--and I WAS a US citizen. Sometime in the 90s the ACLU had challenged the legality of only considering fathers in the determination of citizenship. Because my US citizen father had not lived in the US the right amount of time at the right ages, I needed two US citizen parents to be a citizen. My mother was not a US citizen because HER mother could not be considered in the equation because she was a woman. With that changed, that made MY mother a citizen, which gave me two US parents and made me a citizen. Weird. 

So. That is my BYU miracle.

No more self pity

 There I was, feeling sorry for myself (ourselves) because our bathroom remodel is taking so long, and weirdly today, when the water was turned off and then back on again, our master toilet, which was new in August, started to run after it was flushed, and I can hear the money trickling away, and while we are getting it fixed in the morning, it was causing me stress and worry and I was saying "Poor you!" to myself...

And then Nancy sent me a picture of what her bathroom exterior wall looks like, their shower having caused damage that literally has been making the house fall apart. 

And they have to get a new subfloor and fix some of the frame of the house which has rotted. Let me repeat that: THE FRAME of the HOUSE. Like, that is not insignificant. 

And suddenly my running toilet seems like not such a big deal. And it is obvious to me that, though our bathroom remodel is a bit annoying, Nancy's bathroom remodel is ARRGH. And will also take a long time because they are getting right down to brass tacks. Yikes.

And then, to top it off, THEN I get a message from Rosie that Austin has a mole which is a melanoma in the advanced stage. Waiting to get in to a specialist. They are young and scared for good reason, but facing this challenge with faith.

So, yeah. My little problem is just a minor annoyance in comparison. I need to be grateful.