Firsts: fog
Ella
said my name – huh-knee-me. Ah!
Woke up to misty fog outside my window this
morning. Very fun, very British. (Reminds me of my teenage years in Coalinga,
where we would walk through fog on the way to school every morning during the
winter. It was the era of blonde {nothing to be done about that unfortunately!}
straight, ‘California surfer girl’ hair if you wanted to look cool. My neighbor,
who already had natural straight locks would spend hours curling hers {the grass
is ALWAYS greener, of course!}, and I would iron mine before we took off down
the street together. By the time we arrived at school, having walked through
the fog, her hair was back to straight and mine was frizzy and wavy. Man –
couldn’t win for losing!) Could only see
50 feet in front of me on my way to meet the Ward family for church. We arrived
in Harborne pretty early as Martin was off for Kidderminster again. I had brought
a kid game with me to help keep the kids entertained as we whiled away the
time. Soon David (Amison) joined us around the table in the nursery. He may be
headed for a mission, but still a kid at heart, he’s not too old to have himself
a little childish fun.
Never did get out of the nursery, as I was
commandeered for service again this morning . . . but who’s complaining?! Had
quite a group today, several visitors and new members to the ward. Sister Doig surely
did need my help – the Primary President, too! To thicken the plot (stir the
pot?!), I had decided, in order to give mom a break, as long as I was headed
for the nursery I might as well bring the baby along with me. It’s pretty
fun: Ella is learning to say words all
of a sudden, and quite regularly now, whereas before it was mostly gibberish.
As I took off with her down the hallway, she cried out in a plaintiff voice,
MA-MA! (Help!) Oh, man, she did SO much better today! Stopped crying very soon
after we connected with some toys. Two oversights on my part, however; first,
during snack time I made the mistake of putting Ella on the side of the table
that could see faces come in and out of the little peep window on the nursery
room door. Not good. Secondly, our lesson was on baptism, and as we were
showing, and coloring, pictures of a man baptizing a little boy, I said,
explaining what was happening, the word, ‘daddy,’ it was all over. Tears – ‘Daddy!’
(meaning, daddy, help, save me!) Today I called her, ‘Ella of the Single
Geyser’ as she had a single, floppy ponytail coming out of the top of her head.
But first things first – I must correct myself. It
appears that I heard it wrong: the young man who was baptized last week is NOT
named Ling, rather Linc. And today, Linc was confirmed a member of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, during sacrament meeting. (I asked Leah
if that wouldn’t have been done along with his baptism last Sunday, the way I’m
used to seeing it. She told me that more and more the thinking is to involve
the entire ward, as much as possible, physically or vicariously, in the
ordinances of new converts. That makes sense to me – especially here where
converts, new and old, are a major part of the ward experience. (Prior to
sacrament meeting, our high priest’s group leader pulled me aside and took my
information to see about arranging for home teachers for me – a couple probably,
he indicated. That will be nice.)
Sacrament talks centered around the first
principles and ordinances of the gospel: namely, faith, repentance, baptism, and the
gift of the holy ghost. We cannot expect to achieve a celestial inheritance if
we don’t live valiantly – obedient to every commandment, valiant to the
testimony of Jesus Christ. To be valiant to the testimony of Jesus Christ is to
give up ALL unrighteousness.
One of the speakers was a young woman Leah had
introduced me to who lives pretty close to them, by the name of Amanda Farley.
She is only recently married, a little later in the marriage timetable than is
usual, and is 12 years older than her husband, Nathaniel. (The humorous thing
about that is imagine of what stage of life he was in when Amanda was graduating
from college, say!) Quite a great story – that dating and courtship period that
culminated in their wedding. Anyway, she works at the university in the area of
public health, besides working on a doctorate. I had something I wanted to ask
her about in that area, so we had a nice chat after church. (When Martin goes
off, it is a while before he is back to collect us, and, as I have said
previously, nobody seems to be in a hurry to leave.) Sometime soon I will meet
her on campus for lunch and we will continue our very interesting discussion.
Cool!
Also shook hands and spoke with Elder ‘David Archuleta’ Gorougi following our last hour of
the day, sacrament meeting. I asked him if he was the eldest in his family.
‘No.’
Then, are you ‘the baby’? He really took exception
to that – obviously he was! (So, so what?!) ‘Why does everybody have to refer
to me as that?!’ I explained that, as far as I was concerned, alluding to
someone as the ‘baby’ of the family was a definite term of endearment –
especially to those babies’ moms – that he should be so lucky to be referred to
as ‘The Baby!’ Had to tell him about my own ‘baby,’ and that finally in my life I can joyfully say, ‘my baby’s having a
baby!’
There is a beautiful little dark-skinned, dark-brown-eyed
girl in our ward whose name is Nevaeh (Nə.vA’.əh). Now THAT could very well
be a good Utah Mormon name – try spelling it backwards!
As I was musing today I realized that being here
in England, under the particular circumstances in which I find myself living,
has – inadvertently – led to me giving up some of my worst vices. One is
habitually being late. Since I am often riding with the Wards (if I’m going to
be riding at all!) – who have small, antsy children – I CANNOT keep them waiting,
it’s just not fair! The other thing is being judgmental or hypercritical of
others, particularly of those different from what I regard as the RIGHT way of
being, doing, looking, etc. The truth is around here EVERY person is different
from every other person – different nationality, accent, way of living their
life; different way of thinking and expressing what they’re thinking; different
way of exercising what it means to be a ‘Mormon.’ There’s no use being
critical; you’d fritter your life away, exhaust yourself, making distinctions,
because EVERYTHING is different – it would be a never ending cycle! I didn’t
even have to WORK on this one – it just fell right in place. And I love it! I
must admit that one is much happier and freer not having to entertain the need
to fault-find every minute of every day. Whew!
Met Myfanwy’s Nairobi-dwelling son, Fergus, today.
Burly guy, not tall – he definitely takes after his dad, ‘cause he sure doesn’t
even begin to resemble his mom! (Reminds me of a younger version of Charles
Durning. My first impression, actually, was of a young W.C. Fields – who is SO
far back, that most of you will have no idea who he even is!) He had come to
England for a very brief visit as he was invited to come and give input to some
governmental impact-committee on the subject of flooding. Fergus also owns a
home here in the UK, up in Wales in a small town called Menai Bridge (northeast
across the mainland on the Isle of Anglesey), separated by the Menai Straits
from the larger community of Bangor, where Fergus taught in the university for
many years. Studying a map, you have to look closely to perceive that Anglesey is
actually a totally separate island from the rest of Wales. (Of Norse
derivation, the name came into existence in the 10th century and was later adopted by Anglo-Norman occupiers: the Isle of Anglesey is the largest Welsh island, the sixth largest surrounding Great Britain and the largest in the Irish Sea.) Fergus
left around 6pm tonight to go up and sort things out there before going down to
London early in the coming week. (‘To get oneself sorted’ is a well-loved,
well-worn, and actually pretty apt, phrase, used around here A LOT. Pretty
comparable to figuring things out, making sense of things, take care of things,
put things in order, etc.)
Myfanwy revealed later that though she had not
anticipated it, she was finding herself terribly let-down, almost depressed,
following Fergus’ departure. I gave her a hug and admitted that if I’d been
able to spend a few precious moments with one of my children, when they lived
SO very far away, and had come for such a brief period of time (a couple of
hours in this instance), once you had them near, it would be very difficult letting
them go off again.
I was able to contribute some lovely courgettes (that
I’d gotten in the Sainsbury's discount produce collection – ask Erin, Jenny and Ashley
how to say that properly) to this evening’s meal. Mmm – sliced with melted
cheese! (EVERYBODY liked it – even the kids!) I happened to be sitting next to
Oliver as we ate and opined, ‘Don’t you just LOVE courgettes?!’ He just HAD
to say – ‘those are not COURGETTES! You don’t SAY it like THAT!’ ‘Leah!’
(help)!
Another Ollieism_ Oliver’s mummy was jokingly
saying that he (just started reception – kindergarten – a month ago) is writing
his name, ‘Olive’ . . . on account of he runs out of steam before he gets all the way to the end - or runs out of room on his paper. Haha - even Ollie thought that was funny!
Photos_
1- what I woke up to this morning – good thing I
didn’t try straightening my hair, as I had planned to do before I ran out of
time (what else is new?)
2- timeliness
3- we are all God’s children (cover shot of Ashton
Convention poster)
4- C. Durning/W. C. Fields
