More Mini Memoir

I announced to my parents that I'd picked up mission papers from my BYU bishop when we were at the hospital. My Mom sat in a chair, next to my Dad who was in a hospital gown and hooked up to IVs in his hospital bed. He'd just been diagnosed with cancer.

My parents were less than thrilled.

I wanted to go on a mission, but I began to think that it wasn't the best timing. I did not want to lose my father. I especially did not want to lose him while I was away. . . . on a mission. So I did what any good Mormon girl would do. I prayed.

I remember telling the Lord that I wanted to serve a mission, but not if my Dad was going to die while I was gone. In a rare stroke of confidence, I felt perfectly fine about leaving. My father, I believed, was going to be around for a long, long time. I felt it. I felt it strongly enough to go ahead with my plans for a mission. I don't think that ever before, or since, I've had such strong confidence in a decision that was based on nothing but prayer and maybe, faith. I can't imagine doing such a thing now.

My mother said it was harder to send a daughter than it was a son, but she hadn't sent a son. Not yet.

My Memoir, today

If I were to write my own memoir, I think that every day I'd write something different. Today, though, the first two paragraphs would go like this:

When I was eight years old I leaned against the glass windows at the Salt Lake International Airport. I watched my grandfather be wheeled out of an airplane on a stretcher. He was taken to LDS Hospital where all the doctors smoked. Six weeks later he died of cancer. He was still an LDS missionary.

The words “LDS Mission” and “cancer” were synonyms in my family. It seemed that one always sparked the other. Or visa versa.

Wow. That is so uplifting, I know you all want to read it. :)

God Bless the USA

I never thought I'd live in Utah. My husband always said that hell would have to freeze over before he'd ever willingly moved back to "happy valley--a place he'd hated as a freshman at BYU. (He transferred before he could ever become a sophomore). But move to Utah we did. To our surprise, we liked it. Loved it, even. We didn't want to leave.

I came to Wyoming with trepidation and uneasiness. There was no doubt that it was different. I had lots of worries. One thing I worried about was education. My kids had loved their school and their teachers. I couldn't imagine that the quality of education could compare to what we'd just left.

I met our neighbors on our second day here. I met their daughters. Two beautiful girls. One was returning to the University of Wyoming in a few days. She was a sophomore. And the other? She was leaving the next morning for college.

"And where are you going?" I asked her.

"M.I.T.," she said.

And then I remembered: this is not just Wyoming, it's America.

I haven't worried since.