Callie’s turn came and she reminded me that she had something to tell us. Her deskmate at school, a boy called M– has been telling his friends to tell Callie, on the playground, that he is going to have sex with her. Callie is eight years old. All my attention, all the focus around the table centered on her in an instant, though Lucy and Molly and even Callie don’t really know what that means.

Callie was awkward and mumbly as I interrogated her as gently as I could. Has he touched you? (yes, but only on the arm) Has anyone else touched you? (not like that) Have you told anyone? Does he bully anyone else? (Yes, though as far as she knows she’s the only one offered that specific threat).

Our transition to California has been smoother and happier than I anticipated, and a large part of it is how welcoming an responsive the schools have been. This was a bit of a shock, but I know what elementary schools are like. When I was in kindergarten, I told the kids, a boy named Jim Leavitz had his friends tell me he had something to show me and then he ran towards me, unzipped his pants and showed me his penis.

I’ve never forgotten that, I told Callie, when she said she thought she would never be able to stop worrying about that boy, but I don’t have to think about it any more. You might not forget it, either, I said, but you don’t have to think about it.

I promised to talk to the teacher and we reminded the kids of our family rules: you can tell mom and dad anything; even if a trusted adult warns you you won’t be believed, or you’ll get in trouble, you won’t. You will be believed, and that person making bad choices will be the one who gets in trouble. And if you’re threatened, run away, or fight back if you can’t. Fight loud and hard, throw a tantrum, make as much noise as you can. Don’t be quiet. Scream no. You don’t have to please anyone. Ever.

This is why I’m a feminist, I told the kids, because boys and men are not allowed to say these kinds of things to women and girls. We are going to talk to the teacher and try to get this boy the help he needs to understand that that kind of behavior is completely inappropriate.

I am a feminist because I want a better world for my daughters. A world where rape culture doesn’t tell elementary school kids that sexual harassment is just boys being boys. Or worse, across the world, where girls get acid thrown in their face for even daring to go to school. Because while I want my daughters to know I will fight for them to be one hundred percent safe and comfortable in their environments, I also want them to be aware how many girls around the world face much worse.

Feminism allows me to care about every little thing threatening my daughters’ peace and each huge tragedy threatening the peace of our world. Feminism allows me to make pizza from scratch, from flour I have ground myself, if I want to, or to get in my car and drive to Little Caesars. But wherever our pizza comes from, on Friday nights we’ll be eating it together, around the family dinner table.

Over the next few months we met for an hour every week, talked about cooking and child-rearing and friends we’d had and lost as we moved. Her previous English teacher had moved to Alaska for a job and she half-joked that she must be an unrewarding student. Every time I saw her she was in comfortable lounging clothes, short cotton shorts and matching tank top, a brief knit house dress that would’ve been freezing out in the Utah winter but was perfect for the very warm three rooms she shared with her husband and son.

She was worried about the coming birth, she admitted when pressed, though she felt foolish feeling that way when here in America the medical care was better than her country. Here in America she didn’t have her mother to be with her, though her husband would be allowed, even encouraged to share her hospital room. I had my mother with me for my first birth and my husband and two sisters and dear Chrysanthemum for my last. I had spent months preparing for that last one, reading and planning my way around that modern medical care as much as possible, and hoping. I couldn’t explain much of that in our easy words and sentences. I told her I understood and that Insha’Allah, everything would go well, but that I understood her fear, every mother worries.

I looked around her living room, spotting the towel-wrapped pot that held her culturing yogurt, the half-assembled secondhand aquarium in the corner that Omar had gotten for his birthday, next to the raggedy artificial Christmas tree he’d begged for. Omar was usually at preschool when we talked, except for the times he was sick or on vacation or exhausted from a late party of friends the night before.

He was typically indulged and caressed. He pushed Molly away from a toy one visit and called her stupid repeatedly. I tried to gather and distract her, not wanting to embarrass Alia. She was always trying to give me things, pineapple and blueberries and samples of lotion or candles, surplus from the charity she received gratefully and matter-of-factly. I tried to decline, but she insisted that they didn’t like blueberries, so I took a couple of pints home. They were delicious.

Each week we chatted, and then I carefully enunciated the naturalization test flashcards while she painstakingly copied them in English and a transliteration and then Arabic. Some words and concepts I could explain; others I turned to google translate, hoping that “branch” of government wouldn’t be rendered as a branch on a tree.

We got through the first third of the hundred questions. I got stupidly teary-eyed as I recited the ideals of our democracy, our freedom of speech and press and religion and assembly and to petition the government. That question was on the week before I wore pants to church and I thought, how could I not, when I believed in the freedom of speech and religion and the right to gather and petition those in authority.

I didn’t even try to explain the Pants movement to Alia (it’s hard to understand myself why it should need to be a thing), but I did ask her if there was a mosque close enough for her. There is, an Ethiopian one, she said, though she usually stays home when her husband goes. The Muslim God is happy for the woman to pray at home. Okay to go to the mosque, okay to pray at home, no problem if she is busy with the house and the children. The man must pray at the mosque, but the woman can pray at home.

One week I called from California, to tell her that I couldn’t come in two days because I was out of town with my husband. The next week we were back from Tom’s interviews and I told her, as I sat on her couch, that I was moving in two weeks and that next Wednesday would be my last time. She was sad, of course, but not as sad as I was. The coordinator had a college girl in mind for Alia’s next tutor and I could leave without guilt.

The last time I saw her was bittersweet and unreal in that way that last times always are. She showed me some photographs and gave me a shot of her wedding day, making me promise to never show it to any man, not even my husband, because she was uncovered in her lavish wedding gown. It was nearly time for me to go and that day she had to pick up Omar from school because her husband was working farther away than usual. She didn’t like to drive much, but it was okay just down to the school and back.

I asked for a picture of the two of us together, holding my phone up in front of our faces. She hurried to the closet and pulled out a loose tunic jacket and wide headband and scarf. As I watched she covered her arms, her hair, her neck. Her eyes were covered too, without the lashes ever touching, and I took another picture, though now for the first time she looked nothing like the woman I had met, and known and talked with for months.

That Alia was gone, and after I kissed her on each cheek, so was I.

Last week as we got ready for the day, Lucy requested that I tie her shoes. I love Lucy, from the tips of her little toes to the freckles on her nose, but sometimes it’s beyond me to respond nicely to her because her squeaky helium voice can turn demanding and grating even before I’ve had a moment to process her latest pressing need. There is no hierarchy of needs or triage of necessities in little Lucy’s world. Everything is urgent, crucial and imminent.

I tied her tennis shoes for her that morning, but I realized that, at six and a half, it is past time for Lucy to tie her own shoes. In fact, I remember it being a thing to teach the other kids to tie their shoes before they went to kindergarten. Nana Marian coached Avery. I scoured the internet to make sure I didn’t lead left-handed Callie astray. I don’t know how Lucy’s life skill education was overlooked. Poor, neglected third child.

So that afternoon I joined her on the bright blue rug in the bedroom she shares with Callie. The other girls were off snacking or playing, it was just Lucy and me, and I’m proud to say that I mustered my A-game of parental patience and praise. She got frustrated a couple of times; I moved her onto my lap, though, as I learned when I was teaching Callie, I tie like a left-hander, so I didn’t direct her in which hand to start with or which hand to hold which bunny ear.

Two minutes later she could tie her shoes. Five minutes later her double-knot was indistinguishable in form and symmetry to what I myself would produce. When her sisters learned to tie their shoes, it took a few hours of practice, and for a month or two their knots were slack and amateur.

I don’t know. This seems really basic. Maybe I have retrenched my expectations of life at this point for my own sanity and am having dumb big ah-hah moments all over the place, things that everyone else figured out a long time ago. Apparently it’s a lot easier to learn (or teach) a skill when the person is . . . get this . . . ready for it.

Now that I know this, I can do/teach anybody anything. Or, I can at least justify waiting a little while longer before potty training Molly.

—

(Molly actually showed a brief but intense interest in the toilet a year ago, but I wasn’t emotionally invested because, well, I have ambivalent feelings about my children’s milestones.)

The Saturday before Easter we dyed some eggs. We didn’t last year, so I thought we were doing pretty good to have all the Easter-y treasures of yore unpacked from boxes and to have the time and energy to do an easy thing the kids have been asking about.

Callie has been sprouting lately. She’s reading Harry Potter, loping through school and solicitous of the baby. I cut her hair short again; it’s curling more in the humid California air. Some afternoons I can smell the ocean, though maybe it’s the bay: I should notice which way the breeze is blowing when it brings the salt and the cry of seagulls.

The kids had lots of options for decorating their eggs. Dyeing, painting, stickers and the most popular: magic crayon then dye. Callie wrote out her secret special message and then carefully dyed her egg. It said:

I hate you, Mom!

Perhaps this was a simple rebellious inversion of the dye carton’s suggested “I love you, Mom!” but it pretty much broke my heart. These past few months have been really hard, and harder still has been my frustrated feeling that things should not be this hard, that this should be an adventure, that it could be so much worse, that I am a terrible mother and that not only do I not blame Callie for hating me, I hate myself.

Tom has gently (and not so gently) prodded me, for using the mean voice, for being so impatient. Avery has escalated into almost-teenage emotional swings and I have found myself responding in kind, as if I am suffering a second, more violent and less-justified adolescence of swirling anger and inability to pull back and accept. To calmly respond and patiently redirect, to be more understanding and a safe haven for my children instead of their harping interrogator.

Then, this week, I don’t know what the turning point was. Maybe it was the Uchtdorf talk we discussed in church, about the five regrets of the dying. It kind of made me a little mad on Sunday. “I wish that I had let myself by happier,” when all I have been asking for for the past two months is to be just a little happier, to feel love for my children, to want to want to be with them, to be able to see and hear the endearing things they say and enjoy them, instead of standing helplessly as the fighting and whining and screaming bleed together over the whole of my horizon until my only recourse is to hide.

It is one thing to not like everything your children do while being able to recognize and rejoice in your deep and abiding love for the people they are, the souls that you catch a glimpse of at least once in awhile, and a completely other thing to spend days and weeks truly regretting having ever had them, feeling like it was a mistake, that you are not capable of being their mother, that it is an injustice to saddle them with you and you with them.

But the tide did turn, in the past few days.

I love my children again, and this morning I even liked them. And I realized that when they express anger or hatred for me or how I’m being at the time, when I was stuck in that morass of regret and entrapment, if felt like forever, if felt like, of course they don’t like me and I don’t like them, hasn’t it always been this way? It felt permanent and hopeless as if we have always and will always be like this. Unhappy.

But then I realized that the girls and Tom can criticize how I am acting, how our family is functioning, how I am yelling and swearing, because I am NOT always like that, we are NOT always unhappy, I do not always yell and swear. If they were used to that always from me, it wouldn’t be noticeable or worth pointing out.

So thanks, Callie, for telling me that most of the time you do love me. Ditto.

Halfway through our move to California, I realized that having the ability to turn my daughters to gold was even better than I thought it would be because a golden statue can not whine.

Actually, what I realized halfway through (and by halfway I mean when I had unpacked ninety-four percent of our stuff but my emotions were all still in the Penske, which was awkward because we returned it four weeks ago) was:

I got Tom fired. Er, laid off. It was my fault.

For years I’ve gone through a worst-case-scenario visual-vocalization thing when stressed. This stemmed from a difficulty falling asleep as a child because I wasn’t sure I’d finished that last page of homework perfectly. I had an ocean-waves tape and a mental exercise to remind myself that even if I failed in chemistry, the sun really would go on rising and setting (even if sometimes I/Anne wished it wouldn’t).

Then I read in a waiting room magazine that the act of lying in bed was almost as restful as actually sleeping, and that (true or not), has been my mantra to cling to no matter how often Tom looked over me and teased, “are you getting almost as much rest as sleeping?”

Once I believed that, (and I do believe it, though two pink benadryls are my backup), I moved on to a different, utterly soothing panacea in which I’d construct my three wishes. The idea was to let go of worries and responsibilities in order to sleep, so I gave myself leave to be as self-centered and silly as possible, but it was also to occupy my mind, so there had to be some sort of theme and they couldn’t be obvious things like world peace or mass conversion to reusable grocery sacks.

Usually my first wish was money. I mean, come on. Then weight loss and hair growth. I’d get pretty elaborate. Like, I wish I’d lose one pound a day every day for two months no matter what I ate and it had to be all fat cells, and not any from my bosom (when I was still nursing) and proportionally from my middle section mostly and out towards my limbs and I would never gain it back no matter what (i.e. even if I did strength training later in life that would be converting more fat to muscle, not gaining muscle).

And usually for symmetry I’d want the money and weight loss and hair growth to each contain the same number: multiples of 5 in millions of dollars, tens of pounds and inches of hair, for example. And on the money, I had a big number that would be all I would need for my humble requirements to live well the rest of my life, several intermediate numbers of diminishing lifestyle I’d like to become accustomed to, on down to the minimum amount that would allow us to pay off most of our debt and maybe travel a little and have some savings instead of trying to recover eternally from bad house-buying decisions.

That minimum amount that I came to stayed pretty constant over the past couple of years.

Then six weeks ago, Tom was laid off, and the amount of severance he was offered was very, very, very close to that minimum amount of money. Before the IRS took their 38% of course, so maybe I don’t need to draw such a strong moral of the story from this. On the other hand, King Midas, gold daughter, fair enough. Back on the first hand though, this bounty came with the unexpected huge cost of moving instead of fantasy cruises to look forward to, so.

The good news is, of course, that (knock on wood, fondle the rabbit’s foot, etc), 1) Tom found new work, 2) getting rid of most of our stuff has been as liberating as it is cliched, and 3) the kids are doing well in our new milieu.

So I can’t decide whether I should keep wishing, or stop while I’m ahead.

The best decision I ever made was marrying Tom.

I decided I didn’t need a profession because my patriarchal blessing (and church culture) said so.

I married Tom because everything in me just knew.

I’ve been angry and sad a lot lately; angry with myself, my church; sad for lost opportunities and Tom’s unemployment. Sad and worried and hopeful and worried some more on that last one. And feeling completely helpless and disenfranchised and angry some more for the “not pursuing a profession” part above.

But Tom already has a new job lined up, a small pay increase, a welcome reassurance of his hard work and determination and just plain luck.

It’s in California. Pros to California: the weather, and . . . the weather (and a paycheck! that’s really it right there, I mean.)

Everything else makes me want to stay here. Family, friends, the kids’ schools, our home, the yard and garden. It’s familiar and safe and oh-so-comfortable.

It feels dumb to admit how hard it is for me to try to stay supportive (because I’m grateful. Of course I’m grateful). I can tell the kids what a marvelous adventure we’re about to start, but I’m not always sure I believe it myself.

When I thought there was a chance of staying here and long-term un- or under-employment, I started applying for a teaching job (substitute to start). Might as well get started on that pink-collar profession. And now it looks like, for now anyway, that patriarch was right. Maybe not for my sanity and negligible stuff like that, but financially-speaking. I recognized Tom from my blessing, you see. He was mighty and strong and I knew it was him.

And maybe on a larger scale this is good, because if I stayed here in this bubble I think I’d need to take a break from church: from toxic, body-shaming, blame-shifting modesty talks in Sacrament Meeting. On Sunday I sat there, squirming and shrieking on the inside in my seat. But Sunday School was good. It (the Spirit) reminded me that marrying Tom was a good decision, the best decision, and that I do trust him on the big things, if not on the navigational aspects or certain minor logistical everyday details.

Maybe in California I’ll have a chance to come to church, again, anew, to approach my Heavenly Parents in a more open place, a place of humility in my soul and tolerance in the air.

I pray.

—

And now some pictures from our exploratory trip:

Tom’s friend from high school says he has this same shot of Tom from (many) years ago.

Gorgeous flowering libraries are a good sign, I think.

It was a great “vacation.”

Tom was just a little stressed. (Also he doesn’t like to smile for photos. And there was no hot chocolate at the complimentary breakfast. Did you ever?

Seeing friends face to face is even better that over the internet!

The water may be cold, but it’s still pretty.

Waves really are soothing.

The lesson is at once simple and complex. It would probably be the most controversial to any other Christian group, as it lays the foundation for our only true church claim. Three reformers who paved the way for Joseph Smith’s questioning, visions and ultimate restoration are discussed at length, with a suggestion that three children read over the provided biographies and come prepared to tell their stories next week. The three reformers are John Wycliffe (b. 1320), Martin Luther (b. 1483) and Roger Williams (b. 1620). The lesson is careful to point out that these men did not have “authority from Jesus Christ to correct the problems they saw in their churches. However, by calling attention to these problems, they helped prepare the world for the time when Jesus’ church would be restored.”

I want to add one woman to this group: Joan of Arc, who was born in 1412 and whose life and mission on earth in some ways parallels Joseph Smith’s even more closely than the three reformers mentioned. Here is the short bio* I wrote and handed out along with the other three:

Joan of Arc was born in France in 1412. She was a peasant girl who never learned to read or write. When she was about twelve years old she started hearing voices and seeing angels, including the Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret. Her mission was revealed to her gradually, and when she was about seventeen she left her home to help the heir to the French throne fight against the English and receive his coronation. After she succeeded she was taken by the English and tried for heresy. Joan’s voices had advised her to wear men’s clothing and armor for safety as she traveled and fought. She would not deny that her revelations were from God, and she was burned at the stake for committing the heresy of dressing like a man when she was nineteen years old. Joan was determined to obey God, even at the cost of angering the institutional church. Joan’s mother and others got her a retrial and she was later made a saint in the Catholic church.

Several things stand out to me about Joan (not all of which I plan to discuss). She was poor (but not destitute), she had a loving family that she desired to be with. When it was revealed to her father that she would be with the army of France, he feared that that meant she would be a camp follower (prostitute), and he said that it would be better if she died. The Catholic Encyclopedia is careful to say that Joan was not a feminist — she lived in a system in which any person, regardless of class or gender, could obtain a calling from God. Joan was rehabilitated and canonized pretty quickly after her death. And it’s interesting to compare her to the three reformers. They were ministers, professors, powerful men who deliberately and consciously criticized the Church. Joan was humble and reluctant to believe that she had any great mission, and yet her central conviction, that God had spoken to her through His messengers was blasphemous in the extreme (if untrue).

Speaking of reformers, I can’t help thinking of how some people I know think of nondenominational churches, as if they are the very devil, like, the worst thing imaginable. And yet, taken to the extreme, I think the rational end for the reformation is exactly in those nondenominational congregations. And the Mormon church has more in common today, in many ways, with the Catholic church than most Protestant sects (and those milquetoast nondenoms!).

But whatever. I love Joan of Arc. I am nigh onto obsessed with her. I saw and wept through a play about her life the night before Pants Sunday that suggested the idea that she might be called after death to inspire and guide Martin Luther. The timing is right anyway.

Joan’s similarities to Joseph Smith strike me. She was quite revolutionary, doing something completely unexpected by those around her and even by herself. She was young, unlearned, headstrong and fiery and passionate. She answered her judges much more wisely than they expected. She was wrongly imprisoned, even to being held in a secular male prison instead of a female church guard as she was entitled. And when she relapsed into her heresy of wearing male attire, for safety from rape or because her dress had been stolen, or to emphasize that her visions, with their endorsement of her clothing, were always from God, she was martyred at the stake.

On Sunday we sang happy 601st birthday to Joan and ate King cake for Epiphany in her honor. (Utter and blatant papistry!) The girls helped me gather up little trinkets as per Pioneer Woman. Tom got the dime in his slice (wealth). I got the button (increased spiritual knowledge). Avery got the thimble (increased industry). Callie the shoe (will walk in the ways of the Lord). Lucy the ring (blessings of the church). And Molly, appropriately enough, got the bean and was crowned king (queen) of the feast and has to make the cake next year.

—-

*In writing about Joan of Arc, I reference a talk by S. Michael Wilcox that I heard at Education Week last August, Melissa Larsen’s play Martyr’s Crossing, wikipedia.org (I know) and the Catholic Encyclopedia. Any mistakes are my own, of course.

And then: “Ms.” is stupid. And you know what? I can see his point. Or, I almost think I kind of remember thinking or hearing something that sounded reasonably like that and almost good in a smug “we’re above political correctness/lameness” and “we prefer simplicity and the unwritten order of things” sort of way.

I don’t know the history of “Ms.” (I’m going to have to look it up now.” But this is what we came up with on the spot:

Is there an equivalent male title that denotes a man’s marital status? Why?

Why do we need to denote a woman’s marital status but not a man’s?

Is there a reason people need to know whether a woman is married or not?

Are there or were there things a woman could not do if she were married? (Like teach school a century ago, or own property at different times in history or retain custody of her children or have the right to not be raped or beaten by her husband?)

Is there a good reason for society to know if a woman is married or not in the sort of situations where a title is used?

Then –

If it is illegal for a prospective employer to ask an applicant if they are married or not, is there a way for a woman to retain her legal right to that privacy if she must title herself either “Miss” or “Mrs.”?

And then –

What about, I asked her (skimming over the littler ones’ hears, I hope) the rape case in California where the state appeals court ruled that a man cannot be charged with rape if he rapes a sleeping woman while impersonating her boyfriend. It is only rape, so the archaic law goes, if he is impersonating her husband.

Is it fair if the same action with the same intent by a man is judged differently by the law based on the marital status of the victim?

No, no it is not.

—

Almost every day, it seems, I reach the breaking point. That’s it. I’m done. I wash my hands of this misogynistic, crappy world. I’m not happy that my blog has turned in to feminism and the church* all the time blog, but it’s not like I blog every day, any way. But I could, and every day I could write more about how this is just so not the way things should be. So not.

So not.

*I know school is different from church, but sometimes they’re the same in small town Utah. Avery’s teacher said last month that the women planning to wear pants should be worried about not following the prophet. And he is an old family friend of my grandparents, and Avery happens to really, really like him, as do we, most of the time. But she wore pants that day to church so I think she can like him and stay in his class and learn a lot from him while not agreeing with everything, and I told her to tell him she’s sorry he doesn’t understand these things but he’s probably just suffering from White Male Privilege.

But is sharing those three scriptures the best way to teach children (all children) that they are the offspring of God? The primary presidency’s mandate is to each week “1) identify the doctrine, (2) help the children understand it, and (3) help them apply it in their lives.” They are also told to “Supplement the ideas provided here with some of your own.” So I think it’s valid, even necessary, to think, to actually ponder, how to best teach our beautiful doctrine.

I sat in Primary today wondering if/why I am the only person in the room to see anything wrong with a lesson whose sole purpose is to convince children that they are known personally and by name to God and yet the only examples given are of men that God knows? Does God only know men? Does He know His daughters and simply prefer His Sons? Does He respect His daughters so much He would not approach them personally? Does God wish to know and love me as a female or does He prefer to be inscrutable to me?

I would like to see this lesson taught with both male and female examples. The most easily parallel female example happens to be in the book of scripture we’re studying in class this year. Can you guess? Do you know? (Tom didn’t. And I’ll admit it took me a while to think of her, and now I am more heartsore than ever.) In Doctrine and Covenants 25 :1, the Lord says “Hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God, while I speak unto you, Emma Smith, my daughter; for verily I say unto you, all those who receive my gospel are sons and daughters in my kingdom.

The only other textually comparable example I could think of off the top of my head was the Annunciation — in Luke 1:30 the Angel Gabriel (sent by God) says “Fear not Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.” The angel also mentions Elisabeth to both Mary and Zachariah byname. There are several scriptures about the Lord “remembering” women by name (Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, Hannah, Ruth) and allowing them to conceive.

In the temple we learn that God and Jesus spoke to Eve by name (and in Moses 4:19 it reads: “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living; for thus have I, the Lord God, called the first of all women, which are many.”)

And, speaking of names, when the Lord changes Abram’s name to Abraham He also changes the man’s wife’s name. Genesis 17:15 reads ”And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.” So not only did God know Sarah by name (and remember her eventually in conception), but it was important to Him to change her name as part of the Abrahamic covenant.

Finally, beyond the personal, loving relationships Jesus* had with His female disciples while on earth (e.g. Mary and Martha), in John 20:14-17 there is this beautiful exchange after the crucifixion:

14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

in which Jesus both comforts Mary and makes Himself known to her by saying simply her name.

When I was first lamenting about Sharing Time to Tom, he apologetically reminded me that there are just not that many women in the scriptures, we just live in an unfair world, it’s just the unfortunate way things are.

But that isn’t true! There are women in the scriptures! Of course I wish there were more, and that more were known by name, and that they were more often discussed in terms outside their maternal function. But they are there! They are known by name to God and Jesus, even if they aren’t known by name to us!

I want my daughters to know that God knows them, and all other people, male and female, by name.

—-

*I am a little stumped as to whether there is a doctrinal issue with saying Heavenly Father (Elohim) knows us versus Jesus (Jehovah) knowing us, but  for the purposes of instilling a sense of divinity and divine love in children, I’m going to say it doesn’t matter. In the original examples, Moses and Joseph Smith are pretty clearly addressed by God the Father, but I have always understood Enos’s interlocutor to be Jesus Christ.

First of all, imagine this: A friend, a sister, comes to you and tells you that she is hurting and that she has found a way to feel less alone, to feel more understood, to stand up for what she believes in and show solidarity for those who have made her feel less alone, a way to show God what is in her heart, a way that God has told her is an okay offering of her broken heart and contrite spirit, a way to feel more herself in God’s presence, in the community of believers that she aches to be a part of even as she too often feels marginalized, misunderstood and misused. She has decided to wear pants to church.

What is your response? And how would Christ have us respond to such a friend and sister?

a) Your contempt betrays you.

b) Your hurt for her hurt and your massive indifference to her attire is the best possible evidence that all is well in Zion.

c) Your compassion and desire to understand what is incomprehensible to you, your yearning to reach out in fellowship even when you are righteously convinced that you are right and she is wrong, your humility and love, your turning of the other cheek against such (insolent!) provocation is magnificent.

When I was nineteen I shaved my head. At the time I had no thought of gender social norms. I was in Europe for the first time, I had left a heady, consuming and ultimately wrong-for-me relationship, and I wanted an outward expression of my inward change of heart. I shaved my head.

Sunday I wore pants to Church.

Both times I felt like I was right with God again, that I had re-adjusted my course to walk more fully with Him, and that Jesus knew, loved and accepted the offering of my heart. That I was, and am, okay with God, and that what anyone else thinks or thinks they know about me, is immaterial.

And now some posts and articles to answer your questions (I don’t agree with everything in these posts, but they are marvelous food for thought and worth your time):

But I’ve never felt marginalized or hurt. Does anyone really? (And here is that contempt again, as the subtext is: Does anyone who matters feel hurt by patriarchy? Does anyone who is righteous feel marginalized? Does anyone with a testimony think that gender inequity is a problem?)

Neylan McBaine at FAIR, CJane Pants Part I and Part II, Joanna Brooks in Huffington Post, Wearing Pants

Why pants? What is a social norm?

Feminist Mormon Housewives, Mormon Women Who Wear Pants to Church: A Manifesto

But our church, like our country is one of the most progressive about women, can’t you be happy with that? (i.e. it could be worse!)

The dignity of your womanhood

But why must you protest in Sacrament Meeting?

The Politics (say it ain’t so) of Pants

Why do men feel so threatened by women doing something that the Brethren have specifically NOT counselled against?

How to Silence a(n LDS) Woman: You’re Doing it Wrong

People didn’t really respond so viciously, did they?

Women Wearing Pants at Church Bingo (this is a humorous aggregation. The text of the death threat on the original Facebook event page was “every single person who is a minority activist should be shot .. in the face . point blank . GET OVER YOURSELVES ..” I was also appalled at comments such as: “these dumb bitch feminists don’t understand what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is even about.”)

But you started it, haven’t you brought this response on yourselves?

Less than 1200 words on on pants

If you don’t like the church, why don’t you just leave?

“If you don’t like it, leave” and Religious Pluralism

How do women look in pants at church?

Wear Pants to Church Day

What is wrong with feminists? Why can’t they just accept the church?

How Mormonism Changes and Managing Liberal Expectations,

If women have agency, the same as men, how are they not equal in church?

Women in the Mormon Church: The Limits of Agency

(And even though the pants thing was really about culture and not about challenging doctrine, here’s a bonus post. Do any (faithful, intelligent) men think women should have the priesthood? Gender and Priesthood)

Did any women consider themselves feminist and choose to wear a dress?

How I feel about pants

Doesn’t God hate it when we ask questions?

 Joseph Smith — History, Hear me

Yesterday I got an email from my children’s school saying a lot of appropriately broken-hearted things about the Newton children and teachers, and then describing the lockdown drill they ran on Friday. My kids had mentioned it in passing, and mostly I tried to shield them from the news. Until Callie complained about what we were having for dinner and I cried and told her she was lucky to be alive. We are all lucky to be alive.

And though I had cried when I listened to this and teared up at the sight of this, what brought me to sobs in a parking lot was this from my children’s school. In an effort to make the lockdown drill more realistic, they shouted in the hallways and banged on the classroom doors. They had explained to the children beforehand what was going to happen, because their intent wasn’t to frighten but to show what it may be like.

It should never be like that.

Not for any child. And the only way to make anything good come of this is to make life better for someone else.

My many failings overwhelm me. My inadequacy for even my small, simple calling of mother shames me. And the numbers of the suffering are an ocean. I keep repeating to myself:

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.
― Mother Teresa

We drove to the church (sad, but it’s sprinkling and we were a minute late, despite Callie’s persistence) and sadly, Activity Days was last week. Turns out we are not on the email list for the eight- and nine-year olds, just the ten- and eleven-year old group. I apologized profusely to Callie, who was not mollified.

If only it were every week, I mused aloud, then it would be easier to remember, rather than keeping straight whether this is a first and third Wednesday month or a second and fourth, or, as in December (and June, and July, and August) a once-a-month on the first or second or third or fourth Wednesday month. Callie knows Scouts is every week because every Wednesday Dad leaves dinner early, as he will tonight and next week and probably they’ll skip the actual day after Christmas but even so they’ll manage to meet three times before the year is out.

And Callie wants to know why. I said it’s one of the things that frustrates Dad and me most. She asked if I’d told anyone about it, and I said we both had, quite recently, and she wanted to know why it hadn’t changed, then, and I said I don’t know. I’m sorry. How do you think we could change things? How could we make people realize there needs to be change?

And she said, “Because the Declaration of Independence says boys and girls are equal.” And I said, that’s not exactly what it says but I certainly agree that that’s what it means. But our nation’s founding wasn’t perfect either. That whole three-fifths compromise and all.

Only in the case of Scouts versus Activity days it’s more like girls are one- to two-fifths. On a good month.

A few weeks ago I started tutoring a Jordanian immigrant lady in conversational English. Last Wednesday morning as I rushed to leave the house I got a little careless with my words, letting my frustration spill out in angry imprecations at my children, my house, my husband. Later, as I drove north from my comfortable exurbia to a cramped apartment complex, I called Tom to apologize. He was more understanding, as always, than I deserve. He said, “if it stresses you out so much, maybe you shouldn’t do it.” And I pointed out that before leaving the house that morning I had baked cranberry muffins, started the dishwasher, changed the laundry, nursed the baby and tried to prepare an English lesson.

Tom took a shower and left.

(On school days he makes lunches and drives them on his way, but this was the first day of Thanksgiving break, and Avery was babysitting.)

That’s not the point of this, the moral of that story is simple and one I teach myself unfortunately about five times a week. (i.e. prepare in advance, prioritize and let it go.)

The point of this is that today we had our lesson and that weekly hour I spend comparing pilgrims on the Mayflower to pilgrims on the Hajj is rapidly becoming the most rewarding of my entire week. This week I planned ahead, took a cheap Advent calendar from IKEA as an icebreaker for talk about Christmas and calendars and ordinal numbers, and took Lucy and Molly along, where they watched cartoon Mr. Bean with Arabic subtitles.

I was telling Chrysanthemum all about this, bubbling over in my enthusiasm for the way my new friend showed me how she makes cheese in her small kitchen (practicing “first” and “then” and processes), and I mentioned how we’re starting to study for the naturalization test also, and how the coordinator who matched us up also advocates for the medical and other services the immigrant ladies need.

And Chrysanthemum said it sounds like visiting teaching on steroids, for people who actually need it. I like that. Not that I’m trying to evangelize in any way — possibly my favorite parts are when I remember Arabic words for things (like “bint” for daughter and “mumkin” for possibly) from our time in Cairo, and when we discover that we were born in the same year, and that she was named for the queen of Jordan. And Jesus is on our Christmas flashcards, but I know that Mohamed came later.

Anyway, it’s really good. I feel really good about it. Thanks to L for introducing me to Samira, founder of Women of the World.

Step One: Read the lesson and accompanying scripture references and wonder if the Nephites were an all-male society.

Step Two: Pray about the purpose of the lesson and ponder if there are any scripture stories that include women and fulfill said purpose.

Step Three: Realize there are several, including a recent personal favorite just a few books away.

Step Four: Read and re-read the scriptural account of your chosen female character. Does her story compare to the suggested male story?

Step Five: Review secondary sources.

Step Six: Compose a children’s hymn verse for this week’s elect lady.

Step Seven: Prepare to teach that both men and women can make personal commitments to God.

——

Step One: Read the lesson and accompanying scripture references and realize it has never met a Bechdel test it couldn’t fail.

Primary 4, Lesson 39: Mormon Witnesses the Destruction of the Nephites

Purpose

To strengthen each child’s desire to remain true to the teachings of Jesus Christ in spite of the evil influences around us.

Scripture Account

Teach the accounts of Mormon abridging the large plates of Nephi and the destruction of the Nephites from Mormon 1–6.

(Tom, who taught this lesson last week, says that Mormon is maybe his favorite character in the Book of Mormon, not least because he is the writer/compiler of most of it. The story of Mormon and his son, Moroni, is inspiring, interesting, and sad. After wars in which Mormon reluctantly led the wicked Nephites to battle, he is one of only twenty-four of his people alive. He is a great spiritual and military leader and a wonderful example for the children to follow.)

Step Two: The purpose could possibly be fulfilled by only speaking of Mormon, but given that my class is five-eighths female, and that they are unlikely to ever be the spiritual or military commander of a nation, how could they more easily envision a personal, relatable way to remain true? Heavenly Father, have any of thy daughters likewise pleased thee?

Step Three: Women who stay true to the faith despite what is going on around them: Eve, who brings life (and death) into the world in order to obey the Father’s first commandment; Ruth, who leaves all that is familiar to her to make Naomi’s God her own; Rebecca, who also leaves her family in order to marry Isaac; Esther, who risks death to save her people; Hannah, who prays for a son for the glory of God despite the torment her sister-wife inflicts; Mary, who agrees to carry a child despite the whisperings of whore that could follow, even (especially) from her betrothed; Eunice and Lois, Timothy’s mother and grandmother, who raised an apostle; and Abish. Ah, Abish.

Step Four: Alma 19. King Lamoni’s wife, the queen, is another great (though unnamed) female character in this story. She watches over her unconscious husband and refuses to bury him, saying he stinketh not to her. She sends for Ammon who praises her faith, calling it greater than any among the Nephites. Ammon raises the king, who testifies of Christ and then sinks back down in joy. The queen is also overcome by the Spirit. Ammon prays and is likewise overcome. Abish, the queen’s servant, finds the three of them, and, having been long-ago converted by a “remarkable vision of her father,” runs out to knock on doors and gather the people to witness a miracle.

The people gather and argue over whether Ammon is a monster or the Great Spirit. Abish comes forward and “took the queen by the hand, that perhaps she might raise her from the ground; and as soon as she touched her hand she arose and stood upon her feet, and cried with a loud voice, saying: O blessed Jesus, who has saved me from an awful hell! O blessed God, have mercy on this people!” The queen then turns and raises the king in the same manner.

There is so much here that I am overcome. Abish is a Lamanitish woman who had a vision* of her father, became converted to the Lord and, “never having made it known,” lived a life of servitude while remaining faithful, ever-watching for an opportunity to share her beliefs. Despite a hidden conversion many years old, she was brave, wise and spiritually in tune enough to change the lives of many. Abish’s faith extends to her raising the queen from her unconsciousness. The queen’s faith in turn (remember, greater than any among the Nephites) raises the king. Abish’s spiritual gifts (visions, healing/raising, speaking in tongues as commonly attributed to missionaries) and personal commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ are awe-inspiring.

Does the story of Abish compare in inspirational value to the story of Mormon? Does her story in fact illuminate the stated purpose of the lesson? Can it also be of instructional value to the male members of the class?

Heck yes.

Step 5: Secondary Sources:

Elaine S Dalton Love Her Mother

In the Book of Mormon, Abish was converted by her father’s sharing with her his remarkable vision. For many years thereafter, she kept her testimony in her heart and lived righteously in a very wicked society. Then the time came when she could no longer be still, and she ran from house to house to share her testimony and the miracles she had witnessed in the king’s court. The power of Abish’s conversion and testimony was instrumental in changing an entire society. The people who heard her testify became a people who “were converted unto the Lord, [and] never did fall away,” and their sons became the stripling warriors!¹⁰

By Common Consent: What to Make of Abish?

From Joanne’s comment, a verse to the tune of Book of Mormon Stories honoring Abish:

Abish saw Lamoni and the queen hear Ammon’s word.
They believed and sank for joy; their hearts he truly stirred.
Abish shared her testimony, then bent on her knee,
And she raised up the queen righteously.

Step 6: Abish verse to the tune of Nephi’s Courage. (This is a bit redundant now that I’ve found Joanne’s great verse, but I actually wrote it a month ago, so here it is.)

The Lord commanded Abish to go and preach the word

To her friends and neighbors and the queen she served.

She had been converted and waited for sign.

Abish was courageous and she would reply:

[I will go I will do, the things the Lord commands,

I know the Lord provides a way, He wants me to obey] x 2

Last week I got an email from one of my favorite cousins. I wanted to defer to the priesthood authority in my home and beg my husband to answer for me (because my husband understands, and maybe the same idea from him would be conceivable?) — but the response, my only response, to that and all the other (however well-meaning) shushings I have received all my life is a barbaric and desperate yawp into the gaping maws of benevolent paternalism that I am entitled to my questions.

I am entitled to my questions. I will have and do have and have had questions. You can have my house, my shelter, you can have my books, you may take my Diet Mountain Dew, but you may not take my questions. (You can’t take my daughters, either, unless you promise to not return them when the whining starts.)

God is not threatened by my questions. He understands them, and me, and our entire church is based on the idea that asking questions is a good thing.

In the temple Eve has a small role, but she asks five extremely incisive questions. And then she sets the whole plan in motion by her actions.

With Eve as a model, the creation story as a guide (Adam is a bit of a dim bulb, yes?) and the admonitions of so many as an excuse, I am tempted to concede that it is quite fundamentally obvious, yes, that women are naturally and innately superior to men in all aspects of spirituality. We are born nurturers, we are intelligent enough to ask the right questions and we are courageous enough to do what needs to be done. Of course we do not need the priesthood or comprehensively-planned and well-funded developmental activities. Of course we do not need to approach our education with a career in mind or learn any of the things involved in heading a household. Is it the errand of angels to change tires?

We do not need lessons in leading or calls to action or reminders of duty. We have no need of entering into covenants with the Lord directly when we will always, from birth, through every stage of life, unto death, have a man at our side to mediate that relationship for us. Why would we need to speak to God for ourselves, anyway, when we are already, by virtue of our congenital chromosomes, as perfect as a man might someday hope to be with the priesthood as his aid? Even our transgressions are not our own but the responsibility and realm of the man whose rib made us. We can own no wrong.

Why would any man ever think he knows better than I what it means to be faithful and content and devout? Doesn’t he know what I am? Doesn’t he know that I am a woman, and as such, his innate superior in every spiritual way?

And that is not even counting my motherhood. Four children and two souls lost to miscarriage. In the motherhood-priesthood equivalency, that would parallel, what? Deacon for Avery, Teacher for miscarriage one (or is a miscarriage like an ordination temporarily derailed by one dissenting vote of non-sustaining? Let’s count it for now), Priest for Callie, Elder for Lucy, High Priest for miscarriage two, Patriarch for Molly.

If I embrace the “woman don’t need the priesthood because they’re naturally righteous” and the “motherhood and priesthood are complementary” arguments, it would seem that, logically (or I should say spiritually, because it is not in logic but spirit that women exceed male capacity), I am a seriously righteous Patriarch (Matriarch), who can stop apologizing for asking questions.

Probably now is a good time to say that when it comes to the priesthood, as much as I dislike it when women say (or feel like they have to demur that) they don’t want the priesthood because it’s just more work or they don’t want the responsibility, etc, the truth is that I really don’t want most of the priesthood or authority as it’s exercised, either. I’m not asking to be the bishop! No, really! (I don’t want Tom to ever be a bishop, either, but that is because I am selfish and want him all to my family’s self.)

What I would like is . . . here’s a story:

Angelica’s husband is an engineer, and one day he came home from working with metal shavings all day and feeling fine. Later that evening, though, his eyes started to hurt. The pain was bad enough, by the time the kids were all in bed, that they were looking up online the treatment for metal shards in the eyeball, and wondering about a trip to the emergency room to stave off imminent blindness. At one point he was lying in the bathroom weeping, the pain was so bad.

Angelica sat on the floor in there with him, cradled his head on her lap and prayed. She prayed and prayed and prayed. Moments later he remembered that his coworkers had been welding in the corner of the shop during the day and he realized that what he was experiencing was flashburn, an extremely painful, totally temporary condition and that he was not going to lose his sight.

Now you can say that I should just stop there and agree that the power of God is in the priesthood and in prayer and everything is okay (and it is, and okay), but what about the other things?

What about Primary?

That Sunday ten days ago, I realized that perhaps that was the day our Primary chorister (a wonderful, otherwise-sensitive man) would devote Singing Time to the boys’ practice of A Young Man Prepared for the sacrament program. We had already spent the majority of a different Sunday on the song, and by “we,” I mean that the boys and he had worked on learning the song while the girls and women sat dumbly, numbly, mutely along. That introductory Sunday included a lot of motivational commentary about how awesome and “Superman”-like the priesthood is and how “nothing is better than the priesthood.”

I am sure that these things are all true. What then, is there for girls? Are girls obviously and naturally then inferior, unworthy? But wait, women also have a God-given power — that of giving birth, of creating life itself.

And so what struck me in the shower was that I should liken that song unto myself and my daughters, in preparation, and in hope that I would not end another Sunday, sobbing quietly, ugly, deeply, out in the hallway.

Here is the original:

              A Young Man Prepared

Though a boy I may appear, yet a man I soon will be.

If I prepare and live clean in every thought word and deed

I will be worthy to hold the sacred priesthood of God.

So I now prepare myself, I will serve my fellowman.

Being armed with the truth, with the scriptures my guide,

I’ll go forward a young man prepared.

I’ll go forward a young man prepared.

And here is mine:

              A Young Mom Prepared

Though a girl I may appear, yet a mom I soon will be.

If my womb can expand and my egg be fertilized

I will be worthy to hold the sacred uterine power.

So I now prepare myself, I will snare a handsome man.

Pray for fertility, with the moon as my guide,

I’ll go forward a young mom prepared.

I’ll go forward a young mom prepared.

Tom and Avery were not amused, when I passed them my lyrics as the boys sat and sang, and stood and sang, with great gusto. When I explained, on the way home, that I knew it was ridiculous, the point was how ridiculous!, Tom said, why don’t we have Avery write a version that is not ridiculous, and then submit that somewhere. I said (and say to you, my challenge to you) go for it!

Instead, in the ensuing days, Tom has had what I would call a feminist awakening and has politely pointed out to our Primary President that perhaps the all-boy focus in singing time is a bit sexist and insensitive, and that perhaps having 40+ boys sing a song in the Children’s Sacrament Meeting Presentation is not even prescribed in Handbook 2. (Pending bishopric oversight, of course.)

But even if they stopped singing it for twenty minutes straight with a captive audience, and even if it got nixed or balanced by equal girl time, this whole thing only highlights the fact that this song is in the Children’s Songbook and is the only song in there (as far as I can tell) that is for only one gender.

Because the priesthood is for only one gender. And, yes, men can only use the priesthood to bless others, and yes, in the temple . . . somehow . . . women . . . but that’s not what the song says! That’s not what anything in the daily life of the church says! (on the temple thing, not the daily life thing; most of the time, in my experience, good men use the priesthood to bless the lives of others.)

Does it matter? Can’t I just accept that men and women are different with different roles and different stewardships? Here is a pretty compelling work around the motherhood /= priesthood equivalency, arguing that motherhood = fatherhood and as such, motherhood administers physical birth and fatherhood (thanks to the supplement of priesthood) administers (through ordinance) spiritual birth.

Couldn’t I just pray long enough to see that This Explains Everything?!?*

Maybe I could, but I find myself even more compelled by this:

“Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior.” (Nicholas Kristof, at the end of an excellent column about The Elders)

and this:

“The belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God,” Mr. Carter continued, “gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo.”

Of course (of course!) I don’t think our church is that bad. (Though sometimes I do think modesty madness –>victim blaming is on a par.)

In contrast to women across the world and time who experience the horrible fruits of power corrupted, I have an indescribably easy and blessed life in a rich, peaceful country with education and food and leisure and the freedom to write these things at my fingertips.

I also have a husband I would be proud and happy to submit myself to. Yes, really! And you know why? Because he would never ask that of me.

——–

Have you read these?

Neylan McBaine To Do the Work of the Church at this year’s FAIR Conference and Stephanie (Mormon Child Bride)’s response.

Rebecca J Why I don’t like the priesthood-motherhood analogy  and My feelings about not holding the priesthood.

*I’d like to see this taken to its natural conclusion — that women should administer physical birth at all levels, e.g. midwifery reinstated as a spiritual calling and all-female ob’s. Meanwhile, I cannot get past the plight of infertility in this analogy, among other things, one being, isn’t this trying a little too hard/relying on sophistry/violating Occam’s Razor?

Lucy asked for the adult kind first. She is our great lover of zucchini, the one who led Nana Marian into the temptation of grilled zucchini rounds before dinner. Nana confessed their devouring of our daily zucchini; it felt too odd to scold for gluttony of the vegetal variety.

Tom served Molly our mixed noodles (white and wheat) bathed in garish red and ladled on the demur (spiked) creamy sauce at her demand. She prompted naked noodles on top of that. Avery discounted the baby’s sophisticated preference as simply wanting everything, no serving dish left out.

Callie polished off her kid portion in record time, after downgrading spaghetti from her favorite food to merely one of her favorite noodle dishes. Then she asked for some with my special sauce.

After a couple bites, she turned to sage Lucy and said, “Spaghetti is the thing where we just don’t talk about the onions in it. We know they’re there, but we don’t need to talk about it.”

So Avery, the oldest, was the lone holdout for the kid kind, and Callie, my tall, difficult, almost-eight and black-and-white, simmering pot of incitable emotions, is capable of more complexity than I had imagined.

William Blake’s Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Tate Gallery

Tonight I told Tom a story that I have told him many times, it turns out.

When I was twelve, a new Beehive, our weekly activity for church was a panel question and answer with the full-time male missionaries in our area. I raised my hand (I want to say I was the first to volunteer to ask a question, but only because I have always had questions and no problem with the asking). I asked about the priesthood, why do girls not get it? why only boys? And my leader, our bishop’s wife, dismissed my words with her hand, waving them out of the air between us, apologizing to the nineteen-year-old boys, “Don’t mind her, we’re still trying to get her to let the men wear the pants.”

Eighteen months later we moved to another small town in Utah, a town people moved to on purpose, instead of a town of the children of coal miners and cowboys. Young Women groups got better, my memories get better, but what was her motive, when the whole purpose of the evening was for us to ask questions, is my question now.

This week Tom has been uncomfortable about the Singing Time(s) wholly devoted to the boys preparing their Superman Priesthood number for the program, he is aghast that the boys for scouts get money and time and purposeful adventures unheard of for the girls, and when I point out how endemic these things are, that women aren’t even allowed to pray in general conference, he is quiet for a moment and then admits he’s never noticed that women are silent at the endings and beginnings of our sessions.

I listened to his plans for how to approach our lovely primary president on these issues, the boys flying to Kolob/Krypton while the girls sit by and the scouts/activity days disparity on the way home from third Sunday dinner at my parents. I listened, and listened, and then I got distracted by a post on my phone, a post unread as I had righteously left my phone in the car as we ate and visited and strained the morning’s teachings through the colanders of our experience.

What did you say? I asked, surfacing from my bright little screen. My not hearing exasperated him, I apologized, he started again at the beginning and I said of course I heard that part, skip to the ‘what are you going to do about it part’ please.

But no, wait. How did you not hear me? I told you years and years ago about the sisters not praying in conference and the activity days of frosting sugar cookies and wrapping chocolates for primary prizes. I told you, and told you, and you never heard me.

And then I told him that story, my first and worst memory of when I was old enough to realize that the boys my age were not only getting cuter and smelling better, they were passing the sacrament and becoming the experts to answer our questions.

Last night Tom attended a Mormon Women Project salon with me, a Women in the Scriptures event that gave me a great quote from a colorful apostle character, about our Mother in Heaven — “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mother in our affection,”

But also a lot of disappointment about the timidity we embrace and the “if only you look through the right lens, you’d see, and you’d know and not need to ask that question any more.”

And maybe my question, all of my questions, are one-issue voter questions and I need to pray and read my scriptures more, dedicate myself to the spiritual as I do the soul in my yoga hour that is so sacredly-guarded from outside encroachments.

Yes, I need to do that, of course I do, I’m not asking for the oil in your lamp, and frankly none of us are virgins waiting virginally here, are we? I’ll fill my own lamp in between caring for the one I gave that virginity to and the four who could not be here if that impediment had not been surrendered. (Why all the female body imagery and false conflation of virginity with virtue when motherhood is so proclamationally virtuous?)

I will do my part to see and hear and ask well.

But I need you to hear me. I need Him to hear me.

Even after I carved out a few minutes to report and rejoice over the happy baby, I couldn’t turn the lumbering boat of everything-bothering that was the day.

So this morning I remembered again. (How could we forget? We will never forget.)

And what I remember is that even that day, as I sat on the border of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights, what I knew I must do to honor their death, their sacrifice, their bravery, was to remember them and then appreciate my own life, my own ease, my own blessedly normal peaceful existence.

I worried four years ago that this inclination is just a shade of making it all about yourself-itis, as every post and article (except the biography ones) inevitably are.

And I am sheepish anew that what I wrote most recently is complaining about a 99% happy, healthy baby.

This is the blessing and the curse of young motherhood immersion. I am on the older end of young motherhood but not the shallower end of the immersion. I have not space in my brain or heart to be consumed properly by the heartache of the world. What matters the Dow Jones when there is another diaper to change? What room for the heartache of strangers when childhood hurts and tender stumblings crowd around?

But it is precisely as a mother, a mother of daughters, that I do care. What kind of world will they have? How will they be treated as women, as Americans, as Mormons? How can they make the world better as women, as Mormons, as Americans? How can I?

Last week Molly was miserable. She was fine (a different baby! said my dad. Happy to see us and quick to warm up!) when passed around from aunt to grandparents to dad while I got psyched about nutrition, organization, parenting and marriage at Education Week. And then I came home, after a week of unconcerned nights and peaceful days.

At the end of my retro-stay at BYU, I realized I hadn’t sworn in a week. And it wasn’t hard, either: I didn’t even have to try. I didn’t mumble or think or start to mumble-think a single naughty word in six whole days. And then I realized — I didn’t get mad for an entire week. No anger, no frustration, no wearing a rubber band around my wrist to remind me that the f-word was off-limits.

Just: no kids = no anger = no swearing.

Shouldn’t I be able, I asked myself, to give said self this gift all the time of not getting angry? If I simply refused to get mad, couldn’t I be happier all the time?

No. No I could not, I realized about twelve-hours post re-entry into my real life.

But now that I’m writing this (instead of making dinner, while the kids watch a movie upstairs) (post homework and swimming) (we haven’t fallen that far), instead of writing the post I sat down to write, about how Molly is, instead this has become about how I am, instead instead instead. I realize/remember/recommit that I shall simply choose to be happy (or at least not mad).

So Molly anyway. Molly has been clingy and teary and whiney, sitting on my lap at the dinner table, sometimes edging one leg over her own chair pushed up close to mine but still keeping one leg draped on me. I must turn to the empire for whinging or grizzling — is that not the best term for baby fussiness?

I took her to the doctor the week before last, worried (hoping) it was an ear infection, we aren’t demanding antibiotics, of course not, just let this horrible constant neediness have a reason and not be the new normal.

Then Molly turned two and I thought (horrified), is this the terrible twos that I blocked out of my brain, always thinking the independent threes were harder to deal with? Please bless no!

Before things could get much better (and after I felt stupid at the doctor’s with the “no visible signs of illness but she could still have a virus, you did the right thing, head-pat mommy”), we got her two-year vaccination and a flu shot and rounded the corner on another week of give-me-some-sleep-or-shoot-me enduring.

Well, all that grumbling and groaning on my part to tell you that, knock-on-wood, happy bouncing Molly is back, and if she will stay for a while at least, we need never speak of those two weeks again.

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