Pioneer Thoughts

It's been a long time since anything has been posted here and I've had mom on my mind the past several days. I was asked to prepare a talk for church on the pioneers yesterday and immediately thought of a letter from mom that I have treasured since her death. I came across it after she had died and have always felt that it was meant more for me now, than when it was written. It seems so fitting--much like several other letters that have been posted. It was written to me to be read on my experience with pioneer trek (a mini reinactment of what the pioneers experienced--handcarts, clothing, food etc...) that I went on when I was 14. I will always treasure the words that she wrote to me here.

July 8, 1997 Dear Katie,

Today was blistering hot and dry, and I am wondering how you'll be when you get this letter. The weather can be brutal. I know you are strong, but you are still my daughter. I will always be concerned for your comfort and safety. I am praying for you.

Katie, I am so grateful for you, for your sweet presence in our home, your gentle and diligent ways. I am sorry for the times I doubt your generosity with your friends. With me, you are helpful and kind. That is your nature, and I am sure it will go wherever you go as long as you live. Although this trek experience is physically difficult, it is similar to some of the social difficulties you have already faced and will continue to face. You have placed your hand on the cart (so to speak) when you took upon yourself the name of Jesus Christ and pledged to “mourn with those who mourn and bear one another’s burdens that they may be light.” This is the baptismal covenant. Once we pledge to be his daughters, we must never take our hands from the cart. The work we pledge to do is the work of loving and pulling our share of the load wherever we are. It is His work, because He loves all. We are his hands on earth.

I wish I were a more perfect example. If I were, maybe your brothers would all understand my love and their full worth.

I am grateful, Katie, for your faithfulness to right and good, and for your courageous choices and willingness to accept some of the harder choices we have forced upon you. I hope you know that my deepest desire is your happiness--your lasting, deep and all encompassing happiness. I want you to know all the joys that I have known and even more. So far, you are well on the way.

I feel blessed to have given you birth. I know through the Holy Ghost and repeated sacred assurances that you were sent to us as a special blessing. I knew before you were born that the Lord was giving me two more of what I had lost. I just didn't realize it would be daughters! How blessed we are. You have been both comfort and joy to me. I love your company--have never felt the need to "escape" as some mothers do. I look forward to the time when both of us will meet the ancestors we have done temple work for. I am sure we will love them as I love you. I know families are forever.

See you soon, Sweetheart.

Love,

Mom

Book of Remembrance

I'm in need of a project, and came across my stash of Mom's letters to me the other day. I'm going to type some of them up, to organize them, and so Jeremy and my kids can get to know Mom a little better. I'd like to share some of my favorite passages. The following is from a letter she wrote when I was 11 and put into my Book of Remembrance. Her insight (a prompting?) is uncanny, and my faith in eternal families is renewed each time I read her words:

"...You were born at an emotionally difficult time for me. Just when childbearing had become a triumph and a joy, Peter was a difficult birth and an emergency cesarean section. His birth left me weak. Sarah died 6 weeks later, and scarcely a year after that you were born -- again by cesarean section. Your big brother Matt was not happy with us, and we were not happy with him.

"... Before you were born I was sitting alone in fast meeting feeling sad over the loss of little Sarah and lonely. Dad was home with the boys, and I was enjoying the meeting in peace. A set of twins was blessed that day. I thought as they were taken to the front of the congregation, "What could be more beautiful than a baby -- unless it is two babies. How wonderful!" As that thought passed through my mind, the witness of the Holy Ghost filled me whole body. I thought it meant that I was going to have twins. I asked the Lord again later at home if I were going to have twins, and again that feeling went through my whole being. Strange, the doctor even had been telling me I would have twins. Later -- much later, I learned that the Lord was actually telling me to rejoice, that I would have two more babies -- that the loss I felt would be taken away. I never dreamed I would have two little girls in the place of the little girl we lost, but the Lord told me so before you were born.

"...Dear Jennie, I hope when the time comes for you to bear your first child that I am near and that I am strong. My mother has been such a strength to me through the years. She has known how best to help me and exactly how I was feeling. Such a wonderful companion she has been. I long to be that for you. Should I not be able to be by your side for some reason, little daughter, please know that my thoughts and prayers and my whole soul will be with you -- not only in your motherhood, but in all your life's work. Remember, love and life are eternal. No catastrophe of this life can wipe them out. Those blessings have been sealed upon us in the Holy Temple of the Lord if we are faithful and worthy of them. You were born under that sacred temple covenant, and you are ours forever if we live for it. I loved you before you were born, I love you now, and I always will.

All my love,

Mom."

Happy Birthday

Mom was born 68 years ago today. Coincidentally, in the last week, I've come across two things that have reminded me of a few of the reasons why she was so fun. I've enjoyed reminiscing. The first is a cookbook, The Tasha Tudor Cookbook, I have on my bookshelf I was mistakenly remembering was hers, passed on to me. I opened it a few days ago and found this dedication:

"February 4, 1998

To Jennie on the day of her sophomore recital. This book reflects life's deep joys -- family, beauty, and love. We hope it lasts longer than flowers.

Love, Mom and Dad.

PS Keep it away from the kitchen."

If you want to spend an afternoon with Mom, go pick up a copy of this book at the library or the bookstore. Every little thing about it helped me remember all the little things I loved about Mom. I know she loved Tasha Tudor. Now I think she and Mom are kindred spirits like the world rarely sees. The illustrations (painted by Tasha herself) are all of rosy-cheeked, tousled-haired, bare-footed children, or food, or barnyard animals. From recipes calling for a chicken carcass (zero waste) to instructions like these: "Don't drain the pan; cook it right in the drippings. I can feel cholestrol-intimidated people squirming in horror. However, once a year will not hurt you, and life is too short not to enjoy a few treats," I'm reminded of Mom so much I have to chuckle.

The second reminder of Mom is a magazine called, appropriately, Mary Jane's Farm. I have no idea how I got a copy, addressed to me by name here at my new address, but if you're the one that sent it to me, Thank You! I enjoyed it very much. The subtitle of the magazine reads as follows: "Food as Celebration/ Passionate Gardening / Nostalgic Crafts and Stitchery; The Everyday Organic Lifestyle Magazine." Aside from the stitchery, Mom to a T, without cracking the cover. My favorite article in Mom's honor is titled, "Be an 'Entre-maure': Just because it doesn't glitter doesn't mean it isn't gold." Ha! Hilarious.

If you haven't yet reminisced about Mary Jane yet today and felt happy for the legacy she left us, I hope this helps. I usually feel sad Mom's not here. Sometimes I'm mad. But today I'm just happy I got to know her. Love you, Mom.

The Unfinished Box

From my mother I inherited a restless curiosity. That's meant a jumble of different interests and hobbies, none of which I pursue casually: prose writing, photography, poetry, fossil collecting, fly fishing, fly tying, gardening, cooking. Tomorrow, maybe something new ...

Nature or nurture, I'm not sure which or in what measure, but I got that curiosity from my mother. Somehow, despite raising eight children, teaching piano, and carrying a constant load of heavy church responsibilities, she found time to pursue a wide range of hobbies, and to share them with my long-suffering father and with us, her kids.

As children, we sold "Current Cards & Stationery" to raise money to buy milk goats and, later, show goats, which we took to many a county fair; she dragged the family on rock hounding trips across the deserts of Utah; I went with her to Spanish classes at the University when I was 7 or 8, and pored over old microfiche slides in German at the family history library. We were always going new places and learning about new things. I also remember her buying me a little apple shaped piece of wood so I could practice tole painting, just like she did.

Mom grew interested in tole painting after a visit to Pennsylvania Dutch country. At the time, we lived on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and I think tole painting appealed to her both as a simple, rustic art form--something she felt she could manage--and for its tie-in with her Dutch heritage. Over the years, her skills grew, and, to this day, we have a number of beautifully painted objects: a small rocking horse, a chair, a clock, a doll's crib, and an unfinished box (a small hope chest), which I love precisely because it's unfinished.

My mother painted the box a deep green, the trim in a lighter hue, and then, on the top, one side, and one end, lovely patterns of flowers and other forms. But she didn't finish one end and one side, and there, only faint chalk lines are visible: patterns she sketched but never painted.

I often wonder what other patterns my mother would have painted had she lived past 59, and I don't mean just tole painting, but all the other things that would have peaked her curiosity or tickled her fancy. Mom was the type who would have taken up the banjo at 80. Really. She was never, ever bored, and I will always be grateful for that incredible enthusiasm for life.

I am also grateful that she shared that enthusiasm with us. When my son Jordan was just two she bought a tiny wheel barrow at a garage sale so that, when he visited, he would have his own little wheel barrow to push round the yard and help with the gardening.

In sharing herself and her interests in that way, she left it to us to paint some of the outlines she sketched, and encouraged us, in our own turn, to leave a box of one sort or another for our children and grandchildren: beautiful, we hope, and graceful, but never finished.

High School Reunions

My mother used to say that high school reunions weren't worth attending until the 20 year reunion. "By then," she said, "all we could do was sit around and laugh at ourselves."

So, I just attended part of my 20 year reunion, and, as usual, Mom was right. It's not that the pretense has altogether vanished 20 years out, and everyone (myself included) seemed anxious to prove that we'd become something, but my classmates and I, as Mom predicted, had all reached the point where we couldn't hide 20 years of wear and tear.

We age slowly, day by day, and that change is almost imperceptible. At the reunion, however, it was like one snapshot (the way I remembered these folks from their yearbook photos) and then a second snapshot taken 20 years later (the way they look now). That change is dramatic and surprising--there's nothing subtle or gradual about it--and that leaves little room for pretense or smug satisfaction. (Okay, so I did take some smug satisfaction in a popular kid or two who hadn't aged particularly well ... )

Even so, it was mostly fun, because we're all aging and experiencing life at roughly the same rate, and I really enjoyed catching up with a lot of old friends and remembering time spent together when we were footloose and fancy free.

Taking a Break

I'm afraid the blog may take a bit of a break for the next little while, and not for lack of material so much as for lack of time to sift through it.  I have boxes and boxes of my mom's letters and other writings, and most of the previous posts come from snippets I'd collected over the past several years.  With that easily accessible material used up, finding more means finding the time to look for it. 

So, I guess what I'm saying is this:  while I will eventually post more, it may take some time.   In the meantime, if you have thoughts or recollections of my mother that you would like to share, please email them to me at timothy.d.hawkes@gmail.com, and I will post them here. Ideally, I'd make everyone an administrator and open it completely up, but I can't figure out a way to do that easily.   

I wish I had something deep or profound to add at this point, but I don't.  Yesterday, on Mother's Day, we drove down to the cemetery in Bountiful where my mother is buried, and I stood for awhile and looked at the dates on her headstone.  Standing there, I felt keenly the loss all over again.  I miss her warmth, her smile, her wit and wisdom, the sound of her voice on the end of the line.  Dinners together on Sunday afternoons.  Cooking together.  Laughing together.  Her enthusiasm for life and people.   

Mom should've been around for another 20-30 years, I can't help feeling, but she's gone, really gone, and there's nothing to be done about it, and the saddest part of all is that--outside of Jordan--my children do not know her and cannot feel the warmth of her love, at least not in this life.   

Two Duties

January 30, 1999

We had a little row over the phrase “taking the curse off” at supper last night.

This is a “Mormonism” that flies out of the mouths of thoughtless people from time to time. I prefer the gratitude of the old fisherman. The Lord has provided so much for us. In our abundance, we have become thoughtless--even offensive. My problem is organizing and using the food we have in such a way that nothing is wasted. We have not struggled for bread--except to plant a few gardens and arrange to buy what we need. It seems to me we have two duties: to remember the source of our blessings and to share them.