Ya gotta have friends

... continued

After visiting mom's grave we got "out of the rain" and spent the evening at the Green Canyon Hot Springs, an ancient (circa 1950’s) indoor swimming pool fed by a natural hot spring.  

Let me take you there: It's cool and drizzly out, and rather perplexing for August.  You step into a doorway and are met with a blast of warm, wet air and the echoed voices of children.  A musty, woody odor hits, smelling like a run through the sprinklers.  A teenager behind the snack counter points down the narrow hallway to his right.  There, a cutout window in the hall opens to a tiny room hung with mesh bags on old wooden hangers.  The woman behind the counter moves and speaks like she works in a subway booth; she takes your money and hands you one of the bags.  You follow the cement corridor around to the ladies (or men’s, for my two male readers) changing room.  The wooden dressing stalls have just a skimpy curtain to change behind.  The wooden stalls are worn from decades of use, and random cement patches make a grey patchwork quilt of the uneven floor.  A dozen layers of peeling paint reveal as many colors as the decades in which they were painted.  You step into the indoor pool area that feels like one of those old Turkish bath houses you see in National Geographic, and lower yourself into water that is a cozy 90 degrees.  An outside pool fed directly by the hot spring is a scorching 110 at least.  Next to it is a freezing cold dipping pool fed by mountain runoff. 

Ultra-modest Ellie would have none of the changing stalls.  She fussed and hid and complained, certain that someone was lurking to sneak a peak at her, and finally found a hiding place to change into her suit.  We eased into the bath like pool spent the afternoon bobbing about and watching the babies play on the long steps.  Heidi’s baby, Lincoln, is just one day younger than Natalie, but far more agile and balanced.  The menfolk headed out to the hot pool and the cold dip. 

I did not. 

Guy did.  He is crazy that way.  It reminds him of his mission in Finland where they sat in a 200 degree sauna (SOW-na, if you care to say it properly.  It is a Finnish word, after all) and then rolled in the snow.  Preferably naked (you heard me). He likes that flesh-searing-heat followed by toe-curling-cold experience.  I have given birth, so I don’t need any more excitement for this lifetime. 

As I hung out with Heidi, the days that have accumulated between us melted away until I forgot that I don’t get to see her whenever I want.  I realized that we were just sitting there in silence, side by side, watching the babies play. 

“Oh, my goodness! Look at me just acting like we get to see each other all the time!” I blurted, “Quick!  Tell me everything!”  She laughed.  

But then I made her tell me everything. 

 It dawned on me how much I have missed, and how much I miss her. They say that the friendships you make are for a season, a reason, or a lifetime.  Heidi is definitely a lifer in my book.  I met her just after the terrible loss of her first baby boy, Andrew, whose little body just couldn't support life.  We have walked together, painted together, cleaned and cried and worked together.  We served in church as the leadership in the young women's organization, and have studied Parenting with Love and Logic together as well.  I was at her second baby's birth, and because our younger kiddos are paired in age, we have booked a lot of hours nursing together.  There is very little that we have not shared.

Now we also share distance.

It is so hard when friends leave us.  I have lost contact with many friends over the years, but there are a precious few that I have held on to.  Even though my friendship with Heidi started with a "reason", it has definitely grown into one that I believe will last beyond this lifetime. 

 I was reading in the New Testament today about Jonathan and David, and the friendship they had that was so close, "the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1).  One of my greatest blessings in this life has been to have such a friend, a few, actually.  I think that God, in his wisdom, gave us friendship, "bosom friends", as my dear friend Jackie says, or, - as Ellen calls them- "soul buddies", because He loves us.  He loves us and He knew this earth-walk would be hard, so He gave us kindred spirits to lighten the journey.  I am so grateful to live in an age where the voice or even the face of a dear friend can cross hundreds of miles, and be right there.

What an amazing time in the history of the world to be alive.

Ethan, hiding behind his mesh bag.

Jonah won't let me wash his hair at home 

and is freaked out by laying down in the bath. 

 Go figure.

Eli and Jonah-boy, all swum out. 

Tessa models the latest in travel wear and wet hair.

Tending Stardust

The door knob on the shed of the cabin property
built by Guy's grandfather Darwin Rider Holman

August 4th-7th

On Monday we made tracks north for Mack’s Inn, Idaho, to the cabin Guy’s grandfather built back in 1965.  We arrived well after dark, but squeezed in a Nerf-gun war and listening to Guy read from his grandpa’s life history before bed.  The kids had a ball running around in the cabin, and though that usually makes me nuts, I didn’t mind because for the first time in recorded history, ALL OF MY CHILDREN WERE PLAYING TOGETHER.  Well, Natalie was happy to watch, but seriously, I wanted to call CNN or Guinness or somebody.  I think the magic here was that Ellie didn’t like being hit by the darts, so she played a very good Sweden, collecting and returning darts to whomever needed them.  Jonah’s laughter was like bubbles, and Ethan and Adam played very nicely for the big brutes that they are.

Window art - Artist Unknown

Next day we woke to rain, and the cabin felt cozy and warm.  We got settled and then drove back to Rexburg to have lunch with dear friends Heidi and Mike.  We drove then, to the tiny rural cemetery where my mother is buried beside her grandfather in his family plot.  I have only been there three times, including the day she was buried, and all three (though two have been in summer) were blustery and cold. 

Mom's grave

Now, here I must tangent a bit.  Last week I was watching a documentary about the formation of the universe, and it poetically spoke of how every atom in each of us was once a part of a star.  That we are all made of stardust.  I thought about those words as I left flowers from my dad on mom’s grave.  About how strange it is that we tend and fuss over tiny parcels of land with headstones and grass and flowers, when the person, the actual soul that we loved and lost, is no longer anywhere near.  Just the specks of stardust that they once occupied remain tucked away in the earth; dust to dust, literally.  Their spirit, their soul, the part of them we most miss, is then perhaps mingled with the stars, or wherever it is that spirits go.  Still, even knowing she wasn’t there, it felt strange to leave, to get into the car and drive away from that little hill under the heavy clouded sky, leaving her stardust behind.

Sure do miss her.

Storm clouds hide the Grand Tetons

Our scoreboard keeping track of animal sightings

We shared our apples with the horses in the next field.

Road Trip Part 3: Idaho

Written from the road, Monday, August 8.

We are flying along an interstate
in Idaho, the earth spreading the gap between Jackie and I, and my heart hurts.

When God looked down 18 years ago and said, “Hmmm, those two girls should probably be roommates", I know He knew that we would be lifelong bosom friends, but he let me figure it out all on my own. I think that, out of kindness, He sedates my heart and mind when we are apart, the way he does to a woman after childbirth that makes her forget some of the intensity and pain she has endured. Only for me, my brain lies to my heart, “Oh, it wasn’t probably as wonderful as you think it was”. Because if I could always feel how wonderful it is to be with her, then I would always hurt as much as I do this minute because we are apart.

Within hours of arriving at Jackie's, our little girls crawled into their metaphoric pea pod together and played and fought like sisters. They flocked back and forth in the yard barefooted, skirts and hair blowing, and I wished I could be them. I can imagine that Jackie and I would have played endlessly in a make-believe world to rival Tolken’s. Instead, we stayed up talking till nearly dawn. But it was more like what I think monks must do high in the Himalayas, some mystic communion that slips from lips in gentle song and chant, an otherworldly sound that makes hearts fall into sync. It is, frankly, impossible and rather pointless to try to catch up on the gulf of years since we last saw each other. It was enough to just let the conversation float along like a leaf on a slow current, caught here and there, then moving on, skuddering along on bubbles of laughter.

We: talked-laughed-ate-cried-talked-cooked-ate-read-played-talked.

  We did not sleep.

As I leave Jackie, her image in my mind waving until the rolling hills swallow her up from sight, I really am simply forced to contemplate eternity. How can we doubt that there is a God in His heaven, ever, even on our worst day, when we have been touched by grace in our lives? How can we entertain the weak notion of temporarily-temporal connections, friendships that show up as a blip on the screen of eternity? No. Jackie is my friend for the ages. When this old tired earth heaves great sighs from its ageless spinning, she and I will be laughing in some celestial realm with a hundred generations of our children’s children’s children at our skirt hems listening to our stories.

When we began our goodbyes I burst into tears, just as we both had the moment we laid eyes on each other two days ago. Only Jackie was stoic and brave. I stockpiled hugs from her and then stole one more, like you would if you filled your hands with cookies, and then snatched one more to carry in your teeth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I had to say, because by saying it, my heart hurt just a tiny bit less.

We told the kids that we will probably just have to stop eating ice cream for a year or so

to save up for another trip. I would do it in a heartbeat, 

and if you knew how much I loved ice cream, 

you would truly understand.

Jackie and cutie pie Clara

Clara in the tent I made for her... most con-tent!

In this picture I imagine Jackie is explaining to Clara that we simply must 

brush out her hair or the birds will likely swoop down and nest in it.

Ethan prepares for what would become his single favorite part 

of the entire vacation... riding John's quads.  For two hours after we left, 

he would randomly exclaim,

"That was awesome!"  

"I love quads!"  

"Coolest.  Day.  Ever!"

Adam was like the tortoise, slow and steady.

The Giant Sky of Idaho

Jackie says, "Oh please don't go.  We'll eat you up, we love you so!"

Did someone accidentally bump into the wall and dent it?

"Not I!"  says Jonah (no, silly... he did not ride the quad!  Just a photo-op!).

Could it have been the man behind the mask?  I'll never tell!

Tessa and Ellie inform me that they will be room-mates at BYU 

with Gracie and Emma, just like Jackie and I.  I do believe they will!

 Jackie, dear, you quite ruined my trip to Rexburg. 

I blubbered for a solid 10 miles, wept bitterly for 4 more and sniffled for another 30 besides. 

My eyes were swollen for 3 counties.  Honestly, is that any way to treat a guest?

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More Idaho to come...