Telling a Story

It's difficult to explain how objects come to have meaning, but they do. Personally, I'm a de-junker. If I don't need it or use it, it finds a new home or goes in the trash. On the flip side, I'm thankful that Ruth wasn't a de-junker. Her treasures have become our memories, and finding ways to hold onto the memories contained in the objects without storing "stuff" has been one of the greatest challenges of taking care of their estate. I ask myself all the time which things will mean something to Joie someday, and try very hard to be guided by others who know which objects come to be important to children who lose parents. Going through the house we found clothes and t-shirts belonging to Ruth and Nick that went as far back as high school days. Esther (my sister) took on the challenge of turning that pile of old clothes into a treasure, and she succeeded. It was an emotional challenge, a labor of love to be sure, but we treasure the finished product. On Esther's blog (January 18, 2009), she wrote the following while beginning to work on the quilt:

Pieces of worn clothes, some worn through, some too new...too unused to be sliced into pieces. Cutting up the physical remnants of life that is dearly missed. Piecing them together, hoping to connect in some way with life passed on. Feeling His direction through her memory, and it begins to come together. More than a quilt...my own fragmented emotions that have felt so undone...beginning to come together. Refocusing, reassuring, connecting with lives removed.

Her work has become our treasure. Each piece of this quilt is a memory, and combined they tell a story of the love and life of a family.


In addition to shirt pieces, she cut off pockets and straps from pants and included them...

She didn't leave out some of Joie's old shirts...she's on here too.

The front flap of Ruth's purse. Joie found a stretched penny from the Palmyra trip tucked inside one of the pockets. We left it there.

We have pictures of them in so many of the shirts...it's easy to picture them when you look at the quilt.

It looks like I didn't get a great picture of Nick's old ties, but she cut them off and sewed them to the bottom...look closely i the picture below. (Do you feel like you're staring at a page out of an I Spy book?)

The knitted piece along the top is tied on and can be removed. It's Ruth's first knitting project. Joie said Ruth knit it for her as a scarf but she was just learning how to knit and even though it was too long she just kept going. Joie said it was too long for a scarf.

Thanks Esther for the memories. I understand she has a lot more pieces and quilts are in the works for Susan an my parents.

Our Weekend

The last time I saw Ruth alive I was at her house picking up Champ...she'd been nice enough to dog sit while we were in Chicago and Nauvoo. If you've seen Ruth's yard, you know it was "naturally landscaped." I couldn't get over the number of flowers growing in her yard, and it so happened that year I was on the hunt for flowers for some of our flower beds. I asked Ruth if I could come dig up some of the flowers from her yard when the weather got cooler. She had plans to plant grass and said, "Take all you want."

That fall Ruth was gone but the flowers were still there. When it got cooler, I did dig up some flowers from her yard and brought them home and planted them in what we were then calling "The Ruth Garden," because her rusty planter from in front of her house and Joie's "Pole Canyon" sign were there. I was so disappointed when the flowers didn't live, but as luck would have it, the house hadn't sold by the following spring, and there were those same flowers, growing up in their yard where there would have been grass. I tried once again to dig up and replant flowers from her yard, carefully marking each spot where a flower was planted with a rock. I watered them faithfully and checked them daily, but once again the flowers died. By that time the house had sold, and my opportunity had passed to bring some of Ruth's flowers to my yard. At that point, I didn't want to do anything with that garden. In my frustration and disappointment, I began thinking that if I couldn't have her flowers there, maybe there just wouldn't even be a Ruth Garden. For the rest of the summer I let that flower bed go to weeds, and didn't touch it again until last Saturday. With the help of Jeran, Megan, and Joie, we were raking out flower beds and cleaning up the yard. Joie wanted to rake so I told her to go rake all the weeds out of the Ruth Garden. She had a question about what to rake so I walked up there to show her and below are pictures of what I found...three of the over 20 plants I tried to move from Ruth's house to my garden were growing. After a two attempts and a year of dormancy, there they were. I knelt down and started gently pulling grass and weeds away from the flowers and thought as I did of all the life lessons there are in nature. I consider this my Easter Surprise, and we think we may now call this "The Easter Garden."

Each plant was different. They're all wild flowers, and only one of each variety survived. This one is a daisy variety...don't know the name, but we had some at our old house and I liked them. They're orange and yellow with a brown center.

This one grows tall blue flowers on it...again, don't know the name.

This one...not sure. I dug it up because I thought it was pretty. Joie tells me she thinks it's "stinkweed." That would be just like me to think a weed was pretty and dig it up. If Joie's right and this is stinkweed, we'll name this one Audrey.

Then on Sunday, Jeran and Joie wanted to go to Cedar Fort. We found some Easter signs on Audrey's grave, drawn by children. The pictures say, "I love Jesus." One is from someone named Dewi and one is from someone named Arlee. At the bottom of one is written, "Happy Easter Little Audrey."

Megan's Thumb Trick

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Easter

This is as close as we got to an Easter picture this year. We seem to never be ready for church in time to take a picture before church, and Nate was long out of his white shirt and tie before we walked in the door and took a picture. We have too many different personalities in our family to ever attempt even similar looking clothes. Jeran and Nate aren't picky, but the closer Jeran gets to being 12 (he's actually only 10) the more he wants to wear a white shirt and tie to church so he and Nate were look-alikes this year. Megan's our casual girl--she'll put on a skirt and shirt once a week and is in pajamas almost as soon as she's home from church. Joie likes her dresses and will choose the "girly-girl" looks...but is just as comfortable in her jeans or pj's. We're glad we got at least one shot. I think we may be outgrowing the cute Easter traditions. We did have a great family day though, and enjoyed talking about Easter and what it means to us.

Saturday we had an egg hunt at Tim's brother's house. Before we got there Joie was the only one who wanted to hunt for eggs. The others were just interested in being with cousins. Once we got there Megan and Jeran caved and ended up hunting for eggs also. Megan is on a no candy pledge this year and gave her candy away (but decided she could keep the eggs containing fruit snacks). Jeran ate his (and probably a few extras). Joie ate some and saved some and ended up losing the ones she saved...and figured out if you leave a basket of candy sitting around in a house filled with 30+ kiddos you might not have any candy left. Amazingly enough, she ate dinner, which consisted of a variety of salads, veggies and fruit. She has decided she likes spinich but not salad...yes, I'm talking about Joie, a.k.a. Diana Jo, DJ, the non-vegetable consumer. Her plate was heaping with spinich leaves, some dressing, fruit, and a roll. Sunday we had a quiet day...loved every minute of it.

Fabulous!

We have a running list of quick, easy dinners...the ones you use as a back up on those nights we're in a hurry or just don't want to cook. Soup and grilled cheese, breakfast dinner, chili, chips and cheese, pre-baked chicken from the grocery store, tacos...and many more also containing ground beef because we usually cook a lot at once and freeze it so we have it ready to add to about anything. Tonight I opened the refrigerator and just didn't get any ispiration. I left the kitchen and went back a few minutes later...still no inspiration. I opened the refrigerator again and scanned the horizon. Some cottage cheese, leftovers, pickles, yogurts, tortilla wraps, lunch meat, and a lot of veggies...then I saw it, way in the back...a tub of cream cheese. I'm not quite sure why, but I thought to make wraps. Cream cheese, turkey, and spinich rolled in spinich or whole wheat tortillas. Then as I made them I realized they didn't stay rolled very well on their own, so I stuck tooth picks in them. The kids' comments made my heart swell with pride at my creativity... "Fancy!" "Mmmmm...delicious." "Mom, this is great," and I even heard the word, "Fabulous!" We've had wraps before, but never with the rave reviews we had tonight. ...Add a toothpick and suddenly it's fancy and fabulous. Who knew? (And by the way, we're always looking for more of these quick dinner ideas, so please share what you do at your house!)