DAY 19 - MUCH MORE VISITING THAN TEACHING

Mormons have a few “rituals” frequently observed, and among them: Visiting Teaching – which is basically just a few women getting together to go visit a few other women (and leave them with a “message”) once each month. Although it can happen any time during the month, it’s usually the last few days, because Mormons procrastinate just like the rest of the world.

   We go Visiting Teaching in pairs – and I have a wonderful new partner: Stephanie Barlow. Stephanie just graduated from high school this year, so this is all new to her – but she’s a trooper about it. Stephanie is a beautiful blonde young women, quite into fashion – and with a passion and love for music and singing. And she has a few Special Needs – along with the other PHYSICAL challenges she’s faced her whole life, she has also recently started going blind.

Stephanie Barlow

   Stephanie doesn’t let little things like blindness stand in her way. She is FIERCELY independent, and proudly walks alone where she can – and if she does need a bit of assistance, it’s always the minimal amount possible. And she’s willing to try new things and loves to be social and be involved. And I love her positive outlook and passion for life.

   Today we visited Michelle Corbin. Michelle designed the Joyfully Read program, and helped Stephanie with reading for years. And Michelle is one of the sweetest women you will ever meet. She gently brings Stephanie into the conversations, and asks questions to get Stephanie to open up and share her new schooling experiences with us. As I watched Michelle gently touch Stephanie’s shoulder with each question, and genuinely laugh as she shared – I watched a woman who is not only an expert teacher, but teaches with great love.

   The other woman we visit is Sondra Hudgens. Sondra is a hoot! She always has hysterical stories from just the regular goings-on of family life. Sondra is Stephanie’s piano teacher, and is astoundingly patient and loving with her. Sondra is probably the most easy-going person I know. Even when dealing with extremely difficult circumstances (and sometimes people), Sondra finds a reason to shrug her shoulders and laugh it off. She is definitely someone that understands that sometimes “Life is what Life is” – so why try to fight it. She is a roll-with-the-punches kindof gal, and that is certainly something that I am trying to learn from her example.

   It’s a great experience to have the opportunity every month to get to know these fabulous women better. OK, I have to admit that I’m a bit weak on the “message” part – so basically we just show up and visit for a while. There’s a deep philosophical lesson published somewhere that I’m supposed to print off and take with me – but most days I’m lucky if I remember to wear shoes, so I just run with it. And so far, no one seems to mind.

Marie Baird (and me) -- she's been my
Visiting Teacher for years

   And not only do I get to BE a Visiting Teacher, I get to have them too. Also rather non-tradtional, Marie Baird and Deb Fox took me to the Farmer’s Market for a morning a few weeks ago. We ate yummy food, shared fabulous conversation, and had a wonderful time. (Oh, and there wasn’t any formal message there either, which was just perfect!)

   But apparently there are some women who have “issues” with various aspects of Visiting Teaching. Either they: don’t like their partner; don’t like who they visit; don’t like who visits them; don’t like it when there IS a message; don’t like when there isn’t. Whatever! One of the great lessons that I have learned in life is the importance of having women to share with and learn from.

   Over the years I’ve had some great Visiting Teachers, and had the opportunity to visit some amazing women. And there is one lesson in particular I learned when I was 18:

   I had just moved away to college, and the next day my mom fell and broke both arms. BOTH! At age 68 she wasn’t up to much, so I immediately moved back home to help my parents out. Dad had fallen a few days earlier and messed up his shoulder – so between the two of them, they really needed the help. Because the term had started, I stayed in school fulltime and commuted – plus I had a parttime job.

   I took care of the house, meal prep, cleaning, laundry – everything! Mom couldn’t even brush her own teeth. She just sat there all day watching TV, because it was all the strength she could muster to even push a button on the remote control.

   A neighbor came over to see what the Visiting Teachers could do to help, and my mom declined. (Although I was downstairs, I could hear the whole conversation.) Mom actually said, “Oh, we’re fine. Gena has it all under control.” WHAT?!?!?  I had nothing under control! I was carrying 15 credits at school, commuting an hour each way every day, working 20+ hours, and trying to take care of both injured parents. It was crazy, and I felt wayyyy over my head.

   And, Karen Larkin, this dear sweet neighbor, turned to my mom and said something close to: “Lela, you always volunteer when someone needs a meal or some help. And you know how great it is to be of service. How can any of us ever have the blessing of giving service if no one is willing to accept it? You have the opportunity now to give these other women a chance to be of service.”

   Not only did Mom relent and allow a few meals to be brought over, but both Mom and I learned a valuable lesson about giving and receiving service from other women.

Kaye Nelson, me, Callie McKay
Because VT doesn't have to be boring!

   Because women need to have women in their lives. But in our unsocial-Social-Media-based society, we lose that so much today. I remember going to Quilting Bees with my mom when I was little – but things like that don’t happen anymore. And I think we lost something far more valuable than beautiful quilts in the process.

   So I’m grateful for Visiting Teaching – and especially these marvelous women that it has brought into my life. Because not only do women need women, but I need women – to counsel, learn, laugh, and cry with. And there has been much of that lately – and hopefully much more to come.

Visiting Teaching is a way to help us care for and about each other. It is a way for us to develop the characteristics of a follower of Jesus Christ. It is a way to make sure that no one in the Lord's kingdom is alone. -- Mary Ellen Smoot, RS General President 1997-2002

DAY 6 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIKE!

Michael Evans Roe in 1950

On September 6, 1946, my mom gave birth to their first child: Michael Evans Roe. Having been childless for 10 years, they were thrilled to finally have the family they’d always wanted. They lived in a tiny rented 1-bedroom house, and converted the closet under the stairs into a bedroom for Mike. There was a washtub they used for washing clothes, dishes, and the baby. This washtub saw a lot of use.

Mike loved playing Cowboy

   One day, when he was only 4-years-old, Mike was outside playing Cowboys with a few of the neighbor kids – when he was hit by a drunk driver – right in front of this house. According to the newspaper article, he was hit so hard that it knocked the cowboy boots right off his feet. By the time my dad got to the hospital, it was too late. He found Mom sitting in the hospital waiting room, clutching Mike’s teddy bear. She was devastated – and she never got over it. Never.

   Dad’s cousin Lewis drove up to Oakland to scoop up Mom and Dad and take care of them. Lew was smart enough to know that going home to that empty house should wait for a few days. Lew’s wife Alice fixed them the only thing Mom would eat, Warm Milk and Bread. My Uncle DeVoe paid for the headstone. Everyone stepped up and helped Mom & Dad through the worst time of their life. Everyone except the driver. The drunk driver was never charged (it was 1950), never apologized, and never paid a dime of the hospital or burial costs.

Mom & Mike - his 1st birthday

   Mike would have been age 19 when I was born, and Mom still couldn’t talk about him – or even say his name without crying. And 35 years later, when she died, that still held true. She was heartbroken for the 50 years from when Mike died until she passed away at age 83 – she literally never got over it. I remember once when I was about 5 or 6, Mom was crying in her bedroom – so Dad gently scooted me out to the dining room. As he emptied his pockets he told me that sometimes Mom got sad, and we just needed to be quiet and let her rest. Over the years that happened fairly regularly. I now understand why.

    When I was age 15 my now-married sister, Fran, came to Oakland to visit. For a Genealogy class she’d taken at BYU, she had ordered Mike’s Death Certificate – and on it was listed the cemetery where he was buried. Neither of us had ever been there. We snuck away and drove to the cemetery, looked in the designated location, but couldn’t find his grave. It was a small section in an enormous cemetery – a section specifically designated for infants and children. We looked at the dates from the 1940s and 1950s, laid out chronologically – and the ages, from infants that died at birth to children that died at only 8-years-old. It was a small section of the cemetery, but it was certainly filled with sadness. We found the place we thought should be Mike’s grave, but it was just a bare spot of grass – with no headstone to mark his resting place. We continued to search the area, but we were sure this was the spot – but we were also sure that something was wrong. Unfortunately it was late in the day, and the cemetery was closing – so we had to leave, with all of these questions unanswered. And because we knew it would upset our parents, Fran and I decided to just have it be our secret.

   Six months later when I got my Driver’s License, I went back to the cemetery – this time all alone. I went to the office, again looked, again returned to that bare patch of grass. So I returned to the Cemetery Office and explained the situation. A very nice woman pulled out a file, confirmed that a headstone had been purchased, and send a Groundskeeper out with me to see if a little grass had grown over the marker. He walked to that same spot of grass where I thought Mike was buried, and tapped the ground with his shovel. Nothing. More tapping, a bit deeper – still nothing. Then he stepped on the shovelhead, all the way into the ground before the “klink” of the metal shovel hitting the granite headstone. The full shovel head – about 12-inches-long. It had been 30 years since Mike died, and his loss had been so painful that my parents hadn’t been back to the cemetery in 30 years. 30 years of grass had grown over the unvisited headstone.

Mike at Lake Merritt 1949

   Mike died 64 years ago, and would have turned 68-years-old today – but he is forever frozen in time as a 4-year-old.  Almost everyone that knew him is gone now. My sister and I never got to meet him, and know very few stories about him. But for 4 years he was the center of the universe for my parents. For 50 years his loss was my mother’s deepest heartache. And forever he will be our big brother.

   And that’s the beauty of understanding the gospel and having a testimony. You get to be sealed as a family, so the amount of time that you get to spend together on this earth is only part of the picture. The loss of a child is the most heartwrenching experience any parent can go through, but knowing you will be together for eternity can buoy you through the difficult times. After my mom passed away, Dad told me of a dream he had:  Mom and Mike were walking down the big hill at the cemetery, hand in hand – together. And I know that my dad believed it, and it comforted him to know that they were finally together again.

Dad and Mike

  And that’s why Mormons build temples and do genealogy – because Family is what this life is all about. It is the reason we come to this earth, and it is the reason that we love – because we are building those bonds here that will continue long after this life ends. When you know about eternity, you want eternity. And because we have a loving Heavenly Father, we can have eternity.

107 PURPLE BABY HATS

A while back I heard about November being Shaken Baby Month, and specifically about a hospital that sent every November Baby home in a Purple Baby Hat – to remind parents to NOT shake their babies.

This really touched my heart – and I decided that I wanted to become involved in this cause. So I set a goal to make 100 Purple Baby Hats to donate to the local hospital. A few days ago I finished up the last of them. It was a great feeling! I had a big basket full of hats, so I dumped them out, snapped a quick photo, and counted – just to make sure that I had 100. I counted 107 Purple Baby Hats.

Yesterday I called Trudy, the Charge Nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at UVRMC in Provo, and we had a great hat chat. Apparently this hospital hasn’t done purple hats in November before, but she was thrilled to know that I already had them done – and said that if I brought them by that they would definitely use them. So this afternoon I stopped by Utah Valley Regional Medical Center and dropped the hats off in the Hospital Nursery.

It’s a great sense of accomplishment to achieve a goal, and even more rewarding when it’s something that is for such a good cause. I’ve never had any children of my own, but I know that there will be 107 babies running around Utah County in something that I made for them. And hopefully it acts as the intended reminder to protect our Little Ones by not shaking them.

These aren’t my first baby hats either. To date, I’ve made over 2000 baby hats. Simple little crocheted baby hats – and I’ve given them all away. Friends, neighbors, strangers – pretty much anyone I knew with a baby got a hat. And I'm happy to give them to anyone who wants them. A few years ago I even received a phone call from the retired Director of Humanitarian Services for the LDS Church who asked if I had any hats that he and his wife could take to Honduras – the next week! I rushed 150 hats to them, and they sent me these cute pics of the kids wearing the hats. And these adorable kids are definitely inspiration to keep making more and more hats.

This all started because of my mom. Making baby hats is something I inherited from her. For as long as I can remember, Mom used a handmade wooden loom to make baby hats as gifts. Her hats were beautiful and perfect. Unfortunately, despite many attempts, I just can’t use her loom correctly. When Mom passed away, we found a dishwasher-box-size Yarn Stash – which my sister insisted that I take home: “You’re the only one Mom taught to crochet.” So I brought home all the yarn, tried and failed with the loom, and felt guilty every time I walked by that huge box of yarn. Eventually I figured out that I could crochet baby hats, so I decided that I would crochet while watching movies. (It helps me feel less guilty about just sitting there, and it keeps that part of my mom's legacy moving forward.) Apparently I’ve watched a lot of movies over the years, because I’ve certainly made a lot of baby hats over the past 10 years.

And these definitely won’t be my last baby hats. It feels good to do something for someone else – even if you’ll never know that someone, and they’ll never thank you. Maybe that’s why I like baby hats so much – it’s simply giving with no expectation of anything in return. Because true charity is its own reward. Besides, I like watching movies – and it’s even better to watch them guilt-free. I'm pretty sure my mom would be proud that I used up all her yarn for a good cause.

Oh, and yes – I did stop at Redbox on my way home tonight too!

As we lose ourselves in the service of others, 

we discover our own lives and our own happiness. 

-- Dieter F. Uchtdorf

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MOM & DAD!

Today would have been 78 years.

Lela & Dale Roe

My parents grew up together. Went to Elementary School together. Skipped 7^th Grade together. Graduated from Preston High in 1933, together. And on July 7, 1936, they asked my mom’s step-father to drive them to Logan, they went to the temple together and were Sealed for Time and Eternity, and then went home. No fancy clothes, no reception, no one with them – and not even one photograph from that day. It was the middle of the Depression – they wanted to get married, so they got married. It was that simple.

   They were married 63-years when my mother passed away, and Dad missed her every-single-day until he joined her 5 years later. He literally couldn’t remember his life without her in it. And I never had any doubt that my dad absolutely LOVED & ADORED my mom. I knew it, she knew it, and everyone that knew them knew it.

   Not that life was easy for them. They got married during the Depression, and then WWII came along. They were married 10 years before they were able to have any children, and when my brother Michael was 4-years-old he was hit by a drunk driver right in front of their house – leaving them again childless. About a year later my sister Fran came along, and when she was 13-years-old they decided to adopt me. They had lots of ups-and-downs – like everyone does, but they came from an era where people understood what marriage really means and they always worked things out because that was the only option they could even imagine.

   I am grateful for amazing parents that loved each other and loved me. I am grateful for an amazing example of what Love and Dedication can really be. It can still be like that. Anyone can have that. My parents had that because they wanted it – and they worked at it, every single day.