Tie o’ the Day is a brand new acquisition to my holiday tie collection this year. It offers up, not gingerbread cookies, but NINJAbread cookies. A clever twist, I must say. Please note that Face Mask o’ the Day is covered with bow-tied deer. And my pants are Christmas-lighted. I’m a happy girl in my attire today.
Instead of regaling you with some anecdote or another, I have a question for my fellow Delta Rabbits. I woke up this morning thinking I should wash my truck later this afternoon, and that made me think of the old car wash in Delta. It was sort of on the north side of Main Street, across from where Quality is now located. I say it was sort of on Main Street because it was behind a house that was on that corner. I believe the older couple who lived in the house owned the car wash. They also owned and ran the little trailer park on Main Street beside the house. I can’t remember exactly what the little set-up was called. To the best of my recollection the sign said something like “The B Kitten Klean Car Wash and Trailer Park.” Somebody help me fill in the blanks of my memory. I can see the old couple as clear as day in my mind, but I can’t think of their names. Was it Larsen? Also, did I make up that there was a little RV-type trailer park there? I look forward to any answers y’all can provide.
We here at TIE O’ THE DAY believe that you can never have enough leg lamps of any ilk. It’s just plain true that 2 real leg lamps and 1 leg lamp Tie o’ the Day make a jolly trio in the house. When I next drive down to Deltassippi to visit Mom at the care center, I will be wearing this same tie. I wear it for her at least once every Christmas season. In fact, she has one of my A CHRISTMAS STORY leg lamps in her room there. It is tiny and plugs into a regular electrical outlet. It is visible on one of her tables or in her window most of the time. Tie o’ the Day will make Mom laugh throughout the entire visit. Mom’s short-term memory is such that she will see and enjoy the leg lamp tie the minute we walk in her room, then she’ll forget it, then 10 minutes later she will notice it again, and so on—as if every time she notices the tie, it’s the first time she’s seen it that day. (Mom loves A CHRISTMAS STORY. I think it was BT/Mercedes’ family who introduced the movie to Mom.)
For a while now, Mom has had a tendency to repeat her stories, jokes, and questions. But she still knows who we are and remembers enough about us to have conversations about our lives. She has, however, begun to ask me how many kids she had, and which one am I. She seems to remember from the early-30’s up to the mid-80’s pretty well, for the most part. Sometimes now she mixes up who did what and where. But we never correct her. We heard the stories when her memory was great, so we know who did what and where. If you happen to run into her at the care center this holiday season, I suggest you let her know who you are and who your parents are. Chances are, she’ll be able to place you or at least your family, and you can enjoy a fun conversation with her. No matter what she remembers or doesn’t remember, she’s still got her spunk, her compassionate heart, and her humor. She is still a joy to be around.
I didn’t intend to write about Mom today. The words simply fell out of my fingertips. I miss Mom every day. Lately, I can’t think about her without crying, as I’m doing now. I miss her even when I’m with her. I am already in mourning for her, though she’s still here with us. She’s Mom, but she is not wholly Mom. Pieces of her are no longer part of her. I mourn those pieces—her wildly aware and knowing love; her full-of-stories memory; and her astute cognition. Her hugs are not whole anymore either. But they are precious to me beyond any riches or success I might ever have. 💎 💰 🏆
Today’s Banned Books: I’m re-reading OF MICE AND MEN, by John Steinbeck, and Anne Frank’s DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL. Two literary classics.
I have so much more to say about the banning of books. I could write forever more addressing the topic. However, I think this will be final post about the subject—for the time being, at least. I’m sure you get the gist of how rabidly I’m against banning books. Y’all are probably ready for me to move on to lighter subjects. With that in mind, I’m wearing my rafter o’ turkeys Tie o’ the Day, in honor of Thanksgiving being just two days away.
I am writing this post about my own experience, as just one example. It’s about books and being gay. I have no so-called “gay agenda,” nor have I ever come across one, so I doubt such a thing exists—except in the mouths of pundits on TV. I am merely telling my story to make a point or two, and my story happens to be about books in a school library, and growing up as a gay teenager in a rural Utah high school, during the late 70’s and early 80’s. I’m sorry if my life offends you. I’m not sorry for my life, mind you.
Back in the olden days, when I was young, Delta High School was not just the high school. It was also the junior high. Students moved from 6th grade directly to the high school back then. 7th and 8th graders were not technically high schoolers, but we were in the high school with them. Grades 7-12 used the high school library. There were no computers there at the time. There was no internet. There were wooden card catalogs full of index cards for each book. There were books, and records, and newspapers, and prints of masterpieces of art in the DHS library. I spent my lunch time there almost every day.
Miss Hansen was in charge when I got there in 7th grade. She was an outstanding librarian, therefore, we were blessed to have a fine library—much better than libraries in schools of similar size, i.e., libraries in other small rural high schools in Utah. I know our library was exceptional because when we traveled to the other schools to compete with them in sports, I somehow managed to sneak into the opposing schools’ libraries to see what they had to offer. The DHS library out-classed them all. The DHS library was where, when I was in 7th grade, I found a novel about the post-Civil War era, which name I don’t now recall, and I first learned about Juneteenth, for example. It’s not a new “woke” thing. It’s a celebration that has been in existence since 1866. Because of that library, I have known of it since I was 12. I had no way of knowing back then that, in the 90’s, I would teach in a middle school whose student population was 100% black. I learned about black history and culture from books in the DHS library. Little did I know, those books had prepared me to be a better teacher for my middle school students. Little tidbits of what I learned in the DHS library about a culture so mysterious and far removed from my own rural, white, Mormon culture I grew up in helped me to connect with my students in ways other white teachers in my school could not. In the DHS library, I devoured every library book I had time for—about a multitude of subjects.
But the splendid DHS library lacked a key thing. It did not have any book that connected to me in one key way. I knew I was gay and I was struggling to understand it, but I found no book that reflected what I was going through. Not one. There was no character in a book that I could identify with. According to the books on the shelves, I did not even exist—or maybe I wasn’t supposed to exist. I was a good student. I was a good Mormon. But I did not exist on the shelves of my own school’s library. Nobody talked about being “gay” seriously at that time. I myself tried mightily to ignore that part of me. There were plenty of comments and jokes, though. Some were aimed directly at me. Some were just teenagers cracking gay jokes where I could hear them. Listen, I’m not whining about all of that. It made me tough. It made me savvy. All in all, I had a wonderful childhood in Delta. I was smart enough to understand that people—especially teenagers—have a tendency to either get angry or poke fun at what they don’t understand. Adults should know better, although they often don’t. These people were my friends, and I doubted their goal was to hurt me. But it caused harm to me and other gay students, nonetheless. It wasn’t okay. With every sarcastic comment, every joke, the messages piled up: because I was gay, I was a joke and had no value or morals. I was less than. I had no right to be treated with dignity. And there was no room in the community for me to be me. I never felt friendless—just sad and alien. I knew the jokes came from ignorance, not meanness. Still, they took a toll on me anyway.
I don’t recall a day at DHS when there was not at least one snide comment or joke aimed in my direction, even though I had never publicly told anyone that I was gay. Gradually, I felt smaller and smaller as my years in DHS continued. I was often suicidal. I made a few genuine but halfhearted suicide attempts. I clearly did not want to die, but it began to feel as if my community wanted me to. I felt that I was supposed to rid the community of me. I had a near-constant feeling that eradicating my “evil” self was what almost everyone seemed to want me to do—because their routine anti-gay comments told me I had no right to honorably exist as who I was. I didn’t talk to my parents about being gay when I was at DHS, because I assumed they would have no idea how to help me. And I thought that if they knew the truth about me, they might not love me as ferociously as I knew they did. (Of course, they would have, and always have loved me, but I was a dumb teenager and I wasn’t so sure back then.) I went to an ecclesiastical leader for help to change who I was, and I was surprised to find that it did me much more harm than good. I pretended to be and live as a straight person every day. Obviously, I was not very good at it. I routinely attempted to negate myself. Even as I tried to disappear, I have no doubt I developed my wide sense of humor into a kind of shield to protect the real me, by distracting others—by making them laugh. I did put up a good front.
I was fortunate to have a couple of DHS teachers who could see what was going on with me probably even better than I could. They accepted me just by having conversations with me about books and art and ballet and classical music and politics. We never referenced my sexuality. They gave me slivers of hope that I could be okay just by being me. They valued me. I had a couple of Mutual teachers who did the same. Those four incredible women are still in my prayers of gratitude every day. One day, at the end of a class, I was having a conversation with Nancy Conant (legendary DHS math teacher) about the country’s politics at the time. Without once mentioning my sexuality, she said the following to me as I was leaving her room: “Listen to me. The longer you put off being who you really are, the more people you will hurt when you finally discover you can’t pretend anymore to be someone you’re not.” I sort of understood what she meant at the time. As I found my place in the world, I understood it more deeply with each passing year. My talk with Mrs. Conant happened near the beginning of my Junior year. And that’s when I knew I had to get out of Delta. I couldn’t take not being seen as a valued human being for one more year. I knew I would literally not live through my Senior year. I was getting more serious about wanting to die. I had enough credits to graduate after my Junior year, and so I did. A week after I graduated, I moved to Ogden and started college at Weber State. Immediately, I was treated with dignity by almost everyone I met. Nobody knew me or anything about me. I could breathe as myself. And in Weber State’s Stewart Library, I found books that reflected my experience (I also found Suzanne in the Stewart library a couple of years later). I found stories that were representative of my struggles with my identity, inside bookstores everywhere I went.
I am asking you to imagine how much difference it would have made to me and other gay DHS students (Yes, I was not the only one) if there had been even one book on the DHS library shelves that reflected what we were going through. Just one book that validated our right to exist. One book that said we had value. Just one book that showed us we could have meaningful and successful futures in the larger world. A book that acknowledged we were not jokes, but human beings who could contribute much to our communities. One book that said it was possible for us to love and be loved for a lifetime. Just to stand in front of such a book on a shelf in the DHS library would have said to us and every other DHS student that we gay students were human beings and every bit as important and treasured as every other student. After providing books directly related to enhancing the public education students are offered, the very least a public high school library has a duty to do is to provide books that represent every student’s experience and worth. Not just white kids. Not just Mormon kids. Not just straight kids. Every kid in a school’s student body is owed that respect and acknowledgment by their community.
Statistically, in every culture throughout recorded history, around 1 in 10 persons born is gay. That means approximately 1 in 10 students is gay. I can attest that this statistic was pretty accurate at DHS when I was a student there, and I have no reason to think it’s any different now. A public school has no right to create a library void of books that reflect the experiences of 10% of its student population. Please keep in mind that a public school is a gift, an American right. It is not a church. And no American has the right to try to make it one. 📖 📚 📗📕📘
BTW: A final thought from me, for you to ponder: The most dangerous books are the one’s you don’t read.
I got only half-dressed today, but I think I’m looking fine. You can’t go wrong with Grinch pajama bottoms and what I call my book-writing Tie o’ the Day. I’m wearing my cow Sloggers boots because my feet are cold. Anyhoo…
I’m riled and snarky about this attempt to ban books in Delta. I will be both serious and sarcastic in this post, I’m sure. First, let me be clear about a few things. I do think that some books are not age-appropriate for high schoolers and should not be available in a high school library. In fact, I think there are books which have no place in any library—for example, books whose sole aim is to be pornographic. They certainly do not belong on any school library shelf. Personally, I would prefer those books didn’t exist at all. But I live in the United States of America, where I have the right and responsibility to respect other people’s reading rights—whether or not I agree with their choices in reading material.
With the internet giving us the ability to download books to our phones and computers in less than a second, we have to be honest about how difficult it is to actually ban a book. If you think removing a “bad” book from the library is exiling it to the garbage dump, you are sorely mistaken. I can guarantee you the best way to get a high school student to read a specific book is to ban it from the shelves of the library. I can also guarantee you that the borrowing and online buying of the books mentioned in the The Chronicle article about someone wanting to pull books from the DHS library’s shelves caused many Millard County people of all ages to borrow, download, or order online Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, just to see what all the hub-bub is about. For that unintended consequence that all you book-banning advocates make happen, I thank you. Over the years, you Book Busybodies have caused millions of people to read incredible and majestic books they never would have thought to read without your efforts to get those books off the shelves of school/public libraries. Like I said, I thank the Book Police for that, but not for their know-it-all, puritanical, busybody attitudes, or their thick inability to recognize literary merit and the reality of the messy stories of all humanity. It lowers a book-banner’s credibility to talk about a single scene or paragraph, because a book is an entirety. You cannot properly judge a book by one paragraph or one scene. Or because it has that one F-word in it. A book is whole, true in its own context—and it must be read and understood as such.
I know these things by knowing human nature; by raising two boys; and by listening to the stories of what thousands of my students told me they had read so far, in their young book-lives. For years, I taught writing at the University of Utah, at Salt Lake Community College, and at a public middle school in Baltimore. On more than one occasion, I had recent high school graduates and returned missionaries come up to me in class holding a “banned” book and asking questions like, “Why did this book get banned? I’ve read it and there were some parts that were a little graphic, but they were important parts of the story.” Yup. Just the other day, I did some research on why some folks once wanted to ban the children’s book, Stuart Little. Yes, the tiny mouse/boy. The reason? Bestiality. Because there’s only one way you can get a mouse/boy. I kid you not. That is ridiculous, and it says more about the abhorrent mind of the reader and the school board which banned it than it says about the book itself. Fortunately, the Stuart Little ban did not last long.
If you desire to pull The Bluest Eye off the DHS shelf, make sure you pull everything Toni Morrison has ever written. Her main characters all experience challenging situations (just as characters in any book do, or else we wouldn’t read them). Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature almost 30 years ago. So what would she know about telling a story? To heck with books that are meritorious and true to not-always-white, unfortunate characters. If we read Morrison’s books, we might learn something about art and language and culture and families who endure racism, poverty, and lack of education—people who start life already defeated. We might learn compassion.
In The Bluest Eye, the rape of a child—by the child’s own father—happens in a two-page scene , and it is not easy to get through. The scene always makes me feel repulsed, brokenhearted, and angry. When I read it, I usually have to close the book for a time before I can finish reading the rest of the story. I sometimes choose to skip the scene altogether. See that—I have the agency to choose what I read. The passage is in no way pornographic, and to suggest so is to belittle the child who is raped. The passage is not prurient in any way. It is a devastating scene, deserving of our empathy and regard. There is a lot of feeling to be dealt with, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be on a high school library shelf. We all have to wrestle with life’s vicissitudes. We all need to learn something about dealing with tragedy, loss, and complicated love. We shouldn’t be sheltered from reading about it when we are young, so that it smacks us in the face and drops us to our knees when we finally encounter it when we graduate, leave home, and enter the larger world. To keep age-appropriate hard things from kids is to cripple them just when they are seeking to establish their independence. When faced with a situation they’ve been sheltered from, they haven’t been taught the tools they will need to have in order to make good choices about what to do, or they might just run back home where the too-constant shelter has made them narrow and ill-equipped for independence. That’s a decimating kind of defeat for a new adult.
If you want to ban The Bluest Eye from the DHS library, be prepared to get rid of the Bible wherever you find it, because there’s child rape in there, too—as well as incest, domestic abuse, infidelity, drunkenness, and on and on. Also, you better move completely out of Millard County because all of those things happen in your towns. But, of course, they happen in every town, so I guess you might as well stay. You would be surprised to know how much the kids know about the adult hijinks that goes on around them in a small town. I knew about plenty when I was growing up there, and I didn’t hear it from my parents. I usually told them the news, and then we would talk and they would help me understand the repercussions of the hijinks. (I was lucky we could talk like that.) That was before we had the internet or iPhones. The kids find out even more quickly now. Some kids, but probably not most, might tell their parents about what they know and read. If they do talk to you about what goes on or what they read, don’t pontificate. Ask them questions about what they think about things. Tell them humbly what you think about those same things. They are trying to figure out how to handle the knowing.
I find it interesting that what those who would ban The Bluest Eye cite as the reason for it usually this one particular scene. They don’t seem to have any problem with the ingrained racism, the beatings, the destitute poverty, or any of the other trials that are part of the story. None of that offends them. So I guess those things are okay. We can have books that realistically show those things in the library. Hey, I have an idea: let’s rip those few pages of the child-rape scene out and keep the rest of The Bluest Eye on the high school library shelf.
I have never been inside the new DHS library, but I have no doubt I could walk between the shelves and pull out a book at random, and find something in it somebody somewhere would find objectionable. Banning books ends up being arbitrary—someone doesn’t like or understand something they saw in a book, so they want to save all the kids from it—even as you can hear profanity and bullying in the halls between classes. If you want to ban something, do the students a favor and dedicate yourself to banning the bullying at DHS. That is a grave daily danger to students, certainly more harmful to bullied kids than any book. With school districts in Utah worrying about lawsuits and bad press, all it takes is a very-tiny-but-obnoxiously-loud fuss for a school district to crumble to the unreasonable whims of a few fussers. Look, I haven’t lived in Delta for five years now, so I have no idea who the members of the school board even are. I probably even know and like them. I know of the woman spear-heading the ban, but I do not know her personally. I write this post on principle, without regard to the persons involved, when I say I am disappointed that, according The Chronicle, some of the board members showed support for pulling literature off the shelves of a public school. I am disgusted that any school board member would support the narrowing of students’ education. Unfortunately, however, I am not surprised by their support. I love me my Delta and my DHS and my Delta family and friends, but there is far too much giving-in to certain squeaky wheels just to keep any kind of noise down.
As far as what books you read, you can decide for yourself. I can too. The Constitution says so. You can tell your kids what books you will allow them to read, but know that they likely will read exactly whatever they want.: you just won’t know about it. That’s it. Nobody gave a loud person or loud small group the right to decide for everybody else in the community what is available for them to read. So who should decide what goes in a high school library? I see nothing wrong if we leave that to the professionals. It’s the school librarian’s job to ultimately choose and manage books that can educate and speak to the experience of all students, regardless of the librarian’s faith or political party. So you better pick an extraordinary librarian who puts the student population’s wide-ranging educational needs first. If a school district hires a lazy librarian, it’s the kids who will suffer. If librarians are doing their jobs correctly they should be reading book reviews and books, looking at book award winners, and then obtaining library books that represent all of the school’s students, not just the majority. Add to that a balanced community committee of readers who are representative of the entire community, not just the majority. ALL of those asking for a book to be tossed should have to read that book AND participate in an open-forum discussion of said book with people who advocate for keeping the book on the shelf. Never, ever, ever advocate for banning a book you have not read. Don’t let anyone get away with that crapola either. Banning books that are superbly written and make the reader think makes a mockery of the 1st Amendment. You might as well ban that.
FYI I promise, the personal stuff I have to say about this topic will show up tomorrow. I don’t know how juicy it is, but if I wrote a book about it, I don’t think it could show up in the DHS library. It will have that word “gay” in it, and that might make anything I publish unacceptable for teen consumption. I wonder how I handled actually being that word as a teenager at DHS. 🤔
I thought it was appropriate to wear a book-themed Tie o’ the Day—and my book-y Face Mask o’ the Day to add extra emphasis to this post. When I began writing about the banning of books from public and school libraries last evening, I was struck with a case of the opposite of writer’s block: the post I began writing kept getting longer and longer, and it’s still flowing through my pen this afternoon. Rather than offer my thoughts in one bigly post, it’s clear I’m going to have to chop up what I’m writing into a handful of posts, over the next few days starting Monday.
So today I offer you this one small section of my thinking. I have noticed in the recent blathering of a few very small-but-loud groups, books about the LGBTQ experience and books written by LGBTQ authors are a main target for removal from public/school libraries. (On Monday, I’ll explain in a more personal post why that’s a literal death sentence for LGBTQ kids.) But for right now, for those of you who might think books by LGBTQ authors and illustrators are pornographic just because of who wrote them or the subject matter, I am assigning you to purify your home library. If you have children’s books in your home, you definitely want to start in your own back yard—so to speak—to get rid of any children’s book written by the following LGBTQ authors: Margaret Wise Brown (The Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon); Ian Falconer (a number of the Eloise books); James Howe (the Bunnicula series); Ann M. Martin (the Babysitters Club books); James Marshall (the George And Martha series, as well as Miss Nelson Is Missing); Arnold Lobel (the Frog and Toad books); Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are); and Louise Fitzhugh (Harriet the Spy). Hilary Knight illustrated Kay Thompson’s Eloise books, and the Miss Piggle Wiggle series). For an older child, you’ll also need to ban Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She was not straight. And trust me—this list of LGBTQ authors of children’s books is just a small selection, off the top of my head.
Of course, I need to be clear. I made that assignment to book banners facetiously. The assignment is ridiculous. These books are staples of children’s early years. They belong wherever children are. But they have also been created by people who book banners think don’t deserve to have their work end up residing in public/school libraries. Those who would ban books would rather pretend LGBTQ people don’t exist, than learn about their stories and the struggles they face. The book banners would rather stay in their fear of what they don’t know than understand their fellow human beings who aren’t cookie cutter versions of themselves.
Today, as a preface to the next few TIE O’ THE DAY posts, I leave you with this CAUTION about reading. Reading books that aren’t about people exactly like you, might lead you to understand that those people are every bit as human and precious as you are. Just like they are precious to God. If you read about others, you might gain a rare thing called empathy. You might learn to let go of your fear— which is where hate comes from. You might enlarge your soul. And, like the Grinch, your heart might grow 3 sizes in one day. 📚
When I was ordering my truck in 2021, Suzanne piped up and said, “We’re ordering the heated seats!” I saw no reason to go the luxury route, but it was a must-have for her. I teased her while we waited, and waited, and waited for the truck to be built that waiting for Ford to get the parts for the heated seats was what was holding up the truck’s production for so long—and I’m still convinced it was. If she hadn’t wanted us to order the luxury package, I have no doubt my truck would have been here a couple of months after I ordered it, instead of the 10 long months it actually took to be built. Suffice it to say, Suzanne’s fave things about Abra are the heated seats and the heated steering wheel. I am learning to appreciate the fancy extra heat. As for me, the first time I drove the truck, I had no idea my seat heat was already turned on. Suddenly my butt was warming up. I felt as if I had accidentally peed my pants. It felt like when you have an MRI and the technician injects that contrast or whatever. They tell you it will make your whole body feel warm and might even make you feel like you’ve peed yourself. Yup, that’s how it felt. Wow! Just WOW!
Oddly, my fave thing about the truck so far is the little dial on the center console that I must turn in order to change gears. It’s just so funky. I also like that every person who has ridden in the back seats has commented on how spacious it feels. It seems I can please my backseat drivers without even trying, so maybe they’ll quit trying to tell me how to drive from back there. I also like that Abra gets nearly 30 miles per gallon, which is why I chose to wear my fuel pumps Tie o’ the Day for this selfie. Also, if I’m listening to music on my phone when I get in the truck, the music immediately and automatically switches over to Abra’s speakers. Yup, regarding my Maverick, I’m a spoiled and happy girl. Abra is a valued member of our family.
When I was driving us home last weekend, Suzanne told me that when no other cars are around, I drive as if I learned to drive out in the desert, with lots of space—which, of course, I did. She said I drive like a farmer. She says I make wide turns and I sort of mosey along, mostly in the right lane. I do not deny any of this. When no other cars are around, I tend to meander. But I do disagree with the farmer comparison. I corrected Suzanne: I drive like a beekeeper. Not that it is really all that different from driving like a farmer. But I am proud of my coverall-wearing, bee veil-hatted, apiarian agriculture way of driving. It is part of who I am. Call me a hick if you feel so inclined. I won’t take that as an insult. 🐝 🚜 ⛽️ 👩🌾
NOTE: Unbeknownst to me, even as I posted about our recently put-together banned books puzzle earlier this week, yesterday I saw an article in this week’s Millard County Chronicle Progress about a Millard School Board meeting where there was talk of banning certain books from the Delta High School library. I was disgusted. My next post will revisit the consequences of book banning. It is, believe it or not, a matter of life and death: kids can literally die when so-called “bad” books are made unavailable to them. And that is not an exaggeration. Stay tuned for a difficult fact or two, as well as some personal anecdotes I never planned to divulge. But it’s time for me to do my tiny part to help defend books.
I’m writing a longer post of formal introduction to my new truck, but I haven’t finished it yet. Y’all will most likely be able to read about that vehicle tomorrow. But for today, I have a brief story about Oakley, which I was reminded of when I encountered the Frank’s Red Hot Sauce in the refrigerator this morning. The hot peppers on my Bow Tie o’ the Day underscore the theme.
I wasn’t there when it happened, but I have heard varying versions of the story many times. I am giving you the bare bones gist here. Oakley was probably about 3 or 4 when she and her family were on the road to or from Delta, which was a semi-long drive. Along the way, the car and its occupants stopped at a convenience store for treats and a potty break. The young princess, Oakley, had one complaint about her convenience store experience. She announced to all of those within earshot, “This toilet paper is spicy.” Apparently, the toilet paper in the bathroom at that particular convenience store was a bit rough on the behind, and Oakley was not about to be silent about it. What a swell description of cheap, grating toilet tissue—especially from a little kid! I’m sure you’ve heard of the Hans Christian Andersen story, “The Princess And The Pea.” Well, we had our very own Princess Oakley And The Spicy Toilet Paper.
Suzanne, Rowan, and I spent most of Saturday in Delta for Oakley’s funeral and burial. We ended our day there with a visit with Mom. Mom had been able to attend the funeral, but was glad to be back home at the care center. (I will write more about our visit with Mom in another post.) In honor of Oakley, I tried to pack as much purple into my wardrobe as I could, including Bow Tie o’ the Day. Even my socks and shoelaces were purple. When I commit, I am true.
I’m taking a deep breath this morning. Oakley was privately and publicly honored over the weekend, and then her body was laid to rest near family. Last week was a constant shock—of loss, and breakdown, and gutting through every moment. I can only speak for how it seemed to me, but it felt like, from one minute to the next, family and friends were alternating between being supportive to each other and being supported by each other. Now, we are supposed to get back to normal. We are supposed to go back to business as usual. But the thing about the idea of “normal” is that there is no such thing. There never was. Things are always changing, always in flux. Movement in time and space is the way all of this works. Change is the constant. Last week, in barren grief, time seemed to stop for our family. But we were the ones standing still. We stood as witnesses to Oakley’s earthly dance, and we applauded her as she entered into the eternal present she now inhabits. Today, we are again tasked with finding our momentum. We are left to choreograph our own dances. We are left to interpret the moves Oakley taught us while she was with us. I will tell you this: If you did not learn something about life’s dancing from our Oakley, it’s only because you didn’t know her.
I was ecstatic to run onto more photos of this event at Mom’s house. It struck me that Oakley’s Grandma Mary is the only person in this photo who remains with us. The late Shirley Peterson is sitting in the stuffed chair. Mom’s best friend, the late Peggy Crane, sits on the blue folding chair, playing with Oakley. Mary supervises.
I forgot I had even taken the second picture. Here, a wobbly Oakley is being escorted across the family room floor by her Uncle Jake. I know she had a unique bond with him. All through her short life, she could count on him to be solid. If I remember correctly, Jake baptized her. In the hospital with her the other night, while we were reconciling ourselves to the fact that Oakley would not live, it fell to Jake to give Oakley an encompassing blessing of release. It provided some semblance of comfort to us all.
Also, in that second photo, we see Peggy and Grant Crane. Grant is also now gone. Whenever Mom was watching the wee Oakley while Mary worked, Oakley had the privilege of accompanying Mom and Peggy on their irreverent daily Pepsi runs. I would bet my bow tie collection, that Oakley talked more than the both of them together, and that’s saying a lot because Mom and Peggy never quit talking when they were out together on a Pepsi run, driving through the wilds of Millard county.
In the third photo, that’s my oldest sister, BT/Mercedes, sitting at the table. She is clearly an early member of Oakley’s fan club. But it’s Mary’s stare that Oakley holds, as it always was. In the hospital when Oakley was born, Mary helped give her her first bath. Always, Mary has been Oakley’s champion and fervent protector.
Our vast family is too small with Oakley not here with us.
As a kid, Rowan was always drawing. He carried around a clipboard in case he got an idea for a masterpiece. At some point, he drew cartoon versions of select people. Oakley was one of his subjects. When Rowan first showed me this cartoon drawing, he asked if I knew who it was. Let’s see what the drawing “says”: Goofy? Check. Dancing? Check. Rowdy? Check. Impeccably attired? Check. Bouncy as all get-out? Check. Rowan captured all the defining traits. I knew immediately that it was the famous Oakley Jane Shiner. When I showed the drawing to Suzanne and asked her if she could tell who it was, she didn’t have to ponder who it might be. “It’s Oakley!” Oakley was a party.
