My Inner Mork

Today my baby is 21. Does not bear thinking. I remember holding her, and nursing her, while listening to Leonard Bernstein’s broadcast from the blessedly-fallen Berlin Wall, and spattering her tiny face with tears of joy.

When Firstborn was 21, she was with 1BDH. And I thought, how grown-up she is. LittleBit’s young man seems very nice [and refreshingly normal, after some of the ones she dated in high school, but I’m glad that she was able to see and find the good in some interesting specimens, and to recognize that the Marine she was dating, was rotten to the Corps], and it occurs to me to wonder if he will be LBDH, someday.

I think it must be a Mom-thing, to see one’s firstborn as all grown up at a certain age, and to see one’s youngest as just a baby at the same age, some years later. We grow up [if we grow up] when we grow up, and not to somebody else’s timetable.

Our Jewish cousins have it right: when our children are little, they step on our feet. When they are older, they step on our heart. But notwithstanding the griefs given or received, I cannot imagine my life without one of these five blessings in it, or the blessings they have brought into the tribe through marriage.

They surprised me yesterday. After dinner we gathered by the tree (I should have taken my camera; that tree is twelve feet tall!) and opened the last of the presents. They gave me an iPod Nano! [Hence the reference to Mork, above; yes, I know he said Nanu, nanu. Still.] It makes my cell phone look like the Flintstone phone I had, back in 1998!

Firstborn counseled me to get a cover for it (do they make miniature red patent leather bounce houses?) and to figure on spending an hour getting it set up. I will do both, sometime in the coming week.

Lark is excited about her shawlette and was a little disappointed when I told her I hadn’t brought it along to Christmas dinner. I told her that the combination of beads and lace is slippery and does not make for a portable project. I have had a couple of scary moments, in the past couple of days, when I dropped a stitch here or there and had to fix it. Thankfully, alpaca is a different kind of slippery than is laceweight silk. And I’ve worked enough of the pattern that I can read where I am and how the stitches are supposed to go. The first four rows of beading are done, which leaves three to go, and I hope to get one or more done before leaving for church.

This is our last Sunday on the 1-4 block of meetings, which is my favorite. Next year we switch to 9-12, and the Spanish ward gets afternoons. I am glad that we get to study the New Testament next year, a little sad that it will be in the mornings, glad that I no longer have several hours of meetings before church, mildly curious about what my next church calling might be.

And now if you will all excuse me, breakfast is calling my name. Have a blessed and peaceful Sabbath, everybody!