On Repeat

My life is pretty simple these days.  On Monday, I get all my etsy orders from the week ready to send off.  On Tuesday, Remy and I hop on the bicycle (I hop on, Remy hops in his carrier) and we ride to the post office.  On Wednesday I do laundry and join my neighbor to do cross-fit.  On Thursday, I get ready for Friday.  On Friday, we hop on and in the bike again and ride to the store to get bananas.  Saturday we try to go on an adventure with all of us.  Sunday we teach five little munchkins at church and come home and lay on top of our bed in the sunlight while Remy spies on kids out the window.

 I just read through that list at least four times, and I am totally nervous to put it up because it makes me sound as if my life were insignificant or shallow.  This is my list of the 'big events' of the week, but it looks so silly to me because I feel like the thoughts that swim around in my head -- the way I looked at Remy while he was bathing in the kitchen sink today and thought my heart might burst, the things I read in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's new book that are turning some of my thoughts up-side-down-in-a-good-way, and the ways in which my faith in myself and in life is challenged and restored a hundred times daily -- are not, nor ever could be reflected in that wee little list.  Maybe the point is then, our lives are made up of the simple things we do repetitively, but we are a product of things of a more internal nature, if we choose to be.  Our simple, daily acts do not have to define us, but we also don't have to fight with them.

My days and weeks are made of repetition, in fact, they would not exist without repetition.  There is task-oriented repetition, which can at times be dull, but at other times, can be confidence boosting and satisfying. There is joyful repetition too.  For a long time I thought that childhood was the only place where repetition brought real joy, but I was wrong.  Engaging with repetition as a mom, a wife, a writer, an artist in my adulthood is starting to show me that making enough marks of the same kind requires a great deal of imagination and play, and I believe those are two places where joy is found. There are many hours spent in the sandbox; pages of books read, both of my own and of Remy's, we know the words and pictures by heart; words written and re-written and re-written again; paintings; late nights sitting on the floor with Carl and talking; so many dishes washed by hand; callalillies bloomed; snow pea plants that grown at least four inches; leaves swept off our patio; cookies baked; dinners made; floors vacuumed; Remy and Remy and Remy, crawling and making a mess and clinging to the bottom of my dress.

I used to think I was too good for repetition.  I used to think that I was so adventurous and spontaneous that mundanity would never catch up with me, it would never even be able to find me.  To some degree, I was right.  For most of my life, until Remy came along, I was pretty free-spirited, as in, I didn't quite grasp the concept of consistency and its benefits.  I don't feel less 'free-spirited' now, but I do feel the necessity of slowing down and repeating as I teach someone else what their little spirit is capable of.  I am enjoying, more than I ever thought I would, this simple, simple life.  Yes, there are times, (you can ask Carl) when I go wild and feel like a trapped canary, but even in those moments, I know the the whole of me is happy, even when parts of me aren't at the end of a long day when I'm thinking about getting up early and starting over.

 I think the most significant thing I've learned from the temple painting series I've been working on is that repetition is well, repetitive, but that doesn't mean the doing over and over is without meaning.  Temples are made up of pattern.  Small pieces woven together over and over to make a whole.  Sometimes as I am drawing and painting the parts of a temple, I can't even imagine how it could all come together to make something meaningful. But then again, I never imagined that a bath, a blanky, and a song every single night at 7:30 would be the makings of a meaningful year.  I never imagined how important it would be to me, even years later, that I walked out the front door of my apartment every single day of my mission to do the same thing I did the day before. In work we do, same story. I've also found though, that there is variation in repetition.  I think I knew this in theory, but it didn't quite make sense to me until I sat for many hours moving my hand in nearly the same motion, but not ever exactly the same.

All of this reflection on the repetition that constitutes my life these days makes me wonder if my life always had this capacity for this sort of simplicity.  I'm also wondering what made me so resistant and nervous to even try it out in the first place.  I'm not advocating for mundanity.  Doing things exactly the same way always, is boring.  Maybe I'm advocating for a little more acceptance and peace in the things that simply have to be done over and over and over.  I think that I was so resistant to a schedule because I assumed that my ability to think critically and smartly would diminish if I were to engage in the minuscule things that construct the life of any person who cares for anyone else, or works, or has kids, or goes to school, or has a house, or a pet, or teaches, etc...  I realize now that I was wrong in thinking that my desire or ability to think critically have been diffused.  They haven't.  However, my will to find the right forums in which to think critically, or just really hard, has been challenged, and that is still something I am working through.

I know I've been one to make my life more difficult and complicated than it needs to be.  I have a friend here in California who is so calm.  She has four kids who are home-schooled and whenever I go to see her, she is peaceful.  I asked her about it, and she said she is careful not to schedule herself for things that don't matter to her.  She doesn't have to be anywhere but where she is.  I know that we all have to work, go to school, stay at home, do a million different things in a million different ways, but I do think that all of our lives probably has a greater capacity for simplicity.

I think that we all get so scared of our lives being 'normal'.  I think we easily pick on repetition as being against us.  As I've been pondering on this though, I think back to the women I knew in Uruguay.  I loved and admired them so much and their lives were testaments to repetition. They knew they built families on repetition because if they didn't keep things together, no one else would.  If you've never hand-washed a load of clothes with a bucket and some bar soap, you do not know repetition.

One of the best women I ever knew worked in the fields picking whatever fruit was ripe for the season.  She had probably done this for forty years.  One day she said to us, "I was picking strawberries and thinking of Jesus, when I reached in a strawberry plant and accidentally grabbed a snake.  I thought of Jesus again, and knew I would be fine.  I put the snake down and it slithered away."  Of all the stories I brought home from my 18 months in Uruguay, this is one that comes back to me so often.  I don't know that it is Jesus we all need to be thinking of as we go about our daily's, though I'm sure it wouldn't hurt, but the point that strikes me every time is how deeply engaged in meaningful thought this simple woman was as she did the most routine of things, bending to pick strawberries out of a plant for 8 hours at a time.  I love her for many things, but I love her for reminding me that a simple life can be a good life, and that while repetition may not make a person famous, it will make a person strong.   

Magic and Weight

Sometimes there are moments that propel us forward, remind us that at least at some point in our lives, we believed in very big things.  Not just effervescent, heat of the moment belief, but a real, tangible winking that good things are going to happen.  For me, one of these moments happened when I was a junior in high school.  I was at a friends graduation at the Cathedral of the Madeline in Salt Lake City.  I don't know if it was the way the stained glass looked with the early morning sun glowing through it, or the birds in the trees outside just before we came in.  It could have been a really good graduation speech, though I kind of doubt it.  It could have been that I was sitting up so high looking down on everyone, watching time inch forward like white, flapping wings.  Whatever it was that morning,  I remember feeling so excited, so ecstatic, that my stomach was in knots.  I think I recall writing something about magic in my journal.  I was honest to goodness, just so excited about what was to be accomplished in this life, that my insides were going wild.

I've felt that subsequently, though perhaps with less intensity as the years go on.  I've gone through phases where I think, "I've lost it, any magic, or pretense to magic I may have ever had, is just gone."  Then I go through times where I reflect back on that moment and think, "silly girl, so naive and fresh, how embarrassing." Then there are times like today, when I realize that I am not the only one who has ever felt these things.  Wow, big surprise.  I don't know how I ever imagine that I am the only one who feels certain things, though those moments still are very much my own, it is most refreshing to know that I am not wading in an empty swimming pool with them.  At a Women's Conference today at my church, a very smart women was the keynote speaker. She said that she originally wanted to use a talk that she had written twenty years ago as a missionary in Russia.  She said she wanted to use the talk because it seemed so brimming with hope and happiness, but as she read the old talk, she realized that while her essence was still made up of the same particles, she was a different person today, with different things to say.  She said that she worried, like I have, that she'd lost the magic that she felt those twenty years ago, but then she said something that should accompany any sentence about feeling magic:  we also grow older, and add to our souls the weight of wisdom.  I don't know that I heard too much after she said those words, "weight of wisdom".

In my head, my life from that point in the church pew began to rewind itself and I followed myself back through the weight of moving to a new place and starting over, the first year being a mom, the weight of pregnancy, of marriage, of mistakes, of heartbreak, of schooling, of disappointments, of a mission, of imperfection, of joy, of doubt and loss, of happiness, of service, of friends, and family, and painting and poetry and hikes in the mountains.  And when I was all through journeying back through time and had returned to my place in the church pew where everyone was singing a hymn, I felt better.  I felt like I no longer had reason to lament the fact that I don't get giddy with butterflies as often as I used to.  I am far from ripe, but I am preparing for a harvest when I am wrought with the weight of wisdom.  I think it is possible to cultivate both.

I also realized that those fifteen years ago, when I was so excited for the things that were to happen, which I imagined at the time were earth-shattering and totally life changing, are actually happening and have been happening all this time.  Yeah, I'm not actually saving orphans or starting revolutions, I haven't even protested something in years, but my place has been pretty good.  My place over the past fifteen years has been filled with white flapping wings and birds in trees, and many friends in so many places, and rain out my window at night, and Carl, and Remy, sweet Remy who bites me each morning when he comes into our bed, and the new friends who surprised me with birthday party when I least expected it.  Later in the conference I started to write down a quote by Emma Smith, but I only got part way before the slide changed and it was gone, but I kind of prefer the small piece I managed to get down in my journal.  It says simply, 'We are going to do something extraordinary,...'

Little Rituals

I don't remember exactly the events surrounding this poem below, or what was happening in my life at the time I wrote it.  I don't remember precise sentiments.  I do, however, remember the idea of very much wanting to be reminded over and over about the moments in life that remind me that I am as human as can be and that in the midst of monotony, there is variation.  In the everydayness of detail, there is ritual that will one day make us nostalgic, and I am finding that 'one day' isn't so long off.  In the poem I wanted to convey the surprise and shock of something real and living moving against my palm in total desperation and desire to fill its purpose. Even when that purpose seems small and insignificant. The repetition and constancy of something like a sand crab is comforting and a little bit scary to me.  Scary in that I suddenly see my life as a series of movements that are simple and still difficult for me, and comforting in that my movement is constant, and at the end of the day, makes me happy.

I've read the books I was told to read on putting Remy to bed, which I am glad I read them, and honestly, I'm pretty glad some nights when he finally does go to sleep and I get a little time to mosey about on my own.  Lately though, I've been putting the schedules and rules aside and I, or Carl, have been rocking him to sleep, until he's completely asleep.  Even if the books tell me not to.  For me, it is one of the feelings that gently reminds me that I am alive and that my purpose, however small seeming and insignificant, is pretty great. It is one of the times when I have to stop completely.  I rock back and forth in a dark room and everything is sound.  Repetition has become a friend. I find peace in knowing it will all happen again soon. Instinct seems more important to me now.  I think we all have those moments and tasks that we do because we do. But sometimes it is the ones we are doing like crazy without stopping to wonder why, that are the most beautiful when we take a moment to think about them.  

Sand crabs—

round as my thumbnail,

swashed from that deep sea, 

with each wave washed up. 

Kneeling on the shore,

I lean over dozens of tiny holes

where bubbles rise and dome on the surface and sunlight refracts every prayer.

Delivered and already disappearing.

I plung my hands into wet sands.

We race.

Sand crabs

downward

burrow.

And I, all I want

is to pull up a handful of earth

and feel the frantic movements

against my palm.

 (Did anyone else did for sand crabs?  If not, they are pebble sized little crabs that bury themselves in the sand when a wave comes up on shore.)

Birthday Giveaway!

Hi all,
here I am again.  The holidays were a whirlwind of one Beehive Bazaar, where I spent one of the more glorious hours of my life swapping goods with other vendors (Why can't I buy everything in life with paintings?); six boy cousins around Remy's age all in the same living room at several points in Utah; five more cousins romping in the same room in Portland; one perfect lunch at Sundance with my parents; one round of Christmas carols around the piano;  many a cup of eggnog; three plane rides; one train ride; one Denny's breakfast; very good and several nights with both families; one road trip to Santa Barbara; one round of sparklers on the beach; one hike through a butterfly preserve; one new pair of shoes from Carl; two gifts opened well before Christmas; two immature people (me and Carl) who insisted on opening (not even opening, we hadn't wrapped them yet) these gifts without a stitch of fanfare or even a soul around except my sister Sage who seemed a little confused by our behavior; one bout of the flu for me; heaps of joy; four rainy days in Portland; three people happy to be back in their own little home.

I kept a list of things on my phone that I want to blog about, but not now.  Today is a special day.  Today is the eve-eve of my birthday.  I unabashedly love my birthday and have no problem asking groups of people to sing to me or letting people know how much I love my day.  I love celebrating and have been known to throw myself a party or two.  That being said, I want to celebrate on this here blog as well.  This requires a giveaway, because the last one was seriously a lot of fun.  I've had to temper myself from doing one every other day (It's a good thing that Carl is my business agent and accountant and not me, I give things away willy-nilly and tend to have little concept of how one goes about making a large profit).

 Drumroll....

Birthday giveaway rules:

1. We all know a kid right?  Some sort of young creature with a fresh mind.  Go to them and ask them a few questions, talk to them about their stories, things they find hilarious, pictures floating about in their delicious little minds.  Get around to asking them what they would like to have painted. If you absolutely can't talk to a kid, talk to someone!  An old person,  a funny person, a stranger.  Be sincere though,  snarkiness will not get you a win here.

2.  Write the response in the comment box.  You may enter twice if you spread the word in some way.  You may enter more times if you talk to more than one kiddo.

3.  You have until one week from now to go about this task.  I hope it will be an enjoyable one.

4.  Next Thursday, already five days into my 28th year of wisdom, I will use the random-number-drawer to select the winner.

5.  I will then draw and paint whatever is depicted in the winning comment and it will be sent directly to the clever child who supplied the idea.  I will send an extra for you too.

Doesn't this sound fun?  I'm pretty excited about it.

Also, in other news to celebrate, I have a new etsy site.  The old one is still up and running, but this new site ashmaetemples.etsy.com sells temple prints exclusively, and the best part? 40% of sales goes directly to the LDS Temple Patron Fund.  This is a fund set up by the LDS church that provides financial assistance to those seeking to go to the temple, but haven't the monetary means to do so.  Think, you could have a temple in your home AND be helping to send people on their way to be a part of the wonderful blessings of the temple.  Double win, I think.

And lastly, who doesn't want a photo of Remy?  Happy Birthday eve-eve!

Remy Kent Hoiland

Name: Remy Kent Hoiland

Weight: 7 lbs 11 ounces

Height: 19 inches

Labor: 28 good hours

Status: Healthy, Happy & Grateful

Demeanor: Super-chill