The One With Roxy Ann

Just happened to see this photo on Facebook tonight. My nephew Elijah posted it of his grandpa... my dad. He is holding Roxy Ann, the golden retriever puppy he bought my mom to keep her company just a couple of months before he died of cancer. It has been three years, and it surprised me how heartbroken I have felt all night after seeing this photo. I miss him so much, and I wish he could see all the things I have done this past year. He would have loved 2011.

The One About My Hands

I went with two friends to the temple in Newport Beach last week. I really like to go by myself. I know that sounds selfish, but I love the time in my car by myself to think about things, and to contemplate and ponder. I love the quiet in the temple with just my own thoughts. But I have become somewhat of a hermit lately, and I suppose it is time to try to break out of that. I just knew that I really needed to go that day.

I sat by my friends before we left to go home. We whispered until a nice lady showed us somewhere where we would be more quiet:). We were still wearing white, and sitting on the benches in the dressing room. One of my friends was struggling with a difficult family situation. I watched her hands as she wiped away tears that were streaming down her face. I looked down at my own hands. I have never had beautiful hands, but there is something about the fluorescent lighting in the temple, that makes all of my scars from the past eighteen months show up, like white under a black light. My burns from last year look sort of purple. I see a deep scratch from last month along the back of my left hand. And there is my poor misshapen finger, with a knuckle red and shiny because the skin is pulled tight over it. No, definitely not beautiful hands.

And yet… here in this place I have just received the most amazing blessings to be found anywhere on this earth… they tell me I am strong enough to bear all the burdens, capable enough to finish all my tasks. My mind is clear, and my hands can do this.

I love hands.

I remember holding my dad’s enormous hands, with all their scars and cuts from being a glazier for forty years. His hands were huge and the strongest I have ever felt. Sometimes it is hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I won’t ever get to hold his hand again in this life. I love my dad so much, and I miss him.

I remember my second date with Kevin some 27 years ago… we went to a play on BYU campus. We didn’t kiss that night, but the way he held my hand during that play was this total weak-in-the-knees, out-of-body experience, where I knew that I actually loved him, even though I had only known him for a single week (don’t worry… I didn’t actually tell him that for a couple more months… haha!).

I adore baby hands. Sixteen years ago, when Dillon was only a year old, he contracted RSV, and they put him in a crib in the hospital that was really more like a tall cage from the circus. They tented the crib with oxygen, and he had to stay in there so I couldn’t hold him. Of course he was sick, miserable and terrified. But I could put my hand through the rails of the cage and hold his hand, and as long as I did that, he didn’t cry... so I sat there all night long holding his little hands through the bars. I can still remember how his one-year-old hands felt, how tightly he held on, how he knew he had to be brave.

There is a sweet lady at church named Marjean. I think the first time I ever met her was when I played the organ for her husband’s funeral three or four years ago. I love Marjean, and I don’t know why, but she lights up whenever she sees me. She says, “Oh, Victoria, my favorite person in the world!”  She gives me a huge hug, and then grabs my hand to pull me down to sit next to her, She has beautiful soft hands, and I love her like my own grandma.

Looking down at my scars in the lights of the temple, I don’t know why my hands seem to get hurt all the time lately, but it doesn’t change anything. I can still do what I need to do. I don’t know if anyone else even remembers those times, but I will never forget them, or the love and admiration that I feel for my friends and family. Hands are my favorite.

The One With Thomas Tallis and the NY Times Crossword

Today is my dad’s birthday. He passed away back in October. I honestly don’t sit around feeling sad that he is gone. Sometimes I can’t quite believe that he isn’t just home sitting on his deck throwing things for his golden retriever Roxy to fetch, and that I just haven’t talked to him in awhile. But this week has been a little discouraging for me, and it would have been nice to call him and talk to him about it. He would have told me how great I am, and that it would all work out, and then… it would have. All worked out, that is. It will anyway, but it would have been nice to hear him say it. I wish I could ask him where I should go to fix the broken window in my living room. He would have known. He was an answerer, and a fixer.

When I was a kid, he would occasionally break me out of school (you know, like one breaks out of a prison). He would tell me that he thought I looked sick, and I needed some medicine. The “medicine” always turned out to be a big ice cream cone from Thrifty. Sometimes some good medicine is exactly the cure.

Everyone who knew my dad has stories about him. He loved stories, so he probably would be pretty happy about that. I was thinking to myself, I could tell a story about him. But when I think about Dad, I don’t think about a story. I think about the thousands of times that he showed me that he loved me, and that he thought I was amazing. “Vic, listen to this:” and he would want me to hear a part of a symphony that he thought was particularly beautiful. Or he would want me to just lie down next to him so that he could hold my hand or watch him do a crossword puzzle. Rather than remembering with a story, I think I will listen to Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” or “Fantasia on a Theme from Thomas Tallis” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. And maybe do a crazy-hard New York Times crossword puzzle. But not definitely not in pen…