A Shaft of Sunlight

This is a guest post by Sarah's brother.

A family friend recently told me that he often wishes he had a small bottle full of Sarah, so that he could open it whenever he needed a little sunshine to fill the day or the room. He was quite right--Sarah is sunlight personified, and not just because she lives her life in themes of yellow.

One of the first things that someone notices about Sarah is her smile. It is ever-present and always genuine. In high school she worked at a local pizzeria where she learned to cook some of the foods our family still loves. A few weeks after starting, Sarah confided to us that she was worried about the job: the managers kept assigning her to the coveted spot at the cash register. Even though she enjoyed talking to the customers, she knew that other girls working there had seniority and wanted to work that station; Sarah herself wanted to spend more time in the kitchen learning the recipes, and she didn't want to upset her coworkers by always taking the best job. Despite Sarah's misgivings, the managers knew immediately that Sarah's smiling face was the one they wanted their customers to see, and they let her fill the store with sunshine.

Having grown up in a home filled with Sarah's sunlight, I sometimes forget how special it is. We went to the same university, during which we lived near each other and spent a lot of time together. Even when we were both serving missions on opposite sides of the world I had a weekly dose of sunshine in Sarah's wonderful letters to me. They were always the highlight of my week. Her smile has always been there, and seeing Sarah in the aftermath of a serious car accident has reminded me that her smile is superhuman.

Two weeks ago Sarah and some friends were in a car crash in California. Sarah was seriously injured and underwent a five-hour surgery to try to repair the damage done to her back. In and out of extreme pain, constantly nauseated, and unsure of whether she would emerge paralyzed or otherwise disabled, Sarah's cheerfulness was unharmed. The family and friends who cared for her in the hospital said that all of the nurses loved to come check her room because Sarah always smiled at them and thanked them for everything they did.

It has been a blessing for us to be able to talk to Sarah via video chat while she is in California. Beginning a few days after the surgery we got to see Sarah and talk to her for a short time each day. For the first few days the painkillers and other medicines kept her pretty out of it, and it was clear that she was not very aware of her surroundings or what she was doing. Nevertheless, she was smiling and happy and shining with cheerfulness.

Sunlight isn't just something that Sarah is good at, nor is it simply a characteristic she has practiced. Sunshine is fundamental to her character, to who she is. I am grateful to have this light in my life, and I pray that she may go on shining for a very, very long time.

Where are the rocks?

When you grow up in the Southwest, you spend a lot of time looking at rocks.

Now the rocks we have are admittedly pretty cool (in a baking hot sort of way). Arches, Garden of the Gods, City of Rocks, Goblin Valley, Shiprock, Rockhound State Park, even White Sands if you want to count very small rocks. On the long drive from Albuquerque to Provo, the only thing to watch is the changing rocks, from the pink and yellow stone in central New Mexico, past the desolate stretches of plains broken abruptly by crumbling stone streambeds, alongside the bookshelf mesas, between the smooth stone mounds that start with the giant turtle, into the rich red rock cliffs of bizarre formations of southern Utah, and finally into the powerful gray mountains of central Utah.

But, much as I admire all the stone, I’ve often wondered we don’t look at the rocks simply because there’s nothing else to look at. The whole world is made of rocks, right? So what if everywhere else in the world has great rocks, too, but you can’t tell because there’s trees and stuff covering it up?

A quick trip to western Massachusetts to see the glacial potholes has confirmed my theory.

There, granite boulders rolling in the stone streambed under the force of a churning waterfall have worn deep cylindrical wells into the stone. The granite is gray swirled with pink and warm browns, and it looks entirely surreal. There aren’t many cooler rocks than that.

And why did we get to see them? Because they have rerouted the river to expose the site.

So the question is, should we go around tearing out forests, moving waterfalls, and melting ice packs so we can admire the rocks underneath? Or should we bring in water, plant trees, and scatter flowers so that the poor people who’ve spent their whole lives thinking rocks are interesting will have attractions like everyone else in the world has? I’m rather tempted by both.

Books and Biscuits

Last Tuesday was our last day for the year of books and basketball—the tutoring program I’ve been doing for the last year. Glad as I am to have a summer break, I’m really going to miss it.

I tutored a fabulous 12-year-old girl, who spent the first half hour running away from me and the second half hour telling me about Mitchel Musso while I tried to get her to do her math homework.

Was she rambunctious? Yes. Did the other tutors give me the evil eye every week? Oh yes. And was she totally worth it? Absolutely.

My favorite was the rap she made up about our multiplication problem. The answer was 16, which you can write in green when you’re seventeen if you’re not too mean. In the picture she's trying very hard to look angry with me.

“Working” with her was great, but it definitely reminded me of how often service is not what I expect. I thought I might sweep in and be a noble role model and brilliant teacher for a struggling inner-city kid, when really all she needed was someone to listen to occasionally tease her about her Disney Channel crush.

It reminded me of About a Boy, which we read last month for the Movie Book Club. The self-absorbed Will, who has suddenly found himself unwillingly mentoring the needy young Marcus, isn’t quite sure what to do to help the kid—or even sure if he wants to:

“The thing was, Will had spent his whole life avoiding real stuff. He was, after all, the son and heir of the man who wrote Santa’s Super Sleigh. Santa Claus, whose existence most adults had real cause to doubt, bought him everything he wore and ate and drank and sat on and live on; it could reasonably be argued that reality was not in his genes. He liked watching real stuff on [TV] . . . but he’d never had real stuff sitting on his sofa before. No wonder, then, that once he’d made it a cup of tea and offered it a biscuit he didn’t really know what to do with it.” (Nick Hornby)

This girl was real stuff. And I wasn’t quite sure what to do about her. But I liked my weekly encounters with someone else’s reality and daydreams.

Chrisman

I believe I should briefly mention that my incredibly awesome brother Chris graduated from college and is headed to Emory for a PhD in immunology.

Elder Christofferson delivered an excellent commencement address at the graduation. The essence of his message was that while academic accomplishments are important, they should not distract us from the most important element of life: our moral quality. Elder Christofferson quoted Hugh Nibley as saying that the point of life is to be morally tested. Everything else we do is “just dabbling.”

I’ve had that phrase running through my head ever since graduation. It’s so liberating: it means I can investigate things that I think might be interesting, or fun, or unusual, but whether it’s work or hobbies or travel or whatever, it’s just a small part of what I’m really trying to do.

It reminded me a little of the message my parents are always trying to get into us: that you should perform well, but it won’t matter unless you’re also good. My boss Alice is the same way. She has multiple advanced degrees, she’s raised a good family, she’s lived in Europe, she knows all the experts in her field, she all but single-handedly runs the company, and yet she’s the most humble, likeable person you could meet. She treats me like a peer even though I’m decades of experience and capability behind her. When she talks about her children, she mentions their awards and honors in passing, but focuses on who they are as people.

That’s what made Elder Christofferson’s speech so appropriate for Chris’s graduation. Because my brother Chris, as I believe I mentioned, is fabulous. I’ve looked up to him for years—and not just because he’s a foot taller than me. He’s brilliant: he had top scholarships, published papers, aced classes, and got wined (non-alcoholically, of course) and dined at almost a dozen graduate schools. He’s daring: he likes all kinds of wild hobbies, from scuba diving to rock climbing to performing in talent shows. He’s hilarious: he’s constantly teasing and playing with words. He’s artistic: he sings, he dances, he writes poetry, he tries to turn bachelor apartments into something attractive enough to live in. He’s a great cook: of pretty much everything. He’s dashingly handsome. And yet all of that dabbling is just the ornamentation on the real substance: Chris is as morally sure, as gentle, as sensitive, as humble, as perceptive, as caring, as genuine a person as you could find. It’s a good thing there isn’t a graduation for character, because he’d be wearing so many robes and stoles and medals and ribbons and tassels he wouldn’t be able to walk. And that would be embarrassing.

Ninja Night

Tonight for our FHE, my roommate got kidnapped by ninjas. I know what you’re thinking: What self-respecting young woman manages to get herself kidnapped by ninjas in the middle of a young single adult activity? Let me tell you, it happens to the best of us.

Let me preface this account by informing you that our family home evening activities tend to be very staid: long formal lesson, brief stiff activity, reserved conversation, quick parting of ways. And Camber had prepped everyone by informing them that this would be an exciting evening of “team-building activities.” We were expecting a big turnout, as you can imagine.

I taught a brief lesson on never leaving behind any of our brothers and sisters. I stalled as long as I could, but the ninjas still hadn’t shown up, so my friend Sherilyn jumped up with one of the most popular games known to adults party-goers: Simon Says. Then Camber ran to answer the door, we heard her scream, ninjas in ski masks came running into the living room doing dramatic karate chops, and we rushed outside just in time to see . . . Camber carefully explaining to the neighbor that it was all a joke and they didn’t need to call the police—before Camber was whisked away by the fearsome ninjas.

Fortunately, Sherilyn happened to have a copy of Worst Case Scenarios for FHE Groups, which just happened to have an entry explaining what to do if your FHE group leader gets kidnapped. We followed the instructions to the letter: we asked the Armenian grocer down the street how to say “Thank you” in Armenian (apparently ninja rescuers should be culturally sensitive in many languages). When we got it right, he gave us a clue sending us to the cemetery up the road.

There we were met by none other than the ninjas themselves. Two of them spoke only Ninjese, but fortunately they had a translator, who sent us on a quest to find a certain name on a headstone. We tracked it down using the light from our cell phones and when we presented it to the ninja master, he sent us to Billy Joe’s Ninja Training Camp at the playground across the road, where we learned to meditate, slide, and build a pyramid.

When we had accomplished our ninja training, we returned home to find Camber ready to reward us with ninja headbands. It was an altogether heroic evening. And no one even had to call the police.

Save the Whales

Recently my friend Sherilyn went to tour the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides. Which, by the way, has a fabulous museum: a Boston must-see). The Constitution was closed but there was a visiting German battleship (actual iron. Or maybe even steel. Much more effective). They were just in dock for a day or two and they said she could take a tour.

So Sherilyn was being shown around by young handsome navy guys who knew a lot about their job but not much about tour guiding. They took her up to see the main control room and showed her how they steer the ship. As they were walking out she looked up on the front window and saw a number of labeled drawings of a gray whale, showing it from different angles and in different positions. She asked what the drawings were for. And the navy guy said, "Oh. That is a whale. Sometimes when we are driving the boat, we drive over whales. This makes the Americans very angry. On our way here we drove over a whale. The Americans were very angry. So now we post drawings of whales to remind everyone to drive around the whales."

My middle school biology teacher always used to complain that campaigns to save endangered species always choose big attractive animals as their poster critters. “You see Save the Pandas and Save the Whales everywhere, but you never see a Save the Tapeworms T-shirt,” he would say.

While I *almost* appreciate his concern, it seems we still have some work to do on the whale front.

If you thought Dungeons and Desktops sounded interesting . . .

The big news in our office this week was an unexpected award given to one of our books.

The award? The Diagram Prize for oddest title of the year. Established in 1978 “as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair,” and maintained by Bookseller.com.

The title? Crocheting Adventures in Hyperbolic Planes

When we first heard about the nomination, we couldn’t decide whether we were supposed to be excited. But it turns out winning was exciting: we got calls from the Associated Press and the award has drawn attention to the book from newspapers and blogs all over the country.

And while the award itself may be goofy, it represents something serious: that freedom of the press, of expression, and of creativity is thriving and that wild books can get published. Horace Bent, custodian of the award, said:

[Given the economic downturn,] I feared for the future of this most prestigious of literary awards. Surely oddly-titled books would suffer in a climate that was prompting publishers to focus on more bankable works. . . . But I am delighted that I was being overly pessimistic and that oddly-titled books proved recession-resistant.

Recession or no, the publishing industry has turned out some truly incredible books, including these other winners and nominees (highlights listed at Bookstove):

• Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
• All Dogs Have ADHD
• Bombproof Your Horse
• Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw
• Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
• Highlights in the History of Concrete
• How to Avoid Huge Ships
• Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings
• People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
• Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice
• Reusing Old Graves
• The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais
• The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today
• The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification
• Versailles: The View From Sweden
• What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?