Plexus

Once upon a time there was a girl who hated taking risks and therefore cried when her husband put down a non-refundable $3500 deposit on a starter home. She and her husband were still students. Life was up in the air, yet they moved into the little house on 680 West with only two GMC Sierra truckloads. They had no furniture other than a queen bed, a borrowed dresser, and some free blue calico couches with ruffles on the bottom. They had no trials, no kids, no pets, no cell phones, one landline, and one modemless computer available for word processing. They referred to their exit as “The Harts Exit” because not a lot of people knew where American Fork was. Across the street from their new home was a huge field of horses. You could see the stars well. Their street was brand new and everyone was in the same new boat. It was dusty; there was not one tree, patch of grass, or foot of curbing organizing bulbs and bushes. It was a spartan and brown beginning.

The girl graduated and worked for her husband at his vacuum store. He graduated. They had a baby girl and the girl turned into a mom. She stayed home from the workplace evermore and began to till the ground around her instead of earning paychecks. She began seeing where she lived. Spider webs stretched between houses; sticky little strands of book clubs, dance classes, and playgroups. There were people that would walk around the loop together with strollers. Once she saw a neighbor deliver a homemade cherry-fabric dress to another neighbor.

Fences went up but the street only got friendlier. Every week or two there was a sod-laying party that ended with dirty, sweaty faces lingering behind and getting to know the other dirty, sweaty faces. Spindle trees were staked, miniature shrubs were spaced. Cars started changing from Honda Civics to minivans.

Landscaping ended; everything planted just needed time to grow. MBAs, new jobs, paint swatch picking. Roots deepened. Park days, backyard picnics in the new shade puddles, inflatable waterslides, Reading Rewards, running groups. Workout partners, toll painting, wood crafts, decorating. Part of the horse field yielded to a Target.

Then the lush Zion years, when an after-dinner stroll around the block took 2 ½ hours because you had to stop at every driveway to visit. Adults unwound while numberless kids morphed like an amoeba in the background, kicking balls and doing handstands while hooting and hollering the way barefoot kids past bedtime do. Basketball hoops. Neighbor coaches for itty bitty sports like tee ball and soccer. There was always a friend to walk to the cemetery and back in the dark with.

Her Golden Era revolved around Flour Girls and Dough Boys’ peanut butter ganache brownies. DIY projects, bug catching, swim lessons, glittered birthday parties. Her sewing machine hummed, her wheat grinder buzzed. She was herself with no facade, past the polite beginnings and unafraid to be a morning hater with an imperfect life. The tradition of monthly card making began, where she rounded life’s corners, cropped and matted relationships worth keeping, and saved her scraps. Tupperware cups with straws, hallowed ground, her sisterhood of the traveling pants.

Community. Sharing ladders, wheelbarrows, fertilizer spreaders, and expertise. Annual cookie exchanges, Pioneer Day parties, dunk tanks. Things were getting so lush that pruning happened. Giants transplanted to places they needed to go. They left big holes but the holes were filled with variety and beauty and kindness. Cars overflowed to the street because babies were now dating or getting their own degrees. Once the moms taught the kids, now the kids were teaching the moms. Rises and falls, births and deaths, thicks and thins. Her cycles swirled and swished with others. She was changing.

There were the years the little house ached for a baby shower and a diaper cake, but the neighbors compensated by putting on their capes and landing when necessary. They leaned over fences, ate at tables, peeled and canned tomatoes, and pitted plums. They extracted every ounce of good that could be salvaged, lined her cellar with jars, and stood by for the coming winters.

One winter hammered and howled. She hid inside the darkness of the blankest calendar she’d ever owned. The street covered her porch with love before bubble wrapping the house. Then it held hands, formed a circle, and Care Bear stared her house until the ice melted. Seasons passed, and when an ultrasound showed a flickering heartbeat there was such unified rejoicing and leaping that the earth tilted off its axis. The following baby shower was visible from outer space.

Crucibles for all were survived over the years. The network of survivors fused into one great heart and a greater body capable of sharing pain and multiplying joy until one day she turned onto the street in her car full of car seats and saw a wide welcome, with room for anyone, lined with waving trees that had reached out and touched each other. She passed blossoms and bumblebees and hissing sprinklers. She knew the floor plans and the souls behind all those closed doors; there is little mystery when you’ve spent a generation somewhere. As she parked in the driveway, because her old spot is full of boxes, she realized 18 years ago her husband put a down payment on a third of an acre smack dab in the middle of Eden.

Here is the spot where she saw the face and hands of God, here is where she was beautified and replenished, here is where she will progress from.

p.s. While my neighbors began on 680 West, I am blessed to have many neighbors that don’t live *exactly* on my street. If you’re my neighbor, you know it and you know I love you. And to the neighbors who contributed to my Book of Life a.k.a. the best gift I’ve ever been given, THANK YOU. I was up until 3 in the morning after reading it because my cup (and eyes) were running over.

Photo quote originally heard from Charles Funke, whose yard is Temple Square 2.0 and whose life proves he’s likely one of the Three Nephites. The best way to make things grow is to be there, to try. Oh, the footprints that have stepped on my lawn, my carpet, and my heart. This is why it hurts to leave; I’m tangled in a very intense plexus that has grown over the years. This is also why I have to start stepping at the new place; I can’t leave my happiness and growth up to chance.

Photo of a 2014 installation by Gabriel Dawe at BYU Museum of Art called "Plexus no. 29", my favorite thing I've ever seen at BYU MOA, including the Bloch exhibit! Eighty miles of thread hand sewn with a 15-foot needle to portray the physical presence of light and the need to "bring hidden things to light". Dawe said, "Just because one cannot physically see the organic functions of nature, does not necessarily mean they do not exist. Light wave lengths, for instance, are very real, even though the human eye cannot see the full spectrum of them." I would add that while you can't see the full spectrum of love between neighbors, it is very real and just as spellbinding.

[definition] PLEXUS: a complex structure containing an intricate network of intertwining parts; an interwoven combination of parts and elements in a system