Low Tide

My dad is a beachcomber, meaning he prefers to wake up before sunrise on vacation to find whole shells and sand dollars. He has paid a heavy price in morning spindrift to amass his stellar, hand-picked collection and I’m happy he’s happy—but in my world there isn’t a shell worth getting out of bed for.

Still, truth is truth, and the truth is low tide is when treasures are more easily found.

I’m so thankful this truth is also figurative; that I don’t have to actually wake up early to find treasures. I shall remember when life feels low, or when its fullness has receded or been taken away, it is prime shell-hunting season.

It felt low when I drove Archer through the school drop-off loop and watched his beloved, gloved teacher toss his personal school supplies through the window while he extended a wrapped, giant homemade cookie we baked just for her. As we pulled away, she said she loved him, he said he loved her, and I started to tear up.

It felt low when I was braking in the car parade to honk and cheer for a neighbor who just finished her last round of chemo, and when I saw one of the young women from my church group bagging groceries in a mask and we couldn’t talk in line.

Low isn’t depressed or devastated. It’s just…different. It’s low because the love and emotions are the same, but the normal actions for showing that love are missing.

I’ve learned that the ache of wanting to be in someone’s face—or at their dinner table, or with my arms around them, or walking by their side—is probably just how Heavenly Father feels but He, too, is limited by boundaries created to allow us to grow from faith into sure knowledge.

When you can’t be physically next to someone and you still love them, you get creative. You send letters or texts. You savor the phone call. You hide Easter eggs in yards and stick notes under windshield wipers. You sidewalk chalk, sew from scraps, and bake favorite foods. You pray for them.

God isn’t physically here, but He’s close, and He loves me. What has He left in my path to assure me of his affection? Daffodils, for starters, and the symmetry of hyacinths. Moody clouds. That meteor shower Tuesday night. Music. Paved bike trails. My daughter making my bed. Scripture written thousands of years ago but precisely what I needed today. Snail mail. That singular glacial lily on my glacially slow hike with the boys. The Ogdens giving us 20 bags of their ex-waterfall mulch—just what our yard lacked but without the trip to Home Depot. I could go on forever about my assemblage of marine tenderness.

In the low tide of shutdown I’m simply learning to love like God does—from a distance but with gestures of absolute sincerity. Limitation doesn’t prevent personalization and closure can’t stop closeness. This realization has been the most cherished acquisition yet; my perfect, pink-bellied conch shell.

Photo of a card I made with one of the mini sand dollars Dad gave me. It's about the size of a plain M&M.

Curves

If I’ve learned one thing about myself in quarantine it is this: I can only cook 18 consecutive meals before my shell cracks and the crazy starts to hatch. Greg has made himself aware of the signs, so last week he wisely buckled us in the truck and off we went for a nature drive somewhere over the rainbow and called in The Old Goat’s take-out pork nachos for our pot of gold.

We wound through the canyon past the checkpoints: Bridal Veil Falls, Greg’s parking spot for fishing the river, the Sundance turn, the big swoop preceding Deer Creek, wind surfers and barns in the same point of view. Archer was drawing staircases on his Etch-a-Sketch and as the drive leveled out he challenged me to draw an Easter egg. It took a few tries—those two simple knobs lead me swiftly to cerebral dead ends—but I ended up a golden goose. Archer was blown away (5 year-olds are good for the ol’ self-esteem) and wanted to try for himself.

His first attempt was a square. Second attempt, not much better. Thirteenth attempt deemed “an eagle” by onlooking little brother. Finally, and might I add completely undeterred, he drew something quite ovalish. I was so proud of him. And then I said the unlikeliest, least planned bit of motherly advice: “Archer, if you can draw an oval with an Etch-a-Sketch, you can do anything in life.” Almost immediately he replied, “No, Mom. You can do anything with practice.”

I’ve thought about my egg feat and Archer’s wisdom all week. Which is more phenomenal: making an oval with a toy designed to draw straight lines, or mastering anything with enough practice?

Life before Covid-19 was a spirograph: overlapping color curves and endless possibilities spun into wildly intricate filigrees of freedom. Life amidst Covid-19 is an Etch-a-Sketch: straight lines inside a mandated box border. The rigidity of enclosure has been, at times, austere. FOR THE LOVE, SHAKE ME! START THIS GROUNDHOG DAY OVER!

In my metaphor, ovals symbolize happiness, therefore an oval born inside an Etch-a-sketch proves happiness and joy can exist anywhere. I suspect our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, has been quoted roughly 5.6 billion times for his assurance,

The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.

Isn’t that just another way of saying ovals can be drawn with straight line knobs? Or ovals against all odds just take practice?

So I’m practicing drawing ovals because I know they are possible. We’re all practicing ovals: smiling at each other behind masks, waving through our windows, air hugging, Zooming, delivering baked love* on doorsteps. Ovals in a time of pandemic are beautiful and deserve to be framed. Maybe an Etch-a-Sketch isn’t a prison, but a frame. Perhaps this unique season in history is showcasing goodness we’ve never been prouder to create.

I feel like the world’s population is collectively showing and receiving each other’s best attempts at ovals, and it feels awfully unified and not at all isolated. It’s like the next socially-distanced rally at the Capitol could be optimistic knob bosses waving Etch-a-Sketches in the air to chants of NO MORE STAIRCASES! WE ARE DRAWING OVALS!

We’re sketching for weeks to come but I know it’s not all right angles of doom. There will be softness, and arcs of reaching, and miraculous shapes drawn from people’s persistence.

Let’s not flatten all the curves.

*Are we all making banana bread? Pre-quarantine I made Jaime’s banana muffins twice a week. We’re definitely up to 3x/week. Perhaps 2020’s slogan should be “No Black Banana Left Behind”. For Jaime's muffins we are a house divided and do half with mini chocolate chips and half with blueberries—because my life isn't complicated enough. I also do 1/4 c. each of all-purpose, wheat, and almond flour to make my 3/4 c. flour, but 3/4 c. all-purpose works just fine. And I reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup. We only do minis and I always leave them in for 15 (or more, you really can't burn them). We like them darker!

Bluebird Day

I’ve lived in Utah for 26 years and skied zero times (but I own a ski mask for snow blowing). I think every other resident of Utah skis, which is why I accidentally know the term “bluebird day”. A bluebird day is a blue skied, cloudless, sunny day that usually follows a snowstorm. For the elite that own snow pants, it means prime ski conditions. For me, it’s just a beautiful reward for enduring bad weather.

Easter always feels like a bluebird day to me.

Christ’s last mortal week was full of bad weather: that weighted last look over Jerusalem before His triumphal entry, Judas’ betrayal, sleeping apostles while he oozed from every pore, unjust accusations, an unfair trial, carrying His cross alone, a bloody crown of thorns, torn and whipped flesh, nails and a sword, vinegar, watching his family weep as they watched Him hang and die. Yet all of that was surpassed Sunday morning when, whole and radiant, He spoke to witnesses at the empty tomb.

I think of Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin’s words concerning the first Easter Sunday and the calm gift it was after Friday’s devastation:

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.

No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come.

Me: Archer, why do you think it’s called Good Friday?

Archer: Because it was good for us.

The promise that every storm will end? Pretty good indeed.

Photo of a bluebird day as seen from my deck. I mean it—I didn't photoshop out a single wisp of cloud.