Look Out Ridge

“Look Out Ridge”
Dear family and dear friends, 9 November 2008

Our niece Katie turned four yesterday and celebrated with trampoline traipsing and pony gathering with cousins at a children’s gym in Draper, Utah. After agreeing to drive, we serendipitously collected two extra cousins to transport south. Too confident, when my mom suggested that I print a map quest, I sat, typed the starting and destination addresses, zapped out printed instructions and scooted along with an errand or three on the way to fill.

Doing errands with five women in four different stores (even within five blocks) will ever be like herding cats, so I felt fairly accomplished to collect teens after finding two pairs of jeans and five shirts, their grandma from returning anniversary jewelry, and their auntie narrowing in on a birthday card uniquely suited for a twenty-two year old returned missionary. After personally, not patiently, persuading Costco’s photo machine to take a 22 megabyte wedding picture in less than an hour and a half, the challenge remaining was to zip 30 miles south in 30 minutes—not impossible with a high occupancy vehicle until my brother called. He wondered which exit we were planning to turn on. Try exit 288.

My “google” map said exit 289. I exited on 289 and made a raft of winding turns twelve miles through the suburbs and hillsides of Riverton—after five miles of state highway and main thoroughfare, we turned right at Ambermont, left on Rolling Brook, right on Orchard Spring, Right at Lookout Ridge which became Pulley Lane. We then turned left at Blue Ridge and right to come into Lookout Ridge, Pulley Lane, and then Mesa Circle, which was supposed to lead to the address in the pink horsie invitation, but the Mesa Circle was just that—a round dead end, propped in the middle of nowhere—no houses, no buildings—but miles to look, as far as you wanted to see! Arriving at Katie’s shindig 75 minutes late, in time to wrap up ice cream and un-wrap packages, I have since decided to triple check sources and pay attention to quiet voices encouraging me to come the simple way, even if I do have instructions (and sure ones!) with greater detail. Life can be simpler than it is made out to be!

A few joyous, simple things: emptying the freezer of a turkey today to make room for a new one—happy to rotate a less costly meat, connecting with family members bearing whole wheat honey-and-ginger snaps and snatches of Sunday and talk tidbits. Then, sitting in stake conference, we heard the stake youth sing echoes of their summer’s Zarahemla camp.

“Amelia signed me up, Mom.”

Glad to be signed up. During a two-day Halloween break, our motivated twelfth grader applied for admission into the college she has always wanted to attend, and the day following she began searching for avenues to help finance her ventures. During hour-long conversations on walks near and around the neighborhood, she shared a recent epiphany of appreciating and living in the “now” in spite of interest and energy in preparing for paths ahead.

It is always a blessing to have a family now and here who loves me (and does not mind a few extra bottles of paraphernalia on a bathroom sink top or overflow of clean clothes from basket piles on bedroom floor.) Home made bread on the counter in the kitchen offers welcoming odor and apples from a valley farm add crisp tartness and color to an autumn lunch.

A freshman facing her first debate against a high school team captain unexpectedly triumphed. And a sister senior wading through hopeless Chemistry and Calculus tests and assignments coupled with paltry expectations experienced an incredible discovery of palatable grades, lauding glazed doughnuts to garnish the gaiety.

Three more terms to go! Mom and Dad Gee’s “moving pictures” have touched their progeny. After taking their nearest daughters to watch Errand of Angels, they decided to perform their own, positioning and pounding wrought iron frame holders to my family history room walls. Now leaves fluttering on the wall paper envelope every child…and counting!

Thomas Alva Starkey and April celebrated the coming of a brand new Thomas Alva junior--eight pounds four ounces, twenty inches long, on Wednesday, 29 October 2008 at 8:17 p.m. at Bellevue, Washington. Val is beaming, and to celebrate, he purchased a full case of flood lights! Little Thomas is truly a light, and his sister Eleanor cradles, coos, and apparently does not want to let him out of her view.

The green and purple kale planted in the aftermath of a completed window well last spring blossomed beyond measure. If there is ever a famine, we may have plenty of roughage! Meantime, my mother, coveting the unbridled blooms bought more for her home and mine--see if we match Alaskan cabbage heads next year! The flaming red bush that frames our house and the pathway to our Main Street chapel boasts brilliant colors, as do some of the Wasatch hills, still.

Even though our morning or evening paths may be dark, narrow and coupled with more than one dead end, having the morning clouds break to unveil beauteous pigments of autumn glory, we are constrained to continue to Look Out over Ridges of disappointments and count our blessings. Thank you for signing up to be a good part of what we are thankful for! Love, the Starkey family

Long Upon the Land

"That Thy Days May Be Long Upon the Land" 14 October 2008

"Bye, Mom. Oh, and can I use the car?"

Those two sentences may have made the two feet of difference between a seventeen-year-old at the wheel finding herself behind and not beneath a Ford Explorer that crossed two lanes and crushed her bumper, radiator, crumpling the front end of our little blue 88 Toyota Camry on her way to work on Thursday. I joking have decided that the act of honoring parents saved a life. A simple goodbye and a pleasant request--enough seconds to slow her from much more intense personal impact.

This week each of my brothers, and today, my sister will have had the blessing of honoring our parents. My maverick mother and father returned from their pioneer home up north a week ago last Sunday, having single-handedly winterized the house and taken down a trampoline, with help of mom's younger sister, who cheerfully reminded them, "We are farmer’s daughters! We can do this!" Before break of the next day, they had plowed the "East Forty," or peeled and processed at least that many bottles full of plump peaches, placing each carefully on pantry shelves.

Isn't harvest time heart-warming—to look up and around at crimson leaf-bearing limbs suddenly aware of color and change? And then glancing at vines, stalks and foliage in a plot of earth that was recently sod, pulled up by roots after which tiller blades separated the soil preparing it for seed. New growth from spinach, lettuce, turnips, okra, parsley, and thyme stood beside tomatoes and jungles of squash vines varying from hidden monster zucchinis to acorn and Hubbard. The last few weeks of summer brought "grandchildren" raspberries from another grandma and a strawberry rhubarb fruit sauce from a plant extracted from a gift of a dear now-deceased friend. And pumpkins! Who knows which bird planted the front yard spread of vines with small orange extensions sprawling on both sides of our front steps? Now the palm-sized pumpkins are piled and planted on the front steps, announcing a culmination of harvest and the change to winter—each was harvested this week, to escape nipping from frosty mornings.

The door opened and closed quickly today, allowing consideration of coats and gloves to accompany braving below-freezing brisk walks. It is a season to gather, to count the harvest, to rejoice in our blessings. Mom planted, A watered, M plucked the plants, and God gave the increase!

As siblings flew and drove from Seattle and various other beginning points to meet my parents in Provo at 6:30 in the morning Saturday, it was a fulfillment of a dream that I had a hard time imagining, working fervently to find family names to commemorate a fiftieth wedding anniversary. My dad had celebrated each week, with an email installment remembering our little family’s beginnings…but this day was a means of reaching out, of sharing with someone else the joy of the nature of eternal families. Grateful to the girls for giving up precious slumber time, my heart clasps the image of a little girl grown up to fit into a college-age smile, garbed in a white jumpsuit, wet hair, having just stood with her grandfather in an oxen-surrounded font, comfortably crouched, sitting on her bare feet, telling me with her body language, "This is a happy place that welcomes me. I love coming here!" She does. Often…with her roommates…and it was her food lab boss in white who issued clothing and helped us stamp our cards. A little like when a five-year-old invites you up to a special tree branch, this touched me.

I whispered stories to her about her great grandmother's gumption--traveling across the United States with a near-toddler in tow to be with a young, distant husband--no matter that this Indiana girl had never before driven more than a few miles in a stretch! The same great-grandmother also made a point of learning along side her teenager, studying nursing and serving in a local hospital when her peers were retreating into less active retirement. Grandma A also learned dots and dashes to speak with ham radio friends near and far, and filled her walls as she dabbled in acrylics and oils from the Southwest as she and Great Grandpa traveled.

It isn't hard to honor those who have honored us with choices of sacrifice and goodness and giving! And it is not as hard to rise in the dark to begin a morning with a brief pause of thanks, to tender pages of holy writ and ponder meaning of the day together before a back pack zips and a connoisseur of chemistry and calculus doggedly marches in early morning query to devoted teachers. Not long after, when sleepy-eye sister claims bathroom mirrors and repeats a similar routine, our hearts embrace the words of a wise leader: "Be at the crossroads!" So here we are. And aren't we blessed when they let us be! Dad’s mom reminded us at Sunday dinner that seven years to the month have passed since another leader reminded us about the parable of seven plenteous and seven lean years. Aren't we blessed to have had plenty? If this is our crossroads, aren't we blessed to have been taught how to prepare for inevitabilities that come our way? Aren't we blessed to have one another…to be reminded that our life is not a dead end (crash or no crash)…and aren't we glad to have another day?! May your days be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee!

Happy Tuesday to you each! From your “gathered in” friends