Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

The tempation to reflect as the calendar year flips over is too great for me to resist. I've ordered my 2021 calendar ( a pinup calendar, yes. Of Norse goddesses. Yep. I'm an adult, I can do what I want.) So I think that means I can, gingerly, gently, with much deference and genuflection, put this cluster of a year to rest.  But it eludes examination. It slithers out of my awarenss. What was this year, even? I have to consult outside sources. My memory is just a gray haze of heat, cold, panic, and immobility.  So I go to instagram. This is why I have it, by the way. It is a net to catch memories that my sieve-brain just lets dissolve.  Last January 1st, 2020, we got up before dawn, parked at the closed gate of the parking lot on Spencer's Butte, and scrambled up the bitter cold stairs. I had just pulled the kids out of bed, as is, so they were draped in blankets instead of coats, with thick fuzzy socks stuffed into slippers (aka flipflops). We looked around for the rising...

Being a Mormon Missionarionette, Marriage, and My Imaginary Boyfriend April 22, 2019 I don't know why, but I'm thinking about my mission, and about marriage, and relationships, and God, and it's like a nosebleed-- unstoppable until sufficiently reclotted in my brain, so I am going to dribble bloodily all over my blog until I figure out what I'm thinking, and my thoughts reclot themselves. When I was 21, I was a Mormon Sister missionary in Japan-- a Shimai Senkyoushi in the Tokyo North LDS Mission to be very exact about it. I was young and strong and beautiful, although I had no idea at the time-- looking back at pictures I am astonished I was every so clear of eye and bright of brow. I was as lovely and celibate as a Laurel, entombing myself in lovely twisting wood to preserve my virtue. Maybe that's too pretty of a way to put it. I was young and serious and chaste, mortified to be of flesh and up to my split ends in a project to mortify the flesh, one day of...