In Memoriam

Today is Memorial Day. What does that mean? I could go research the origins of the holiday and spout off the facts of how it got started, but I don't feel like that answers my question. A holiday should mean more than just what you can find on Wikipedia. There should be some sort of personal intersection with your own life, your own heart; otherwise, why are you celebrating?

So I've decided today to sit down for a moment and figure out where Memorial Day intersects with me. I have family who have served in the military, but not many who have died in service (not for 100 years or so). But I have lost loved ones in the regular course of mortality, and I think that merits something, too. This is Memorial Day - a day of remembrance. So maybe it's time to look back at some of the people who meant enough to me that they left a piece of themselves behind when they died.

These are some of the people I carry with me.

Myrna Darleen (Packer) Grosland

My Grandma Grosland. She died of cancer in 2009, just a month or so before my high school graduation. When I think about her, I hear her delighted laughter and see her smile - I can't remember her ever not being happy. She took me fishing, she taught me how to play Skip-Bo and Phase 10, and she always always had good things to snack on at her house (cookies, Twizzlers, Ritz crackers, etc.). But what I remember most is that she loved me - wholeheartedly, without reservations - and that I always felt safe when I was with her. 

Love you, Grandma.

Josephine (Mower) Duncan Conover

I know I had other great-grandparents, but my Great-Grandma Conover is the only one I remember well. She died just before the year 2000, when I was about nine years old. From stories and home videos I know that she was my mother's savior, a safe harbor she could hide in when she wanted to run away from home. For myself, I remember that she was quiet and peaceful, and that love bubbled out of her. She was an angel, so I'm sure the transition to heaven was second-nature to her. 

Thanks, Grandma Conover.

Kevin Holm

He was Brother Holm to me - a man in my home ward, married to one of the coolest women I know. She was loud and vibrant, while he was quiet, so I regret that I did not get to know him better before he passed. But my best friends in the ward, Logan and Eric, knew him very well. He taught them about chivalry, manners, and class. His well-dressed demeanor and stories of "a better time" inspired them to wear suits to high school every day for a year. What he was really known for, though, was the fedora. Through him, a fedora became a symbol for a person of quality, and - one by one - every young man in my ward showed up to church wearing a fedora, until the hat rack by the chapel was full of them. My friends even bought me a suitable lady's hat so that I could be part of the group. 

What we didn't know was that beneath his calm exterior Brother Holm was battling depression. He had been suffering for years, but somehow he never let his pain leak out and stain other people. He used the strength he had to protect other people from his illness; and so eventually he didn't have enough strength left to protect himself. Brother Holm was the first person I knew to kill himself. I was in high school, and didn't know at all how to deal with suicide. I didn't know if it should change the way I thought of him or not.

I went to his funeral, hollow and unsure. As agreed upon in advance, my friends and I all wore our hats. After a deeply heartfelt speech, our bishop asked everyone who'd received a hat via Brother Holm to stand up. Over a dozen of us rose to our feet, and I saw in our witness a monument to his legacy. Brother Holm was truly a good man, and one who inspired others to become truly good men. He died because of a mental illness, not because of a character flaw. I am grateful for his example, both as a man of principles and as a man of suffering, because he taught me better than anyone else that a mental illness is something that happens to you - it is not a part of you.

Rest in peace, Brother Holm.

Jordan Needham

Jordan was a guy in my singles ward. He was cute, so I noticed him, but we weren't best friends or anything. We talked a few times at church, and we goofed around a lot at our ward's volleyball night; that was pretty much all it took. Jordan was friendly, so everyone he talked to became his friend. He was an expert at making people feel important and valued in just five seconds of conversation. He was the kind of guy who lived life at full volume all the time - and so he died young. He was killed while riding the motorcycle that he loved, with no helmet. It's difficult not to be frustrated by that - losing someone you care about because of their own foolish mistake - but Jordan was so generous with himself during his life that I can't seem to hold this one mistake against him.

Happy trails, Jordan.

I still don't know what Memorial Day means. But I know who I remember.

Who do you remember?

Unbelonging

These aren't my shoes.
My feet are just living here
for a while.

I had shoes that I loved -
really loved -
a few years ago.
I'd worn them for so long
the shoes
and my feet
changed shape, fitting together
like perfect partners.
And walking was
dancing,
then.

But it couldn't last.
My feet were still growing,
and one day,
without any warning,
my favorite shoes
didn't fit
anymore.

But I loved them.
I loved them.

So I crammed my feet into them
violently, desperately.
But now walking hurt,
and there was
no more dancing.
And it broke my heart
that I hated
my favorite shoes.
So I let them go.

Now I am barefoot
standing in these empty shells
that are my halfway house.

Because I need shoes,
but these aren't them.
My feet are just
living here.

Thoughts from the Girl with the Shaved Head

It has now been a little over three months since I shaved my head to support my sister who was going through brain surgery. As I've already mentioned, it has not been an entirely smooth ride - every single person I've encountered has had something to say on the subject. During the first few weeks, my head never failed to generate a reaction. The responses were surprisingly varied:

• Lots of little kids stared at me, to the chagrin of their parents - who usually were trying to look like they were ignoring me.
• Several old ladies complimented me in the grocery store, saying that they loved my hair - "really!"
• A nurse at the hospital tried to keep me from leaving, thinking I was one of the patients.
• One of my sisters refused to look at me for days.
• I was granted the honorary title of "Sister of the Year."
• My boss nearly fired me.
• Temple attendants mistook me for a man.
• Other English majors congratulated me for challenging gender stereotypes.
• People I don't even know were moved to shake my hand and praise me.
• I was offered free haircuts (for the future), hats, and a wig.
• Many, many people asked to rub my head. (And a few didn't even bother asking!)

Even when the attention has been positive, it's still draining. It feels sometimes as if I've unintentionally turned into some kind of representative. Everyone has taken it upon themselves to decide what my action means, and to make me the poster child for their chosen virtue/sin. I'm either shunned as a radical or praised as a hero. It has been truly overwhelming to try to negotiate social interactions when so many people have interpreted my motivations so disparately.

Why did I shave my head?

To support my sister. Or to shock people into reconsidering their definition of beauty. Or to keep men from asking me out. Or to show my disregard for societal demands of womanhood. Or to escape from the summer heat. Or to get attention. Or to expand my field of life experiences. Or to relieve myself from the pressures of doing my hair. Or to emulate women of strength. Or to explore my own identity. Or to check something off my bucket list. Or to prove I wasn't afraid to do it.

Maybe all of the above. Even I'm not exactly sure which.

What interests me more is why it matters so much to everyone else. It's MY head. Why should my follicle status be of such great import to other people?

For a long time, I really couldn't wrap my mind around this. I just couldn't understand why people would be so emotionally involved with my hair (or lack thereof). At first, I thought it was a socialized sexism - if women don't look like our definition of women, society crumbles. But then I realized that there was a bigger issue at the core of this debate, an issue that defies gender distinctions:

What is the morality of appearance?

Can your appearance, in and of itself, be either virtuous or sinful? There are a great many religions (including my own) that have a dress-code of some sort; and there are even more societies that have clear guidelines for what constitutes "decent" or even "legal" appearance. Whether you're talking about clothes, skin color, hair, piercings, accessories, tattoos, or even basic physical build, most people believe that some combinations of appearance are somehow "wrong." And they are generally not passive about those beliefs either.

They feel offended. They feel afraid. They feel assaulted somehow.

As a person who has felt the backlash of this attitude heavily and recently, I am tempted to reject this kind of philosophy. And I'm sure that there are many people (not the least of which are racial minorities) who have asked themselves the questions that haunted me during that first month: Who are you to decide whether my appearance makes me a good or a bad person? Why do you get to make rules about how I look? I'm not hurting you! Why should I be treated any differently just because I am different from you?

And yet . . . I am not guiltless in this. For one thing, I believe fervently that people should wear clothes in public. If I saw a person walking naked down the street, I would probably feel assaulted. How is that different? Can appearance really have that kind of an affect on other people? And if so, what is our responsibility towards others, with regards to appearance?

Was it wrong for me to shave my head?

This experience has given me so much to think about. As always, the more I delve into the questions, the more unanswers I find. All I know is that I did shave my head, and I am learning a lot from it. I even have the audacity to hope that other people are learning from it as well. But as to that . . . well . . .

Maybe you'd better ask my sister who stopped looking at me.

Rehearsing and Performing

Today I had the opportunity to perform at Devotional with the University Chorale. We reported to the Marriott Center at 10:15 (almost an entire hour early) and started warming up. Once everybody had arrived and climbed over each other, trying to find a seat in their section in this confusing new setting, our conductor motioned for us to stand. The rehearsal began.

It was painstaking. We'd been rehearsing the song (among others) since September, but never had we pounded it out quite as methodically as we did today. First we had to fix our vowels. Then we had to fix our intonation. Then pacing. Then dynamics. Then phrasing. Then lift. And finally, we were reminded to fix our faces. "The cameras will be right on you," our conductor said. "Be excited. Tell the story with your face."

It was a bit stressful. I was worried about our ability to focus on all of those things at once, and I was worried that my worry would keep me from having a story-telling face. I wanted more time to rehearse, but the organ was starting to play. Devotional had begun.

So we performed. And you know what? It went really well. I had fun singing the song, feeling the music as I connected with my fellow performers, conductor, and audience. The Spirit was there, and it filled in the gaps in our performance. Everything was okay. Actually, everything was pretty terrific!

It wasn't until later that I realized that this is what writing is often like for me.

Prewriting, outlining, drafting, revising, redrafting, and editing - these are the literary forms of rehearsal, and they can vary from fun and exciting to painstaking and miserable, depending on the day. The closer I get to the performance (actually turning something in), the more anxious and stressed I get about every flaw in the rehearsal. But once the performance comes - do or die - I find that my fears were mostly for naught. My hard work has paid off, and my progress shows.

This is also usually the time when I remember that writing (or singing) is something I choose to do. Because it's fun. And despite all of my doubts and anxieties, I am good at it.

I am really grateful for performance days.