If only all midwestern towns were still like this...

Tonight is my last night in Chicago, for a pretty long time, most likely. I'm more than a little bit sad. To celebrate the wonder of bygone midwestern days and the continued charm of small midwestern towns (not that Chicago is--but we've been to/through several small towns while I've been here, so you get the idea).

If you haven't seen Robert Preston play the Music Man, then do it right now. Here--I'll help.

Roots

This is the song I kept thinking of while I was thinking about this:

When I first got back from my semester in England, virtually every person that knew where I'd been said similar things. The conversation invariably went something like this: 

"You got to study in England? Wow! You are so lucky! How was it?"

At which point, I would usually say some vague, all-encompassing phrase like, "Oh, it was so great. I just loved it." Which was, and still is, true. But I always felt a bit like I was cheating my experience to sum it up in one trite word or two. After all, my near-four-month stint in England did more to help me see and understand myself than anything else in my had. And I'm calling it "oh, so great?"

"So great" doesn't say anything about the breath that flew out of my lungs when I first saw St. Paul's Cathedral, silhouetted against the sunset, with streaks of pink, gold, and orange bursting from behind it.

It doesn't describe the love I felt for the people around me when I sat in Tube (the District Line heading towards South Kensington, if you were wondering) watching the young couple across from me play with their son and ask him to "give Mummy a kiss" just because "she loves you so much."

Nor does it explain the gratitude I felt as I stood next to Benbow Pond in Herefordshire, thinking of the hundreds (literally) of my ancestors who became members of the LDS faith there in England in the 1800s and who sailed over to America to join other members like them.

This time, when I went back with my family, I wasn't sure if it would be the same. My sister and I talked later in the trip about how we weren't sure if it would be such an overwhelmingly wonderful feeling all the time, the kind that lives deep in the soul, like it was before. But then  we arrived, and I found myself feeling the same comfort and happiness as before--the way you feel when you've been gone doing hectic, unpleasant things for weeks on end, and then you finally get to come home. 

I enjoyed the whole trip, naturally. We spent the first four days in London, and then we rented a car and drove up to the north of England for the last four days. It was all beautiful, and given how happy I was to return, it was even better to be there with my family and have the opportunity to show them all of my favorite places and re-experience with them so many familiar things and savor new opportunities as well. But I think I realized why being in England makes me feel so happy and myself when we stopped at a church in a tiny village called Farnworth, on the borders of Widnes township. This village has a church that was built in the 11th century, under Norman rule, and my ancestors, the Rathbones, lived in Farnworth in the 1500-1600s. They were christened and (some of them) buried there at that darling little church that has been there for almost 900 years (see below). I stood there and thought of them, where they came from and where they had been. And then I wondered what they would have said if they could have see almost 500 years into the future and known that one of their great-great-great-times-a-big-number granddaughter would have flown over the ocean, driven to this tiny town to stand there where they worshiped, and stood thinking of them, wishing to meet them.

For me, the best thing about being in England is having experiences like that—standing in a church where my ancestors walked, socialized, baptized their children, and worshiped God. They lived too! The British Isles are more than just lands with lovely countryside, rich history, and excellent literature. Our identities are wrapped up so tightly in our heritage and where we come from, that when I go to England, I truly feel as if my soul is coming home. And then, on top of this extraordinary kinship with my ancestors who lived there, the connection I feel to England is so much more solidified because so much of what I like, what I study, what I think about, and what is beautiful to me is found there. That’s not to say that I don’t find those things elsewhere—certainly not. But the culture, history, and beauty England just feels so inextricably a part of my roots and a part of my soul, that how can I help loving it as I do?

Though a tree's roots aren't always seen above ground, the tree wouldn't stand without them.  The roots are the lifeblood, the stability, and the strength of the tree. 

I'm glad to have found mine.

Telegram

Traveling to London today STOP to visit the queen STOP

Cannot wait to see this again STOP

May never come back STOP

Heaven scent?

The other day I was running in a nearby neighborhood, when I suddenly smelled a very strong odor of marijuana. Mmmm. It's this sickly sweet, rotting kind of flavor to the smoke, for those of you who are so unfortunate as to never have smelled weed before. When I was a senior in high school, one girl who sat next to me in choir used to go and smoke weed at lunch every day...and she told me so. So she felt fabulously...free every day, and I got to smell the aftermath. And, since choir was right after lunch and our chairs in choir had to be touching each other...I got to know that smell very well. It was so nice to smell that lovely smell that brought back so many memories when I was out on my run the other day. So....nostalgic? 

I ran faster so I could get away from it. Ick.

I wish you all a very scentsual day. 

via

You can call me Grace.

from me!

Whenever someone asks me what my pet peeves are, I always say the same three things: people clapping in between movements at classical music concerts, grammatical/typographical errors in printed material, and going to bed when the kitchen is still dirty.

But the other day, I thought of a pet peeve that I'd never really realized before--one that the only culprit is me. I realized this after I had physically run into three different people in the grocery store (all within about five minutes of each other), after I had accidentally stepped in front of my sister as she was trying to walk through a door with her arms full, and when I realized that I had forgotten to do two or three different things for work that I should have taken care of a few days earlier...and that it had inconvenienced several people. 

I hate being in the way. Whether I am actually physically in someone's way, or if I am causing someone an inconvenience, or even if someone does something that inconveniences him/herself because of me, it's all the same. They all make me feel like I am "in the way." It's funny, because I often try really hard to change my behavior so that I am not in the way, but often, that ends up being even worse. It's so difficult, when you are trying to organize your father's books and magazines to surprise him, and as it turns out, all those stacks of magazines that looked messy to you were actually organized already in piles to give to different people in a few days. Or when you are with the man of your dreams and he tries to woo you with champagne...and ends up sitting on the champagne flutes. Whoops. And you feel terrible, because if you hadn't been there, he wouldn't have done that, obviously! 

 

Oops.

Or, like the other day when I tried to run into the room and clear a space for an armload of stuff that my sister was trying to put away, and I just ended up running into her and knocking over a suitcase and a stack of books instead. Oh bother. I'm a real lady, with poise to burn. Obviously.

You know, you'd think that since I dislike it so much, I'd figure out how to be less in the way and more accommodating. Or at least handle it a little gracefully, like Julia Ormond does. I mean, she has the nerve to slap Harrison Ford just a few minutes later! Brave woman. I'd probably just trip over his shoe.

Oh well. Guess I'm just a slow learner. And after all, someone has to provide the slapstick comedy. Maybe I'll try the Donald O'Connor tactic. Because who doesn't like him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW02c5UNGl0&feature=related (This video had embedding disabled. Sorry.)

Meanwhile, sorry if I, uh, knock you down or something. I'm probably just trying to get out of the way.

 

via

JRB

I want to be this person to another person.

That would be living.

(Oh, and by the way, the images of Ron and Hermione are cute and all, but I'm talking about the song. It was the only version I could find that used Jason Robert Brown's real version--just listen to the words.)


Real post coming tomorrow or the next day.

Make a wish into the well

I wish for a lot of things, like anybody does. But mostly, I'm pretty content. But, oh for the few things I wish I had done when I had the chance.

I wish I had become better friends with a couple of people that I really appreciated in high school. Of course, I didn't realize how much I appreciated them until after high school was over. Of course.

I wish that I had written to my friends on missions (and my siblings, when they were gone) better.

I wish I had learned how to be spontaneous a little sooner in my life. I wish it were still not so hard for me to be spontaneous.

I wish I had bought that bottle of wine at Whole Foods on my 21st birthday (yesterday), even though I don't drink. I was going to use it for cooking, but I didn't get it. It would have been really fun to say that I, a Mormon girl, bought wine on my 21st birthday. :) But of course, it was a spontaneous thing, and I'm still working at that.

(That's what I'm wishing most this right now. Bummer.)

And at 4:30 tomorrow morning, I'm going wish that I had gone to bed sooner. But I will not wish that I had stayed in bed when I am running on the lake path around Lake Michigan at sunrise.

That I will not wish.

I guess it's a balancing act, figuring out which wishes to keep wishing and which wishes to let go.

I wish I knew how to do it.