The next part of June

The morning of Michael's mom's funeral, I got a text from my dad that my Grandma Alley had just passed away. This one was not unexpected - I'd even gone out to Utah for spring break to see her one last time before her health declined too much - but the timing was crazy. Not only was I in Tennessee at my mother-in-law's funeral, but my parents were on vacation in Hawaii with my mom's family. Thankfully, they were able to schedule the funeral to give everyone enough time to get out to Utah.

When I told people that I'd been out of town at my grandmother's funeral, the response over and over again was amazement that I still had living grandparents. My grandma lived a long and amazing life, and although I cried buckets at her funeral because the eulogies were beautiful and I will miss her, it wasn't the same kind of sorrow as the other funerals I've been to this year. Instead, the days I spent in Utah were a sweet time reminiscing with family that I don't get to see very often.


One hard part of the trip was saying goodbye to my Grandma and Grandpa Alley's house. My Aunt Diana has been living with Grandma for the past several years, but with Grandma gone, Diana decided to move closer to her daughter.

My grandparents had lived in that house my whole life. I think even my dad's whole life. It was a tiny house with too few bathrooms for the number of people we would cram into it and the scariest basement stairs. I have so many wonderful memories of running around the gorgeous yard, playing games at the dining room table, and watching BBC movies with my grandparents in their back bedroom. When I was very little, both sets of my grandparents lived on the same block, and it was a child's dream to be able to play at one house and then walk around the corner to the other house when I got bored. I loved to play with the shells and other trinkets my grandma kept on her blue shelf, watch her wind up her music boxes, and read book after book from all over the house.

When I was fourteen, my parents sent me to Utah by myself to spend time with my relatives for a few weeks. I remember one day sitting at the kitchen table with just my Grandma and Grandpa, eating homemade bread and home-canned pears. Grandma made cheerful small talk in that beautiful happy way of hers while my grandpa and I listened quietly, and Grandma laughed, pointing out how much alike we were. I have always been a quiet person in a world where quiet is often not valued, and so I sometimes feel weird and out of place. But sitting there that day with my Grandma and Grandpa Alley, I felt like I knew where I belonged. My grandparents made me feel so special.

This post has been a long time coming...

Looking at my photos from June, it's hard to know where to start. It was a strange month.

On the weekend before my last two workdays of the school year, Michael's dad called to say that Michael's mom had passed away. She had been in poor health for the past several years and had been living in a nursing home. When we visited at Christmas, she was a frail shell of a woman, and it was hard to tell if she knew who we were. For years, we'd been saying that she might not live much longer, and yet when the call finally came, it felt unexpected.

Michael and the boys left immediately to attend the funeral in Tennessee, but since I was having trouble getting in touch with my boss, I went into work Monday morning, planning to catch a flight out that night. I left work a little after noon, went home to pack my bag, checked my plane ticket...and realized that Michael had bought a ticket for the wrong date. Luckily, I was able to book a same-day flight (for significantly more money), and in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have asked Michael to purchase my plane ticket, considering that he'd just lost his mom and wasn't in the best state of mind.

I'm hoping Michael will at some point write something about his mom and what she meant to him. For me, though, Sylvia's funeral was tough and strange because she was so young - about the same age as my own parents - and because she'd been in such poor health for the past several years. Except for the first two years of our marriage, we haven't lived near Michael's family, and I think just because of the way Michael is, the way his parents are, and the way I am, we haven't spent much time with them over the years - only a day or two in July and again at Christmas. Although I am extremely grateful to Michael's parents for the son they raised, I have never been close to them, and the fact that Sylvia's health declined so much in the end made it even harder to really know her.

I kept thinking at the funeral about an interview we did with Michael's mom a few years ago to add to our family history record. One question we asked was why she decided to join the Church. She was in college when she met Michael's dad and decided to be baptized. Because of that decision, her parents disowned her, and for most of his childhood, Michael didn't interact with his maternal grandparents. But Sylvia said that despite the way her parents felt, she loved the gospel teaching that families can be together forever, so she knew she wanted to join the Church.

Michael's parents married young, had five kids in six or seven years, and never had a lot of money. At the funeral, Michael's sister Diana had displayed photographs of Sylvia as a child and teenager, and looking at the photos, I kept thinking about how pretty she'd been and how much potential she'd had in life and how, despite that potential, her biggest accomplishment had been raising five crazy kids to be stable adults and then how she'd died so young.

"Was she happy?" I asked Michael on the way home.

"I think she was," he said. "I think that being involved in our stuff when we were kids and then watching us live our lives as adults, that made her happy."

I know there are some people that don't find satisfaction simply being a parent, but I also know that for me personally, the best job I ever had was staying home with my kids. As hard as it could be at times, I loved every second of it.

I don't know what dreams Sylvia had that she may have had to set aside to raise her family, but I know that she raised some amazing human beings, one of whom is the father of my amazing human beings. And I hope that made her happy.

Middle School Graduate

Care for Your Teachers Like They Care for Your Children

Several years ago while I was working on my teacher's license but hadn't been hired anywhere yet, I took the boys to a Moral Monday rally to support teachers. We stood around for awhile on the lawn in front of the General Assembly building and then marched with the other protests downtown. Cole and Eli mostly sat on the sidelines and read, tolerating yet another thing I'd dragged them to.


This past May, we joined another rally for teachers, but this time since I have some skin in the game, we made signs.








Eli especially took his sign making very seriously.

Although I'd be grateful for a salary raise, all I really want is to be able to spend fewer hours doing work outside of work. I just don't understand the mindset that undervalues education and teachers. Plus, I'm starting my master's program this fall also, so that will be fun....