Definition Clarification: Captivity

Sometimes, we find, that the inner workings of a three-year-old seem more clear than the complex definitions that you can find in Webster's dictionary. For example, let's take the word captivity. It's hard to know how the word captivity sounds to a three-year-old. For sure it must conjure up some sort of negative connotation. Recently, while my daughter was reading to my three-year-old granddaughter Taylor, she got a peek into the inside of Taylor's inquisitive brain. Included in the reading were several mentions of "captivity". It seems that Taylor could discern from the content that the people that went into "captivity" had done something very wrong. At the end of the reading, Taylor spoke up. She had a puzzled look on her face as she asked, "Now just what is "captivity"? Is it when a person goes into timeout or hail?" I didn't misspell that word at the end of her question, but I did try to spell it phonetically as itcame out of her mouth.

It seems as if they have quite an accent down in Arizona! To her, "captivity" was a simple concept, but it needed to be clarified. I know my daughter, Brianna, opted for the more simplified definition of "time out", but when I think back on the Taylor's question, I wonder what would have happened if Brianna had opted for "hail".  Then the next time Taylor got in trouble, Brianna could have said to her, "you better settle down or I'm going to put you in captivity."

Just wandering!

Feeding Time For Gimpa

I am really excited to have the time to work on a blog post or two today. First of all, a few unrelated note to start. I am very close to being "all better". My sores are mostly healed now. I am very grateful for the help, which included all of my children and my ever beautiful wife. I am also grateful for the medical care and aids who have also cared so kindly for me. Early on, I received a blessing from my home teachers. I have acquired a great faith in their blessing. Should they ever must me to head into my next journey, I will be gone within 24 hours. I'm not telling them that yet, but that day is approaching :-) as miscellaneous pieces, I have a few congratulations to go to my children. I understand that they are not the focus of my blog and I ask you to patiently wade through this for a moment and then I will get back to being Gimpa. I tip of my Fedora and speak with my heart when I say how happy and how proud I am of our children. Seth finished his next to last semester in law school with flying colors. There will be a perfect job for him where he will bring great value to his employers. Brianna got herself well known within the Eyre, well-known for their Joy School curriculum and many other parenting teachings. Even though she's such a great mother, she extends herself to be the very best she can. Jackie has had her hands full lately with babysitting, not just me but other children, mothering, being pregnant, entertaining her mother, and now she is tutoring school children who need a little extra help in either understanding their homework or getting it done. Eric has found his career shifting a bit as he has been quite successful in acquiring, remodeling, and selling homes in Phoenix. He is serving faithfully in his bishopric calling and is dropping weight like a pirate with scurvy. Curtis is well on his way to completing his semester with perfection. He has been interviewing at potential graduate schools and, as you might imagine, he is so well liked by all that they would love to pay him to start graduate school immediately, as in, "don't get back on the plane home and will send someone for your stuff." Hannah writes the most exciting and fun to translate e-mails from her mission. She is teaching and baptizing each and every week as a trainer. She is certainly doing what Heavenly Father wants her to do and she is definitely serving his children with the Hannah Flare. Saren letter late cannot wait for her 16th birthday and makes us count the days down. Of course, she is excited to have her driver's license, but of more excitement to her I believe, is that there is A Preference Dance the weekend that she turns 16 and she can definitely make a date out of that! She is progressing so well in our young women's goals and her spirituality has been growing tremendously. Now, as for Mimi, she is incredible and beautiful as always. She loves being a grandmother and does so many things for each of her grandchildren and they love her dearly. She has gone to full-time work at the place that she loves and she is perfect for them there. Her shifts are currently graveyard shifts, so sometimes during the week she looks a bit tired. It seems to me that she will go to day shifts within the next few months. Thanks for listening to me as I explained those things outside of my Gimpa life that added to my complete joy.

Not ever having the enjoyable experience of nursing a child, I can't say that I'm very much of an expert when it comes to "feeding time". I've witnessed many "feeding times" in my days, respectfully of course, and I have noticed that they bring great joy to both the person offering the food and the person receiving the food. And, as far as being the person receiving the food, I can say I'm a bit of an expert at that. I've certainly had many years of receiving food since my accident and many experiences that have caused me to laugh, such as the time that they passed off plastic grapes on my plate as real grapes and I really tried to eat them. But one day recently, when Taylor and Ellie were here to visit, I received a feeding that touched my heart and gives me joy.

There is something that you need to know, if you don't already, about Ellie. Ellie is not afraid of anything. She loves to get down with Taylor and Maxine and mix it up. She loves to interact with people and animals. She is very social. But I would say that Ellie has the quality of meekness in her personality. She definitely is not shy, but she generally is quiet and observing the train around her. She likes to see how things work out, particularly in the social realm. Independently, she will choose a toy to play with, and he invariably Taylor will decide that Ellie made a good choice only that that good choice was a toy for Taylor. Scene continues with Taylor snatching that toy from Ellie. Ellie will just look at her with her wide and beautiful eyes as if to say, "okay, Taylor I understand that you're not very mature and that you're upset that I took your spot as the baby of the family, no problem. I will just head over there and play with a toy that I really don't like so that you will come and take that toy and then you will be sufficiently distracted." And, that's exactly what she does. Usually, she doesn't get angry at Taylor or anyone else easily, but when she does get angry, there is a good reason. She is also kind and very generous in her sharing. That's the part were feeding, mandarins, and I come into the story.

One morning, Ellie had eaten her fill of little mandarins. She was sitting on a stool at our kitchen island and I was sitting at the corner enjoyably watching her. She had a few mandarins left and it almost looked as if she didn't know what to do with them. Then she looked at me with her huge beautiful is and I could almost see what she was thinking. Oh, I don't believe you've had anything to eat yet Gimpa. I sort of remember that you can't feed yourself. I've watched how my mom has sent you before and I think I can do that if you promise not to bite me! Then she looked down at the leftover mandarins in her bowl and a connected in her head. She picked up a Mandarin in her small fist. It looked rather like she had grabbed a hold of a slippery fish. She thrust her fist out at me and said, "Ugghh". I understood that perfectly as, "here Gimpa, would you like a bite of mandarins?" I leaned over the counter and opened my mouth and was the recipient of perhaps the most tasty Mandarin ever in my life. My eyes moistened. She continued to feed me the rest and without asking if I was done or not, she insisted that her mother opened another can of mandarins so she could continue feeding me. We laughed together as the occasional floppy Mandarin would squirt out and missed my mouth. She loved it when I would not only take the Mandarin, but pretend to swallow her fist. During the rest of their stay, she insisted on sharing with me, but she would not let anyone else do the feeding. Even now, that scene makes my heart swell up with joy. A Gimpa developmental breakthrough for sure!

Developmental Time Flies by

Time is a topic that just gets better understood as the years go by. Not that you can't understand how time works when you're young, but no matter how much you understand it,you are always lurking around the corner for the next period of time. Surely, it will be better than this period of time right now. So if you're young, try to keep up!

I spent some time this afternoon with my granddaughter Maxime. We discovered this new game. She stands up on the chair next to my bed and tries to slap my elbow. It's kind of like that game where one person lays there hands down with another person lying there hands on top of the other person and the bottom person tries to slap the hand of the other person. I can't play that game very well because my hands tend to stay very curled up to my chest while I'm in bed. They are more in the shape of chicken wings then arms and hands! But, that's what made our game work. My elbows sticks out and Maxine can slap at them. At first, I was not moving my elbow, but as she got better at it, I started moving my elbow and the game was on!

The really great part was that no matter the outcome, she would let out a squeal that is adorable. I'm not so sure her mother thought it was a very appropriate game. I'm hoping that it doesn't teach Maxine to hit. But, everyone has to learn the difference between playing and being serious. Technically, I'm not entirely sure she is at that developmental stage at the moment. But, I felt something that was very soft and very sublime. He developmental moment shared between her and I.

A moment in developmental time for a developing young person passes so very quickly, particularly in retrospect! I spent a lot of time this last month trying to get a first draft done on a book I'm considering writing. That time went fast as well, but at a cost of not taking many of the in-the-moment moments in the developing of my grandchildren. One thing that I've learned is that the moment lost is virtually impossible to re-create. True, the memory remains and we have that, but the treasure is in that moment.

True, developmental time flies by, probably even faster than computer time. The only way I have found to stretch it out is to live in it.

The Best High-Five I Ever Got

How does one measure a high five? Is it measured by the size of the hand? Is it measured by how hard their hand slapped yours? Is it measured by how well they can perform the maneuver or how direct the slap is? Is it measured by how good you feel after the high five? to be quite honest, I really don't know how the pros measure their high-fives. My tireless efforts at researching have not identified any known rules for this unique piece of our pop-culture. I did uncover some history of the "high five phenomenon" on the source of all truth -- Wikipedia. (Insert here a passionate plea for everyone reading this blog please click the appropriate donation to Wikipedia in the plate as he goes around the room.)

It seems that the history of the high five has very deep cultural roots. In the beginning, when football was played without helmets, pads, unsportsmanlike conduct, offense, or defense, when someone was holding the pink skin ( sometimes substituted with real pigs when no one could come up with a pigskin) crossed the line of the end zone ( sometimes known as the "slaughter zone") and they were still alive, they would reach out to their teammates and say, "give me five" which was actually a sincere plea for five dollars to put towards medical costs incurred during the game.

All of that changed with the introduction of helmets and the migration of slaughter zones from football fields to hockey. Postgame medical cost fell dramatically and salaries for players skyrocketed. When salaries were first instituted, players were paid for their performance rather than their choices of agents. Players went directly to the owners for their pay after each touchdown ( which were known previously as smackdowns for obvious reasons). The players would run to the sideline, find the owner, face him square on, turn around in place and scream, "give me five, please!" Upon which, the owner would tuck five dollars in the players back pocket and then slap him on the back pocket to let him know that he had been paid. This proved to be a bit problematic though when the owners started making uniforms without back pockets and just going through the motions with the players. Still, this early form of the high five made its way into the pop culture, mostly as a way to make fun of dumb football players who thought the owners were still paying them. The slap on someone's back pocket caught on as a way to show that you thought they did a great job or performed something very well. It spread like wildfire. Other sports loved the motion. Baseball players, golfers, bass fisherman, ballet dancers and lawyers. It was the lawyers who finally killed it off. History is a bit unclear here, the documents are classified, but it seems that a certain lawyer named Clarence Thomas was submitted to become a Supreme Court justice and his nomination gotten muddied by some claims that maybe his efforts at freely expressing the motion had gone "a little too far".

Next came football agents and several more lawsuits giving rise to the high five motion as we know it today. The football agents, many who were attorneys also, devised a system whereby one person would raise their hand high and another person, in the case of football this would be the owner, would raise their hand and slap five dollars into the hand of the player. This was an intensely ingenious move by the football agents because the "high five" was done in the open, for everyone to see, including the players and agents. Lawsuits, triggered by "excessive motion" in prior days, were now reduced to virtually nothing. ( yes, Clarence Thomas did become a Supreme Court justice and wrote the majority decision in the case of Thomas V. Jane Doe which struck down all prior cases of "extreme and excessive use of the motion") As four of the expression of a high five in pop-culture, there was no exchange of money ( note exception drug culture) and anyone engaged in the activity as an expression of congratulations or "job well done". There are numerous variations of the high five that spring up from time to time. Most of them are introduced into culture by sports team owners and basically boiled down to "congratulations, job well done, but I ain't giving you a dime" ( most popular examples are the closed hand fist to fist and two or more people jumping out the into each other with their arms down at their sides).

This brings me to the topic of this post: my best high-five ever. ( history is very important so that we don't repeat our mistakes, but sometimes it can be quite long -- like 789 words long) As I mentioned above, there are no rules in "grading" a high-five, but, I will tell you how I did it. In my current crippled state, I cannot physically give a high-five. I can't raise either of my hands above my head and my palms are permanently turned in instead of out. So when I say go for a high-five, people get all creeped out and they think I'm making fun of crippled people who can't high-five. So I don't ever signal for high-fives anymore. So put your thinking hats on and get ready for a metaphoric ride.

Five years ago, on October 29, 2006, I fell out of a tree and the world for myself, my wife, my children and many others changed. ( I would say changed forever, but I know it's not going to be forever, just long enough for me to learn what I need.) that was five years ago when I fell from a high tree. (that sentence was strategically placed for the metaphorically challenged) I had an initial purpose that I had supposed was what I needed to do and why I remained alive. But, the time and activity of that initial purpose has passed and I live on. I have looked up and asked the question of why I remain living countless times and I know that others have as well. I started this blog because I wanted to cry the whole my life as a grandfather so that I could pass that along to future generations. Being a grandfather is a joy that it's difficult to express in words to anyone who is not. Being a grandfather that is confined to a wheelchair and had always trained of how I would run and play with my grandchildren has been a source of many sleepless nights for me. How can I be a grandfather like all of the others?

About 18 months ago, our third granddaughter Maxine was born to our son Seth and his incredible wife and mother Jackie. At the time, they lived in our house in the basement area. Under the best of conditions, it's not easy for a new young family to live in the home of their parents. We have had to constrain our grandparenting wants as we strive to let them make their own family decisions and have their own family time. Soon after Maxine was born Jackie would bring her up the stairs every morning to say good morning to her Mimi and Gimpa. At the earliest of age, she has seen me laying in my hospital bed and sitting in my wheelchair. It seemed to me that from the moment that she could focus on objects further away, when she would come to see me, her eyes would lock themselves into a stare. Or at least I thought it was a stare. Then I noticed that she wasn't staring, but that she was studying intently the object which she held in her focus. I used to joke that she could be the next National Baby Staring Champion. In all seriousness, it is one of the most intense and sweet gazing that I have ever seen. Sometimes our eyes would lock and she would give me an intent gaze of the kind that I could only hope that I might receive one day from the Savior. I am convinced that she knows me as I am and doesn't expect anything different. She doesn't expect me to give her food or drinks. She doesn't grab my hand to take me somewhere and show me something. She doesn't crawl up on my lap or reach out for me to hold her. She doesn't play ball with me, nor does she throw or roll the ball in my way. She has discovered that I can fake dance with my upper body ( which is actually better than my previous real dancing) so she will get out a toy that plays a musical tune and without waiting, she will make it play the tune and look at me to see if I'm dancing. She knows how to use baby sign language and she knows that I know it, but, she will never give me a sign that I can't do. We came face to face to say good morning, eat lunch together, and goodnight most of the days while her parents lived with us.

On Saturday was my anniversary. I am thankful that I can still breathe every day when I wake up. I know that I am a burden to some and they cost to others. Most of my days are filled with intense pain that I can only partially block out. Sometimes I think that there is not much here for me to do. But, amazingly I fill my days and many times it is just being with the grandchildren.

On Sunday, Maxine was being a bit rambunctious and whining during sacrament meeting. Usually, her parents said much more towards the front so they can hear and see better, but our family sits more towards the back so they can take out the folding chairs and cut out a place for me. Jackie got up to walk around a bit with Maxine and then decided to sit down next to us. Well, of course, Maxine wanted to explore her new environment, but we could tell that she was also tired. She sat with Saren for a while and then wanted to her Mimi. She put her head on Mimi's shoulder while Mimi patted her back. Then she looked over at me. It looked as if she was questioning whether or not she could come to my lap. She was close and there was nothing keeping her from sitting on my lap, only herself. I nodded my head and gave her a look with my eyes to come over to my lap. I wasn't really expecting it to come over, but I think she got a little bit of encouragement from Mimi and she stepped over to my lap. Sue sat down with her legs straddling my left leg and laid her head down on my shoulder. I tried to curl my left arm around her to help her to feel safe, but I suspect it was the padding by her Mimi on her back that helped her feel secure. She laid her head there for probably 30 min. I kept looking down because I thought maybe she had gone to sleep, but she didn't love even for a minute. Her eyes looked very heavy, but she kept them open. Many times she looked up at me to see if I looked at her. Once she caught my eyes, she would smile and lower her head to seem as if she was resting. When I sang one of the hymns, she seemed to hum along with me or maybe even tried to sing. I guess after a while she felt that she had rested enough and given me a wonderful feeling as a grandfather. In fact, she had. She had given me the best high-five I ever got!

As a follow-up to the above story, I wanted to mention that while she hasn't laid her head on my shoulders, like she did that time, she did sit on my lap for a while during opening exercises of priesthood. Of course, I was sitting right next to the Wurlitzer Play and Fun home sized organ. It's a good thing that it wasn't on because she tried to play it with her fingers and when that didn't work she tried to play it with her toes! But the really great thing for me was that while she was sitting on my lap, I snuggled close to her and gave her a kiss on the side of her head. The smell was so unbelievable. It was the smell of a young child's head. And the hair felt so thin on my face. And brought me back many memories of sitting with each of my girls when they were young. Kissing their heads, one of those sweet joys of a father, turns out also to be one of those sweet joys of a Gimpa!

Chin Up!

I was lying in bed with Judge Judy on mute ( which, I discovered, is actually the best way to watch that show), listening to DJ Sammy ( dreaming about my Heaven with my family) and trying to decide what to write about today. Then it hit me, right in the throat it got me. I'm talking literally. Everything was going just perfect until my body decided to offer a volunteer full body spasm. My computer stand was set up a bit low and so when my carefully placed and manicured fat belly hit the computer stand, off slid the laptop and landed square on my throat. So now, if you can picture this, Judge Judy on mute and me with a computer pinning me down to the bed by my throat! As you can see, I just don't let a small thing like that put me on mute. Take that Judge Judy.

Being in a position like that got me to thinking ( it doesn't take much!) I am reminded of something Taylor lovingly calls "chokers". The other day she woke up and told her mother that she didn't sleep so well. When her mother asked why, she clearly stated, "the chokers kept waking me up." That being a new word for her mother used in that context, she was curious what Taylor was talking about. So she asked  incredibly probing secondary question to Taylor's remark, "So, what did you do?" To which Taylor gave her reply that obviously shows how incredibly smart she is, "I blew them on my sheet." The clarification wasn't so clarified to Bree so she hurried off to Taylor's room to check out these chokers that she had blown away.

I'm going to leave you hanging for just a second. I too have my problems with chokers and I too blow them a way. Where they land is not really up to me and they have chosen many delightful places to land. Okay, you guessed it! Chokers are those ugly yet fascinating little green blobs ( that really is the technical term -- I checked it on Wikipedia) that get bigger and bigger until you can't breathe through your nose and you have to do something with them. Taylor correctly identified how to dispose of them so she could go back to sleep. Blow them on your sheet! Now, if she would have been oh, say, six or 12 months younger, she may have also explained to her mom that she not only blew them away, but that she couldn't stand to see them wasted on the sheet and she got hungry. And the end of chokers!

I'm still pinned down here with my computer, waiting for someone to rescue me. I'm okay and all, I've been in worse situations that's for sure. Oh! And the above reminded me of something that probably only my children have experienced because no other father would play such a trick or have such a distorted sense of humor. Anyway, I loved to cook breakfast for our family on Saturday mornings. I owed as much to their beautiful blue-eyed brunette mother who cooked breakfast every other morning of the week and stayed out late with me on Friday night's. My breakfast of choice was a big pot of oatmeal. Not just any oatmeal, but my "special" oatmeal. It included vanilla, walnuts, cinnamon, brown sugar and my "secret" ingredient. I'm willing to offer up my secret ingredient today because I have a pretty good suspicion that I won't be making any special oatmeal in the near future. Here's the secret ingredient: five drops of green food coloring. And there you've got it --delicious oatmeal that looks like fresh chokers. You'd think that no one would ever eat it right. Well, I convinced them one by one and if you ask them today, they will tell you that was their favorite meal that I ever made ( of coarse, it was the only one I ever made!)

Well, Taylor, I can tell you from experience that chokers have kept me up many nights and nothing feels better than falling asleep after blowing away a choker!

Off to the Park Taylor and I Go

I don't get out as often as some other grandfathers do. But, I have one granddaughter, Taylor, who would like to spend all of her time outside if she could. So on a recent visit here, she was begging everyoneand anyone she could find to go to the park with her. After a few minutes of this, I spoke up and told her that I would like to go with her to the park. She gave me a look like, "Are you sure you're old enough to go to the park?" I was so glad when her mom encouraged Taylor to go with me. Taylor was still dressed in her pajamas, a well-worn Cinderella dress. But, that was very comfortable for her so we took off out the door.
Taylor is such a pleasure to go with outside. She tends to believe that she is responsible for me so she tells me where to go and how to act most of the time, which is fine with me, my wife has been doing that for many years. The park is about two blocks from our house which is just perfect. I let her lead me along. It was a bit windy and the wind had been blowing all night. We spent lots of time looking for dandelions that had turned into wishing lions. When we got tired of that, we looked for other flowers and we saw some beautiful roses. It is a feeling almost beyond description to see her reach out with her little girl fingers and gently cupped her hands around a rose. That's what I call a reverence. She found a rock or two that struck her as pretty and I got to carry them in my lap.

Along the way, there was a broken down riding lawnmower that was positioned after way into the sidewalk. At first, it was fascinating to Taylor. But then, she saw that the way that the lawnmower was positioned made it difficult for me to get my wheelchair by. Then she seemed to show a bit of frustration when she asked me, "why would they just leave their lawnmower right there when it's in your way?" She seemed relieved when I told her that it was okay, I could get around.

Next along the way, was crossing from one corner to the next. Fortunately, we had arrived at the end of the morning shift for our local crossing guard. A crossing guard was a new experience for Taylor. She beat me to the corner and walked around in nervous circles not really knowing what to do. When I got to the corner, I explained to her what a crossing guard was and why they were in important, as well as how we were to proceed. She walked right next to my wheelchair as a crossing guard helped us go by. Once we had completed the crossing, I said thank you and Taylor quickly followed suit with her own thank you which gave the crossing guard a chuckle. Walking along the sidewalk for the next half of a block, several other children used the crossing guard. I was so happy when each and every one of them said thank you to the crossing guard. And each time that they said thank you, Taylor said to me, "that boy/girl said thank you just like I did."
As soon as we arrived at the corner of the playground, Taylor took off for the area where they have the playground toys. I followed and was delighted at her behaviors. There was another little girl, younger than Taylor, who was already playing there. She was accompanied by her mother and the family dog. Now Taylor has developed a "concern" about dogs, so when she had to go around the dog, who desperately wanted to play with her, she took a wide arc. It was all for the best anyway since judging by the incessant scratching, the dog obviously had more fleas than hair
.
Taylor lost no time in developing a friend. She quickly asked her her name and remembered it often in their small girl play world. The other girl was a bit more comfortable, being local, with the playground equipment and monetary gift Taylor at tour. But, Taylor would have none of that and explored on her own careful to stay away from most slides, which I think she is a bit uncomfortable with. Soon, they both went off to the swings. The other little girl needed help from her mother to climb into the swing and needed her mother's help to push her. Not Taylor though! The swings are something that she is very familiar with and has been for a while now. Her little friend was amazed that Taylor knew how to "pump" her legs to keep her swing going. I moved to the other side of the park to get a better view of the swings and to rest in the sunlight.

After 15 minutes or so of swinging, Taylor made her way over to me and asked, "do you think of my mother is still at your house?" I said that I didn't know and that probably we should go check. The walk home was rather uneventful, without a crossing guard. The lawnmower was still there though, it's always there! But this time, Taylor just kind of said to me in a matter-of-fact way, "that guy left his lawnmower in your way."

After we got home, Taylor had a couple of bites of something and then she quickly asked, "Gimpa, would you like to go to the park again?" Fortunately, her mother had another idea of what she wanted her to do. I would have gladly gone with her again, but it took me a two-hour nap to recover from the morning! I know that other grandfathers do activities with their grandchildren that are much more "exciting", like going to Disneyland or boating or fishing, things like that, but I am filled with as much joy and and content to find "excitement" in the simple things of life.

How to Use The Word 'Lederhosen' In a Blog

The moment that you are about to gain some critical information about a member of your family feels electric. It's something like being in the middle of a seventh-grade dance floor with a disco ball directly above your head and you learn the name of that beautiful girl that keeps walking right by on her way to dance with someone else. You now have the name of the next love of your life!

That's exactly the way I felt last night when I learned that I had an internationally ranked clogger as a son-in-law! Here's how the whole thing happened:

I was busily engaged in watching my grand daughter Maxine go through a routine of her twirling. I'm fascinated by this, as you might imagine. She's quite good, in fact when I teach her how to start chanting poems as she twirls, I think she will give Rumi a whirl for his money. Apparently though, completely unbeknownst to me, my son, her father has other plans for her. He mentioned something about how she might take some lessons from my one, and only so far, son-in-law. ( This is where the electricity begins to flow.) I'm deep in thought about what the suggestion has to do with Sufism when I hear my son say that my son-in-law is in the internationally ranked blogger. "An internationally ranked blogger?" I'm thinking, and I did this out loud for some senile reason, "I didn't even know Eric had a blog and how did he get internationally ranked? I can even get four people to read my blog?" My wife gave me a look as if I had completely gotten the whole concept wrong and she pulled her chair closer to my ear and she repeated, "No, he said clogger, not blogger, with 'c', not a 'b'!"

Now, the disco ball is spinning out of control. I get a flash of a picture: my daughter, in her beautiful white wedding gown standing next to a man with a green hat, multi-colored shirt, and green lederhosen!

So, apparently the gent is, or was at least, an internationally ranked clogger who traveled over to the very country where they invented the dance. How could I have missed such an important fact like that in my pre-son-in-law interview? You'd think, being Irish and all myself, that I would have included a question about clogging in my interview. I asked him about blogging after all. Now, the electricity is losing its voltage. I must to make room for this new information and figure out how I'm going to apologize to my daughter for missing that important information before the wedding.

I'm not saying that I regret that he slipped by me on the interview. Actually, it's probably a good thing that I didn't ask that question because he's my number one son in law and I think the world of him and more importantly, my daughter loves him lederhosen and all.

Sidebar Question: there's a rumor floating around that you actually would have won the international clogging quartet competition except you split one of your cloggers all the way to the toe and you have forgotten your backup pair. Is that true?

I think it's time to start updating my pre-son-in-law interview because my next letter is obsessed about marrying somebody with the last name "Lutensliemer". I bet he probably has his last name in white letters on the back of his lederhosen.

Just Another Lazy Saturday

Lying still in bed thinking is one thing, but lying in bed watching football is completely another. On the one hand, you are still doing, but on the other hand you just lay there waiting for somebody else to do something. I realize it's entertaining, football I mean, but of what value is football entertainment? I'll admit that I've had a few entertaining moments from football. But, they usually come when there's 2 seconds left on the clock and the losing coach gets drenched in Gatorade by the players that have spent the whole game hovering around the wet fan and don't even realize what the score is. Time runs out. Now that's entertaining. So here I wait, still, guys run up the field, fumble, and the other guys ran down the field and end up throwing an interception. This goes on for somewhere around two hours while I wait, still, for the last 2 seconds and the Gatorade dump. I think the last one I saw was in the seventh grade!

To set the record straight, I love football. But, I've never really been a good sports fan. I don't listen to sports talk radio, and when I was younger I could only sit through a few minutes of any sport before I had to go outside and throw some ball, any ball up in the air as high as I could. I can hardly imagine me spending an afternoon watching sports unless there was a blizzard outside were Evil Knievel was jumping 20 smashed Buick station wagon's. It always made me nervous that they were Buicks because that was the model we drove. It also seemed a bit odd to me that they were all smashed, didn't Evil believe in himself?

So, here I lie, still. I could probably use some entertainment if I would have done anything this week. Entertainment is for the people that work hard all week and need a break. That's not me. I've been in this bed all week long. I'm not complaining or anything. Three good meals with plenty of yummy medication for dessert. I have any show that I want to watch at my fingertips, if I could only get up and get the remote. Now, how lazy is that? I pretend like I'm doing something on the screen, but I really just have a comic book up where no one can see it. That's how my days roll, scheduled nap in the morning, interesting lunch because I get to interact with someone, Bonanza, scheduled nap in the afternoon, Gilligan's Island, unscheduled nap in the evening, interesting dinner because I get to be fed by my beautiful, blue eyed, brunette wife, scheduled quick nap, then into prime time -- which I'm usually too tired to watch.

But, there is one relief and I watch and pray for it every day. Around the corner of my bedroom door will come a beautiful pregnant lady carrying a small package. She puts her downand she toddles three or four steps in my direction. She stops dead in her tracks, her eyes glistening, she gives me the little gimp wave. She knows that's how I wave so that's how she waves to me. I could watch her for hours and not feel the least bit lazy. She amuses me and he entertains me. Not this evening though, she has a cold and she's tired. She probably missed her nap today watching football games with her parents. Sweet Maxine toddles off to her evenings rest and so do I. both of us awaiting the Healers.

Soon she will get a tricycle. I think I'm going to keep a lookout for smashed Buick station wagon's!

The Art of Distraction

The child control tactic of distraction should be one of the sharpest tools that we grandfathers carry around on our tool belts. It's one of the first parenting concepts that we learn: Child A, a three-year-old, notices that her sibling, Child B, an 18-month-old, has picked up Child A's only toy on the face of the earth. So, Child A races over and body slams Child B tearing away the toy. Of course, Child B retaliates with a sharp scream and so the fight begins. We check our tool belt and "distraction" stands ready for use. We whistle our way over to the ring, pick up another flashy toy on our way, and offer that to Child B. She is quickly distracted and happy to play with this new toy. Note: you get extra points if you make Child A feel like it was her idea. And on it goes, 30 to 40 times a day until they move out of your house. That's how come we know how to do this so well. Mimi and I discovered recently though that our children learn this control tactic as well when they are quite young, even before three.

Our oldest granddaughter is quite the artist. She started with crayons when she was in her crib -- only it wasn't crayons and I will be the rich and smelly source of another blog. In preparation for our granddaughter's maturity to the point that she knew better than using the wall as a coloring book, we had stored away some crayons in a drawer that we pretty much figured a tiny fingers couldn't reach. As a seasoned grandparent, you might be able to discover the numerous mistakes which were made in the last sentence. First of all, level of maturity has nothing to do with what is chosen to be a coloring book and second of all, nothing is out of reach once they are two.

We let her mom could take a much-needed nap ( another grand parenting mistake many newbies make). We played with our granddaughter for a little while and then left her "for a quick minute" so we could go cuddle up ( oh how I wish! Voice-recognition error! Should be "huddle up") to discuss upcoming dinner plans or something on that level. Mimi was only gone a couple of minutes at the most and then returned to check on our granddaughter. I was a bit slower, and lagged behind back in the bedroom. When Mimi got to her little angel, she had climbed on this, so that she could climb on that, so that she could step on this, so that she could open the drawer with crayons. How did she know they were there? Could she smell them? At her mother blown our secret -- something she's very good at by the way? Crayons were dumped and a counter stool was scooted over by the refrigerator where she had carefully chosen Mimi's handcrafted calendar as her coloring book. The following is a narration of their conversation which I was later able to get from our liable source:

Mimi: "Taylor, what are you doing?"
Taylor, without even flinching, drops her crayon, look squarely at Mimi: "Mimi, go see Gimpa!"
Mimi: "Why, Taylor, why should I go see Gimpa?"
Taylor, without a break: "Because, he's a REALLY NICE GUY!!"

This level of advanced distraction from the mouth of the two-year-old. I didn't even learn the principle until I was in my 30s. Not accounting for how much it took her to get the crayon or the stool or the calendar, but she deftly and seamlessly applied the rule of distraction. On one level, she tried to distract her Mimi from even seeing what beautiful coloring had already occurred and, on an even deeper level, she appealed to her Mimi's love of being with Gimpa. She's fortunate that she tried it on her Mimi, because I would have fallen for it without ever seeing the underlying activity. But not her Mimi! Just as quickly her Mimi replied the following:

"Why of course he is! How would you like to color with some gummy bears instead of that yucky old crayon?"

Coloring gig over! Mimi gets points for applying the principle of distraction artistically and at a level that only Yoda could understand. Taylor gets extra points because she agreed to never use such advanced tactics on our own parents. I got left in the bedroom because it was discovered, don't ask me how, that I was the one that disclosed the secret hiding place.

Conference!

 Today is the Monday after conference. It should be declared a holiday for all parents who have children under five and tried to take in conference! If you’ve never experienced this, it’s hard to relate. I remember those years, every fiber of our being was spent on corralling our children and trying to get them to remember one thing from conference.

Of course, leading into conference, we adults have all prepared quite diligently and made promises to ourselves that we would listen to every speaker and gain “something” out of conference. The Bishop’s wife suggested that we decide upon a question we have and we will be surprised about how many answers we receive during conference. What we forgot is that toddlers trump conference!

Okay, I can bet that there are countless grandfathers out there who have some good ideas about how to interact with your grandchildren so that their parents can watch conference in peace and hopefully learn something that you didn’t teach them. I’ll also bet they have to prepare ahead of time and make sure they are well hydrated and have had plenty of sleep. These kind of grandfathers do things like set up games where the grandchildren are matching faces on TV with faces carefully cut out of the Ensign. Or perhaps they give out pieces of candy corn to the listeners who identify certain words. Special candy for whomever can stay the quietest for the longest. Yes, these are all great ideas and I’m sure you can share hundreds more.

Here’s how I get through conference at the speed of gimpa. First, I set a reasonable goal. This year, my goal was that none of my grandchildren would be brought home by the local police because they had “escaped” and I had forgotten about them. So, I got myself a current set of pictures of our grandchildrenI and and worked on their names. I also had deadbolts and stair gates installed. I chose a room, our bedroom since I was confined to bed to take care of my pressure sores. The advantage of our bedroom was that it was relatively small and didn’t have many escape routes. I dumped out a bunch of crayons, papers, picture books, bugs ( the plastic ones of course), dolls, zillions of hair ties, and everyone’s favorite blanket. No guns. I learned that lesson last time. Turned on the TV to conference at a very low volume.

Here’s a hint on how to make it through eight hours of perpetual emotion: redefine reverence. It’s time to give up our tired and old definition. Reverence no longer includes “the act of being quiet”, nor is there room for “sitting quietly and listening”. Save those definitions for primary. Here’s my definition: watching my grandchildren in such a way that I come to spiritually understand the greatness of my Heavenly Father. He is their Heavenly Father as well. The Kingdom of Heaven is likened unto one of my little ones and I am here to learn.

I am happy to announce in this very blog that I reached my goal! No policeman visited my door, we all survived, I learned a bit from my grandchildren and I can’t wait for the conference issue of the Ensign!

How to Get Your Very Own Private Cuddly Registered Nurse

You know how some big business tycoons dream of having their own private jet – that’s me! Well, except,take out the business tycoon part and add-in quadriplegia and it all comes to this: I dream of having my own private cuddly registered nurse. Today that dream came true! The following is a detailed plan of how my dream was carried out.

While I was courting my most beautiful wife, someone threw a monkey wrench into our plans to get married. As always, the wisdom is on the side of those who have traveled before you. So, I admit that with wisdom, I’m pretty sure that it was her parents who sided with a plan that potentially could have derailed our entire marriage.

My most desirable fiancée had done so well in her high school studies and scored so highly on her college entrance exams that she was offered a full-ride scholarship to the University of Tennessee that would set her on a path of becoming a registered nurse. It was everything that she had worked for, everything she had dreamed of, and everything her parents had planned for. In fact, the plan was perfect for everyone– except me! The scholarship stipulated that she had to live on campus for two years and they had a strict non-marriage policy regarding their nursing students. I knew that if we were to attempt to carry-on a long-distance relationship, some other taller, more muscular male specimen would come along and by virtue of proximity, I would find myself being thrown back into the pool of eligible bachelor bass.

So, we talked about it, kissed about it, and our youthful lack of wisdom and raging hormonal complexities lead us to scrap the scholarship and move up the marriage date by two months. I can still hear her parents wailing and gnashing their teeth in my general direction. Nonetheless, we proceeded ahead with the marriage.

Of course, no one knows what lies ahead in your marital journey. How were we supposed to know that the premarital psychic we consulted was right when she predicted that I would one day take a dive out of a tree, compress vertebrae five and six together, mangle my spinal cord, and become a quadriplegic? As they say, playing quarterback on Monday is a whole lot easier. What it boils down to is that I made a mistake. We both, now, encourage our children and anyone else to get the most education they can while they are young and have brain cells to spare. This holds true for both partners because you never know when your dependence on just one of you will come up one short.

After my accident, we awoke to a new world where our financial plans of a blissful retirement had been. I spent many tearful nights over my lost abilities to financially take care of our family. But, one bright morning, my courageous wife decided to set aside our losses and journey forth on her original plan of becoming a registered nurse. Time being of the essence, she wanted to minimize the educational component so that she could begin working as soon as possible. She chose a very good college where she could be prepared to be a registered nurse within 18 months. The only problem was that they would not honor her scholarship which she had previously earned to the University of Tennessee. The price tag for their nursing program was not only steep, but required to be paid upfront. We had no idea how to come up with that kind of seriously bloated chump change!

We live in an area where many wealthy people attend our same church and know us well. We came up with a plan whereby we could approach some of the more wealthy and ask them for assistance. After consideration by our Bishop, we were counseled not to follow that path, but to find another way. When we asked for suggestions, none were given except that we needed to exercise our faith that God would provide. That began a tremendous growth of our faith. We both knew that my wife was inspired and that God had planned for her to be a nurse for many years. But we had no idea where to raise such a large sum of money. We prayed, we fasted, and my most resourceful wife went to work on it. Through a complex menagerie of student loans, government grants, re-educational incentives, state assistance, help from fellow church members, generous checks from many family members, and at the very last and most important moment our son whose name begins with “C” loaned his educational fund to his mom.

As if putting together the funds wasn’t hard enough, it paled in comparison with what my most brilliant wife had to actually go through in her educational experience. Countless nights filled with study and writing papers and care plans. Days and nights filled with study and learning with her most excellent study group. Every drive to and from school spent listening to class lectures. Long schooldays and even longer clinical days. Nights where I woke up many hours into my sleep to see her either sitting up in bed with one of her thick textbooks or kneeling at the side of her bed in fervent prayer. We fasted and I gave her several priesthood blessings as she headed into critical tests. Some mornings, while she was preparing her beautiful face, the tears of frustration, sadness, resentment, anxiety, and anger would pour from her eyes making it impossible to put on her mascara. There were days that she cried to me and the best that I could do was listen.

Out of these ashes rose the most beautiful Phoenix that I have ever seen – my wife the registered nurse!

So that’s how I did it. My seemingly impossible dream took shape right before my eyes. I now have my very own private cuddly nurse. I owe her my very life and she selflessly proceeded ahead. I have only touched on the many trials and the countless blessings that we have experienced through the last two years. And through it all she has also maintained her nurturing motherhood, her caring sisterhood, and her giving nature within our community. Twenty-eight years ago, her education accomplishment would have been attributed to her incredible intelligence. Today, her intelligence can still be credited, but I that I have witnessed a most complete miracle. Time to reverently sweep aside the ashes and fly ahead. Congratulations, with deep respect and love without end to my very own private cuddly registered nurse.

And that’s how it’s done! The beginning.

The Five Signs of a Great Dentist

For a quadriplegic like me, every excursion outside of my home is an adventure. Of course,anything can be an adventure for the adventurous. My recent trip to the dentist certainly qualifies.

I seldom travel to the dentist. And by seldom I mean like once in 10 years or so. I am gifted with what dentist call “bad mouth flora”. In terms that you and I can understand, what the dentist means is that the inside of my mouth secrets acids that eat away at any leftover food parcels stuck between my teeth. Why is that “bad” I hear you asking? Because it means I don’t have to go to the dentist! I haven’t had a cavity in my entire life. Now that’s “bad” for the dentist.

Recently, I started to have one tooth that felt like it had a cavity. But, as mentioned above, I don’t even know what a cavity feels like so after some encouragement from my wife ( who sees the dentist about as often as she her hairstylist), I decided to see what the dentist had to say.

For most people, the ones fortunate enough to have dental insurance and are able-bodied, that’s not such a big deal. But for me, because I rely upon Medicare and I have to find a dentist that will accommodate my wheelchair, it’s a big deal. My wife gave her dentist a call and they said they would gladly accommodate me.

Now here begins the part of the story where you can compare your dentist with mine and I’ll bet that my dentist can beat up your dentist! First, my dentist has their practice in a very upscale business park. We take the elevator to the second floor and when we walk in the door we are greeted with a 16 foot high by 20 foot wide waterfall that immediately soothes my dental nerves. From behind the waterfall steps a receptionist with a beautiful smile. She reassuringly states, “Welcome Gimpa. We are running on time so your appointment will start in just a few minutes. Please take a seat in our reception area and enjoy our refreshments.” My first thought is, “they are running on time…on time? Is not this a dental practice?” The reception area is spacious and looks more like the lobby of a posh Hilton Hotel. There is a large flatscreen HDTV playing a sequence out of “Planet Earth”. No sound, just soothing reptiles.

My wife walks over to what looks like a snack buffet. There is everything there from pretzels to apples and cold bottled water. I’m beginning to understand why my wife comes here so often. Soon, right on time, a hygienist emerges from behind the waterfall, introduces herself to me and says that she will accompany me back to my appointment. She asks Tawnya if she wants to wait in the “Zen Room”? My wife eagerly takes her up on the offer and makes her own way, oh yes, she knows the way,to the Zen room. I’m curious so I ask “my” hygienist on the way back to my appointment just exactly what is a Zen room. She explains that it is a soundproof room with a high tech massage chair, a sound system that rivals any theater, and choices of music to listen to or movies to watch. It is actually used as a recovery room, you know like when you have your wisdom teeth “slipped” out and the anesthesia makes you feel like you could melt into the floor which is great if you’re in a massage chair, but, it turns out to not be so great for driving.

We reach our destination which is a nice big private room which can easily accommodate my wheelchair. The hygienist quickly and efficiently does her part without ever scolding me about not flossing enough. Suddenly, almost magically, the dentist appears at my side and leans my wheelchair back as if he’s done it a million times. While I’m still trying to figure out where he came from, he is already into my "dental experience". No cavity. My tooth is cracked all the way through down to the bone. My mouth goes numb and my dentist very quickly and efficiently “slips” out my tooth. No asking me questions while my mouth is full of instruments and fingers. No small talk with the hygienist about the pool he’s putting in or the new convertible Jaguar he just bought. All professional.

During my "dental experience", I noticed that a couple of hygienists had came into the room and whispered something to my hygienist. She mentioned something to my dentist along the lines of, “Dr. Hammond is on it.” After the experience, while my mouth was being loaded with gauze, my dentist, Dr. Ellis, made sure I was okay and then excused himself to see what he could do to help Dr. Hammond. After sufficiently gauzing my mouth, my hygienist asks, “How do you feel about spending the night here?” I flashed her a questioning squint and she said, “Well, currently, the elevator is not working.” And then quickly, “But, both doctors and several others are working on it. The fire department has been called. I’m sure it will be fixed soon.” She accompanied me out.

The scene around the elevator was nothing short of a one-act comedy. It reminded me of when you’re working on your car with your hood up and 12 of your closest neighbors are gazing at the exposed engine and nodding their heads like they’re pretty sure they know exactly what to do…only they don’t! Dr. Hammond and Dr. Ellis are asking intelligent dentist-like questions which get stuck in the gaze of the firemen. The firemen, who are treating this like a cat stuck in a tree, ask about outside porches. For a few minutes there is discussion about just picking me up in my chair off a second-story porch with one of their fire engine cherry pickers. The look of terror in my eyes must have scuttled that discussion. They push on with the theory of putting me in a stair chair, yes, they actually have such a thing called a stair chair, which is meant to lower people downstairs who are incapable of doing it themselves, like me. But the stairs look like something you would see out of a movie or in an exquisite hotel. Certainly not the type of stairs you want to ruin with a stair chair. That became their last alternative. While dentists, hygienists, and firemen are working on the stuck elevator, my hygienist invites me back inside to the waiting area and asks if I would like any  stacks or water. Having my mouth full of gauze, I had to turn her down and she motioned to the HDTV. My wife opted to wait in the “Zen Room”. Of course! I’m trapped, may have to spend the night here, and she’s okay with that because she has the “Zen Room”.

A call goes out to the elevator company, but they are days away. Then a brilliant idea flashes through the group. We don’t need “maintenance people” because we are not in maintenance mode, we are in broken mode and we need “repair technicians”. The call goes out to the BYU “elevator repair technicians”. Of course, a college with hundreds of elevators would have “repair technicians”. No one wants to miss their final test stuck in an elevator. So, of course, they have “repair technicians”. Six more guys arrive on the scene and stare at the open elevator door. But not just any stare, this is the stare of an “elevator repair technician”. Quickly their stares turn into “the solution”. They decide to lower me down manually. Who knew that an elevator could be run manually? I’m still not quite sure how they did this, but they put me in the elevator with two firemen on their walkie-talkies, I guess to protect me in case the manual option suddenly failed. Did they do it hand over hand? I don’t know and they wouldn’t tell me. I guess it’s a trade secret thing only to be known by the “elevator repair technicians”. Thanks to the dentists, hygienists, Provo fire department, and BYU repair technicians I made it safely down and out to the gathering crowd outside. I waited a few more minutes while my wife finished her Zen session and we were on our way.

So, here we go, the five signs of a great dentist:

• Accommodates quadriplegics with wheelchairs
• Accepts cash and is flexible with payments
• Free cold water and a snack buffet
• Zen room for recovery and stressed-out spouses
• Accompanies patients down the elevator!

So if you’re looking for a new dentist or a different dental experience, check out Hammond & Ellis in Provo, Utah. If you’re coming in from out of town, be sure and ask for their free night's lodging in the Zen room! Just kidding you have to pay for your own lodging, but don’t forget there’s a snack buffet!

Off to Work I Go…

Okay, so technically I’m a day late in writing this post. No excuses, just a lot of activity yesterday part of which included a nap when I should have been writing my post. So in my own little blog world, I’m going to pretend that it’s yesterday and write the post that I wanted to write yesterday.

This is the first Labor Day that I can remember that I am actually celebrating as a Labor Day. Prior to my accident, I spent the Labor Days out on a boat somewhere in the middle of the absolutely crazy Lake of the Ozarks. Boats everywhere, not just the small family variety, but BIG boats ranging anywhere from 40 to 80 feet. By the middle of the day, the waves were at least 4 feet plus. I once tried to cross main channel of the lake in a 40 foot pontoon boat during the middle of the day. That should give you some idea of how crazy I was even before my accident!

This Labor Day I would like to remember some people that have set the tone for labor in my life. If the reader is inquisitive, there is plenty more to read about ancestors beyond my Grandma Heintz ( Cadwell), Grandpa Arthur Atkisson, Ernest Mings, or John Widner. But in this tribute, I’ll only reach that far back.

Let’s start with my Grandpa Arthur Atkisson. He enjoyed the life of an entrepreneur long before they were called such. My father told me that grandpa Atkisson started the Red Ball Trucking Company which was still in existence the last time I checked. He started with one truck and had several by the time he sold the company. During my growing years, I remember my grandpa’s syrup factory. He supplied pancake syrup to several Pancake House chain restaurants and independent restaurants throughout the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. In the beginning, he made and delivered the syrup during the day and slept in the back of the factory during the night. He existed mostly on a peanut butter-syrup mix that he would put on sandwiches. He had no shower and he told me the story once of how he went to wash his hands with Lava soap that is normally quite gritty. He felt the grit on his hands as he was washing them in the dark, but when he looked down to see how it was going his hands were completely cut and bleeding. He had a habit of leaving his razor blades poked into the soap and had thought that it was just the normal feeling of the soap! When I asked him if he had taken any time off because of this injury, he told me that he just bandaged them up the best he could and went back to work.

He made syrup of all different flavors from fresh ingredients. I remember watching him squeeze the juice out of blackberries with a hand turn colander. The vats that he cooked the syrup in were huge. You had to climb to the top of them on a ladder to add the ingredients. Usually each batch required several hundred pounds of sugar which he carried bag by bag individually in 100 pound bags up on the ladders to add to the steaming hot mix of other ingredients. Working at his factory was my very first job. I worked there for one week during the summer. When I was done with that week he asked me how much I thought my work was worth. When I told him that I didn’t know, he chided me and taught me that I should always know the monetary value of my labor going into a job. He paid me 20 bucks for that week and I kept it in a glass jar on our family mantle for several years. He taught me so many more important things during that week, but I will mention just one more. He told me that no matter what my position in a company was that I should never step over a pile of trash that needed cleaning, but rather I should just clean it. I watched him interview a young man once and he had purposely placed a pile of trash with a broom and dust pan in the path of the young man coming for the interview. The young man stepped over the trash and sat down for the interview. My grandpa looked at me and just shook his head. Needless to say, that young man was not hired.

My Grandpa Ernest Mings was different. He eschewed the life of an entrepreneur and developed stability in his worklife. He worked at a state hospital for the mentally ill as an orderly first and then in the kitchen. Every day was labor for him, but I don’t ever remember him complaining. The pay was low, but he and my grandmother were frugal. They bought a used railroad caboose at a salvage auction and had it moved to a piece of land that they had bought in Pueblo, Colorado. They remodeled that caboose into a very small home in which they lived the rest of their lives. They eventually added on a room here and there until it had five rooms total. I doubt that he or grandmother ever missed a day of work. After their retirement, they didn’t lie around and watch TV. They worked every day, a full day, in their yard and in their house. I’m sure if Walmart would have been around then, they would have worked as greeters until they died!

My Grandpa John Widner was a farmer. He raised acres of row crops and acres of apple trees. He worked hard from Sun up to Sun down. I remember going there and sleeping in their basement. When it was time for all of us “laborers” to get up he would bang on the upstairs floor with a broom handle until we came upstairs. He and grandmother had 10 children of their own which he pretty much considered his free labor. I remember working what seemed like the longest hottest day of the summer one time while we were visiting. At the end of the day, he invited us into his air-conditioned fruit stand and each one of us got to pick a soda pop that was ice cold. That was one payday that I thoroughly enjoyed! I loved Grandpa Widner for a lot of positive reasons. His normal disposition was grumpy, but at the end of the day, in the cool of the night, you could hear him humming 100 yards away as he was counting his money! In fairness, he taught me an important lesson by negative example. He used to sell apples in large gunny sacks that you could see through. To fill those bags, he would place a stovepipe in the center of the bag and put all of the best apples around the outside of the bag and fill the inside with bad or even rotten apples. When I asked him about that practice, which he called “stove piping”, he told me that the people expected the apples in the middle to be bad so that they would have some apples to make cider with. From that moment forward, I vowed that whatever I work I did in life would be my best through and through. No stove piping for me.

My Grandpa Hoss worked in a steel factory all of his life and I don’t know much about him or his work. But my grandma Heinz (Cadwell) was a different matter. Every time we would visit them, she would never sit down until the meal was cooked, served, and cleaned up. I really didn’t know the extent of her hard work until I was much older. I learned that she worked for years and years in a laundromat doing the cleaning and ironing of other people’s clothes. The heat was unbearable in the summer and the work hard on the back and hands. I remember her frail curled up arthritic hands that no doubt were the result of her laundromat years. When we visited her house, she would always find jobs for us children and we were not allowed idle time. Her motto was tried and true, “an honest day’s labor for an honest days pay.” Our pay for the odd jobs she assigned us: dinner! And there was nothing better that I could have hoped for. Her roast and potatoes were to die for.

From what I can remember, my father worked hard every day while I was growing up. But, he was adamant in keeping the Sabbath day holy. We may not have gone to church much, but we always spent those days together as family, usually taking off on some drive with no destination in mind and enjoying whatever we found along the way. My father inherited an entrepreneurial spirit from my grandfather. His main line of work was that of a salesman. He told me once that a good salesman can always find work. He created several ways for me to learn how to be a salesman while I was growing up. I sold Cub Scout popcorn and single-handedly sold more than twice what the rest of our Cub Scout pack had sold. I should mention here that my father sold most of those himself, but he wanted me to have the joy that comes from being the top salesperson. A few years later, he worked out a program that the scouts could earn money by selling Shaklee vitamins and spices door to door. He would drop me off on one street and let me “work” the street door to door. At the end of the street, we would fill any orders that we could from the truck of supplies. I can’t tell you how much I absolutely hated that job. And, to this day I disdain sales and have never really been able to sell much of anything, even if it was free! Still, my dad taught me to push on every day with the mantra, “if your mind can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it.” When my achievements didn’t measure up, he said that I needed to increase my powers of belief. I would watch him leave every Monday morning, often crying in the driveway as he drove away. He would return late Friday night or Saturday morning and tell stories of his adventures which included whatever he was selling at the time. He set a tremendous example for me to go back every single day and work no matter what had happened the day before. He worked pretty hard like that up until the day he discovered he had cancer and died within weeks. One important work concept that I learned from him, besides his daily tireless work, was that one could avoid a lot of downfall by giving considerable thought before engaging in the work. He held several jobs during my growing up years, but most of them involved selling insurance. I once found out how much money he made – $1000 a month – and thought that amount to be more than I would ever see. Of course, my parents were caught in the cultural consumerism of the time and were always complaining that we didn’t have enough money.

I have held a multitude of jobs myself, more than I wish to count. I feel like I have worked hard all of my adult life, but not necessarily smart. There are many jobs that I look back upon now which I should have kept. By sticking in one place with one company, especially when that company was growing, I could have done very well financially. I generally saw my work as having two goals: take care of my family financially and use the job as a stepping stone for my next job. I don’t believe that my children have seen me work hard from a labor standpoint. I have tried to work alongside them in yardwork or service work, but I believe that I have not been a very good example to them. I spent more time as a taskmaster and not enough time joining with them in the work. Often times, it just seemed easier for me to do the work then to work alongside them. That would definitely be something I would like to change next time around.

I will tell you one funny story though that comes from my years of working a graveyard shift. We were all riding in the car with Curtis seated next to a a window. He stared out at a cemetery and blurted out that I must be a very good gravedigger because I had held my graveyard shift for a long time. I still smile at that comment.

I hope that my legacy will show that I did work hard throughout my life, but most of my work has been more cerebral than physical. My only regret, as I mentioned above, is that I wish I would have stayed put in some companies like Quick Trip or Group Health.

As a father, I am extremely proud of the work ethic that my children already display. Seth works very hard to complete law school, while at the same time doing an internship with the SEC and maintaining his responsibilities as an editor with the BYU law review. Brianna works every day to be the best mother that she can. Previously to becoming a mother, she finished her college education and worked for a couple of years as a speech pathologist. Our son Curtis is working his way toward a PhD so that he can be a college professor. In the meantime, he has won several awards for papers and projects that he has participated in as an undergraduate. He is brilliant and is a wonderful example, as are our other children, of working with your brains. I should note that Curtis has also worked as the Director Of Marketing for a small software company and has been able to earn most of his money to pay for his own education and his other necessities. Our daughter Hannah, who is currently laboring every day in the hot jungles of Nicaragua as a missionary, has almost completed her bachelor’s in psychology and plans to go to graduate school in pursuit of being a therapist (yup, like me). This she plans to do before she gets married. Our last daughter, Saren is a tireless worker here in our home as our last child. Many of the chores fall to her and she also serves me happily with meals or other multitudinous requests.

I learned that one’s definition of work can change in an instant. As an adult, work has always been central to my role as a provider for this family. I readily admit that I have made many mistakes, but there never has a day gone by that I have not tried to supply the needs for our family.( with the exception of Sunday’s and some Saturdays). I never really knew how central this was to my psychological identity until after my accident. I woke up wondering what I was going to do to support my family and pay the huge medical costs. Tawnya claims that the first words out of my mouth were, “I guess I’ll have time to write that book now.” I had seriously been thinking about writing before my accident. But somehow the notion flew away on the wings of a butterfly. Once I attended the workforce services orientation program and was assigned a workforce services person, the push was on to get a job that paid. I understood their perspective and adopted the model wholeheartedly. I worked for a time at a call center reviewing notes that callers had made. It was difficult for me to put together two hours a day three days a week with any consistency. I soon was back in the hospital where I stayed for months. I have maintained my license as a clinical social worker and have had a few clients from that. Otherwise, I dropped into the abyss of the illusion of making millions on the Internet. It looked so easy and every new opportunity was just around the corner for only 20 or 30 bucks. Where could I go wrong? All I needed to do was just follow their plan and soon I would be raking in money. Well, as they say, it is much easier said than done. I discovered that most of these systems were making the lion’s share of their income by selling their ideas and approaches, not by actually working the system itself. Still, I kept pushing and narrowing myself down to what I thought could be feasible for myself to do. It turned out more than my brain could handle by myself and I was not in a financial position to be able to hire anyone else. Another very important reason why this failed was because it was all about money. I tried to trick myself into thinking I was building some app that would change the world. In the end I found out it really just about the money and I could not raise my level of passion high enough to sustain my interest. It was a very disturbing discovery for me and left me to ponder once again: why am I still alive? What is the purpose in dragging around a mostly dead body just to house and keep my brain, heart, and soul going?

I have some suggestions for generations to come. You can learn from my situation. Accidents are just a breath away for anyone and that breath may be your last. Maintain your life insurance and carry a healthy disability policy with a reputable company. I had a doctor friend who was hurt on a snowmobile accident when he was younger in his career. His disability insurance paid him at the rate he was making monthly for the rest of his life. Make sure that both parents are educated and prepared for a career that could support a family if needed. Get your education while you’re young. You can think better and you can remember more. You can always go back for more education, but at least get the basics for a valuable career. You just never know when you will need it. Tawnya had a full-ride scholarship to become a nurse with a very good university. We let that go in order to be married. In hindsight, it certainly would have been prudent for us to wait a year or two. Now, she has really had to struggle to get to that point so that she can be gainfully employed to support our family. Allow yourself to be flexible with regards to the roles that you play in your family. Our family has been sustained first and foremost with a great love that we have for each other, but that love has been put to the fire and purified. It’s not an easy journey for any family and despite your best plans, you can expect adversity on the way to becoming an eternal family.

That’s my tribute to work. I have only given my side. Tawnya’s side is equally filled with stories exemplifying a very strong work ethic. Work because it is necessary and work because it is fun. The closer the two become, the more enjoyable your life will be. Love, gimpa

Step One: What's My Name?

Do you ever have one of those dreams where you’re in the classroom and the teacher calls your name to come up to the blackboard and do a math problem in your mind suddenly goes blank? I had one of those dreams before any of my grandchildren were born and it went like this: I was in the classroom filled with other men about my same age, but I noticed that not any of them were in wheelchairs. The teacher was upfront, and though I can’t make out her face, she was very tiny like a baby. She asked if anyone would be willing to come forward and write their name on the blackboard. Of course, I shot my hand up without even thinking and the teacher motioned to me to come forward and that’s when it hit me… I didn’t know my name! Some of the other students in the class laughed out loud and some of them were yelling, “Just put grandpa”, or, “Just right PaPa”. I froze and that’s what woke me up.

Now whether this was an actual dream or some sort of other altered conscious experience that came from morphine, I can’t really say for sure. All I know is when I came back to consciousness, I needed a “grandfather name”. Why I felt such urgency is unexplainable. I had no grandchildren at the time. Only one of my own children was married and a candidate to give me a grandchild, but they assured us that it was a ways off. My wife, the grandmother to be, had already chosen her preferred “grandmother name” – Mimi. That was catchy and easy to remember, but I knew that Pipi ( where the I is pronounced the same as the I in Mimi) would not go over very well and could become a bit confusing during the potty training stage.

While lying in my hospital bed with a halo on, I discovered that picking a “grandfather name” is not quite so easy. I contemplated my dilemma for a few days. I asked nurses and others who came in the room about names that they know. While I was growing up, it seems to me that there were only two choices and they depended on where you worked or your accent. It was either ”grandpa” if you were from a working class and wore overalls or “grandfather” if he spoke with an English accent. Because of several marriage “disruptions” that had occurred in my family of origin, I had four grandfathers. Three of them I called “grandpa” with their last name added on the end for clarification and the other I just called “Hoss” because that’s who he looked like and he was a stepgrandfather. None of those fit my personality and were nowhere as cool as Mimi. One of my nurses suggested that I try out an app that she knew about. She asked me for some basic information and what my favorite rap song was. Now, I have heard a few rap songs, but I’m certain that I don’t have a favorite one. She picked one for me, put all the info in the app and it came up with the name “G-dawg-pa”! Can you imagine that? And the app even promised that I would be more popular if I used that name. Well, it scored too high on the stupid meter for me.

Then one day I was reading a book of gimp jokes, something the rehab doctors like to have us read to see if were still alive or we need more depression medication. Suddenly, it hit me, what about “gimpa”. At first glance, it sounds kind of mean. But, after you say it a few times while you’re laughing, it fits me perfectly! I mean I am crippled, and I know that my grandchildren will see that. But perhaps, this name, my grandchildren will understand that I am handicapped but that’s no reason to be sad. It certainly will be distinguishable from their other grandfathers’ names. I floated it by Mimi and my daughter and it rated high on their cuteness scale. I’ll update this post as I go along with this name and let you know how it goes. With love, Gimpa

blah…blah…blog?

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I’m going to give to my children and grandchildren. I don’t really have any earthly possessions beyond what I use day to day. You might say that any fortune that I had accumulated or planned to pass on took the same egg drop that I did.I expect it to stay that way the rest of my life. Sure, there are all the optimists that ask, “What if you got better and begin to earn money again?”, or “What if you made a computer app that went viral and you got fabulously wealthy like that Suckinbird guy?” It’s not that I’m a pessimist at all, quite the opposite, but I think you would find me floating more toward the realist corner of the triangle. While those optimistic dreams may come to pass, the reality is that I’m going to die. So what do I do while I’m in this holding pattern? Should I fritter away my days on vain pursuits that may ultimately equal lots of sweat equity and no sweet inheritance? Or is there something that I can do today that will give to the future?

By the very fact that you are now reading this blog sometime in the future, you have answered my question. I write this blog with the intention of passing it on to others. I suspect that either most of you or probably all of you are up branch from me.For better or worse, I am down tree from you. My hope is that this blog may pass on some nourishment so you may sprout and gather rings just as I have. May I nourish you with: some history for the days that you don’t want it to repeat; some knowledge that you may grow wisdom; some wit to clear the way when the word is more than the sword;some courage to grow towards the sky on days when drooping down is easier; and encouragement for you to absorb the sun on days when tree huggers push away in apathy and loggers attack you with the saw of criticism.

There will be some who will claim that my purposes are self-serving and they will search my blog for any shred of advertising. To them I promise my uncompromising standard of “free blog”, as in freeware, as in free words and the free root beer. If you find a link in my blog, it is to something that I care about, have reviewed myself, believe in, and offer up link paper plate with no kickback to me. The best cup of hot chocolate you can buy me is you.

While I’m okay about plagiarizing, I’m very not okay about plagues as in bugs, worms, snakes, Trojan dragons, or anything that seeks to harm another in any way. Remember, there are children reading this blog so take your plagues and run to the mean children’s playground. Kind comments are always allowed and encouraged.

I am filled with imperfections, many of which will become glaringly obvious as you travel with me. Hopefully some of my goals will be reached. Remember, you can never fly to the moon unless you put a monkey in space first!