These is my hashtags

Recently, I have developed a newfound appreciation for the book ‘These is my Words’ by Nancy Turner. If you haven’t read it, and I highly recommend you do, it’s the fictional story of Sarah Prine, a woman living in the Arizona territories in the late 1800’s. If you’re into things like Indian raids, nervous breakdowns, and amputation without anesthetic, and who among us is not, you’ll eat it up.

The book is written in the form of Sarah’s diary, the first entry dated when she was 17 and barely literate, and spans about 20 years.  By the time it ends, she has been married a time or two, birthed and buried babies, and finally learned how to put together an intelligible sentence. Then of course there is that dashing Captain Jack, swoon, but before I go spoiling the plot I will get to my point.

What I’ve come to appreciate recently about the book is that when it begins, and Sarah is an unattached teenage girl, the diary entries are frequent, and they are lengthy. She writes every day. Multiple times a day. Pages and pages. We get rich details of her daily life, challenges, dreams, joys.  

As time goes on however, and Sarah assumes the responsibilities of a wife and mother, the entries become increasingly brief and infrequent.

She will write once a week, then once a month, and soon only a few times a year, sometimes dropping in simply to mention that the Maldonado children have the measles, or that she is proud of the dress she sewed for her daughter, and of her son, who can now hammer nails into the wall, and “talk Mexican like he was a native.”

Then, another year will go by, and we will hear nothing except that, “A new decade will be upon us soon, and our family will greet it with another baby.”

My favorite excerpt from her journal, is this one:

“My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop and read it” 

Yes Sarah! Katie Erb “likes” this.

My own book may be free from the threat of poisonous snakes, or tasked with churning butter and fighting off bandits with a shotgun, but the wind blows my pages still, at a rate of speed that never ceases to amaze me.

Like Sarah, the more deeply entrenched in family life I’ve become, the more brief and infrequent the chapters I write. I imagine the posterity of our generation digging up our memoirs, and finding lengthy blog posts that gave way to Facebook status updates and eventually, Instagrams. From these is my words, to these is my hashtags. 

The book helped put into perspective for me, the value of any effort we put into documenting the lives of our families - no matter how brief, infrequent, or inconsistent. Even a picture or two a year, accompanied by a few thoughts here and there, can add up to over the course of a lifetime to tell a remarkable story.

I think sometimes we're paralyzed by the idea of all or nothing - Either we keep an organized, current, consistent record of our lives and our children, or we don't bother keeping one at all. I think I would do well to take a page from Sarah's book and start embracing the concept of brevity. (Nevermind the fact that my post about brevity has ended up being eleven paragraphs long.)

When the pages of my life are blowing quickly in the wind, and I want to remember them as best I can, I'm going to upload for my posterity whatever is on my memory card, with nothing more than a word or two.

Like this. Here a few highlights from our last six months.

“My life is so full of wonderful things right now...Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good things will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day."

-Sarah Prine, These is my Words.

#reaganairport

#thighs




#littlebrother




#usnavalacademy




#nationalmall





#deer

#belles

#darknight

#camping

#bigbirdonmeth

#notamused

#groundhogday

#thanksgiving





#watermine



#eight

#truckin

#timeforahaircut




#teammates




#bob




#FCC




#economics




#motherslounge

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes

When Eddie sees Jack or I enter a room, he opens his mouth wide and throws his hands in the air 

It's hard to tell whether he wants us to hold him, or take him on a roller coaster. 

Snow Day

You know it's cold

when your snowman is packing heat. 

Oh, Brother

"Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero."

-Marc Brown 

Happy Birthday to you, who is truer than true

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! From Jolie, Leah, Cal & Eddie
Hard to believe you're 109 already!  

We wanted to thank you for all of your rhymes

We've read them a hundred, no, thousands of times

We've counted Ten Apples on Top, just like you

We practice our sounds when your Mr. Brown Moos

We eat Green Eggs and Ham, and sometimes with cheese

We cheer for The Lorax when he speaks for the trees

We study our placemaps, just so we'll know

What you mean when you say, Oh the Places You'll Go! 

We laugh when the Grinch puts on Santa disguises

And wipe tears from our eyes when his heart grows three sizes

We hear whos like Horton, and still we don't stop!

When Dad comes home from work, we Hop on our Pop!

And so to pay tribute, and show that we care
We woke early this morning, and we slicked up our hair

Cal put on a hat like the cat that you drew
And the girls picked out dresses like Cindy Lou Who

And then, off we went to proudly declare
That we're grateful for you, and the joy that you share!

Placemaps

Every night, I serve dinner atop maps of the world.

We don't have any formal way of studying them, but the kids enjoy looking while we eat, and asking the names of different countries. Sometimes we might challenge them to put a carrot on Russia, or to tap Mexico with their spoon. If there is any interesting global news that day, Jack or I will tell about it and give a context for its location.

I found our set at Walmart, but have also seen a few options online, and very highly recommend them if you have young kids, and/or if you are the product of public education in the United States.

I say this will all due respect to public education in the United States. I am the proud product of it, and my children will be as well.  Jack's father and grandfather both served distinguished terms as superintendents of public school districts, and I even claim bestie status with Lee Fleming, who is rumored to be the next Secretary of Education.

But. It simply baffles me that Americans can earn a high school diploma without even the most basic proficiency in global geography.  According to a National Geographic survey I read, nine in ten Americans aged 18-24 could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia. Sixty five percent couldn't find France. Half could not locate NEW YORK on a map of the United States. Twenty percent couldn't even find the Pacific Ocean.

Hold on! It gets worse!

The same survey was given to 18-24 year olds in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and Great Britain, and we were outscored by EVERY OTHER COUNTRY except Mexico, which did only slightly worse. Ouch.

When I graduated high school I was aware of my own geographic illiteracy, so I convinced my friend Whitney to register for Geography 101 with me at BYU. Imagine our horror when we discovered that the course was actually about land formations and weather systems and junk like that. (Whitney, if you're reading this, I hope you have forgiven me). We suffered miserably through the quarter, then as soon as it was finished I punished myself for the mistake by declaring a minor in Political Science.

Five years ago, while watching the Miss Teen USA pageant, I actually found myself rooting for Miss South Carolina who, when asked why 1/5 of Americans couldn't locate the United States on a world map, said:

(You remember her answer, right? Click HERE to relive the moment)

She said, "I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps." And then she started speaking in tongues.

Did she sound like she had been inhaling swimsuit adhesive? Sure. But did she have a point? Yes!! Schools are not solely to blame. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all had maps in our homes, and wouldn't it be even better if we served dinner on top of them? I personally believe that it's about more than teaching my kids to point to a country and recite the name of it. It's about instilling in them a framework for relating to the world beyond their home.

It's also about forming precious family memories. Like the time I served chile rellenos, and  Leah pointed somewhere in South America and said, "Mom, what country is that?"

And I said, "That's Brazil, sweetheart."

And then Jack said, "Kate. That's Argentina."

Ah well. Those chile rellenos were gooooood.