10 more of my 60 snapshots

21. One day in a youth Sunday School class we were learning about someone who didn’t believe in the gospel. I remember wondering out loud, “How can anyone not believe the Church is true?” A wise Sister Haneberg said, You say that now, but you just wait a couple of years and you too will start to have your doubts.
“Not me,” I thought.” I’ll never doubt it.”
Well, she was right. As I entered my teens I began to have questions about the Church. At first I was shocked that I would have doubts. Then I remembered what she said, and figured it must be normal to question what you had been taught.
I knew some people who sat in their box of “I don’t know” and I didn’t want to do that. So I made it a life’s quest to find the answers to the questions I had. It has been a very interesting journey, and truth has withstood any test I’ve given it.

22. My mother was a busy lady, so we got used to waiting for hours for her to pick us up, and sometimes forgetting about us altogether. One time she forgot I had a roller skating party after school. It was a Mutual night, so after waiting for hours I decided to walk home. It was pouring down heavy Northwest rain the whole way. I had a double-stack of heavy school books. The walk was probably about 5 miles, and, yes, much of it was uphill. I remember talking to myself the whole way home, going through the different stages of anger and forgiveness, misery and enjoyment, as I soaked through. My mother spotted me on a quick run to the grocery about half a mile from home. She felt so badly. She put me right into a hot tub, and nursed me the rest of the night. Then I felt badly for her.

23. We drove to Utah most summers (before freeways) and at one time had a black Kaiser, a regular sedan. Mom drove with 8 kids crawling all over the car, and no disposable diapers. One time the roof of the car caved in. And at least once all our clothes that had been strapped to the top of the car came loose and flew all over the highway.

24. In the “old days,” we bought marshmallows in a box, 12 to a box, with tissue paper and a very fine powdered coating. They were a nice confection, not the air-filled tasteless marshmallows of today. I snitched in them whenever I could. One Christmas I found a box, my very own box, in my stocking. That day I knew my mother really loved me.

25. My dad decided to enlarge the basement. Because we were little, he had us crawl under the house into the crawlspace to dig out dirt until he could fit in. It was very dirty, dark and spidery, and hard work. We would never say the word hell, or probably even think it, but it was not a fun place. Dad broke his finger one day pushing the wheelbarrow through the narrow cement opening that had been the little door, but continued to work into the night. It was hard to complain after we saw what he was willing to do.

26. We had a little red battery-run car for the kids to drive around the driveway. It had a “gas” pedal and brakes, a horn, lights, and really drove like a car. It was open, no top, and made of steel, not a plastic toy like today.

27. To give my mom a break from cooking, we often went out to dinner after morning church on Sunday. Most often we went to the back of Olberg’s Drug Store. I thought it was really fancy at the time, but realized later that it was just the back of a drug store. Dad never came, so I don’t know how much of a break it was for my mother to handle 8 very active kids in a restaurant. But those open-faced hot roast beef sandwiches sure seemed fancy.

28. I took a liking to cooking early in my life, and was often in the kitchen watching my mother, or watching cooking shows on television. For a while, my specialty was Puffed Omelet. It’s an omelet with beaten egg whites folded into the yolks to make it puffy, and we had a special pan that folded it in half. I made them every day after school.

29. All of us girls took dancing lessons. We took tap, ballet, and tumbling until high school. I think I was just getting into toe shoes when we gave it up, and I didn’t take tumbling long enough to learn flips with no hands. My mother made our costumes for our annual recitals. My favorite was my Little Red Riding Hood costume, with a tutu as always. My favorite ballet was to Waltz of the Flowers.

30. When I was still in grade school my mother let me go to the movies with a boy named John. She dropped me off at the theater and I think another couple joined us. After the movie we went down the street to a diner and had chili. I didn’t think of it as a date until I was there, and the boy was really, really nice (and tall), but I don’t know what my mother was thinking! I didn’t do that again for many years.