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A\m | Not a Woman anda ister?
Mother’s Day
Vol. 30, No. 4 Spring PORE!
CONTENTS
Letter from Our Editors
Wa iting........:ccccccctceeeses see deepens 4
Lisa Van Orman Hadley
Identification Card, Please............ 5
Pam Lindsay Everson
Two, Actually... ceeceeeceseeeeeeees ei
Kirsten Campbell
Birth Mother.............0...:eceeeeeees 8
Tamra Hyde
EMERSON CO te 5 cei tess desteasroreenseeds 10
Kendahl Millecam
Sisters Speak
Mother S Dayeninwicaninnaiiuiw 13
Dispositions, Inclinations, and
Underwear. ............cceceeseseeseeee 16
Lesli Smith
Awakenings
SWINGING... .esccescceteseneeeneeseenseenaeeeaes 17
Shelah Miner
Women’s Theology
No Apologies or Apologetics.......... 20
Elizabeth Hammond
Never Alone............ cece eee 23
Margaret Olsen Hemming
Goodness Gracious
Daughter § Daye cass... meen... ses 25
Linda Hoffman Kimball
Global Zion
PYIVULCZ ORE. ... ERROR. ZB. 26
Sherrie L. M. Gavin
Courtney Cooke
Judith Curtis
Dayna Patterson
Kristine Barrett
Lisa Van Orman Hadley
Exponent Generations
Women and Reproductive Choice..36
Ellis R. Shipp
Emma Lou Thayne
Galen Smith
Television Review
SISLEF WAVES] wisecuscieeacbetcsh adatte ds 39
Alissa King
Flannel Board
Deborah Under the Palm Tree....... 40
Adriene Cruz
Special thanks to Adrienne Cruz, Galen Dara, Sharon Furner, Leslie Graff; Linda
Hoffman Kimball, Kathryn Knudsen, Amanda Demos Larsen, Tessa Lindsay, Stepha-
nie Northrup, Amy Tolk Richards, Sarah Samuelson, and Ann Marie Whittaker
for the use of their artwork in this issue.
Cover art is Klimt's Women by Sharon Furner, Matthews, North Carolina
Submissions to Exponent IT
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The purpose of Exponent IJ is to promote sisterhood by providing a forum for
Mormon women to share their life experiences in an atmosphere of trust and
acceptance. Our common bond is our connection to the Mormon Church and
our commitment to women in the Church. The courage and spirit of women
challenge and inspire us to examine and shape the direction of our lives. We are
confident that this open forum will result in positive change. We publish this
paper in celebration of the strength and diversity of women.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Co-Editors-in-Chief
Aimee Evans Hickman
Emily Clyde Curtis
Design Editor
Margaret Olsen Hemming
Copy Editor
Kathleen Gaisford
Poetry Editor
Judy Curtis
Exponent Generations Editor
Deborah Kris
Goodness Gracious Editor
Linda Hoffman Kimball
Sisters Speak Editor
Caroline Kline
Sabbath Pastorals Editor
Margaret Olsen Hemming
Awakenings Editor
Jessica Steed
Staff? Marci Anderson, Kristy Benton, Sue
Booth-Forbes, Susan Christiansen, Courtney
Cooke, Deja Earley, Tresa Edmunds, Lisa
Hadley, Sara Hanks, Kate Kadash-Edmond-
son, Sariah Kell, Rachel Jones, Kendahl
Millecam, Amanda Olson, Elizabeth Pinbor-
ough, Natalie Prado, Meghan Raynes, Gwen
Reynolds, Chelsea Shields Strayer, Suzette
Smith, Heather Sundahl, Brooke Williams
EXECUTIVE BOARD
President
Barbara Streeper Taylor
Historian
Chery! DiVito
Members: Andrea Alexander, Emily Clyde
Curtis, Margaret Olsen Hemming, Aimee
Evans Hickman, Linda Hoffman Kimball,
Caroline Kline, Jana Remy, Heather Sundahl
EMERITUS BOARD
Linda Andrews, Nancy Dredge, Judy Dush-
ku, Karen Haglund, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Exponent II (ISSN 1094-7760) is published quarterly
by Exponent II Incorporated, a non-profit corporation
with no official connection with The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Articles published represent
the opinions of authors only and not necessarily those
of the editor or staff. Letters to Exponent I or its editors
and Sisters Speak articles are assumed intended for
publication in whole or in part and may therefore be
used for such purposes.
Copyright © 2011 by Exponent IJ, Inc. All rights
reserved.
Years ago, as a woman strug-
gling with infertility, I hated go-
ing to church on Mother’s Day;
the sympathy, praise, everything
anyone said felt like a slap in the
face.
So, the first year I had a baby,
I settled in, thinking, “Finally, I
can enjoy Mother’s Day.”
It was then that I came upon
the sad realization that Mother’s
Day carries baggage for so many
Mormon women, those who
are single, divorced, childless,
estranged from their children--
even those who look like they fit the ideal.
There is no way to address the pain and sadness that
many women endure every Mother’s Day, but I wonder
if it might be alleviated if we expanded the definition of
the word, “mothering” to focus on the concept of divine
love.
In the scriptures, I see glimpses of the theological
concept of mothering. We read passages which provide
metaphorical images of God and Jesus giving birth, nurs-
ing, and raising up children. Jesus does this when he says
in Matthew 23:37, “how often would I have gathered thy
children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings?” In Isaiah 49:15, God speaks, “Can a woman
forget her sucking child, that she should not have com-
passion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget,
yet will I not forget thee.” In both of these examples,
God and Jesus take acts of mothering: comforting, teach-
ing, and feeding to show their love for us.
As Jesus and God embody motherhood through these
metaphors, I think we all do the same in our daily lives.
We show our capacity for divine love when we bring a
meal to a sister who is ill or when we simply sit with a
friend who is struggling. In those tender acts, I believe
we are expressing the divine love inside each of us; we
are mothering each other.
In this Mother’s Day issue, Aimee and I have worked
to find examples that illustrate how mothering is not
limited to one type of relationship. We see examples of
this in Pam Everson’s “Identification Card, Please” as
she and her grandmother struggle with their diminished
capacities, and in Sherrie Gavin’s Global Zion piece,
“Privilege,” as she talks about her struggles with infertit-
ily as she travels to a far away
country.
We also wanted to show the
variety of difficulties women deal
with in our attempts to mother.
My mom once wrote in a Moth-
er’s Day talk she gave, “The crux
of the difficulty of Mother’s Day
may be that the ideal mother we
sometimes chose to hold up on
Mother’s Day is not very help-
ful to those involved in the gritty
mothering business.” We see
that grittiness in Tamra Smith’s
essay about giving up her baby
for adoption called “Birth Mother” and in Kendahl Mil-
lecam’s work about healing from her abusive parents in
“Emergence.”
And, there is humor in these struggles as Lesli Smith
shows in “Opposite Day,” worrying whether the small
daily choices she feels ill equipped to make will have
unforeseen consequences on her children, or in Kylie
Nelson Turley’s proud assertion of herself as a “Mean
Mom” (right there with you, sister).
For me, Mother’s Day became easier to bear when I
decided that ultimately, what we are celebrating on this
holiday is the divine love we have for each other and our
meager attempts to show that love through acts of moth-
ering. One medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich, writes in
a piece entitled “Revelation of Divine Love,”
To motherhood as properties belong natural love, wis-
dom and knowledge - and this is God. For though it is
true that our bodily bringing forth is very little, low, and
simple compared to our spiritual bringing forth, yet it is
he who does the mothering in the creatures by whom it is
done.
As we learn to express divine love (whether it be through
a biological link or a spiritual one) I think we become
better able to nurture as our Heavenly Parents do.
Emily Clyde Curtis, Spring 2011
Have a Letter to the Editors or a submission for
Exponent II? Email us at editor@exponentii.org
by Lisa Van Orman Hadley
Somerville, Massachusetts
At the end of sacrament meeting, an awkward new
dad comes to the pulpit and says he needs to make a
quick announcement. He clears his throat and says, “Um,
the Elder’s Quorum has a little something for all of the
women in the ward. I’m going to pass this basket of
treats around and all the women should take one.”
He is trying so hard and I appreciate the gesture, but
there is no way around it: today is Mother’s Day. This
day was not created for women, it was created for moth-
ers. And sitting here with my little bag of Hershey’s
Hugs and Kisses is not comforting. It is just another
reminder of what I am not.
I remember Mother’s Day when I was a kid. My
mother had to conduct her cacophonous orchestra of
children alone while my father sat up on the stand. They
asked all of the mothers to please stand up, and the
deacons brought around a carnation and baby’s breath
corsage for each woman standing. When my mother
stood up, I felt proud. I looked forward to the day when
I, too, would stand up and receive my corsage.
I’m thirty-two years old and still waiting for my car-
nation and baby’s breath.
Painting Tulips by Sarah Richards Samuelson,
Orem, Utah
If there is one constant about infertility, it is wait-
ing. Every month you wait to see whether your period
will come. Every month the timer resets, every month
another failure. You wait for appointments with your
doctor— weeks, sometimes months. You wait two excru-
ciating weeks after an in vitro cycle to take a blood test
and then wait for the nurse to call and tell you whether
you’re pregnant. And then you wait for your period
to come, that big red checkmark confirming what you
already know. You wait for paperwork to be processed.
You wait for the insurance company to approve another
treatment. You wait for a birth mother to choose you, for
a child to be matched to you. Sometimes it feels like put-
ting coins into a slot machine and waiting for a payout.
You worry about time running out. You wait and wait
and wait and wonder if you will ever stop waiting.
I have been in this holding pattern for four years.
I remember when I went off birth control. My hus-
band and I wondered if the timing was right, wondered if
we should wait a little longer. But I was 28 and tired of
waiting. We were sure that we wanted to be parents and
certain that things would happen when they were sup-
posed to. I figured it might take a few months. If worse
came to worse, I would have to take Clomid for a month
or two like my older sister.
But nothing happened. Clomid, surgery, in vitro
cycles, adoption sessions, periods, periods, periods. Still
waiting.
I’ve been in a lot of waiting rooms. At the doctor’s
office where I did my first two in vitro cycles, the wait-
ing room for Infertility was shared with the waiting room
for Obstetrics and Gynecology. It always seemed like a
cruel punishment to have to wait with all of those preg-
nant women, all of those mother geese with their gaggles
of cooing babies. The flyers pinned to the wall bore
conflicting messages: a flyer for an infertility support
group was pasted alongside a poster of a mother holding
a newborn.
No one talks to each other in the waiting room. All
the people on the Infertility side are there for the same
reason, but they don’t say anything
to each other. You flip through maga-
zines, make judgments about each
other. Most of the women look to
me like they’re in their forties. They
wear high heels and pearl necklaces
and come in with briefcases. I, on the
other hand, am usually wearing jeans
and a t-shirt from the grocery store
where I work. They probably think
I’m just a kid. I’m 32, but it’s not
uncommon for people to think I’m in
high school. A few years ago I was
denied a sample at Costco because
my mother wasn’t with me. I see the
way these women look at me, like,
“What’s she doing here?”
Sometimes I wonder that, too.
Sometimes, actually pretty much all
the time, I get sick of waiting and
wonder how long I’ ll continue to do
it.
A few months ago I decided I
was going to try to talk to someone
every time I’m waiting. I tried it out
as I was waiting for an ultrasound
during my last in vitro cycle. I
started talking to the woman sitting
next to me. She seemed nervous.
She told me it was her first in vitro
cycle, and I told her how things
worked. She told me how much she
hated the nurse downstairs who drew
her blood, and I told her about the
time that nurse put the needle in my
arm and forgot to attach anything
to the other end. We talked until my
name was called and I found myself
wishing we could talk longer. For a
minute, I forgot about waiting.
The thing about waiting is that
you have to keep living life while
you’re doing it. You can travel the
world, live at an artist colony, do
all the other things you’ ve always
wanted to do. You can find other
people who are waiting and wait
it out together. I’ve found that it’s
almost always better to wait with
someone than to wait alone. m
by Pam Lindsay Everson
Newport Beach, California
Once again I felt the frustrated
ambivalence of caring for my grand-
mother while my mother was tied up
for the day. When I was a little girl,
Gam’s appearance at our house had
always been greeted with unparal-
leled enthusiasm as she transformed
our otherwise mundane existence
into extraordinary pleasure. Her
presence meant the unleashing of
bright red crabs on the dark floors of
our dining room where they scuttled
noisily about before she snatched
them from their hiding places (and
our youthful intrigue) and plopped
them into the fiery cauldrons of the
boiling water pots. She could do
anything, and she did. She was our
leader, our camp counselor, and our
security when our father disappeared
from the scene.
But things were different now. I
was an adult, and Gam was the one
who needed shepherding, protec-
tion, and an infusion of joy that had
faded with age and infirmity. It was
my turn to care for her, to give back
a smidgen of what she’d given me,
and oh, how I longed to be up to the
task.
It was nice to have something on
the calendar that day to get us out
of the house. It was now difficult to
plan outings or find ways to occupy
our time since neither of us could
drive. Her life had been anything but
sedentary, and I felt my limitations
all the more keenly in her presence.
Today, we were off to the Depart-
ment of Motor Vehicles, where my
son had some business to conduct.
At fifteen, Landon had studied the
California Road Handbook and
hoped to obtain his driver’s permit.
My husband, Ken, moved towards
the car with as much enthusiasm as
one headed for the dentist’s office—
it was another errand which would
take a precious chunk of time out of
his work day. He rolled the car down
the driveway and backed up right
alongside the curb. Gam blamed her
tight skirt for her difficulty in climb-
ing up onto the high seats of the Sub-
urban. Never would she capitulate to
the foibles of old age. She was used
to driving her own car and being in
charge in every sense. Sitting next
to her great-grandson in the back
seat, she must have felt like another
charge for the day. She was, but in
no way a burden or a displeasure to
have around.
I loved Gam as much as anyone
could possibly love her grandmother.
She had always been my hero. I
hated the fact that she now had to
live with my mother and be passed
to my care like a child. She was not
convinced that it had to be so, and it
hurt to see her in such a predicament.
How sorely she missed her home and
her dignity.
Ken was in his own world. When
could he get back to a phone? Would
we make it before it closed or would
this be a waste of time and need to
be repeated the next day? He turned
the radio on. When it’s quiet, switch
on noise. He, too, was in a new situ-
ation, one that he hadn’t chosen. His
way of dealing with it, it seemed,
was to keep his head down and the
music up.
On the drive, Landon looked over
his sample test. What would he tell
his friends if he failed? He shouldn’t
have said anything to them. He
wasn’t so sure this permit was go-
ing to be all that great
anyway if it meant that
he’d have to drive his
mother to the grocery
store and the depart-
ment store and shop
with her for clothes as
his sister had done. He
told me as we walked
through the women’s
shoe department of
Nordstrom; that he
didn’t know what hell
was for girls, but he
thought that this busi-
ness of shopping with
his mother might just
be it for guys.
No one spoke in the car. I re-
minded myself again what my role
was in this excursion. I was there
primarily to share the experience
with Landon. Just because I couldn’t
drive him myself to get his driver’s
permit, I could not and I would not
miss these milestones in his life. And
I also had my own business to take
care of at the DMV. I wanted neither
to think about it, nor to let it cast a
shadow over his day. But it was time
to do it—to stop pretending, like
Gam was, that things weren’t really
what they were.
We inched our way towards the
appointment window, this odd family
of four, each of us wrapped up in
the anxious concerns of a world all
our own. Landon was to confront his
dragon first. Leading his entourage
forward, he made his play quickly
and easily. For him, it was going to
be won or lost in a matter of minutes.
Effortlessly, he read through the se-
ries of letters on the eye chart while
I was still searching in vain for the
chart somewhere behind the desk.
He received his test and disappeared
around the corner.
I was up next. I asked which
window could help me in obtaining
Illustration by Tessa Lindsay
Salt Lake City, Utah
an I.D. card. “You mean a driver’s li-
cense renewal?” My heart was beat-
ing hard. How long had I thought
about this day and put it off, antici-
pating an emotional outburst. Here
it was. “No, I’ve experienced some
vision loss and need to just get a
personal identification card instead.”
I said it. Ken was quiet, perhaps sur-
prised that I was finally making the
move. It was a token gesture. I
had given up driving a couple of
years earlier but clung to that small
card that made me feel like it really
wasn’t over yet. Now it was. I turned
myself in and knew I could never
go back. My chest was tight, and it
hurt somewhere between my heart
and my throat. The woman moved
forward, processing my paperwork
as if I had just declared a change of
address. “Take this to window 12
and wait there to have your picture
taken.” Didn’t she recognize how
tragic this was for me? How could
she be so nonchalant when I felt like
weeping, wailing, and rending my
clothing?
I moved over to another line and
tried to hold on while normal busi-
ness continued about
me. My face contorted
as I tried to ward off the
mounting swell of tears.
Gam followed closely
behind me. Did she
know what was going
on? I had always fol-
lowed her around, my
brave and indomitable
Gam, and now, here we
were, quietly suffer-
ing together. I turned
and faced her squarely
for the first time since
we had arrived. I felt
her looking back at me
with an understanding that surpassed
words. I could no longer see well
and she could no longer speak well,
but the lines of communication
flowed between us with unprecedent-
ed force.
With the tight squeezing of my hand
she told me everything. She told
me she knew, she knew how much
I hurt, she knew what it meant to
lose one’s independence, and she
knew what it meant to live a com-
promised life. Her eyes told me that
it wasn’t fair that a grown woman
could not speak for herself, could
not get herself from one place to the
next and could never again fully be
the master of her own destiny. Her
loving empathy said more to me than
her pride had previously allowed her
to express. The only words to pass
from her lips were, “I know, dear. I
know!”
Landon drove us home that day. I
gave up my place in the front and he
moved forward. “Bucks in the front,
squaws in the back,” Ken quipped,
as we got in. Landon was trium-
phant, with his permit in his pocket
and his hands on the wheel. The road
stretched out before him. This time it
was I who asked for the radio to be
turned on. @
by Kirsten Campbell
Granger, Indiana
When I was in elementary school,
a kid teasingly asked me how many
moms I had. I knew enough to know
that he was poking at polygamy. Be-
ing one of the only members of the
church at the school made me a cu-
riosity, and I had to deal with ques-
tions. My close friends had asked
me about polygamy. I had explained
that Mormons no longer practiced it
and echoed their disgust at the very
thought of it. When this kid brought
up the issue, I decided to answer dif-
ferently. I felt like shocking him so
I replied, “Two, actually.” His face
registered a look of amazement and
smug satisfaction until I finished my
answer, “I have my real mom and my
birth mother. I’m adopted.” I could
tell it wasn’t the answer he expected,
and he walked away confused.
The interesting thing was that at
that time this wasn’t how I viewed
things. I had only one mother. She
was the one who dragged me out of
bed each morning, made my lunches,
encouraged my piano practicing, and
laughed at my jokes. She was my
“real” mom and I bristled when oth-
ers would say that my birth mother
was my “real mother.”
I always knew I was adopted.
My parents had told me the details
of my arrival story so often I felt as
if I could remember them myself. If
anything, I felt animosity toward my
birth mother. Not out of a sense of
abandonment, but out of a feeling of
loyalty to my real mom. To me, sim-
ply giving birth did not warrant the
title of “mother.” My mom was the
one who calmed my fears and taught
me right from wrong. It did not mat-
ter at all that she hadn’t carried me in
her womb for nine months. She was
my mother. No one else deserved the
right to be called my mother. I even
went so far as to start referring to my
birth mother as my “birth unit” when
speaking of my adoption.
I rarely thought about being
adopted. Sometimes on Mother’s
Day or my birthday I would wonder:
Where was my birth mother? What
did she look like? Did she enjoy
black jelly beans as much as I did?
It wasn’t until I was 25, married,
and holding my first child in my
arms that I awakened to the truth that
I was adopted. I knew this fact my
whole life, but sitting in the hospital
room with my daughter in my arms,
loving her with a ferocity I had not
known I could possess, I was over-
whelmed by the realization of my
origins. My birth mother had gone
through the same ordeal I had just
endured to bring me into the world. I
was 25 and scared to death—she was
only 17. As I looked at my daughter
I could imagine nothing that I would
not do to protect her. I could not give
her away to anyone.
I abandoned the term “birth unit”
and I embraced the title “mother.”
This transformation came not as a
result of her physically giving birth
to me, but rather the act of her giving
me away to another to raise. I won-
dered what went through her mind as
she made that choice.
The song, “From God’s Arms,
to My Arms, to Yours” by Michael
McLean helped me identify with
how she might have felt. The song
is from the viewpoint of the birth
mother who agonizes over the choice
to give her son to another, but de-
cides that she must put the needs of
her child ahead of her own desires.
If you choose to tell him, and if he
wants to know,
Pregnant Woman Sits by Stephanie Northrup, Carbondale, Colorado
How the one who gave him life could
bear to let him go;
Just tell him there were sleepless
nights; I prayed and paced the
floors
And knew the only peace I'd find is if
this child was yours.
And maybe you can tell your baby,
when you love him so, that he’s
been loved before;
By someone who delivered your son
From Gods arms, to my arms, to
yours.
I needed to honor my birth mother
for the choice she made. Doing this
did not mean that I loved my real
mother less. It meant that I could
make room in my heart for my birth
mother as well. I always felt that I
was with the family God had wanted
me to be with—He just had to find a
unique way to get me there.
It has been 15 years since that
“awakening.” This year I will turn
40, and my birth mother will be 57.
I think of her on my birthdays now
and wonder if she thinks of me. I
have had the paperwork to begin the
process of finding her for quite some
time, and I’m not sure why | haven’t
mailed it off yet. My motivation in
connecting with my birth mother
would be to express my gratitude for
her decision to give me away. I want
her to know that she made the right
choice. I had a wonderful upbringing
and am living a full life. I hesitate
only because I don’t wish to upend
her current life with something that
might bring back painful memories.
And so the forms lie in an envelope
in my bedside table drawer.
I rarely get asked about how
many mothers I have anymore.
However, if I am asked, I may reply
just as I did back on that playground,
“Two, actually. I have my real mom
and my birth mother. I’m adopted.”
And this time I will mean it. m
by Tamra Hyde
St. George, Utah
My perspective on Mother’s Day
was permanently altered in May
of 1996. That year Mother’s Day
fell two days before my son was
born and three days before he went
home with his adoptive parents. In
getting “knocked up” prematurely
(or immaturely), I certainly wasn’t
alone; in fact, every year in the US
about a million girls and women find
themselves in that situation. What is
unique about my motherhood is that
I am among the less than 1% of that
group who chose adoption.
My first real Mother’s Day fell
two days before my son’s first birth-
day. As was custom in my ward, all
the mothers were asked to stand and
be honored with a carnation. | felt
a multitude of emotions brought on
by the last year brimming just below
the surface, but I was holding it
together. My sweet teenage brother
leaned over to me and said, “Tamra,
stand up.” Though touched by the
gesture, I shook my head no. He
persisted, “Tamra, you are a mother.
One of those is yours.”
I’ve never been one to hide my
story. I view my experience with
motherhood as a badge of honor and
have never thought of it as a scarlet
letter, but at that time I thought it
best not to presume to be in their
ranks, not publicly anyway. I knew
there might be some members of the
congregation who would be shocked
at the audacity of an unwed mother
with her head held high, but it
wasn’t that idea that held me back. It
was more that I was only just be-
ginning to understand who I was in
my new life. When my little brother
was convinced that I would continue
to refuse his prodding, and as the
carnation bearers were approaching
our pew, my brother stood up with
the women, as my proxy, and made
sure I had my Mother’s Day trophy.
Needless to say, tears flowed.
In recent years I have hesitated
to share my feelings about Mother’s
Day (though Id like to) because my
experience isn’t to anyone else what
it is to me. I perceive an expectation
to be “over it.” One Mother’s Day, I
overheard someone close to me say
that I wanted attention. I did! I did
want someone to take note of what
Mother’s Day meant to me and pay
attention to the bittersweet emo-
tions that come with my memories.
The truth is, when my son left that
hospital room, I thought the air from
my lungs went with him. There was
a literal, physical aching in my arms
that would come and go for the next
several weeks. I wanted someone to
feel it with me. Before I placed him
for adoption I feared I would be the
victim of adoption. My son would
have two parents and be sealed. His
parents would have the family they’d
longed for. And I would be broken.
I’d never known anyone else
who had been through this. I tried
to share it with my ex-boyfriend. I
showed him pictures and told him
stories about how I knew my son,
Justin, the first time I saw him. I told
him about the uncommon sweetness
I felt for Justin. I tried to describe
his perfection and the euphoria I felt
breathing in his scent, how attentive
and intelligent Justin seemed, how I
felt there were unseen beings there
with us. Sensing I was trying to draw
something out of him that just wasn’t
there, he said “Tamra, your son has
never been a reality to me.” Even
though he was one half of Justin’s
biology, he couldn’t help shoulder
the burden. No one could.
I had joined the ranks of “the
birth mother.” For generations there
had been no representation for us.
We had no voice, no face—only
shame and secrets. We were advised
to resume normal life and deny to
ourselves and everyone else that we
were forever changed.
But now there is a community—
the adoption community. When I
moved out west a couple of years
after placing my son for adoption, I
found this community. We are birth
families and adoptive families. We’re
integrated and united. We understand
disappointment and loss, and we
don’t give it an expiration date. It is
little-known outside our community,
but the Saturday before Mother’s
Day is Birth Mother’s Day.
Over time my heart has healed
and I have realized that I’m not the
broken woman I once feared I would
be. The place my son holds in my
heart has not diminished, but many
other things have found a place there
as well. I am filled with tremendous
peace and gratitude; I have been so
tenderly cared for by the One who
led me to my choice, the One who
saw me through my decision. He
has remembered my sacrifice. I’ve
been delivered and preserved and my
life since has been filled with tender
mercies. I know my little dude has
the life that was designed for him.
But I am not “over it.” I hope never
to be. This experience has made me.
My adoption story is also my con-
version story—a story of making
wrong things right and bitter things
sweet. “Beauty for ashes.” Though I
only had the role of a mother a short
time, I magnified the calling to the
fullest. I put my own heart, and my
instincts on the altar in exchange for
the life he could have. I would have
been good for him, but I gave him
the best. I put his best interest above
the deepest desire of my heart. I did
what a mother does and we’ve all
been blessed as a result.
When I was 18, sending the flesh
of my flesh and bone of my bone to
his new home and returning to mine
with empty arms and an empty heart,
I never imagined that at age 33 my
womb would remain vacant. I as-
sumed I’d soon be married and again
feel the fullness and contentment of
being “mommy” to someone. I have
friends who were childless before
adopting children who had refused
to go to church on Mother’s Day be-
cause they couldn’t bear to watch the
celebration of what they longed for
but couldn’t conceive. I hope it’s not
presumptuous to say I have a taste
of that. I attend a family ward, but I
have no family. I know I’m fortunate
for the glimpse of motherhood I’ve
had but it’s hard knowing what I’m
missing.
There is a Mother’s Day I look
forward to with anxious anticipa-
tion, when I might reunite with the
mother who adopted my son. She
whose two pink lines came in the
form of a phone call, who prayed
him home, who changed his diapers
and consoled his disappointments,
who has given her life to him day
by day, and who I believe had claim
to him before he ever came to me,
is mother to him in a way I would
never presume to claim. My con-
nection to him is real. Biology is
significant, but it’s nothing compared
to the sealing covenant. She is on
my mind as soon as I wake up every
second Sunday of May. We answered
each other’s prayers. We are partners
in acommon purpose. I long for the
day, I hope not too far off, when I
can honor in person the mother who
means most to me, second only to
my own mother. I hope to some day
give her the hugs and kisses and
thanks I’ve been storing up all these
years. @
Reunion by Stephanie Northrup, Carbondale, Colorado
by Kendahl Millecam
Tempe, Arizona
“When you are struggling to recon-
struct the truth of your past, espe-
cially when that truth reflects poorly
on them, your parents may insist that
‘Tt wasn t so bad,’ ‘It didnt happen
that way’, or even ‘It didn t happen
at all.’ Such statements can frustrate
your attempts to reconstruct your
personal history, leading you to
question your own impression and
memories.”
It’s not like you wake up when
you're five, or eleven, or nineteen
and think, “It all makes sense now:
Mom has borderline personality
disorder, and Dad is a molester!” It’s
not like you can fathom that your
parents can’t, or won’t, love you.
It’s not like you call yourself a
“victim” while it’s happening, either.
Perhaps time slows down. Or life
becomes a blur. Sometimes you
think you deserve it, or that you must
deserve it because you knew it was
coming this time. You get used to it.
For a long time, I thought I invited
hate and abuse, though I was un-
aware of how I was doing it. When
I got slapped for talking back, or
preyed upon when I was vulnerable,
or told to stop eating, or told I wasn’t
being righteous, I would think, “Oh,
that’s right, I am nobody. I am an
appendage to my parents, a player in
their lives.” I would break out, try-
ing to be a full person, human for a
moment, only to be reminded of my
place.
1 Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcom-
ing Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your
Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), p. 21
Why couldn’t I just remember
the rules I had worked out to keep
me safe? Just never be alone, always
be on the lookout for Dad’s mood.
If he’s angry, don’t provoke him. If
he’s being affectionate, get the hell
out of the room. If he’s pontificating
about school or politics, get ready to
nod and keep your mouth shut.
At least Dad was gone during the
day, but I was with Mom more often.
She was depressed and jealous. Be-
ing home was like being in combat,
out in a field waiting for the enemy
at any moment. I couldn’t count on
anything staying the same. I was
always on alert for any shift in her
mood, her facial expressions, or her
tone of voice. I never knew when the
emotional landscape might change. I
had to be ready to defend myself.
At the same time, I felt ike Mom
expected me to take care of her. She
was so hurt when I didn’t clean up,
or fought with a sibling, or wanted
something for myself that she didn’t
want for me. Once on her birthday,
I bought her a large collection of
Dickens, and made a promise to her
that I would make it a daily goal to
not upset her and to clean my room
and to handle my younger siblings.
That way she would have time and
desire to read for fun. At first, she
was happy when she opened the gift
and saw the book, but as I explained
my plan to her, her face fell. Her
smile disappeared, and as she set
the book down, she said she hadn’t
known she was such a burden to me.
It seemed even my attempts to fix the
problems at home turned into prob-
lems.
Holidays were a combination of
joy and escape but also higher stress
and greater likelihood of conflict.
My mother took painstaking care to
prepare properly for each holiday.
When I was a child, it made life
exciting. I would look forward to
decorating, going on doorbell-ditch-
ing cookie-plate runs, and making
special cards and food.
One Valentine’s Day, my siblings
and I woke up to a beautiful table
set in pink and red, breakfast ready,
personalized sets of candies on the
table, all dutifully prepared by my
mother. I guess we didn’t say thanks
enough, or not sincerely enough,
because by ten o’clock Mom was
in tears because we didn’t appreci-
ate her. Worse than tears, after some
time she turned cold, stating she
didn’t know why she tried to give
us nice things if we didn’t say thank
you. She couldn’t make eye contact
and wouldn’t speak to us for the rest
of the day, except for short, clipped
answers.
Mother’s Day and Father’s
Day were especially confusing. At
church, parenthood was held up as
the pinnacle of existence. I could
never make sense of my abusive
home life compared to the fagade my
parents put on for others. I started
to question whether our home life
was bad at all. Not only did my
parents act as though it was normal
and acceptable, the ward members
would praise them too. I knew there
were people I should trust outside
my home—people in my ward, my
extended family—so I discounted
Green Branches by Leslie Graff, Sutton, Massachusetts
what I knew deep down and believed
everyone else but myself.
Becoming the Observer
This failure to believe in myself
bled into almost every sphere of my
life. I had no idea that the kinds of
abuse I experienced were known and
discussed in the outside world until I
started paying attention to the news
and reading books in junior high
about eating disorders and physical
abuse. There were other messed up
people, just like me. This happy rec-
ognition planted a seed that struggled
to grow in the hostile environment of
my mind.
In college, I was surrounded by
students who could pay attention in
class and do their work. I felt per-
petually confused about why I had
so much trouble functioning in daily
life. I made friends who balanced
work, school, and dating with ease.
I struggled to wake up to an alarm
in the morning. I didn’t know how
to study and follow through with a
class. I made friends, and even had
boyfriends, but I couldn’t really
connect with anyone without being
paralyzed with fear. I was afraid of
being discovered for what I really
was—a damaged, scared child.
It barely even occurred to me
that there was a connection between
why I felt so dysfunctional and the
constant emotional upheaval and
abuse I grew up with. And being
sexually abused by my father when I
was eight didn’t automatically tip me
off to understand my trust issues. It
seems so obvious in retrospect, but at
the time, I simply compartmentalized
my problems as being unrelated to
my home life, as I had always done.
I was vaguely dissatisfied with
life. I was getting bad grades. I
wasn’t sleeping well. I procrasti-
nated. I had massive mood swings. I
felt crippled by shyness at times and
like a social butterfly the next day.
I would cry for hours if my feelings
were hurt. I would be silly and jovial
to a fault. I was exhausted. Finally, I
went to the free counseling center at
BYU. I thought I didn’t really have
a reason to be there. All my excuses
for walking through those double
doors seemed trite. I knew plenty
of normal people who felt dissatis-
fied or got bad grades. But that core
of low self-esteem, buried so deep
down, hadn’t withered after all. I
knew that I somehow deserved more.
I believed I could find the part of me
that knew how to sleep well, how
to get good grades, how to respect
myself.
I took color code tests. I reveled
in finding out about different learn-
ing styles (I learned that I am a
visual learner). I took quizzes about
personality. I went to the library and
casually walked by the psychology
section. I whittled my way down
to the books on sexual abuse and
checked them out. I kept waiting for
a strange look from the other patrons
as I walked out with my stack. I had
to find out who I really was.
In the process of discovering who
I really am, I also found out who my
parents really are. I graduated from
self-help books on sexual abuse and
emotional manipulation to books
on abusive parents. After I found
myself, I could respect myself. After
I could respect myself, I could make
boundaries. And after I made bound-
aries, I realized just how abusive my
parents had been (and still are).
Connecting the Dots
After I went through the BYU
Counseling Center doors the first
time, I gradually became more con-
fident that I was on the right track to
my freed self. I met with several dif-
ferent counselors, one of whom said
“You seem fine to me; I’m not sure
why you think you need therapy.”
Angry at his dismissal of my prob-
lems, I felt galvanized to find the
right therapist no matter how long it
took.
Fortunately, my seed of confi-
dence and self-respect was alive and
well. I went back again, requesting a
new counselor. I settled on a woman,
Barbara, who validated my decision
to be in therapy. It was in her of-
fice where I first talked about being
sexually abused. It was there where
she said, “Sexual abuse doesn’t just
happen, it’s a symptom of a larger
family problem.” This was my turn-
ing point. I had permission to look
further.
My mother, a probable borderline
personality, lacks the ability to be
a good mother. She doesn’t know
how to function unless she is with-
out fault. She is threatened by my
independence, that I have my own
desires. She is threatened by my
unwillingness to tolerate abuse and
manipulation. She cannot apolo-
gize, and she cannot remember ever
hurting anyone. She is consumed
with her own internal struggle to the
point where no one can be a com-
plete person in her life. We are all
her appendages as she plays out her
pain and loneliness over and over. I
cannot change her.
My mother tries to make me
disappear. She feels invisible herself
and is constantly doing the work
of getting recognition. She doesn’t
know how to love me because she
can’t see me as a person. I don’t
think she really knows how to love
anyone.
Now on Mother’s Day, I don’t
have to pretend that I am close to my
mother. I simply acknowledge that
she is. I am gradually letting go of
what she should have been for me. I
allow myself to feel the pain of not
having a good mother, the pain of a
practically empty link in my ances-
tral chain. But I also allow her to be
what she is. I think of all the other
women like her, without resources or
self-awareness, driving their family
members away. I think of myself;
I think that every time I choose to
honor my children’s humanity and
their choices, I break the pattern of
abuse. Every time I choose to see my
sons as distinct small people who
are not my appendages, but fully-
formed, I break the cycle of dehu-
manizing ridicule. I think of all the
other daughters and sons of border-
line parents trying to piece together
their personhood in the aftermath.
I think of other grown survivors of
abuse who heal themselves and then
choose to parent their children better.
Those are my people on Mother’s
Day.
My father is nicer and more ap-
proachable than my mother. He is
the one that I miss more now that I
don’t speak with my parents. He has
the self-awareness to be ashamed for
what he did by sexually abusing two
of his daughters. He is slightly emo-
tionally available. But he continues
to stay tangled up with my mother
in a codependent mess of mental
illness. As the survivor of the spec-
tacular web of lies and secrecy they
built, I am still far too triggered by
talking to them to maintain any kind
of relationship with them.
On Father’s Day I contemplate
whether to call my dad. He’s doing
well in many ways, faithfully attend-
ing his group therapy and church
every Sunday. But he defends my
mother’s behavior and continued
abuse. I usually don’t call. I think
of all the other survivors of physi-
cal and sexual abuse. I think of how
Father’s Day must be for them. I like
to think that my thoughts waft into
the ether and offer solidarity.
Someday, I will be ready to sit face-
to-face with my parents and declare
the truth. I will have my script, I will
tell them what happened and how
hurt I have been, I will tell them
what kind of relationship I want
from now on. I will stay calm, and
I won’t feel threatened. The trauma
of abuse will be in the past. During
the past year I have been laying the
groundwork for such a culmination.
I will be ready someday to get in my
car, drive to California, and bring my
life full circle. I will not be a si-
lenced woman anymore. I will speak
my truth, own it, and allow them to
be what they are. And that’s okay. m
Undercurrent by Leslie Graff
Sisters Speak gives our readers a forum to present their own ideas about a topic of interest to Mormon
women. The topic posted for the next issue can be found at the end of this column on page 15. We look forward
to hearing and publishing your own thoughtful response soon!
Our Sisters Speak question comes from Caroline Kline of Irvine, California:
Mother’s Day is a difficult day at church for many Mormon women. | have mixed feelings about it. On the one
hand, I think it’s refreshing to listen to talks and lessons that focus on women. On the other hand, heroic accounts
of maternal selflessness, the essentialization of women, and the exclusion (or awkward inclusion) of women who
are not mothers can be troubling.
If you could give advice to your bishop, what Mother’s Day gifts from the bishopric would you suggest
for the women? What would you tell him you’d like to hear in Mother’s Day talks? What experiences have
you had with the celebration of Mother’s Day in church?
Whitney Mollenhauer of Dixon, Cali-
fornia comments:
I’m not gonna lie. I like getting a
piece of chocolate at the end of sacra-
ment meeting, even though I’m not a
mother (mostly because I get hungry at
church, and I love chocolate).
But I don’t like the way that saying
every woman is a mother trivializes the
hard work and sacrifices of the women
who actually are engaging in childrear-
ing. I don’t like the way that saying every
woman is a mother trivializes any other
valid and important contributions (non-
mother) women make to the church, to
their wards/branches, to their communi-
ties, to their families and friends, and to
their fields of employment. I don’t like
my whole self being equated with my
reproductive organs.
Jessica Steed of Mesa, Arizona writes:
In our ward, the bishopric arranges for >
all of the women’s callings to be covered -
by the men for Mother’s Day. All of the You Walk by the River by Ann Marie Whittaker, Salt Lake City, Utah
women congregate in the cultural hall for
appetizers and chatting. The third hour is Allyson Tarr of Nibley, Utah writes:
a program prepared by the bishopric and I don’t think we should be doing this at church. There’s nothing
youth in the ward. They perform musi- wrong with the bishop getting up and wishing people a Happy Moth-
cal numbers, read poetry, and share other er’s Day, but that’s it. No talks about it, nor do I think we should get
talents. It’s a lovely event that includes gifts. Give the money to the Young Women’s program to help equal-
all the women in the ward. I look forward ize the spending between the Young Women’s and the Young Men’s
to it every year. programs. Or use it for humanitarian or service efforts.
Amelia Parkin of Salt Lake City, Utah shares this: Sherrie Gavin of Australia suggests:
In my last ward, our Relief Society president turned the I say nix the holiday at church. Mother’s Day is
Relief Society meeting that day into an hour-long tea party. not an international holiday. While national holi-
We’d meet on the lawn and have delicious food and most of days aren’t necessarily bad things to incorporate
the women wore hats. The president called it something like into church, this incorporation disregards the at-
“Divine Sisterhood Day.” She wanted it to be about celebrat- tempts of the Church to define itself as an interna-
ing women as women and sisters, not just about mothers. She tional church.
was aware that Mother’s Day was a hard day for many wom- With that in mind, why not have the Church
en. There was still a lot of schlock and plenty of offensive embrace International Women’s Day on March 8?
gender stereotyping, but both years I attended, there was also That way, one talk can be aimed at mothers, and
talk about our Heavenly Mother, which was wonderful. And the other two talks can be focused on women—
it was a forum in which, when other women talked about the nurturing, healing, leading women, and their
stereotypically feminine attributes of our Heavenly Mother, impact on men, other women, and the world for
I could speak up and add more stereotypically masculine at- good. That would be so much better on so many
tributes, claiming strength and courage for our Goddess. The levels—for the church as an international organiza-
fact that we spoke openly of our Goddess, even if we referred — tion as well as for all Mormon women, regardless
to her as “Heavenly Mother,” compensated for some of the of maternal status/age/marital category.
more unpleasantly stifling aspects of the day. o
P. Anderson of Scottsdale,
Arizona writes:
I’ve always longed for them to
pass out nice pens for Mother’s
Day. Who couldn’t use a nice pen?
7 I’ve also thought that Mother’s
Day is best when talks encourage
people to focus on respect for their
mothers (everyone has one, even if
they don’t know her), rather than
on being a mother. And how can
you best show respect for your
mother? By doing her proud and
being a good person. And that even
fits in with the pen idea—give a
pen to everyone and encourage
them to use it to write a letter to or
about their moms. oO
_
~
Bright Be Her Branches by Ann Marie Whittaker
Anonymous shares her experience with sisterhood on Mother’ Day:
At one time, I was in a position where I was providing transportation to a sister and her family to church on Sun-
days. After I had failed—again—at in vitro fertilization, she offered not to attend on Mother’s Day, thinking it would
be difficult for me. As she was my friend, I wanted to take her and her family to church so that they could partici-
pate in the program. She went into the chapel before me and refused the flower they offered to her, so I wouldn’t be
the only one who refused a flower. I knew she did it for me. Mid-program, I started having violent cramping from
the failed IVF, so I excused myself quickly and quietly in a manner that I thought no one would notice. Ironically, I
went to the empty nursing mothers’ room because it had a thermostat and I could lie on my back with feet elevated
and turn the heat up to relax my abdomen muscles and hopefully not vomit. She followed me a few minutes later
and insisted we all go home as soon as possible. She insisted on going to McDonald’s since the salt in the food was
balm for my nausea. She then offered to carry a baby for me as a surrogate. That Mother’s Day was about sisterhood.
Beloved sisterhood. oO
Margaret Peterson of Amherst, New York comments:
My favorite Mother’s Day at church was when the
Elders’ Quorum passed out lovely bookmarks and made a
donation to the local women’s shelter in the name of the
Relief Society. Sadly, several women complained that they
wanted more than a cheap bookmark, so the practice only
lasted that one year. My second favorite treat was a little
bowl of berries and good chocolates. Whatever the token,
please, please, put it on a table in the lobby or the cultural
hall to be taken or not, as each woman wishes. There is
simply no good way to pass out the gifts without causing
hurt and pain.
Trudy Rushforth of Freemont, California writes:
As for a gift, I love the idea of a donation to a local
women’s shelter. I usually skip church on Mother’s Day.
That way, I don’t rain on the parade of people it’s intended
to honor, and I don’t have to have an honor I didn’t earn
foisted upon me merely by virtue of having a second x-
chromosome.
Foisting Mother’s Day honor on non-mothers cheapens
the sacrifices of mothers by reducing motherhood to simply
being female, and it cheapens the sacrifices of non-mothers
by implying that everything we’ve done with our lives is
useless because we haven’t managed to reproduce.
Diversion by Ann Marie Whittaker
Kimberlee Staking of Fairfield, California hopes for a more inclusive celebration of women on Mother's Day:
Mother’s Day at its finest is (or should be) about something much greater than any individual’s experience of
mothering or motherhood. It is about nurturing. When social constructs prevent us from being able to celebrate our
varied experiences as nurturers, they need to be questioned and deconstructed as the harmful, woman-punishing
archetypes they are, detrimental to women’s abilities to productively self-determine their own futures. Mother’s
Day should be a celebration of the diverse ways in which all women nurture one another and the rising generation.
As women, we have both the responsibility and the privilege of helping one another do so by patiently hearing one
another’s stories with empathy and charity. Thus, we help each another to see beyond our own sorrows and find the
ways in which our experiences of nurturing and being nurtured have contributed to our joys.
The next Sisters Speak: Recommendations for Great Books
I’m always on the lookout for wonderful books that expand my mind, take me into a completely different
worldview, or challenge my preconceptions. I’m also on the lookout for books that are just great page-turners.
One of my favorite finds of the last few years was a book called The High Flyer by Susan Howatch. It’s a psy-
chological thriller about a newly married lawyer and her husband who has secrets from his past. It also revolves
around a charismatic Anglican priest who helps this woman deal with questions of evil, redemption, and God as
her life breaks down around her. To have the Christian message explained in such fresh psychological and theo-
logical language gave me a new and absolutely compelling framework through which to look at religion.
What books have impacted you and your understanding of the world? What books have you just plain
loved because they were so much fun? Why did they leave such an impression on you?
Please send your Sisters Speak responses to carolinekline@exponentil.org m
by Lesli Smith
Berkeley, California
My aptitude test in high school
said I was creative and liked to work
with people. I did not, however,
score as well in the think logically/
analyze correctly section. As it
turns out, I’ve been a golf-course
attendant, house cleaner, teacher,
vegetable garden hoer, rock picker,
home-health nurse, and even a dental
assistant for a day. Mother was not
on the list of job choices on the
aptitude test, and nobody mentioned
that my demeanor, while pleasant,
could be disastrous if I was in charge
of other people’s lives.
Every day I am faced with a list
of issues I am supposed to be do-
ing something about. Should Ellie
take karate because her friend does?
Should both kids be taking music
lessons? How old is too old to wet
the bed? Should I help with Ad-
dison’s class party or just pretend I
didn’t see the email?
My tale concerns Berkeley Arts
Magnet Elementary School. Date:
January 29. Event: Opposite Day.
Our after-school routine is pretty
simple. I walk in the house, kick my
shoes off, and the kids attempt to
hang up their bags, then head for the
fridge. After snack and quiet time
(defined as any activity that doesn’t
require parents and doesn’t do harm
to the house or another person),
I get the gumption to go through
backpacks. I toss out the junk, read
the newsletters, and hang up the
artwork. This day, both kids have
pink flyers announcing an upcom-
ing spirit-building activity. I put one
flyer on the fridge and call the kids
in for today’s homework.
Mom: It sounds like your school is
having an Opposite Day.
Ellie: I don’t want to do it.
Addison: Ellie, this is going to be so
cool. Remember Crazy-Hair day?
Ellie: Yeah, that was fun, but Justin
said he is going to wear his pants
backward, and I don’t want to wear
my pants backward.
Addison: No, Ellie, you can do tons
of things—dress like a boy, socks on
your head, anything.
Ellie: What are you going to do?
(Addison leaves the room and comes
back minutes later with his under-
wear over his clothes.)
Mom (not computing her son is seri-
ous): That is definitely opposite of
your usual dress.
Addison: It is going to be perfect.
Mom (realizing that her son is seri-
ously considering this outfit): I sort
of don’t think that is a good idea.
This is exactly the sort of thing I do
not want to decide. I have no idea
what is appropriate. I am pretty sure
that he is the only student who has
interpreted Opposite Day in this way.
My other problem is that he is deter-
mined (like didn’t-eat-candy-for-a—
year-to-prove-he-could determined).
I am his mom, and he really wants to
do it, and he is sure it is the perfect
thing to do.
But then again, I am his mom,
and I know that this could be a sec-
ond-grade disaster. He had a rough
first grade, and now just when he is
finding his place, he wants to wear
his underwear for everyone to see.
What-ifs start flowing through my
head. What if everyone laughs?
What if he is cited for public lewd-
ness? (Not all that likely in Berkeley,
but still a possibility.) What if he is
called Underwear Boy for the rest
of his time at school? What if, by
letting him do this, I ruin his chance
of just being a regular kid, because I
didn’t have the guts to tell him it was
a bad idea?
So I tell him it is a bad idea.
Actually, I say it is a great idea—be-
cause I believe in being positive—
but not a good idea for school. I give
alternatives: pants backward, shirt
backward, dress like a girl, etc. He
listens, almost, and he says flat out
that I am wrong. He isn’t worried
about it. This is, after all, Opposite
Day, and he will be doing the oppo-
site of what he usually does.
I try not to make every decision
for him. I want to respect him as an
individual and let him take risks.
Should I let him? Maybe it isn’t that
big of a deal. Maybe lots of kids will
be doing it. Maybe he will change
his mind in the morning.
January 29, 9:05 AM — I drop the
kids off. Addison marches proudly
through the front gates as if he had
the world by the tail. I hope to see
the same face when I pick him up
this afternoon. I comfort myself that
I did eventually talk him into also
wearing undies underneath and con-
vinced him that boxers were better in
this case than briefs.
2:25 P.M.: I head to the kinder-
garten yard to pick up my daughter.
Ellie’s teacher is waiting with a
smile.
“Addison was really rockin’ his
outfit today.”
“Yes, he was pretty excited about
it.”
“We noticed.”
Three of Ellie’s classmates pro-
claim they saw Addison’s underwear.
I’m not sure what to say, so I just
mumble, “Have a good weekend,”
and we hightail it out of there. I am
convinced that this was exactly the
worst idea I have ever let pass.
We make our way to the big yard
where the rest of the school is re-
leased. I try to act busy with the baby
and not talk to any other parents.
Lines of students make their way on
the asphalt. A few wear shirts that
are inside out or backward, and some
have socks on their arms. None wear
underwear outside of clothing.
Bungalow B-2’s door swings open
and out he bounds. Addison is smil-
ing. He can’t wait to tell me that his
teacher said he was the only one in
the whole school to have that idea.
All of the teachers talked to him,
even ones he didn’t know. He is
practically a Berkeley Arts celebrity.
He has conquered Opposite Day.
And while I highly doubt anyone
will imitate his costume next year,
no one has really given him a hard
time.
Maybe logic and analytical
prowess are overrated. Maybe I am
a great mom. We walk home, and I
give the kids an extra-long quiet time
to celebrate.
Vol. 30, No. 4
AWAKENINGS
Swinging
by Shelah Miner
Salt Lake City, Utah
With the three older kids out
front and the door locked tightly
behind them, I have just enough time
for one big sigh before I turn my
attention to Maren. I scoop up our
coats, backpacks, and lunchboxes,
and announce in a cheerful voice,
“Tt’s time for school.” She’s quiet as
I button her into the coat and take
her hand, and we walk under a gray
sky to the minivan. I’m halfway
down the block before she pipes up
from the back seat:
“I’m too scared to go to school.”
I try reasoning with her: “You
always have so much fun there.”
“I’m too scared to go to school.”
I try distraction: “Look at the
pretty leaves on that tree, Maren.”
“I’m too scared to go to school.”
I try a bribe: “I'll get you a
Happy Meal for dinner if you don’t
cry when I drop you off.”
“I’m still too scared to go to
school.”
Luckily, the drive to Maren’s
school is so quick that she hasn’t
worked her way up to full-fledged
crying by the time we pull into the
parking lot. I unbuckle her from the
booster seat, take her into my left
arm, and gather up her pink back-
pack in my right. My guilt weighs
more than she does, even with the
backpack.
They Did All Eat by Amanda Demos Larsen, Brooklyn, New York
Page 17
When I open the door to the
school, the heavy smell of Clorox
wipes, Diaper Genie, and Sloppy
Joes hits us. Maren sniffles as she
hangs up her backpack, then clings
to my legs as we look for her teacher.
Miss Needra, a sixtyish Sri Lankan
woman, holds out her hand, “Let’s
go look for a book, Maren.”
I walk toward the door. My baby
turns to watch me go as tears fill her
eyes. I’m free. But my eyes are full
too.
My older kids also started pre-
school when they were three. The
difference is that they went for two
hours at a time, which gave me
almost enough time to nurse the
baby and make a quick run to Target
with one less child to contend with.
If they threw a huge fit about school,
which rarely happened, I’d keep
them home with me. Maren is in
preschool for 23 hours a week, in-
cluding two seven-hour days; if she’s
having a rough time, she gets pushed
through the classroom door anyway.
And it’s all my fault. When I ap-
plied to graduate school last year, I
did it on a whim. My friend Dee was
applying for BYU’s MFA program,
and she convinced me to do it too. I
reluctantly assented. “I won’t get in
anyway,” I told myself, “But at least
this is a step in the direction of what
I want to do in a few years.”
I was flying home from Hawaii
on the last day of February when I
got a text from Dee. “Wait-listed,” it
said.
There was an envelope waiting
for me too.
There have been times in my life
when I know I should have prayed
for direction, but I wanted what I
wanted more than I wanted inspi-
ration. It seemed like everyone I
knew at BYU had some story about
praying to know if they should marry
their boyfriend/girlfriend and a feel-
ing of peace/dread/joy/confusion
washed over them and they knew
what to do. When Eddie came home
from his mission I knew two things:
I loved him, and I’d been twiddling
my thumbs for the last two years
waiting to marry him. I didn’t want
anyone, even God, telling me not to.
So I didn’t ask. Fourteen years later,
we're happy. Marrying Eddie was a
good decision, but sometimes I won-
der if having a confirmation from the
Spirit would provide reassurance.
I didn’t ask when the acceptance
letter came in the mail either. All I
knew was that I was going back to
school, and if other people in my
family had to sacrifice, then so be
it. Eddie’s work schedule wouldn’t
allow him to pitch in reliably, but if
I stayed up later at night, woke up
earlier in the morning, and became a
little better at multitasking, it would
all work out, wouldn’t it?
A few days later, I stood in the
unseasonably warm winter sunshine
of my back yard with the phone
cradled under one ear, talking to
my friend Michelle, while I pushed
Maren on the swings. Michelle, a
mom of six who has managed to bal-
ance successful freelance writing and
photography projects with driving
to soccer and cello lessons, told me
flat-out that I was crazy.
“There’s no way I would even
allow myself to want to go back to
school right now,” she said. “My
kids need me too much.”
“I’m going to be smart about
this.” I assured her. My arms were
tired, but every time I stopped to
give them a rest, Maren complained.
“Don’t you worry about what
will happen if you’re an hour away
and one of them gets sick? Or if you
have a class on a night when one of
the kids has a band concert?”
I had worried about all these
things, and more. But I worried more
about what would happen to me if
I didn’t at least try. Still, I gave her
the answer she wanted to hear, “I
can always quit if it’s too hard on the
family.”
I had Bryce, my first baby, when
I was twenty-five. Compared with
many of my peers from BYU, I got
a late start. I'd worked for three
years after college and completed all
of the coursework for my master’s
degree. I thought we’d waited long
enough, even though Eddie would
have gladly deferred parenthood
until Pd finished a PhD and he had
medical school behind him. I thought
I was an adult, fully formed, ready to
embrace parenthood. I was eager to
put aside school and work, to do the
right thing and stay home.
Mostly, I knew I wasn’t going to
be the same kind of mom my mother
was when I was a child. She hid out
in her bedroom, sewing or painting,
and often went out to take a walk as
soon as my dad walked through the
door. I would get on the floor and
play with my kids. I would read their
board books as many times as they
asked. I wouldn’t slave over Hungar-
ian goulash or perfect omelets filled
with bananas and sausage, then fume
when the kids wouldn’t eat them. I
would push them on the swings, I
would never pull my girls’ hair until
they cried as I made picture-perfect
French braids. Most of all, I would
never ignore my kids. My mom
always loved us, and we knew it, but
it was equally evident that she did
better with small kids and in small
doses.
I did read, and play on the floor,
and build wooden puzzles until I
could do them blindfolded in my
sleep. My kids have grown up on
kid-friendly meals of quesadillas,
chicken nuggets, and almost no
vegetables. My girls’ hair is short
and usually combed. For most of a
decade, I couldn’t have
a conversation with my
friends longer than a few
sentences without say-
ing, “Hold on just a sec,
needs some-
thing.” Most of the time,
I loved what I was doing.
The competitive side of
me, the side that spurred
me on to graduate as my
class salutatorian and
landed me a presidential
scholarship, had a hard
time overcoming the urge
to live through my kids’
developmental milestones,
but I found that obsessive-
ly running/baking/mommy
blogging/decorating my
houses helped. I tried to eke out a
few minutes each day for myself,
and if I was overly competitive in
trying to lower my half-marathon
time, at least I was only competing
with other women in my age bracket.
Then I had Maren, my last child.
I’d watched Bryce, Annie, and Isaac
grow, knowing I couldn’t loosen my
grip on the iron rod of motherhood
for even one second; fearful that I
might never find my way again in
the mists of darkness, lethargy, bore-
dom, or ambition. But with Maren,
I finally exhaled and allowed myself
to relax, seeing rays of light beck-
oning from the end of the tunnel. I
let her watch cartoons until she had
her fill; we sat on the front porch in
the long afternoons, me reading in a
chair while she climbed on my legs
and watched for her brothers and
sister to come home from school;
I indulged her incessant thirst for
grape juice and swinging. I started to
look towards a future where I didn’t
have small children and I worried
about what my place in that future
would be when the kids didn’t need
me every day. I worried that I would
Afraid to Look by Amanda Demos Larsen
start to cut my ties before they cut
theirs.
I knew I didn’t want to end up
like my mother, who floundered
for half a decade after my youngest
sister went to college. Her career as a
stay-at-home mom was over, and she
didn’t know how to feel needed. I
may have ended up with the opposite
problem. As the semester progressed,
I feel too needed—by my homework,
my responsibilities, and my kids. My
schoolwork has even taken over my
sacred Sunday mornings. Maren just
came up to my bedroom, begging for
a drink and some mediation with the
older kids, who have taken over the
television. Mediation is about all I’m
good for these days—I banish the
bigger ones to the basement, turn the
channel back to Nick Jr., and return
to the bedroom.
The other kids have adapted
to our routine pretty well. They’re
in school all day and they like our
babysitters well enough. When I
come home from school at nine
o’clock, they shove papers in my
direction for signature
and have me quiz them on
their spelling words. They
don’t miss me too much.
But Maren, who relies on
me for her nightie/tooth-
brush/blankie/book/prayer/
pink nightlight/doorknob-
touching-the-wall routine
each evening, always finds
her way into my bed on the
nights when I’m not home
to tuck her in. I cuddle her
just long enough to get
her back to sleep, and then
scoot over to the edge to
sleep in my own space.
She balks at going to
school the next morning.
A few days ago, a
night class ended unexpect-
edly early. I parked my car and
walked up the driveway to the back
yard, where the boys jumped in twilit
leaf piles and Annie sat with our
teenage babysitter, sharing between
them earbuds from the yellow iPod.
Maren was on the swings. I was sure
that she’d see me and ask for a push.
Then I noticed she was airborne, her
legs moving back and forth.
“Look at what Miss Needra
taught me,” her voice sang out across
the yard.
For just a second, my stomach
lurched; I should be the one teach-
ing her how to swing. But maybe
it’s not such a bad thing that I’ve
relinquished some control over her
life. Maren doesn’t need me to push
her—someday, she might even stop
crying when I drop her off at pre-
school. But I hope that even if I’m
not home with her like I was for
Bryce, Annie, and Isaac, the steady
stream of Mommy-love is something
she wants only from me, her selfish,
imperfect, striving mother. m
No Apologies or Apologetics: A New Sunday School
by Elizabeth Hammond
Cambridge, Massachusetts
As a teenage convert I was
overwhelmed by the task of try-
ing to “catch up” to my LDS peers
in scriptural knowledge. I became
enthusiastic to learn all I could and
eventually ended up with a degree in
Near Eastern Studies. Along the way,
I had opportunities to visit Jerusalem
and study scripture at both BYU and
Cornell. These universities’ differ-
ent approaches to scripture study
exposed me to a diverse range of
perspectives. I found that my class-
es—secular and religious—were
supremely spiritual and enlightening.
However, I started to dread Sunday
School, which, I felt, did little to
increase my scriptural under-
standing.
In seeking the source of my
growing frustration with
my Sunday School expe-
rience, I realized these
feelings stemmed from a
failure in Sunday classes
to dig into the scriptures.
Most of our class time
was spent discussing
broad religious themes
barely related to the text,
and drawing modern conclu-
sions which rarely reflected an-
cient authors’ intent. I was hungry
for teachers to share outside informa-
tion that would provide context and
bring these stories to life.
Some Mormons often assert that
incorporating material from outside
the manual is pridefully “intellec-
tual” rather than humbly “spiritual.”
Such claims were completely con-
trary to my own spiritual experi-
ences. I found that literary analysis,
as well as deeper understanding
of history and culture, contribute
significantly to scriptural under-
standing, and that oversimplifying
the scriptures often cheapens their
spiritual value.
The question of using outside
material in Sunday School should
not be seen as a choice between
“spiritual” and “intellectual.” Rather,
the tension lies between two differ-
ing devotional approaches to scrip-
ture. To me, the issue is whether it is
JOHN LY. O42
Nineteenth century American folk art
better to teach Sunday School as a
class in which context is given for
scripture and its interpretive history
(J call this a Contextual Devotion
approach), or as a call-and-response
exercise void of historical context
and meaning (Noncontextual Devo-
tion approach).
In light of the manifest impor-
tance of scriptural knowledge, I sug-
gest that a Noncontextual Devotion
approach actually limits the ability
of our membership to learn scripture.
This approach can end up pridefully
“reading into” the scriptures what
we already think is there. In literary
criticism terms, this “reading into”
a text—having preconceived ideas
and using a text to uphold them,
or using a text to say something it
was never meant to say—is called
eisegesis. It is as if we are telling
Isaiah what he means, instead
of listening to what he says.
We risk putting words in
the prophets’ mouths when
we teach scripture for
thematic convenience.
The alternative to this is
trying to “dig out” mean-
ing from the writ itself.
Exegesis plumbs the text
for original meaning and
intent. Does exegesis have
limits? Of course it does, as
one would expect. We can-
not fully recreate the Biblical
world or the original intent of the
writers, but we should try. We should
employ every tool at our disposal,
after which the Spirit takes over.
Noncontextual Devotion and
Contextual Devotion as Teaching
Approaches
A class employing a Noncon-
textual Devotion approach might
proceed as follows: the teacher
asks a question that is not intended
to extract knowledge but to elicit
a specific response. Typically, it is
a question almost everyone in the
room can answer and has probably
heard before. Answers are offered by
students with a voice inflection that
makes the answer sound obvious.
People usually nod or expand on the
answer with a personal experience
that illustrates the theme. People talk
about their feelings. The class pat-
tern is that the teacher asks, students
answer, and everything that is said
reinforces what we all have heard
before. It is possible to have spiritual
experiences in this kind of context,
especially in sacrament or testimony
meetings. It is not, however, the only
way to feel the Spirit or (especially)
to learn scripture.
The Contextual Devotion model
assumes that Sunday School is for
learning the scriptures. We try to fig-
ure out what they actually say. Other
forms of worship—such as “learning
our religion,” having emotional dia-
logues, and “applying the gospel”—
happen in other church venues.
In the Contextual Devotion mod-
el, one can apply many disciplines,
including history, languages, politi-
cal science, and economics. Context
provides a framework in which we
may see scripture more clearly, much
as we better understand Doctrine and
Covenants because of the headings
at the beginning of each section.
To illustrate the benefits and limi-
tations of each method, consider the
story of the Good Samaritan. In the
conventional call-and-response class,
we might read a few passages from
Christ’s parable of the Good Samari-
tan, link them to a theme (generosity,
charity), reinforce the theme with a
few general authority quotes (“visit
the sick and needy”), and share an
experience about someone helping
us when we needed it. We end by
testifying that we feel happy to be
part of a group of people who take
care of each other. Warm fuzzies
abound.
A Contextual Devotion lesson
would look at the same story and
consider how the Jews and Samari-
tans each saw the other group as a
fallen people and themselves as the
true covenant people. By teaching
the background that a Levite is part
of the hereditary priesthood line and
therefore high in the Jewish religious
echelon, we would have the context
to better understand that his com-
munity would view him as ritually
unclean if he touched the person
broken on the roadside. We would
understand that a temple priest per-
forming a simple and needed act of
service would be forced to undergo
extensive purification to practice in
the temple again, thus incurring a
huge personal cost.
This parable delineates that the
most unrighteous class from the
ancient Jew’s perspective a Samari-
tan better fulfills God’s purposes by
serving the person in need than does
the high priest who practices in the
temple. The contrast is jarring. If we
know that Christ’s audience greatly
esteemed their priests and had great
pride in their Levite heritage (much
as we esteem our church leaders and
are proud of our pioneer heritage) the
story is suddenly personal in a more
penetrating way. We call ourselves
righteous? Did we pass by anyone in
need on the way to church? Did we
soil our garments in reaching out to
help the impoverished, the beaten,
the dirty, in order to serve our God?
It is important to know that Christ
gave the parable in answer to a
question,“Who is my neighbor?” but
that it ultimately answers a preced-
ing question: “How can I inherit
eternal life?” The original intent
of this story is arguably not about
generosity, but is a call to awaken,
and a warning against pride given
specifically to a covenant people.
Suddenly we’re not thinking we’re
the good Samaritan. Instead we won-
der if we are the priest or the Levite,
and we recognize that as a covenant
people we can easily fall from grace
if we misunderstand God’s priori-
ties in our efforts to worship Him.
With such historical, cultural, and
literary context, we hear the parable
more closely to the way that origi-
nal listeners did—as a rebuke from
the God we worship. We may even
respond as they did, with a little bit
of miffed pride, shame, sadness, and
a yearning for the Savior not to pass
us by when we lie broken on the
side of the road. With context we are
empowered to liken the scriptures to
ourselves because we can become
better attuned to that ancient audi-
ence by sharing their perspective.
Contextual Devotion confounds
our assumptions, whereas Noncon-
textual Devotion can leave us feeling
comfortable and affirmed. Contex-
tual Devotion requires grappling,
honesty, and introspection. Non-
contextual Devotion can make one
feel uplifted, but also complacent.
Which approach changes people’s
lives for the better? While I cannot
assert that the “struggle” approach
always trumps the “uplift” approach,
I can affirm that it is a valid path to
exploring spirituality and that it is
likely to result in a more in-depth
knowledge of the scriptures. Our
Church history clearly demonstrates
that we progress more as a people
when we ask questions with heartfelt
intent. Perhaps Sunday School isn’t
supposed to give us answers, but
rather to offer questions so we can
pray about answers. Perhaps Sunday
School doesn’t need to wrap things
up in neat little packages or pat us on
the back, but instead invite us to gain
greater knowledge and spirituality
through our own striving.
Contextual Devotion, I as-
sert, leads to more robust scripture
mastery and spiritual growth. Just as
importantly, I believe it also avoids
a commonly recurring problem in
LDS practice of employing scrip-
tures primarily to bolster thematic
affirmations of the modern Mormon
worldview. One of the risks of mod-
ern revelation is a body of saints less
engaged with scripture—after all,
one could argue that these sometimes
opaque and complicated scriptures
lack the accessibility and ease of lis-
tening to a modern prophet. In addi-
tion, with a belief that we are living
in the last dispensation of time, it can
be easy to think we are also the pin-
nacle of God’s efforts on the earth.
Contextual Devotion, by contrast,
respects the ancient as well as the
modern take on scriptures. Adam and
Eve’s altar, the Tabernacle, Solomon,
even the churches of Paul—these
were “old versions” of our “fuller”
faith tradition. The scriptures do
more than just corroborate the new.
It takes humility to listen to a poor
man who scratched on vellum 2000
years ago and seriously believe he is
a spiritual mentor who can teach us
something about the gospel we don’t
already know.
Why Study Scripture?
People keep records for a reason.
They not only validate us, they save
us from ourselves. It would be easier
to discuss religion without context
and talk only about things as we see
them, convinced we are right. But
records show us the fallacies and the
tragedies that people inflict on each
other when they have a worldview
that they think applies to everyone.
Conference talks come and go, a few
by Aimee Hickman, Baltimore, Maryland
quotes survive, but most are forgot-
ten a few decades later. On the other
hand, God goes to a lot of trouble to
ensure that scriptures survive over
millennia, and He commands that we
study them.
I see the “true church” as alive,
not stagnant. We should not cry,
“a bible, a bible, we have a bible,”
closing ourselves off from further
knowledge by claiming we already
have it all. The people of the Abra-
hamic covenant were the ancient
“true church.” The animal-sacrificing
ancient Israelites were the “true
church” of that age. The Pauline
church was “true.” The church of
the Restoration is “true.” Each truth
built on the other, and they were all
“true,” but none was the end point of
Truth. The status quo is not superior
to the reality of what is to come.
We don’t need a comfortable,
oversimplifying form of Sunday
School to give us all the answers and
digest the gospel for us. Rather, we
need to come to the banquet, banter
with our friends about the meal, and
swallow the bitter herbs along with
the cream. We need members who
can question the Lord about what
they do not understand and be stron-
ger as a result. We are but a pinprick
on the great arc of spiritual truth.
When a critical mass of members
need guidance on an unexplained
point of truth, when enough people
ask for answers, we eventually get
a response from on high. We need
not shy away from seeking greater
understanding. . . and it all can start
with the questions—not necessar-
ily the answers—we find in Sunday
School.
by Margaret Olsen Hemming
Baltimore, Maryland
On a warm spring day in Michi-
gan, the first day in many months I
could walk barefoot out on the deck,
my mother hauled the wooden dining
room chairs outside and scrubbed
them down. With five children of her
own and a passel of kids from her
in-home day care center, my mother
had quite a job before her. Stickiness
and grease had accumulated on the
chairs over the winter. With a bucket
of soapy water she started scrubbing.
At one point, she stopped, looked me
straight in the eyes, and said, “The
reason that you get an education is
so that you will never have to be
alone. There will always be someone
in your head, ongoing conversations,
that you can take part in, even when
you’re scrubbing chairs.”
Those words stuck in my brain,
possibly because I had never before
considered the reason for going to
school. In my family, education was
assumed, and had been for genera-
tions in my mixed-politics, mixed-
religion family. In fact, we probably
take the value of education to an
extreme. When my family played
the game of Life for family home
evening, it was not an option to
start a career before going to col-
lege, even though the kids all knew
that strategically, it might be better
to get a financial head-start by go-
ing straight into a career. My father
simply changed the rules of the game
so that we all had to start out with
college. My parents accumulated
degrees like over-eager Boy Scouts
achieved merit badges. And in my
family, education was never about
the money (my father is an anthro-
pologist/librarian, and my mother is
a social worker).
So when I started looking at
feminist issues as a young adult, I
was surprised that getting an educa-
tion was so often stressed as impor-
tant for financial independence. I had
not been raised with the idea that an
education resulted in higher pur-
chasing power. The value of educa-
tion, to me, was that a person could
take part in the conversations of the
world—the ones that began with
philosophers thousands of years ago
and have continued with thought-
ful people all over the world ever
since. An education allows a woman
to have something just as important
as financial independence—mental
independence. She can think her own
thoughts, disagree with others, and
have confidence in her own capabil-
ity to read and process information
and arguments.
The high value placed on educa-
tion in my family did not begin with
my parents. My great-grandmother,
Mary Emma Patton, was born
in 1898 on a farm in Oklahoma.
Though Mary Emma’s older brothers
were able to attend the University of
Oklahoma in Norman, when Mary
Emma and her sister Patti came of
age, money was tight on the farm,
and it was not considered appropriate
for two young women to live alone
far from their family. My great-great
grandparents, Jeremiah and Mary
Kinkade Patton valued the education
of their daughters so much that they
decided to sell their farm and move
to Norman so that their daughters
could attend college.
It was a major sacrifice and not
a sound investment at a time when
land was precious and women’s
minds were undervalued. Mary
Emma went on to teach math at a
high school and raise five children;
Patti never married and became a
university librarian. Both women
benefited financially from their
education (and Patti could be en-
tirely independent because of it),
but that was never the point of the
story when I heard it. The lesson
my parents emphasized was that the
development of Mary Emma’s and
Patti’s minds gave them the gift of
freedom and independence, gave
them the mental conversations that
would mean they never had to be
lonely, even if they were alone.
C.S. Lewis said, ““We read
to know that we are not alone.”
Reading allows us to share in the
experiences and emotions of oth-
ers. We learn that our thoughts are
not wholly our own but built on a
worldwide community of thinkers,
artists, and scholars who have gone
before. I think we also read so that
we can be alone without fear. With
a book in my hand and skills gained
from an education, my mind is not
dependent on anyone else. I always
have conversations to join and issues
to dig into.
My education was in government
and international conflict resolution.
Now at home with my toddler, I soak
up the news eagerly and fit it into the
theories and frameworks I learned
in school. I had to laugh when my
daughter recently cooked me a
plastic meal from her play kitchen,
sat down next to me, and opened a
nearby copy of The New York Times.
She has already picked up my habits.
Recently my thoughts have been
filled with the unfolding
events in Egypt. While I
sing “Eensy Weensy Spi-
der,” my mind is on the
NPR news story in the
background, following the
developments of the day.
While I am cleaning, I
review various theories that
would explain the eruption
of nonviolent action from
long-simmering unrest in
Egypt. John Burton and his
discussions on how un-
met human needs relate to
violence, Gene Sharp and
his historical examples of
nonviolent movements, and
Kevin Avruch and his pro-
posals of how culture might
affect ideas of human rights
in the new Egyptian constitu-
tion—all these float through
my head, adding their contri-
butions to my mental dialogue. No
words are spoken aloud, but these
scholars are dear friends of mine
and fill the empty room with good
conversation.
Just as important to me have been
the classes that were outside my
field. My horticulture class has been
invaluable as I review the cellular
process of sexual reproduction in
a flowering plant while I weed my
garden. My art history class gave
me entirely fresh conversations
about symbolism in images of the
Madonna that I continue to enjoy
while I fold laundry. These ideas,
gained from fulfilling the require-
ments of my university, have been an
unexpected saving grace for me ina
demanding time of parenting.
My great-grandmother, Kathryn
Martin, understood the freedom that
comes from having confidence when
picking up a book. At the end of a
poem she wrote about learning to
read, she said:
Writer s Inspiration by Stephanie Northrup
Carbondale, Colorado
I was never a beggar again,
Running to lean on the knees
Of my three older brothers
Or on my father, or even on you,
Begging to hear
The mysteries between covers.
The words came to my eyes
Like opening leaves,
The alphabet danced in designs,
The doors and windows opened
On endless new worlds,
While the dolls looked on,
Staring and dumb, patient because
They were not alive.
I thrill at those words, the con-
nection they bring me to a woman
who was my namesake. Kathryn
Martin knew that an incredible
moment of liberation had occurred
when literacy eliminated her depen-
dency on others. As a single mother
and teacher, she understood that
while her education made financial
independence possible, her mental
independence made life full.
It decreased her fears and it
opened her eyes. Kathryn
passed along to her son, my
grandfather, the joy she found
in reading. In turn, he found
great personal satisfaction in
chemistry and set an example
for his daughter of the sacri-
fices one ought to make for
education. My mother, Vivian
Martin Olsen, grew up to be a
librarian, then a stay-at-home-
mom, and then a social worker.
She filled her children’s lives
with books and pushed us
toward college. Four genera-
tions, four people linked by the
legacy of education, which
gave us the skills and confi-
dence to grow into individuals
very unlike one another.
As much as my mother’s words
struck me as a child, I did not re-
ally take them to heart until I was at
home with my own child. Suddenly,
with a baby at home and a husband
working overtime as a medical
resident, I was very much alone. One
evening, while attempting to clean
up from the whirlwind of mess my
daughter had left behind her, the full
force of what my mother had said
that day hit me. The months of de-
pressing Michigan winters, constant
demands from her children, never-
ending dirt and mess in the house
must have been a heavy burden at
times. But she understood that she
had an escape, and she grabbed it
with both hands. She was grateful in
that moment that she was not lonely
in a moment of being alone. In a
minute that she had to herself, she
was not thinking about chairs or dirt
or children. She was thinking about
something higher, that her children
could not yet even understand. And
she was thankful that she could. =
Daughter’s Day
by Linda Hoffman Kimball
Evanston, Illinois
Knowing this Exponent II issue
addresses the topic of Mother’s
Day I decided to write not on being
a mother, but on my experience
having my particular mother. That
makes this more a “Daughter’s
Day” piece (which may just be a
Mother’s Day piece in disguise).
My earliest memory is of being
held on my mom’s lap in a dark
room while she sang me a lullaby.
How is that for sweet and embrac-
ing? I belonged; I was cared for; I
was safe. This was a very nice way
to start life.
Fast forward to age four when
I managed to lose one shoe while
playing. I can’t remember Mom’s
exact words, but I recall the feeling
of being yelled at. Not so sweet or
embracing. I was learning that my
mistakes affected other people and
that navigating all of those unpre-
dictable ramifications was tough.
I can see that little girl and want to
swaddle her up and welcome her to
that condition we call human. I can
also see the frazzled mom and want
to forgive her, too, for not being
able to manage one more hassle
that day. Such perspective helps me
forgive myself and learn from the
occasions when I barked at my kids
for infractions. (Once, after I loud-
ly lamented that my three-year-old
had chipped a sizeable portion of
stucco off the living room wall, my
little guy sobbed “You broke my
feelings!”’).
libidinous era of the late
1960s. A number of my friends
were “turning on, tuning in,
and dropping out.” Boys I
knew were serving in or avoid-
ing the war in Vietnam. While
the country was quaking my
parents were facing serious is-
sues of their own, physical and
mental health woes and finan-
cial challenges. They weren’t
the go-to examples for facing
these new frontiers.
It was also during these
turbulent years that I became
a Mormon, much to my moth-
er’s dismay. She once admitted:
“At least you chose the Mormons
for your adolescent rebellion. I
should be grateful you didn’t run
off and join the Hare Krishnas.”
Although my mom died in 1994
thinking I had become Mormon
because I was “overly influenced
by those young missionaries,” she
had received much Mormon com-
passionate service when my father
died in 1973. Her lessons of loving
me even when she had limited ap-
preciation of choices I made have
served me well over my own years
of mothering. When my daughter
decided as a young adult to at-
tend a church that better suited her
spiritual needs, who was I to thwart
her, given my personal history? It
wasn’t an easy adjustment for me,
but I haven’t been snarky like my
mom was toward me.
One day stands out as a particu-
larly vivid day of both mothering
would soon head out on his mis-
sion. We went to the temple togeth-
er. Following my son’s endowment,
we went immediately to a sealing
room where a good friend knelt as
proxy for my mother while my son
knelt as proxy for my dad. I laid
my hands on theirs, and through
the sealing ordinance became a
daughter for all time.
It’s a tough but valuable exer-
cise to examine the circularity of
being a mother and a daughter. As
an adult and a mother, I can empa-
thize with my mother for the times
she clearly flubbed. At the same
time I am protective of the little
girl I was who was trying to make
her way in a confusing and some-
times painful world. Forgiveness
and compassion seem to be the
skills to take to this mothering task
from both directions.
Gee, I hope I taught my kids
7 teen oe fell in the a and daughtering. My youngest son that! m
The experiences of Mormon women traveling, working and living outside the United States.
Privilege
by Sherrie L. M. Gavin
Australia
It was late when we arrived at
Mumbai International Airport after
a long day of travel from Australia.
arranged by the clinic, a man named
Mowyji met us outside customs and
showed us to a taxi. It was not dif-
ficult for him to recognize us among
the crowded passengers clamouring
for the exit; as far as I could tell, we
were the only fair-skinned couple
there. As we rode in the taxi, Mowji
explained some of the basics to us:
Do not look beggars in the eye. Do
not eat any fresh produce. There
are delicious vegetarian foods to
eat when fully cooked. When a car
blows the horn, it means that you can
cross. If they do not blow the horn,
they cannot see you. Almost every-
one speaks English, you will be fine.
Mid-May is winter in Australia,
but sweltering pre-monsoon season
in India. We smelled the aromas of
sweet fruit, hot asphalt, sour flowers,
and exotic spices. It made a bizarre
perfume that was sometimes a
luxurious scent, other times a stench.
By the time we reached the hotel, I
was ill with heat and exhaustion. We
were shown two rooms, neither of
which were anything I would choose
in Australia, but I understood this
was privileged accommodation for
India. Before he left, Mowji noted
that we would be served as soon as
we atrived at the clinic, whenever it
suited us.
Even before marriage, I knew
we could not have children in the
traditional manner. My body just
wouldn’t. While other couples
discussed honeymoon plans, we
discussed adoption strategies. Aus-
tralia is a difficult place to adopt. Its
history included the forced removal
(kidnapping) of children from
single-parent and Aboriginal homes.
In what might be described as an
overcorrection, adoption in Australia
is now a highly regulated, invasive,
and expensive nightmare. We esti-
mated it would cost us an amount
equal to four years of the average
Sydney-area household income and
seven years’ minimum waiting time
to adopt. Even then, the odds for us
to be childless were high: less than
20 adoptions were finalized in Aus-
tralia in the year we married. In other
words, the adoption rate was literally
less than one in a million.
Following an advertisement on
the Church notice board, we con-
sulted LDS family services. The
counsellor at the appointment yelled
at me. “We’re not even a licensed
agency!” He shouted, “Australia
prefers abortion to adoption! There
is nothing we can do! Those notices
are useless!” We had similar, though
less aggressive, results from adop-
Boe We oy ae le
tion agencies in each of the Austra-
lian states. Adopting from overseas
was equally disappointing. Countries
like Guatemala, Russia, and China
have adoption laws geared toward
American couples. Australia is rarely
a preferred country of placement. We
found LDS information and adop-
tion literature both sappy and biting,
making adoption sound easy...if only
we were Americans who prayed hard
enough.
Finding Australia void of options
for adoption, we decided to try our
luck in the United States through
LDS Family Services. As per their
recommendations, we made a video
of ourselves and submitted it to LDS
Family Services. The caseworker in
Utah was immediately dismissive of
our application. “I don’t think any-
body is going to want to place a baby
with foreigners,” he said, shaking his
head. “I’m not sure why you came
here.” He finally took the video and
application from us. He still has not
responded to our emails or calls.
It was apparent to us that we
needed a miracle, but we also needed
money. If we were to have a family,
we needed money for administra-
tion, travel, and medical fees and
we needed to prove that we could
provide a home for a child. My
husband was already working six
days a week, and I began a series of
part-time jobs. We lived on a self-
yt wo
imposed, extremely frugal budget.
Movies and eating out were already
off the list, but we trimmed even
further. We wore donated clothes.
We ate only marked-down food. We
asked to be released from any call-
ing that required us to donate paper,
craft materials, or food items. This
meant we were no longer involved
in Young Men’s, Young Women’s, or
Primary. I didn’t go to Enrichment
activities that required purchasing
craft materials or donating food,
even though I used to love crafts. I
wanted a child a million times more
than I wanted a wall hanging or a
conversation about wheat grinding.
Serving at church became dif-
ficult. Even as a Sunday School
teacher, parents seemed confused at
my refusal to donate food, materials,
or money to enhance the lesson. I
perceived that without the expense of
parenthood, they thought we should
give all of our time and money to
other people in the church who were
more deserving because they had
children. They failed to understand
that we were desperately saving
money for our own family. Like-
wise, when I missed or was late for
meetings, they were perplexed that I
wasn’t more determined to do what
they thought was important
I saw this as a double standard.
People with children are able to use
their children as an excuse for being
ill-prepared or missing meetings. In
providing for their children, they are
doing what they are instructed to do.
I understand and support that. But,
if I was poorly prepared or missed a
church meeting to work late or be-
cause I was in the middle of negoti-
ating an emotional adoption contract,
I was labelled as selfish.
Mother’s Day was especially
difficult. The typical Mother’s Day
meeting in my Australian ward
started with the Relief Society
presidency dispensing lapel flow-
ers to all women as they entered the
chapel for sacrament meeting. The
Mother’s Day program consisted of a
Primary song and blubbering female
speakers who waxed on about bear-
ing children and the ensuing joys of
motherhood. At least one speaker
would inevitably add the requisite
belittling of “worldly women” who
refused motherhood. I wondered if
those women ever realized that their
assumptions were wrong and their
words were swathed in cruel conde-
scension. Rather than spending the
day ignored or pitied in my margin-
alised state, I liberated myself from
the experience.
What lies at the heart of my
Mother’s Day angst is the profound
divide between Mormon families
who are focused on an earthly and
spiritual methodology for the devel-
opment of an eternal family, while
childless Mormon couples who are
focused on earthly and spiritual
methodology for creating a mortal
family. As a result, our interpreta-
tions of “maintaining and strengthen-
ing the family” are not equal. Child-
less couples are in the process of
strengthening themselves in order to
obtain a mortal family, while child-
filled families are in the process of
strengthening themselves in order
to build an eternal family. These
competing ideas result in a caste
system in which childless couples
are stigmatized, or at least may feel
like lesser spirits who were not al-
lowed earthly children. Escape from
the lower caste can only be achieved
by becoming parents, or in death (“in
the next life you’ll have a family”).
My husband and I grew tired of
feeling like lesser souls at church.
We still wanted to serve, so we
signed up to work with volunteer
organizations that wanted only our
time. We volunteered to host ex-
change students and discovered that,
having passed every known govern-
ment background check, we were
a preferred couple for such place-
ments. We trained dogs for disabled
individuals. I became a volunteer
ESL (TEFL) teacher. Outside of
work and volunteering, I began read-
ing every book I could, Mormon or
otherwise, about how to work with
and raise children.
Finally, after failing at a number
of attempts to adopt or become preg-
nant, we took what few funds we had
and went to India for an aggressive
infertility treatment. We chose India
because a clinic there advertised
larger doses and longer courses of
fertility medications than are allowed
in Australia, at a substantially lower
cost. We opened up about our deci-
sion to a few select people, including
the bishop. He did not oppose our
choice, but I felt he was not com-
fortable in supporting us, either. We
prepared as best as we could, and
went to India.
On the drive to the clinic, every
level of economy was on display. It
was Clear that the largest percentage
of residents were living in extreme
poverty. Entire families lived on
small sections of sidewalk that they
territorially claimed. On the earlier
flight, an attendant had advised us to
:; —— MD
oi A arth ILITY rat
Outside the fertility clinic
visit the expensive Taj Mahal hotel.
“They will let you in. It will give you
a break from the people of Mumbai,”
he said. “It can be overwhelming.” I
disregarded him at the time, thinking
his advice ethnocentric. But he was
right. The poverty and underlying
caste system were overwhelming.
Even though the medical clinic
was on a city street, a dirt path with
chickens and a stray dog graced its
entrance. Inside, the clinic was west-
ernized, complete with a western
toilet and toilet paper. The female
workers wore colourful and deco-
rative saris on the street, but once
inside the clinic they changed into
white nursing uniforms complete
with bobby-pinned white caps that
made it seem as if they had walked
out of a 1970s American soap opera.
When not wearing a sari, many
Indian women wore a Punjabi
salwar kameez, which consisted
of a bright and modest tunic
worn over colourful loose pants
that matched a scarf draped
around the front of the neck.
This clothing style was beauti-
ful, and I envied how comfort-
able and colourful the women
looked, compared to me in my
dull trousers and t-shirt.
I began a series of injections.
These were intense doses of
hormones meant to force my
malformed reproductive sys-
tem into action. Although I am
normally not squeamish and
previously had experienced hor-
mone treatments, I found these
injections lengthy and painful.
We would travel to the clinic
daily for tests, injections and scans.
We then rested, spending the heat
of the afternoon in the hotel room.
On especially hot days, we snuck
into fancier places, including the Taj
Mahal Hotel, to swim in the pools.
In the evening, we ventured out to
night markets, Buddhist temples,
and the Haji Ali Mosque. We were
charged more than
locals for the items
we bought. “You are
of privilege,” the
shopkeepers would
tell us when we
protested the higher
bartering rates. “You
must pay more.” We
accepted this, and
openly chatted about
our family plans and
baby names.
At many of these
places, well-to-do
Indians would force their children
on to me, insisting on a photograph.
Pale skin was considered good luck,
so the children would be told to
shake my hand and touch my skin
as though my hands were Buddah
bellies filled with good luck. I was
thrilled to hold the gorgeous, dark
babies that were bejewelled in infant
saris and laden with bracelets, ear-
rings, and bells. I sometimes offered
to let them touch or comb my light
hair, which they did with delighted
awe. It was strange to be considered
a token of good luck, since I have
always felt unlucky. In Mormondom,
I felt like a social outcast: different,
pitied, and labelled worldly. In India,
I was the opposite. I was desired
because I was different and this
might bring others good luck. It was
a strange and beautiful feeling to be
appreciated for existing. It brought
a joy to me that I had never before
experienced.
Within a week, however, it was
clear that my treatment was not
working. Dosages were increased,
medications were changed. I was
struggling spiritually, emotionally,
The author with nurses at the clinic
and physically because
of the chemically-
induced hormonal
changes and the ines-
capable poverty we
passed on the way to
the clinic. I cried daily,
sometimes hourly.
Added to this was
my awareness of an
orphanage a block
from the clinic. There,
if someone had a child
they no longer wanted,
they could dispose of
the baby in a bassi-
nette that hung by the
front gate. Ringing the bell beside
the gate ensured that someone from
the orphanage would retrieve the
baby, no questions asked. Yet cul-
ture and religion had combined into
law that forbade us from taking an
abandoned baby home. Mowji had
pointed out the orphanage location
as an irony, “so close to the infertil-
ity clinic.” Increasingly aware of it, I
felt my sanity being stretched. I con-
stantly begged God to not allow the
orphanage bell to ring when I was
there. I could take more injections,
but I could not handle the idea of
another abandoned baby, a baby that
I desperately craved to take home.
After three weeks, it was clear for
us that there was no hope. My blood
tests showed that I should be ovulat-
ing, but I wasn’t. My body was not
responding, and I was in pain. We
would not be going home expecting
a baby. I stopped the injections and
was unburdened of the chemically-
induced depression and hormonal
baggage that had slowly begun to
crush our marriage. We found our-
selves as failed and alone in Mumbai
as we were in Mormondom.
By ~ rm * 7
5 2
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= ¥ p ‘ ;
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The author and her husband
With a handful of days remain-
ing, we did our best to become
tourists. I had a pedicure, and Bruce
had a traditional shave and haircut.
Women at a beauty salon dressed
me in a sari and added a red mark to
my forehead signifying my married
state. We took a day trip to Elephanta
Island, where even more children
were pressed upon me to obtain good
luck.
In the predawn of our departure,
we took clothes and food and left it
with a homeless family we had given
food to every day during our time
there. I cried as I walked to the taxi. I
felt as though I was abandoning this
family in the same way that God had
forsaken my womb.
The flight home was a breath of
fresh air. We found ourselves being
served fresh fruit and even laughing
at the in-flight movies. It was good
to laugh. It felt like I hadn’t laughed
in years. With that, I began to pick
up and realign myself spiritually. I
knew that God loved me. I knew that
my husband loved me. I know that
both God and my husband
carried the weight of the
desire of my heart, and
of my mortal limitations.
They also knew that I
did everything I possibly
could do to become a
mortal mother. Although I
had failed again at obtain-
ing motherhood, both
God and my husband still
loved me. I also knew that
God had blessed me.
The gospel is price-
less knowledge, but
equally priceless was the
understanding that, despite
infertility and despite the familial
Mormon caste system, | retain privi-
lege beyond measure. The emphasis
on creating a child-filled, two-parent,
“sealed” family is incontestably
entrenched as the highest level in the
Mormon caste system. But any caste
system wherein individuals have
a presumed status based on mortal
limitations, church titles, or other
worldly differences, is inherently
in opposition to the gospel of Jesus
Christ. My privilege is in knowing
how decadently I am blessed, even
if 1 am not the typical “Mother in
Zion”.
What’s more, I understood that
God loves and carries the weight and
desire of the hearts of the millions
around the world who are lonely,
hurting, imperfect, downtrodden,
hungry, or unable to obtain worldly
preferential status. My own pre-
sumptions of meekness made me a
party to the Mormon caste system.
In India, I recognised my spiritual
shortcomings. I understood how
blessed I am. Most of all, no matter
how imperfect our lives, I could see
that we are all children of God. m
by Kylie Nielson Turley
Provo, Utah
I am a Mean Mom. This is
something I admit with hesitancy
because—just in case you have
not heard—meanness is distinctly
unfashionable. Think of your worst
fashion faux pas (e.g., 1980s pink
neon), and you will know what I am
talking about. Mean Moms have no
place in modern life other than as the
rare spectacle, which is highly un-
fortunate for me, since I discovered
as soon as my firstborn reached the
age of—oh, say—two, that mean is
natural for me. It’s like walking, eat-
ing, breathing. Apparently, I possess
a gift for heartlessness.
My talent is likely genetic. I
come from a long line of Mean
Mothers. Indeed, I first set my sights
on developing my inherited mean-
ness at my great-grandmother’s
funeral. Grandpa Ard regaled the
crowd with stories of arm-hauling,
pinching, and spanking episodes in
which his mother, Ethel, played star-
ring role. Her approach to correct-
ing him did not stop when he was
young. As a sixty-year-old mission
president, he came home to find his
construction company on the verge
of bankruptcy with the Church play-
ing no small part in the matter. He
sunk into a depression, turning to his
mother for comfort. Her verbal swat
is recorded in family lore: “Arden,”
she told him unsympathetically, “the
Lord’s just testing you. Stand up and
show him what you’re made of.” He
did and later thanked his mother for
the shake-up.
Ethel was strong and sassy, with
a flaming, red-headed temper and
willpower as deep as the ocean. She
yelled at her father-in-law for his
rude comment to her brother (punc-
tuating it with a few choice swear
words), and she let the entire family
know in a loud voice that she did not
appreciate her father-in-law’s temper
and his disrespect to the women in
his family. Given the early twentieth
century’s traditional family hierar-
chy, I can barely believe Ethel had
the nerve to do such a thing. But
nerve was not something Ethel was
lacking.
I think I would have liked Ethel,
but by the time I came along, she
was a Shadow of her former self, a
forgetful and paranoid centenarian
who insisted on dying her hair red
but could not remember the children
who respected her. She sat around
in an armchair, her young-girl spunk
bubbling up through the fog of age
as she repetitively demanded that all
of us around her, “Get up and make
something of yourselves!”
Even at 101, she was as unlike
a Mother’s Day Mom as powdered
milk is from fresh. You know the
Mother’s Day Mom I am talking
about—the luminary of Sacrament
Meeting talks, the one who “had
eleven kids and never raised her
voice,” the one who “joyfully ironed
and starched” her sons’ white shirts
so she could “honor the priesthood,”
and the one who “happily got a PhD
in diapering and an MA in laundry.”
Just in case you were wondering,
I am quoting from two real Mother’s
Day talks given right here in my
Marriage Quilt by Kathryn Knudsen, Provo, Utah.
Details of this piece can be found in the following pages.
Provo, Utah, ward. I sat
there digging my nails
into my hands, pinch-
ing my lips together,
and raising my eye-
brows at my husband.
He shifted the baby to
his other side, patted
my clenched hands,
and whispered oh-so-
solemnly, “I just love
Mother’s Day, don’t
you? It’s so uplifting.”
Really cute, sweetheart.
My five kids will
never be able to give a talk for
Mother’s Day, because I began rais-
ing my voice on the days they were
born (natural childbirth). Moreover, I
firmly believe my husband and sons
can iron their own shirts if they want
the wrinkles out. And last, but not
least, studying for my MA degree
in American Studies made me far
happier than doing the laundry ever
does, though I concede that the smell
of Downy detergent on a fresh warm
towel beats sitting through a hot,
boring graduation ceremony.
I have considered protesting
Mother’s Day. I could picket my
Sacrament Meeting, forcing my
five children to carry signs that say,
“Mean Mothers Unite” and “A Loud
Voice Gets Results” while I yell
directions over the chaos. Of course,
all my kids will be present at the
protest because Mean Moms do not
really believe in agency, at least not
when it comes to Church attendance.
Here’s your choice in our family:
You go! Ethel raised six amazing,
mission-serving, temple-marrying
kids, one of whom is my grandfather,
and she will no doubt haul them by
the arm or kick them in the seat all
the way to the Celestial Kingdom—
from the other side of the veil, if
necessary. How can you not admire
that?
Luckily, I have not had to resort
to extreme physical measures to en-
sure Church attendance, except with
a few unruly two-year-olds. I picked
up the wriggling child, hauled him or
her into the chapel, and plunked him
or her onto the bench. My husband
had to carry a crying, squirming
six-year-old who did not believe his
parents would, indeed, make him
go to Church in his pajamas if he
refused to get ready. It turns out that
blue footsie pajamas are modest and
effective, if somewhat embarrassing
to the one zipped inside. A month
of warnings and cajolings could not
accomplish what one pajama wear-
ing did: My son has dressed himself
without a fuss for going on two years
now.
You probably think I am kidding,
that this essay will come around
at the end when I realize that “a
soft answer” really will turn away
“wrath,” and that timeouts (not
swats) are nearer to godliness. You
probably think I will come to repent
of my snappy retorts and not-nice
attitude, letting sweetness overcome
my sins. I admit that a part of me
wants you to be right. I feel a twinge
of guilt every so often and determine
never to yell at, “flick,” or “bop” my
children. But all too often sweetness
becomes saccharine, and kindliness
slides into manipula-
tion. Not that that is
any excuse, but I am
just saying that some-
times nice is not all
it is cracked up to be.
Sometimes, in fact, it
looks more like mean in
sheep’s clothing.
You see, there are
plenty of days when it
crosses my mind to give
in and “just be nice.” I
am tired. I do not feel
like magnifying my
talent at meanness. If I were nice, I
could sit in my comfy rocking chair
and read my newest book while my
kids did whatever it is that they want
to do instead of practicing the piano,
scrubbing toilets, and doing home-
work. I would never have to hear
about how I am the Meanest Mom
because “I am the only one without
a cell phone” (this from my high-
school freshman daughter); “I am the
only boy I know who has to clean
bathrooms” (my middle-school son);
“Other kids don’t have to eat fruit
and vegetables and have ‘pleasant
conversation’ at every single meal”
(my fifth-grade son); and “None of
my friends still have to use a booster
seat” (my second-grade son). If I
were nice, I would smile and simply
say “Yes” to iPhones, Game Boys,
Wii’s, fruit-less meals, and friends
coming over before jobs are done. It
would be so much easier.
Alas, I find I cannot. My mean
streak flares because—in my heart
of hearts—I believe my children will
be better, happier, more functional
adults if they are responsible enough
to clean up after themselves; if they
are polite eaters, no matter what is
served; and if they can buckle down
and work before playing. And the
way I know to achieve that is the
way I was raised. It seems safer, if
infinitely more difficult, to make
them toe the line, even if it requires
a smooth pinch to a soft, fleshy spot.
It is tiring, but we all must work to
magnify our talents, mustn’t we?
Okay, okay. I admit that my
children are growing up, and pinch-
ing and swatting are quickly fading
to the background. It has been a darn
long time since I have felt the need
to pinch anyone but my husband.
And sometimes the tried-and-true
“What would Jesus do” mantra
makes me wonder if all my methods
are entirely up to snuff. But, like I
said, I blame my mean tendencies on
my heritage.
The fault really lies not just with
Ethel, but also with Mary Ann and
Olive, with Villa, Doris, and Yvonne.
My entire family tree is packed with
role models who are strong, feisty,
God-loving women of piety and
resiliency. In a world where so many
women are understandably conflicted
about their own mothers, I have no
such problem, and I am grateful.
I feel no need to examine how I
“learned” to eat cooked mushrooms,
spinach, and asparagus. My inner
child is not upset that I had piles of
my junk thrown on top of my bed
every Monday until I learned to put
it away. I am not worried about my
sister who had to
walk home on a
brisk Wyoming
evening when she
“said that one more
time.” I have plenty
of reasons to talk to
a psychologist, but
my mother is not
one of them. And it
is not just because
I make my chil-
dren eat food they
don’t like; throw
their junk on their
beds on cleaning
day; and try as hard as I can to make
realistic threats and follow through.
It is because I feel quite unequivocal
about my mom: I adore her.
I adore all of my mothers. I
dream of having Ethel’s audacity and
bravado. She knew what was right
and took no nonsense—not from her
kids, not from her husband, not even
from her father-in-law. When my pa-
ternal great-grandmother, Mary Ann,
was asked during her last days if she
ever considered divorcing my tem-
ple-and-stake-president great-grand-
father, she announced “Divorce?
No. Murder? Yes!” And, of course,
everyone knew she was mostly kid-
ding. My maternal great-grandmoth-
er, Villa, was a brave single mother
when such things just weren’t done,
especially not in church, and Doris,
Villa’s only child, left her abusive,
alcoholic father decisively in her
past to marry in the temple and raise
seven children in the gospel. Every-
one who met her knew that my pater-
nal grandmother, Olive, was the true
source of my grandfather’s interna-
tional business success; there were
audible laughs at Olive’s funeral
when my aunt eulogized, “Grandma
always knew her place was just one
step behind her husband.” And my
mother, Yvonne? I can only hope to
raise my five children in the same
firm style in which I was raised. She
absolutely loves me—of this I have
no doubt—and I did not get away
with anything. Ever.
My mothers anchor me. When I
think I just cannot stand one more
misogynist moment, I picture Ethel
and Mary Ann, women who did
not apologize for who they were as
women, mothers, wives, and daugh-
ters. When Mother’s Day speakers
say silly things and make me doubt
a woman’s place in the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, I think of Villa and Ol-
ive, who made their own niches and
influenced all around them as well as
children for generations. When I feel
pressure to be sappy and agreeable,
to be pleasantly nice, or to smooth
things over instead of standing
resolute and determined, I picture the
tough women who came before me,
and I feel powerful enough to say
what I really think.
It may not turn out the same for
my children. Maybe they will hate
how they were raised, resent me, and
need years of counseling. It’s a pos-
sibility. I read on the Internet that my
boys may turn into down trodden,
spineless men, and my girls may
become domineering, bitter women.
Then again, perhaps my boys and
girls will turn out like
the men and women I
know who were raised
by strong women;
perhaps they will be-
come like my father,
my brother, my hus-
band, my mother, my
grandmothers, and my
great-grandmothers.
That’s a possibility I
like. So at this point
in time, I’m holding
the course. I think
the world needs more
Mean Moms. @
Parasite
by Dayna Patterson
Nacogdoches, Texas
When the pediatrician came
into the dim
hospital room,
she called you parasite.
I scoffed, shocked.
Months later, I hear truth in an
ugly word.
Not only do you eat me ounce
by ounce,
sucking calcium from my
own bones,
you swallow my sleep,
hour by hour.
You consume my free time,
leaving hungry crumbs in
the cracks
of my days.
You soak up my light moods,
my dreams,
with your needs.
You even steal my smell and
replace it
with your own—the reek
of puked milk and feces.
As a parasite, there’s no room
for doubt—
you do your job well.
Still, I would not trade you
for a tapeworm.
And you are a universe cuter
than a fluke.
Mother and Child by Amy Tolk Richards
Provo, Utah
Holy Sonnet for Mother’s Day
by Judith Curtis
Phoenix, Arizona
No need to pierce my side with soldier’s
sword
Or bleed from every pore as in Gethsemane;
Designed by Thee to shed blood naturally
Cycling with the menstrual moon. Lord,
In accordance with Thy holy word
This fragile body, too, is offered freely
To give others life. Speak to me,
Banish fear, let me be assured
As I descend to Death’s dark realm
And drink the solitary, bitter cup
That I will be filled with peaceful, healing
balm
And, at last, with Thee be lifted up.
I give birth to you, my brother,
And in return am born of Thee, Christ,
Mother. m
The Well
by Courtney Cooke
Boise, Idaho
I cradle you,
plastic in hand
next to flesh that
once you pawed
like a baby kitten.
I feel a loss.
An emptiness
that hurts you
but you do not see.
I grieve
for the string that broke.
Physical connection
is replaced with
longing.
We use
a different material
to bind us now.
Invisible.
When once my well
flowed free,
it is now
dry.
The spring that was
sacrificed to a river,
opened up to give
new life.
And I am
still sad
that I can no longer
feed your mouth.
But Iam
learning
to feed your soul.
To Mother in Heaven
by Kristine Barrett
Sterling Park, Virginia
At pollinating time
last year, close by the honey-
suckle, I breathed the air
of your perfume and
wondered
if you had come perhaps
and I had missed you.
The flowers you left for me
I found and pinned them to
my hair upon my wedding
day. And under a mountain
in Africa was found
the diamond you buried. Of
the gold of south America
was pressed the band I wear. caste remeniber what you
I think of you often. look like. Some nights
through my
I walk along the beach reflection in our high window
and do not find your footprints. _ | see the stars and think
But the shards of sun I see strung diamonds plaited
you sowed, I follow towards in your hair. I think
the veiled horizon. if T could look into
the sun, I would see your
I drove once through Wyoming picture.
and saw how you had matched
the sage and mustard flowers I want to know your name.
pretty little violet I know it is livelier than
wilds. It was lovely. Mary
or Sarah or Eve. Can you
Your letters haven’t yet please whisper it to me?
been found and bound. What is yourname? m
be, | Whenever
Remembering Eden black seeds lie upon To Mother in Heaven was previ-
by Sarah Richards Samuelson white snow or flocks aflight ously published in Exponent II,
embroider dawn, I look Vol. 7, No. 2 (Winter 1981).
Mother for your writing.
by Lisa Van Orman Hadley
Somerville, Massachusetts
My mother and I have the opposite problem.
She kept having babies each year until
she figured out that you can, in fact, get
pregnant while breastfeeding.
But I have a dead sea in me. My fallopian tubes
are closed off and bursting
from their casings like a pair of sausages. Dad’s Zinnias
She had no time for herself. by Sarah Richards Samuelson, Orem, Utah
And I have all the lonely time in the world.
Mother was previously published in Opium Magazine
In 1872, our foremothers began publishing The Woman’s Exponent (1872 to 1914). One hundred years later,
their spiritual granddaughters formed Exponent II (1970s to present), and thirty years after that, a new generation
launched The Exponent blog into the digital realm (2006 to present). By reprinting thematically linked articles from
these three different publications, we hope to pay homage to this chain of sisterhood.
Women’s bodies and their reproductive choices: In this edition of Generations, enjoy an 1896 article by Dr. Ellis
Shipps, a female physician who urged all women to be schooled in basic obstetrics and who advocated for more
female medical professionals to support women’s health. One hundred years later, Emma Lou Thayne weighs in on
the abortion debate and what it means to be “on the side of life.”’ Fast forward twenty more years for an intimate
glimpse at one woman’ decision to remain a “one-child family.”
The Woman’s Exponent. Woman, Know Thyself
by Ellis R. Shipp
Pleasant Grove, Utah
January 9, 1596
In these days when schools, sem-
inaries, colleges and universities are
being established to propagate the
wealth and wisdom of the world, let
us not overlook a school for women
wherein they can obtain a knowledge
of themselves and the great scientific
laws that govern their physical orga-
nization. This indeed should be made
a point of every woman’s education
to fully qualify her for the crowning
mission of life, that of motherhood.
The old maxim “Man know thy-
self’ is equally applicable to woman.
The ideal education fits and prepares
a woman, or man either, for the prac-
tical duties of life. Therefore, they
should make a serious study of life;
its origin from its very incipiency,
that intricate problem which can only
be solved by inspirational genius; in-
deed, she should go back of this and
consider well the potent influences
of heredity, its bearing upon the
physical, mental, and moral develop-
ment of posterity. Of hygiene she
should be a very master. She should
study well the constituent elements
of air, food and drink, clothing and
exercise, their chemical and organic
properties and their physiological
effects upon the human organization.
If the mother recognizes the normal
standard, how readily will her quick
eye detect any deviation therefrom,
when simple remedies promptly ap-
plied will often prevent more pro-
tracted and serious maladies. These
subjects should engage the attention
of every woman whatever her life
or vocation may be. And should
she possess any desire to become a
professional nurse or efficient ac-
coucheur, still greater is the need of
the knowledge. If any one doubts the
ever present and growing demand
for skilled help for suffering women,
especially in our distant towns and
villages, that one should sojourn in
those districts beyond the reach of
competent physicians, and listen as
the writer has listened, to the recitals
of suffering caused through a lack
of skill and knowledge. Also notice
the results in the failing health, the
loss of strength, the shortened lives
of the masses of women, with the
broken homes, the lonely firesides,
the motherless children. Then can
we fully sense how precious are the
lives of wives and mothers, and how
all-important it is to prolong those
lives in health and vigor.
In many places women are
through sheer necessity forced to
practice, because in the kindness of
their heart they desire to benefit their
fellow creatures. All unmindful of
personal comfort, they answer these
untimely calls night or day, rain
or shine, ministering to their sister
women with all the inherent gentle-
ness of their sex, and all too often
without the least remuneration for
these wearisome services. That this
mission is one of philanthropy and
unselfish love no one can gainsay,
and had she been prepared for this
labor of mercy by thorough educa-
tion in the science of obstetrics, how
much greater would be the good
accomplished; then could she meet
every emergency that might arise.
How much more fitting that
woman should receive these delicate
attentions from one of her own sex,
if one can be secured who is quali-
fied for such offices.
Knowledge and skill are the great
prerequisites, for occasions not in-
frequently arise when life is in great
peril and there is no time to send
miles away for competent assistance.
Thus is emphasized the necessity of
skilled help in every town and vil-
lage. Truly the educated nurse and
obstetrician should be co-eval with
the race and found wherever there is
habitation of man.
Exponent IT: On the Side of Life
by Emma Lou Thayne
Salt Lake City, Utah
Vol. 15, No. 4 (Fall 1990)
Our fourth daughter called two
days ago after her visit to her obste-
trician. “The baby’s dropped, Mom,
everything’s perfect—in position, all
set... Be ready to come!”
What could be more exciting?...
The new mother and father would
welcome that first baby like little
else they had ever welcomed...And
we would be grandparents relishing
this stage of baby-loving in a far-
from-empty nest.
At almost the same hour a
friend’s daughter had a baby girl
with spina bifida—a spinal column
unclosed. It was the first child for
the daughter, a first grandchild for
my friend. Three weeks and three
operations later, my friend wept into
the phone, “How can we stand to see
that little baby suffer any more? The
little thing cried so much she hardly
had a voice when she came out of
that operating room with tubes ev-
erywhere. And no matter what they
do, the doctor tells us she’ll never
be functional—in fact, she’ll be a
vegetable. And so much pain.”
Still another week later, “Her
own doctor, who’s a stake president,
says for my daughter to go ahead and
get pregnant again, as soon as they
can, and hope for a well baby. But in
the second month they can tell if it’s
spina bifida and can abort. He said
that no one could think it anything
but merciful.”
The mysteries. The contradic-
tions. The claims and counterclaims.
The personal experience together
with the marches, the declarations,
the court decisions... The question
of when life begins is a new variety
of hype that has divided [this] coun-
try as few issues have.
All this in the midst of the first
widespread concern about the
emotional and physical welfare of
women betrayed by ill-conceived,
ill-fated motherhood. It is a time for
thoughtful weighing of old values
against new possibilities.
And what sense can I make of it?
What might I do if placed in a situ-
ation similar to my friend’s daugh-
ter’s where my unborn child might
face a life of tragic deprivation? In
confrontation with such sprawling
questions as abortion presents, I pray
for understanding, kindness, and the
wisdom to follow Matthew 7:1-2:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged:
and with what measure ye mete, it
shall be measured to you again.”
Not judging does not mean indif-
ference, indecision, or disengage-
ment, but being consciously on the
side of life, in each instance strug-
gling to affirm life and at the same
time honoring the gift of agency...
Was there ever an issue to be
given more thoughtful, prayerful
consideration? An issue closer to our
center of feeling?
Twenty-seven years ago I was
happily pregnant with that fourth
daughter, the one now about to have
her first baby. In the playroom where
her three older sisters—still little
girls—were watching, I was trying
to put a new lining in the old family
cradle, laughing because I was so
out of sorts trying to make the sides
fit the pink satin. Not my line of
work, and we all knew it. I’d always
had two dispositions: normal, and
sewing. I turned on the TV to help.
To Channel 7, PBS, and ironically
to the story of Margaret Sanger. The
impact of the documentary has never
left me. When I tuned in, Marga-
ret, a nurse in a Brooklyn tenement
around the turn of the century, was
trying to save the life of a woman
who had tried to abort herself with a
coat hanger. Bleeding to death, the
woman wept to the nurse who held
her, “TI tried to tell him where they
came from [pointing to what seemed
like a room for children in that sad
one-room apartment], but he says
I’m the only thing he has—and what
could I do?”
I watched the film to the end, saw
Margaret Sanger struggle to educate
those tenement women, fight for
them in court, get sanction for them
to take some reasonable control of
their lives before they lost them. I
saw Margaret, in her willingness to
love mercy, become the subject of
scorn, harassment, and threats. She
had to defend herself in court and on
the streets because she was an advo-
cate of birth control for the poor.
All the while I poked my needle
through the stiff old wicker to the
soft satin of the cradle that had
rocked three generations of wanted
babies to well-fed sleep, thinking,
“There but for the grace of God go
I,” the outrageous grace of the God
I so wholly believe in as the giver of
the life I love and want so much to
pass along. Complicated, that giving
of life, and the giving and taking of
the quality of life. I never felt more
humble, never more passionately
wished that the grace that came to
me and my happy children might
also extend to all women, and all
their children.
Four years later, I had a fifth
baby, with complications enough
that I had to have a tubal ligation
after she was born, miraculously
well, even beautiful, in spite of much
difficulty. Demerol, the drug given
to me over and over for gall bladder
pain that repeatedly triggered labor
in the last trimester of my preg-
nancy, preserved her by allowing me
to carry her into the eighth month
of pregnancy. But it took me three
agonizing months after her birth to
regain myself after addiction to the
drug. In spite of it all, we survived,
both of us, and gained new strength,
as she became the family plaything,
happiness for us all.
For six years of her growing up,
I, as a member of the General Board
of the Mormon Church’s youth
organization, wrote lessons and gave
Standards Night talks on chastity,
temple marriage, the challenges and
joys of mothering. At the same time,
as a part-time member of the board
of Odyssey House, a drug rehabilita-
tion center, I saw pictures of children
born to prostitutes addicted to drugs
not unlike the Demerol that caused
me such agony. Many of these chil-
dren were born addicted and were
sold into the sickening, burgeoning
business of child pornography. I
shudder now remembering pictures
of those children. I wonder how it
was for the mothers who bore them.
For both mothers and children, the
daily horror or bleakness of life with
quality totally absent. Every morn-
ing each child faced such an uneven
destiny that no two circumstances
could possibly be equated...
In the past three years I’ve sat
on the lay advisory committee to
the OB/GYN department at the
University of Utah Medical Center.
We’ ve heard experts talk about in
vitro births, artificial insemination,
methods for sustaining fragile preg-
nancies. We’ve listened to ecstatic
couples who have carried babies they
would earlier have lost to miscar-
riages.
At the same time, a year ago, I
spent five weeks at an artists’ colony
where four of the seven residents—
painters, writers, composers—had
chosen not to have children. These
were concerned people, informed
and aware of inequities, over-pop-
ulation, starvation, of a world that
needed careful attention to its wel-
fare. Nevertheless, they reveled in
hearing every detail about my family
and even smilingly put up with the
snapshots of them and lines from
their letters. Each of us was enriched
for respecting choices not our own.
Photo by Cia de Foto, Creative Commons license from Flickr.com
Complicated indeed, this busi-
ness of having babies—or not. Per-
sonal, private, often excruciating the
choices, the eventualities. And who
could possibly decide whose choice
is what it should be? I’d hate to be
the one to judge. In fact, the longer
I live, the more convinced I become
that it’s all I can possibly handle just
to try to come to grips with what
besets my own life, to try to make
sense of my own sense of mortality.
I think often of the admonishment of
David O. McKay, the prophet of my
growing-up years, that such deci-
sions be the private affair of a couple
and the Lord.
Two weeks ago I sat with my
fifth daughter far away from home.
That Sunday we were across the
continent visiting in a fundamentalist
church. We listened with distress and
despair to the head of that church as
he made blanket condemnations of
“those murderers who take the life of
a fetus.”” Women, medical people, all
were collectively damned. I wonder
how that judgment would feel to the
frantic, pregnant woman in Margaret
Sanger’s arms, to Margaret Sanger.
To me, who after the birth of my
youngest daughter had elected to end
my child-bearing potential. I lived in
a world in which such a choice was
mine.
I sat in that church and remem-
bered sitting two years ago in a Teen-
age Pregnancy Conference at the
YWCA where I was to be a speaker.
Though thinking myself fairly well
informed, I trembled in hearing a
judge, a counselor, the director of the
home for pregnant adolescents, tell
of thirteen-year-olds keeping their
babies “for companionship” and then
abusing or abandoning them because
they felt sapped of their girlhood,
their chance to be young and free.
And at the same time hearing of
fifteen-year-olds having their third
and fourth abortions. Every “case” is
different, no two answerable to the
same solution. Reverence for life?
Whose life? What life?
All I could think then, pray now,
is this: Dear Lord, give me the heart
to understand, the wisdom not to
judge, the loving kindness to know
what the poet Gwendolyn Brooks
meant when she wrote, “That even in
my deliberateness I was not deliber-
ate.” All I could do was think that
if my daughter’s friend chooses a
different destiny for another spina
bifida child, I will love them both for
their likeness to and their difference
from me.
Where do I stand on abortion?
On the side of life. For the mother as
well as the child. Not bewildered by
not deciding exactly where I stand
except in reverencing both the life
and the agency that the Lord alone
gives to decide anything at all.
And I go gratefully, ecstatically,
to welcome in another grandbaby of
my own.
- =
The Exponent Blog: Baby Clothes on the Goodwill Pile
by Galen Smith
Tucson, Arizona
July 3, 2009
We did some spring cleaning a
while ago. Made a nice big pile of
stuff to go to Goodwill. I tackled our
son’s room and decided that all the
baby stuff we had been holding onto
needed to go. I’m not planning on
having another child— let’s free up
some shelf space. When DH came
in to take the pile out to the car and
saw all the baby stuff I had put on it,
his shoulders slumped a bit. “Oh” he
said. ““This makes it feel so final.”
It’s not something that comes up
too often, but I know that my hus-
band would like more children. Just
when I get feeling at peace with my
family planning decisions, I realize
that it’s my peace and my planning,
but it’s not the decision that my
significant other would make. So,
not family planning but selfish-me
planning.
A one-child
family.
It would
only take one more
child to appease his
disappointment. A
sibling. So our son
would have someone
to share with, grow
up with, grow older
with. And this is
where my insecurity
about my family-
planning concerns
really hits a tender
spot—what is best
for my son. I’m tor-
mented by anecdotes
about the lonely only
child, about what my
————————————
Heart and Womb by Galen Dara, Tucson, Arizona
not having any more children will
mean for him in his life. I cling to
stories about normal healthy people
who were only children.
Fecundity and procreation are all
around me. At church on Sunday it
seemed the bellies of every woman
under the age of forty were blooming
with newly implanted life. At church,
in my neighborhood, among family, I
feel like such an anomaly. An ovar-
ian freak of nature deaf to the call of
“multiply and replenish.”
I’m okay being a freak.
Occasionally I get twinges of
guilt or sadness over my husband’s
regrets about our family. However,
what really gets me is the doubt, the
worry about what possible harm I
am inflicting upon my son by my
unwillingness to give him a sibling.
(Mom guilt. We will never be good
enough. We will always be the cause
of so much harm.) Sometimes, just
for that, in insecure moments, I
waver: Okay, Yes! Fine! Let’s make
a sibling!
Ha.
I keep a stash of pregnancy tests
in the bathroom. Sometimes I get
this wave of terror that my birth
control has failed and I am pregnant.
I rip out another stick to pee on,
praying to my goddess Mirana that it
isn’t so. She has not failed me so far.
I should just get my tubes tied.
But then...
I see the slump in his shoulders.
“This makes it seem so final.”
“Well,” I say, “If we have another
baby we can just get new stuff.”
[Meanwhile, the clock ticks
away....] |
by Alissa King
Laguna Hills, California
Iam a bit of a reality TV junkie. I
like the crab fishermen, the roommates,
the chefs, and the wanna-be singers. So,
of course, I was intrigued when I saw
the promos for Sister Wives, a program
that follows Meri, Janelle, and Christine
as their husband, Kody, courts a fourth
wife, Robyn. All of this takes place
amongst their sixteen children and under
the pictures of Joseph Smith that hang on their walls.
How could I not watch?!
I’d seen a few episodes of the HBO drama Big Love,
and it simply wasn’t for me. I know enough about what
Hollywood thinks polygamy looks like behind closed
doors and wasn’t interested in another fictionalized ver-
sion. As an outsider, polygamy has always struck me
as world of secrets, repression and domination. Having
grown up in Utah, I had always wondered what a “mod-
ern” polygamist family was really like.
From the first episode of Sister Wives I was hooked.
The brutal honesty of Meri, Janelle and Christine was
startling to me and seemed to offer a transparent view
of the delicate negotiations that go on between family
members in this “lifestyle.” In Sister Wives we see how
polygamy is not just about sharing a husband, but it’s
also carving out your space in the household; it’s moth-
ers making sure their children get time with their dad;
it’s about who works and raises babies; it’s about who’s
having the babies.
For example, Meri, the first wife, had always wanted
a big family but was only able to bear one child. Meri
says gratefully that because of her lifestyle she has been
able to have years filled with babies and children that she
gets to help parent. Thinking about shared motherhood
in this way was one of the more eye-opening moments of
this show for me.
But the main event of the first season was the fam-
ily’s courtship of a new sister wife, Robyn. All of the
wives were in on (and even helped orchestrate) this new
relationship. The jealousy her arrival aroused was some-
thing I expected but not in the way it manifested itself.
I was surprised by how women who were comfortable
sharing a husband could still be hurt by the discovery
Sistér Wives
iN
that Kody had kissed Robyn
before they were married
and then secretly helped her
pick out her wedding dress.
Understandably, they made
comparisons between how
Kody had treated them during
their courtships with how he
was carrying on a new one.
But perhaps more astonishing
was that the wives’ collective
jealousy did not push Robyn
out of the picture. Instead, they wanted to get Robyn
married into the family as quickly as possible in order
to strengthen the family. In their view, a new wife in the
family is a contribution, a girlfriend is a distraction.
When I started watching the series I was shocked that
a woman in her right mind would want to join a fully-
formed polygamist family with three children from her
previous marriage in tow. By the end of the season I was
surprised that I was beginning to understand what could
draw Robyn to this family. I was struck by the dedica-
tion of these five adults to the happiness and success of
their family and the fact that they weren’t ashamed to
show how they accomplish that. Such dedication some-
times meant going toe-to-toe with each other, including a
painful confrontation between Meri and Kody about the
disproportionate amount of time he was spending away
from his existing family (and their twenty year marriage)
as he courted Robyn. Robyn’s willingness to have dif-
ficult conversations with her future sister wives regarding
her religion, her children, and her feelings for Kody also
created conflict.
The same curiosity that draws me to Sister Wives is
also the part of me that is drawn to the pages of Exponent
IZ. L enjoy an opportunity to find a new way of looking
at something I thought I understood, and this program
offers a new perspective on something that people have
generally only been able to fictionalize or splash on the
cover of a newspaper when it goes especially awry. The
women in Sister Wives are not submissive caricatures of
polygamy: they are spunky and spirited wives, moms,
and sisters. Though I still cannot relate to choosing this
lifestyle, I better understand the cost of the choice, and I
think I see the rewards differently too. m
FLANNEL BOARD
Deborah Under the Palm Tree
“And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time.
And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Beth-el in
mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.”
(Judges 4:4-5)
In Sunday School lessons, we often see the same handful of women in the scriptures depicted over and over again:
Mary, Mary Magdalene, and to a lesser extent Eve, Esther, and Ruth. This problem is compounded by the fact that
these women are always depicted as being white. This piece has been a favorite of our Exponent staff for a few
years now, and we thought how wonderful it would be to publish this picture in the magazine in a format that would
allow people to use it as a Sunday School visual aid. Adrienne Cruz, an Oregon-based artist, has graciously given us
permission to use her beautiful interpretation of the Deborah story in Judges 4-5. m
Page 40 Exponent iit
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