Spring cleaning.

It's a difficult thing to place memories and feelings and emotions and thoughts in a box and give it away.

But I attempted that today.

It began with last night, with a mental itch that wouldn't let me sleep until I'd scratched it.  The idea that his identity was stamped all over this room, though he's never set foot in it.

There on the table was the bracelet he'd made, the necklace his mother had given me.  In the dresser was the sweatshirt he'd outgrown that drowned me.  By the window was the bank information from the week I'd opened an account with his bank.  (I closed that down weeks ago.)

In the corner was the motherlode, laundry baskets of old clothes and books he'd left at his old house.  I'd gone on his behalf to collect him, back in the early days when being called someone's fiancée still made me blink and want to look over my shoulder.  I never really got used to that label.

Some things would have made sense to keep.  Some didn't, but I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them just yet.  But I went through the majority; the books, the papers, the photos on my laptop.  The video we made.  A few pictures were difficult to erase.  I'll admit, I left a few.  (Particularly the pictures of missionaries in his zone when they were at the Provo temple.  When I looked closely I could see people in my district in the background.  I couldn't ever see me, though.  Maybe that's more telling than I thought.  Maybe I'm just looking for meaning in the meaningless.)

Some things of mine were associated with him.  I put them out of sight, hid them in cupboards until it doesn't hurt to look at them anymore.  Mumford & Sons have been tainted by association.  What a pity.

I went through my voicemail.  He'd left messages of love that I'd kept, and as sick as it seemed, I wanted to hear them again.  They'd expired, disappeared of their own accord.  I guess that's best.

I loaded my car late last night with the vestiges of his physical presence... the ones I could bring myself to part with, at least.  Drove to the donation center by my work this afternoon.  The volunteer seemed surprised that I didn't want to keep the laundry baskets I'd packed them in.  I just didn't want any more reminders.

Marisa

It's been four years since Marisa's accident.  Sometimes it seems like it was even longer than that, a lifetime.  Sometimes it feels as fresh as a moment ago.

I have the occasional dream about her.  Something will step out at me in my day-to-day life.  The checkout girl at Target.  The girl I met yesterday in my Institute class.  (Although she spells hers with two "s"s.  I mentioned that I had a friend named Marisa, but I didn't have the heart to tell her more than that, or that she was spelling her name wrong.)

I see all the different ways people keep her in their memory and I have regrets now and then.  I should have gotten to know her better.  Should be thinking of her more often now.  But then I wonder what would have happened if positions were reversed.  What if it wasn't Marisa that we lost, but someone else?  What would she do to commemorate a friend's passing?  What if (as morbid and maybe a little selfish as this may seem) it had been me?  What would my funeral have been like?  And what would people be saying or thinking four years later?

Check-Lists.

I'm a check-list kind of girl.  I like having my to-dos prioritized and timed.  I did well with the missionary planner when it was a daily requirement, and on the days when I misplaced it, I really started to freak until I found it again.  The tendency to catalog the things I need to do, say, watch, etc., gets a little overwhelming sometimes.  I catch myself doing something, then checking my list to see if I can cross it off, then seeing I haven't even written it down as a to-do.  So I write it down and then cross it off.

Today was a good list day.  I read my scriptures, walked/ran on the treadmill while listening to next week's Relief Society lesson and French lessons on my iPod.  Showered, researched banks in Utah so I can start establishing residency--not least because I want to get a library card, heh.  Went to Utah Community Credit Union to open an account.  By the way, after about an hour of scanning for the best deals, I'm of the belief that credit unions are far superior to banks.  Less worrying about hidden service and maintenance fees.

Went to Ross and waited in a hugely long line to return a pair of jeans I bought on a whim without checking to see if they actually fit me properly.  Just when I was getting close to my turn, an employee walked casually by and asked if I was here to return.  When I said I was, she said, "You'll have to stay here, then."  (Gee, thanks.  I had no idea?)

Grocery shopping in the afternoon just when the schools were letting out.  Remind me never to go to Target after three thirty ever again.

FHE was fun, and I met a girl who went to BYU and then U of U for the same program I'm going into.  I enjoyed picking her brain.

Things you should check out if you haven't already:

• The Coverville Podcast.  Brian Ibbott puts together playlists of great songs as done by artists other than the original.  I subscribed on iTunes, but you can also find it here.
• (Leading off of that) The Scala Choir and Kolacny Brothers.  Piano-and-childlike-choir versions of hit rock songs.  Fan-TAS-tic.  I'm listening to their cover of Foo Fighters' "Walking After You."
• Mahogany Sessions.  Indie artists that deserve way more attention than the so-called 'artists' people are texting and Tweeting about.  (Can you tell I'm on a music kick?)

Whale Rider.

Today I saw "Whale Rider" for the first time.  I'm not a professional movie reviewer, and I'm pretty much as white as white gets, but I frankly disagreed with the DVD calling it a "funny" and "heartwarming" family film.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the little girl/main character.  The pacing was slower than I'd hoped for, but it had its good moments.  My main problem with the film was the grandfather's character.

A run-down of this character's actions: The guy shuns his granddaughter after her birth (because she's not a boy).  He raises her when her father takes off halfway around the world, trying to fix up his son with locals so that a "real" heir can be produced, and freaks when his son has taken up with another girl on his travels.  He tell his son to take the girl away (because, and I paraphrase, she means nothing to him), then flat-out ignores her when she comes back to the island.  His next move is to start up a Maori school for the boys of the village, trying to come up with a new chief in the process.  Not only does he exclude her from the male-only Maori training, even though she's just as good or better than all of them.  But when the boys in training fail to complete a task for him, he goes catatonic and KICKS HIS GRANDDAUGHTER OUT OF THE HOUSE.

This is the part that did it for me.  Could you picture that happening in any other movie?  "Gee, Gramps had a lousy day at golf today, so we're going to have to evict you, sweetheart."  Tribal heritage or no, this guy is a jerk.

Then in the last five minutes of the movie (due to events I won't go into here), Gramps suddenly has a change of heart, the girl is proclaimed the new chief, and all the problems that have persisted throughout the film suddenly resolve themselves.

Bleh.  Ebert gave it four stars.  It charmed critics and won countless awards.  But I'm not impressed.  What do you think: Am I completely miss the point of this flick?

Late.  Short entry.  Backwards.  Watching Pushing Daisies makes me want to write witty dialogue with plot twists.

We made a lot of food today.  Mom made curry.  I made almond fudge.  Mom made spinach brownies (much tastier than they sound).  I made Claire cookies.  It was like the Dueling Banjos, if those involved a 350 degree oven.

General conference makes me want to be a better person.  I may be a political simpleton, but I laugh at the reporters who make a big fuss over a certain LDS politician who happened to give a large chunk of change to the Church.  (Um, it's what all of us active members do?  As long as it's ten percent of his income, what does it matter?)

Finished reading Ella Enchanted for the gazillionth time.  It always makes me smile.

Also, I watched The Blind Side.  As much as I understand that the film is about some kid beating the odds and rising above his trashy homelife, I don't get why they have to insert a gratuitous gross scene in the last ten minutes of the movie so it has to have a PG-13 rating.  Why do movies do this?  Why do they ruin a perfectly good and clean and uplifting flick with ten minutes of smut?

What I want my Sunday School class to understand.

I've been in countless classes in my growing-up years, and had a variety of teachers ranging from the barely-qualify-as-adults-themselves to the Depression-era old-timers.  I have different memories of each and several have passed from my recollection altogether.  I remember outsmarting one Brother's carefully planned object lesson on temptation and how Satan traps us.  He was using a variation on an old trap that tribes in Africa use to ensnare monkeys: coaxing me to try to grab the candy bar from the narrow-mouthed glass jar on the table.  He wasn't pleased when I deftly extracted the treat with my dainty fingers, escaping the trap intact  and smug, as teenagers will do when presented with an opportunity to score sugar and impress peers at the expense of a spiritual application.

I remember one Young Women leader who looked no older than some of our Laurels, reading The Giving Tree to us fresh-faced Beehives.  A wizened Sunday School teacher  taught us varied truths, among other doctrines and principles I am sure (though those I don't readily recall).  The term "guy" used to be applied to scarecrows only, a truth he learned the hard way after his father reprimanded him for using the term in reference to his father's boss.

These anecdotes comprise only a few random selections of people who were called to teach my classes growing up.  People who gave up their time and energy to try to shape us into better people.  It makes me wonder what this little Youth Sunday School class in England think of me; and, more importantly, what effect I have on them.

I'm no stranger to teaching.  I've done my fair share in terms of siblings, stints in Seminary, sacrament meeting talks, school group projects, Relief Society lessons, public speaking courses, visiting teaching assignments, arts and crafts groups...oh yeah, and the eighteen month mission I recently completed.  (That's a whole universe on its own: MTC discussions and practices, district meeting role-plays, zone conference talks, training new missionaries, and countless lessons with investigators, recent converts, less active members, fully active members, and somewhere-in-betweeners.)

But teaching a class, and a class full of teenagers at that, is a different ball game.  [Side note: I've taught missionaries on my mission and I've now taught teenagers, which I hope will give me some idea of what it will be like to teach brand-new missionaries at the MTC, should they choose to hire me in the next few months.] There is a whole range of mentalities from fourteen to eighteen, which can make lesson plans a bit of a challenge when you've got a handful of people all in various stages of adolescence.

I don't claim to be a psychologist or a miracle worker.  I don't have kids of my own, and it's been (holy cow) nearly a decade since I was the age of most of the people in my class.  But I have some recollection of what it's like to be that age.  I was not a huge scriptorian.  I went to seminary, and I found it interesting, but when it came down to my own personal study I was not up for more than about five minutes at a stretch.  Some parts of the Book of Mormon were foreign and boring to me.  It took a while to warm up to the scriptures, and I have Institute and my mission to thank for the leap from passing-glance to deeper contemplation.  The Old Testament remains, to a large degree, uncharted territory for me, even at the ripe old age of nearly a quarter century.

I have some idea of what it is like to sit as a teenager in a class and have the teacher ask what is possibly the silliest question you've ever heard.  Teaching manuals are full of those.  Questions that, if you've been raised in the gospel, are really more rhetorical than anything else.  And when you're a teenager, rhetoric borders on the are-you-serious? level of incredulity.  Adults, at least, will give an opinion when asked (though in my experience, the YSA ward members vacillate between the two.  I always tried to help out the flailing teacher during the dead silence portion of the meeting in cases like this.  It's really not their fault; they're just following the manual.)

I don't know what my class got out of our lessons this year.  Possibly they were thinking deep thoughts in the quiet interims.  Possibly they were wishing we would play hang-man.  Possibly they wondered who let in this crackpot who kept bringing up mission stories and asking silence-inducing questions.  But whatever else they gleaned, I hope they will gain a greater appreciation for the people who made these classes possible.  We wouldn't have much material if Nephi hadn't made the several-day trek back and forth to Jerusalem to get scriptures and prospective wives.  If Moroni hadn't written down his father's words.  If Paul hadn't made it a point to send letters to the Church in their respective regions.  If Joseph Smith hadn't kept the plates hidden in a pickle crock or under the hearth when prying eyes came around.

I hope the scripture study goals I invited them to set will help them make these people a part of their daily lives, that they'll gain a better understanding of what they carry around in their scripture cases.  These books are jam-packed with spiritual knowledge, layers-deep.  I hope they'll come to learn for themselves the joy that comes from unearthing one layer of insight after another.

I hope they'll get that adults are not just trying to ruin their teenage fun with rules and standards and skirt length stipulations.   That the book of Revelation is really not as scary as it may seem.  That attitude is the difference between Nephi and Laman.  Ultimately, that Christ is reaching out to them and hoping they'll take the steps necessary to close the gap.

I think I understand now what my old Institute director was trying to help me see: his highest ambition was not that he will be praised and lauded for being a great teacher.  His whole objective was to help his students discover things for themselves.  He was just there to show us how.  I hope I have become, in even a small way, that kind of example for the people I taught.

Maybe that's too much to hope for in a six-month stint of teaching.  But I like to think it made a difference.

I don't regret going, but the day disappeared when I signed up to go to Bristol for some stake youth-and-parent activity.  It wasn't bad when it was good, but it was long even when it was good.

I wish I could tell stories with even half of the charisma of the sweet couple in our ward.  The husband has backpacked and traveled the world.  In Holland he didn't have money to pay (or just didn't want to pay) for accommodations, so, unbeknownst to the owners, he spent a few nights in the back greenhouse of some strangers.

Lists of things I should have done run through my head.  Half my weekend chores done.  None of the study time.  I got a shipment of odd assortments in the mail.  I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to do with the largest one.  Something tells me I'm not going to get out of it easily.

Maybe a better present would have been a dictionary.