by Lehua Parker | Jan 10, 2014 | Mainland Living
Days since heel surgery: 7
Days drug free: 2
Days attention span longer than a goldfish: 2
Books read: 0
Books started: 4
Chapters written: 0
Attempts at writing chapters: 733
Random checks of Facebook and Twitter: 2587
Catan/Candy Crush/Carcassonne games played on iPad: 7256
New York Times crossword puzzles solved: 5
History documentaries watched: 41
Movies watched: 1
Movies started: 15
Real Diet Cokes drunk: 1
Days family filled sippy cup with caffine-free Diet Coke and lied: 6
Ice packs filled: 47
Max number of pillows propping leg: 9
Number of times knee scooter needed but being used by kids doing wheelies: 13
Times ran over own toes with scooter: 5
Falls with crutches: 2
Attempts with crutches: 3
Days to walking cast and being able to sit at desk: 21
by Lehua Parker | Jan 5, 2014 | Mainland Living, Mana'o (Thoughts), The Business of Writing, Uncategorized
So how do you use a laptop when you can’t sit at a table and don’t have a lap?
That’s my most pressing problem right now with my right foot in a cast and needing to be propped higher than my heart. The ice bag takes up what little room I have between my gut and knee and reclining half on my back and leaning on an elbow, I’m at a loss at how to balance the computer and type at the same time. Cocooned in a pillow nest, I’m tired of taping out one letter at a time on an iPad. Serious writing needs ten fingers.
It’s my fault for always writing at a desk with a chair and keyboard and two big monitors in a room where I can shut the door. Like a jock with lucky socks, I’ve trained myself to think that it’s all about the quiet room and the ability to use a mouse. Writing on the living room couch is a cramped affair filled with scraps of other people’s conversations and too loud music.
Adapt or die. Right now death is winning.
Being cooped up the past two days has built up a torrent of words and ideas that want to pour like water over a cliff, but they will have to wait until my foot no longer needs elevation and ice or I master some new yoga poses.
It’s going to be a long two months.
by Lehua Parker | Dec 16, 2013 | Mainland Living
I have a favorite Sunday joke that goes, “A mother left church to look for her son and found him sitting on the curb in the parking lot. ‘You need to come back inside,’ she said. ‘But Mom, nobody likes me. Nobody talks to me or wants to sit by me. It’s boring going to meeting after meeting. I’d rather be outside enjoying the sunshine. Isn’t that a better way to feel God’s love?’ ‘Son, there are two reasons you need to come back inside,’ she said. ‘The first is that you made a commitment to God. The second is that you’re the Bishop.’
I often feel like that bishop.
Of course, you can change bishop to pastor or priest or rabbi or even Relief Society President or PTA Chair. The reason I like this joke is because at its heart it’s really about reluctant leadership and obligation. Even the most stalwart on the outside can have internal doubts.
There are many people in my church who would find that sentiment horrifically unsettling, but I consider it marvelously humanizing. I feel like I can lend a hand to a human. I can also forgive humans for making mistakes.
My husband and I team teach Sunday School to fourteen year olds. Some days it’s like trying to raise the dead. They constantly beg for treats and want to take naps instead of participate in discussions. It’s a lot like helping in the nursery but without diapers or Goldfish crackers.
One Sunday when I was teaching alone I walked out on them, saying I refused to believe they were truly as stupid as they were pretending to be when they insisted Catholics crucified Christ.
You don’t even have to be Christian to know that’s impossible.
But calling their bluff and storming out was probably not one of my more Christ-like moments. I even told them that if they didn’t want to learn, I’d wheel in a tv and play a video each week while I sat in a corner reading a book. Surely that would bring more Sunday peace to my life than struggling with these knuckleheads.
After stomping around the hallway and grinding my teeth to hold in the inappropriate words that bubbled up to the surface, I realized what I needed to tell them.
God only had one perfect person to do his work in the entire history of the world—and even Jesus had days where he wept in frustration. If our faith rests in the infallibility of a single person or group—bishop, scout leader, parent, Sunday School class—we’re guaranteed to be disappointed, possibly angry, and sitting on the curb while the meeting is going on. Our fragile, tempest-tossed faith has to be more resilient.
Faith is something that grows not because of all the good we’ve experienced, but in spite of the bad. It is the fervent belief that no matter now big or insignificant our contribution seems, no matter how little progress we seem to be making, faith is knowing the journey defines the destination.
After nine months of cajoling, badgering, challenging, and insisting that kids think beyond easy answers like prayer and reading scriptures when we ask them about how they will tackle life’s curve balls, I realize that I’m going to miss them when a brand new class takes their place in a couple of weeks. More surprising is that they say they’re going to miss us, the mean teachers who insisted their weekly treat was having us as teachers.
Evidence of God’s power and grace, if you ask me.
by Lehua Parker | Nov 21, 2013 | Mainland Living
When my son was eight years old, we made a deal that he would take piano lessons until he was sixteen or could play all the songs in a simplified hymnal, something I guessed would take three or four years at the most. By then I figured he’d love music and would want to continue to play.
Not so much.
I made the fatal rookie mom mistake of underestimating the power of the truly unmotivated. I once caught him practicing the piano while standing next to me in my office. He’d recorded himself practicing weeks ago and simply had the piano playback the tracks.
That was the first and only time I regretted buying a digital piano.
Now sixteen, a month ago he told me he was ready to quit. With a gun pointed at his head, I think he can manage a couple of hymns and a classical piece or two, but it’s obvious he’s not going to be tickling the ivories for pocket change at a piano bar or subbing for the church pianist anytime soon.
I was seriously bummed.
You see, I always wanted to learn to play the piano.
The closest I came was in fifth grade when a band teacher starting coming to our school twice a week. Only two kids from each 5th and 6th grade class could join the band. Since it met during regular school hours, teachers had to approve who could miss valuable class time. I begged my teacher Mrs. Goo to let me go. I said my parents insisted that I be in band. I promised to bang the erasers to rid them of chalk every day before lunch, that I would stay in from recess on band days to read and do extra math, and the kicker, I would never ever ask another question in class again. Eventually, a boy no one liked and I got chosen. I think Mrs. Goo was secretly relieved to be rid of us a couple of hours a week.
At the first band meeting the conductor said if we played the sax, clarinet, or oboe we had to buy reeds. If we played the trumpet or trombone we’d have to buy a mouthpiece. Drummers needed to provide their own drumsticks. I raised my hand.
“Is there an instrument that doesn’t cost anything to play?”
“The flute,” he laughed. “The school has a few you can use.”
Score! “I want to play the flute,” I said.
“Hell, no,” my father said.
“There’s no rental fee and band is during school so I don’t have to go early or stay late. I can still ride the city bus with Heidi.”
“Band? Like marching around on a field? What about uniforms? I’m not paying for that.”
“It’s free,” I said.
“Fine,” he said. “You want to look like an ass marching around in the rain, that’s up to you.”
To keep the peace I practiced before my parents came home from work and saved all my babysitting money for three years to buy my first flute, a crappy Artley that I was so proud of in eighth grade. I played all through high school, marching in the rain at football games and teaching at summer band camps. As a freshman, I earned a chair on a competition symphonic wind orchestra that traveled all over the United States performing at places like Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Center, the Rose Bowl, Disneyland, and the White House—all major multi-week adventures when you’re a bunch of teens traveling from Hawaii. Jazz, classical, baroque, pop, movie scores, ballads—I played them all, including ballroom waltzes and be-bop oldies for the Waikiki tea time crowd at a fancy hotel. By the time I was a high school senior, I could sight read and play just about anything a conductor threw at me.
But as a freshman in college, I psyched myself out and didn’t even audition. Since I wasn’t a music major I didn’t think there was a place for me to play. Life went on with less and less musical joy in it until I turned around and realized I hadn’t sung in a choir or played more than a token note on a flute in more than 25 years. It didn’t seem possible.
The lessons are already in the budget, I thought. But so what? I’m the boss of me now.
“Okay,” I told my son. “If you really don’t want to play, you don’t have to. But I’m talking to your teacher about taking your spot.”
“You can’t do that!” my thirteen year old daughter shrieked. “It’d be too embarrassing!”
“Oh, for me because I’m old?” I asked.
“No! For me because you’re old! Moms don’t take piano lessons! What about recitals? No way!”
Yes, way. With three lessons under my belt, I’m already tackling beginner’s Christmas music with simple three and four note chords that I fumble my way through. According to my teacher, it’s actually easier to teach an old dog new tricks, especially when the dog is used to pounding on a different kind of keyboard for hours on end and can already read music.
After all, somebody’s gonna have to play the piano when the kids are gone. Might as well be me.
by Lehua Parker | Nov 13, 2013 | Mainland Living
I was piddling around in bed playing Candy Crush level 147 and losing for the fifteenth time that morning when the lights flickered, once, twice, and went out.
Holding my breath and staring at the light fixture, I waited.
Dang, I thought. Late last night I didn’t double-save my manuscript.
Beep, beep, beep nagged the UPS in my office like a toddler’s persistent Mom, Mom, Mommy, Mom. I know nothing’s foolproof. All the UPS really does is allow me twenty minutes to gracefully shut down the server and computers—assuming I’m even home. During an outage smart money always unplugs everything from the wall to protect delicate electronics from a power surge meltdown when the electricity comes back on.
Most days I choose lazy over smart. When I realized I’d have to move my desk, I just turned my computer off.
I can always write another novel. Hernias are forever.
With the UPS no longer beeping at me to do something, anything, quick, I considered my next move.
No writing on the manuscript, I thought, not even on my laptop since I can’t get to my most current files on the server. No social media stuff either unless it’s from my smart phone. Yuck. There’s a headlamp hanging on a peg in the mud room. I could—horrors!—clean the bathrooms. No laundry. No vacuuming. I could empty the dishwasher and wipe down counters.
Oh, joy. Without my favorite electronic gadgets to lean on, I’m like a housewife in the 1890s, but without a snazzy rug beater or ruffled apron.
Or maid. In the 1890s I’d have a maid, a nice homely hardworking lass who cost me 5 cents a day. I’d totally pop two bits a week for someone else to clean. There’s probably a month’s wages in the couch cushions. With Ella scrubbing her heart out, I could recline on the fainting couch all day and read trashy novels while snacking on chocolate bon-bons.
Wait. Do I even like bon-bons? Not the chocolate and fruit kind, that’s for sure. And when’s the last time I read a book on paper? There’s not a printed book in the house that I haven’t already read.
What if this power outage never ends? It’s November. We’ll freeze! No, we’ll just put more clothes on. It’s fine. Eskimos lived without central heating for thousands of years and they didn’t have ski coats or thermal underwear.
Dinner! Well, at least last night’s bread is still fresh. Peanut butter sandwiches. Blah. The kids will just have to deal with it. Hubby’s out of town. Typical. I wonder how the camp stove works. Last I saw it was piled under all the scout stuff in the basement. Propane canisters are green, right? Maybe I can build a fire.
I glanced through the window.
“Oh, #@^!$*!! The horses!”
Out loud it sounded worse. How am I going to water the horses? No power, no automatic watering pump, no heat. The water trough will freeze solid. That means we’re back to filling buckets and breaking ice like the pioneers. Horses need at least 5 gallons of fresh water a day. Six times five plus spillage—
Damn. That’s a lot of buckets. The kids will have to get up really early to get that done before school.
But if the pipes freeze, they can’t get water from the tap. Where’s my nearest water source?
The hot tub.
It’s insulated so it should stay above freezing for several days. The kids can dip buckets out and carry them down to the horses. Maybe it would it be better to bring the horses to the deck. Can horses climb stairs? Should we even give spa water to horses? It’s a salt system, not chlorine, but salt’s hard on kidneys. People lost at sea go crazy drinking ocean water. That settles it. The horses are crazy enough already. Hot tub water is for washing dishes and clothes.
Did Eskimos wash clothes? The wore furs, right? Do you even wash furs? Cats lick themselves clean.
I’m not licking anybody’s parka. Seriously. I’m not.
So no hot tub water for the horses. That leaves Deer Creek Reservoir. It’s what? Ten miles each way? Twenty miles on horseback will take most of the day. We’d have to start at dawn.
But really, when did anybody last add salt to the hot tub? Maybe it’s still an option.
I sighed. Too bad my daughter loves them. It would be easier to set them free. Worked for Willie.
Holy crap. Twenty miles each day. After I get snow pants and a jacket on, I’ll dig the ax out of the mess in the garage and use it to break ice and chop wood. The kids and I are going to need water, too. I better figure out a way to tie coolers to the horses. I think we’ve got bungee cords in the truck. Maybe take fishing poles—
Huh. Power’s back on. Guess I’ll shower and write a blog post.
by Lehua Parker | Oct 9, 2013 | Mainland Living
Click here to read Part 1: Famous Last Words
Click here to read Part 2: It’s a Date
Horse eating rocks, water crossings, and trees that reach out and snatch you are all perils of mountain trail riding. It always spooks me when the horses’ heads and ears twitch and then they suddenly peer off into the brush. Like them, I’m certain it’s a bear or a cougar with a hankering for horse meat, but more than happy to snack on the stupid human who falls off when the smarter horse bolts. I don’t like long sideways drops off hillsides, either.
Give me sharks and ocean waves any day.
On horseback, my husband Kevin and I forded about six small streams reduced to a ghost of the ripping ice melt they’d been in the spring, passed beaver dams, and nimbly high-stepped over fallen aspens. About four miles and forty-five minutes into the ride my butt ached, the button on my jeans was poking a bruise into my belly, and I had to pee. I knew I shouldn’t have chugged that Diet Coke on the drive up. I rubbed my knee.
“Who rode my saddle?” I asked.
“No one,” Kevin said.
“Are you sure? The stirrups feel short.”
He looked back, considering. “Yeah, maybe they are. I’ll fix ‘em when we get to the campsite.”
“Thanks.”
“Look at the light on the mountains,” he said. “The new green from the rain mixed with the fall colors in the warm afternoon light.”
Kevin’s an engineer by trade and temperament, but like most Celts and Welsh I think he has a warrior poet’s heart. My eyes, previously laser locked on the trail as viewed between Marley’s ears—all the better to eat you with, my dear—looked up.
Oh.
At his chuckle, my eyes snapped to my lover’s face. He was beaming.
“It’s stunning,” I stammered.
“I knew you’d like it,” he said. “It’s good to see you smile.”
A date, I thought. Not a trip to Costco or a quick movie in town, but time with my husband in the mountains and away from computers, television, kids, and books. He knew the mountains would look like this and wanted to share it with me. A horse ride so spontaneous I didn’t have time to create prior plans, but important enough with the coming snow that we had to go. Was his handheld GPS gadget even missing?
A few minutes later past the rocky ridge that always reminded me of a dinosaur’s spine, we turned up the hill and reached the campsite.
“Here,” he said. “Let’s tie the horses over there and walk around.” He dismounted, took two steps, reached down, and picked up the GPS from under a sagebrush.
“You’re kidding me!”
“Nope.” He wiped it off. “Battery’s still good.”
My jaw was still hanging open. “I can’t believe you actually found it.”
“Me, too.” He chuckled and held my horse’s reins so I could dismount.
“So what do want to do now?” I asked.
“Well, I got my girl all alone in the woods…” He reached over and unstrapped a .22 rifle. “Wanna shoot?”
It was my turn to laugh. “You are such a dude!”
“I’ve been married to you for over 26 years. I see the mud and ice patches and didn’t bring a blanket. I got you on up here on a horse. If I can get you to shoot a gun, it’s a banner year.”
I sighed and sighted in a yellow aspen leaf. The things you do for love.
