Random Thoughts (the only kind I have anymore)

I left Bradon & Sadie's home at about 3:30 pm Sunday (January 4th) and headed for the Long Beach Airport. I Arrived in Moroni ten hours later. I could have driven from their home to mine in eight hours.

While in California, our rental car was a white Mercury Marquis with black wall tires. Looked very much like the Crown Victorias some law enforcement officers use. It was fun to have people on the highways think I was a cop - until the got up close and then thought I was just Mel Gibson out for a drive.

The rental car had a GPS system complete with a color map showing where I was and included rivers, railroad tracks, etc. When I left Bradon & Sadie's I punched in the address of the Hertz car rental location at the airport and it directed me in three styles to my destination. 1) the color map showed me where I was at all times; 2) the directions would print out on the screen to be read; and 3) a pleasant voice would read me the directions aloud, telling me, "Your next turn is in five miles," and, "Point two miles until your next turn;" and, "Turn left at the next street." If I would make a wrong turn it would tell me to "make a U-turn when it is safe to do so." After directing me all the way to the entrance to the rental lot the pleasant voice announced, "You have arrived." It would also give me a constant visual readout of how many hours, minutes, and miles until I reached the address I punched in to the gizmo. Very cool. Maybe I've been in Sanpete County too long - afterall, we only have two stoplights in the whole county - with only 14 people per square mile. Maybe.

I called Jet Blue (the only airline offering a non-stop flight) and asked that a wheelchair be provided for my mom. The gal I talked to said they would bring it right to the curb for me. Wow. Seemed like a pretty good service to offer. Well not only did a nice Samoan bring the wheelchair to the curb, but he took her inside the terminal and waited 30 minutes with her while I parked the car and hoofed it back inside to meet up with them. He waited with her while I stood in line to get our boarding passes and check the luggage, then walked us to the front of the line where they check us for guns and knives and exploding shoes and such. When we got through that hassle he pointed to the Burger King and asked if I wanted to get a breakfast sandwich "for you and your mom." I did. He then wheeled her all the way up the ramp to within ten feet of the door to the plane and asked if we needed anything else. Pretty good service. When we landed a nice Barack Obama look-alike met us with a wheel chair at the top of the ramp - not more than fifteen feet from her seat - and took mom to the restroom (at her request) while I waited for the luggage. When we got our bags, he then wheeled mom across the street to the Hertz rental agency where we had a car waiting for us - and asked if there was anything else he could do. Now that's what I call service! I'm gonna ask for a wheelchair next time for me!!!

Mom lived with us for a couple of weeks in December. Visits to see her and phone calls six hunded miles away can only connect "soul-to-soul" so much. But living under the same roof for two weeks affords conversations and experiences that just don't happen otherwise. These conversations and happenings reconnected me to my mom far more than I ever imagined. And mom felt a similar connecting experience to me, to Terri, to our children and their spouses and their children during the Christmas holiday. One example was the night she made cinnamon rolls. As she stood there kneading the dough by hand, I sat facing her and we talked. I asked her why she scraped the inside of the mixing bowl with the side of her hand after every few kneads. She said, "That's the way Grandma Haskell did it." I asked her about her Grandma and she said she remembers visits to their home in Sublett, Idaho (about a hundred miles to the north of mom's childhood home in Newton, Utah). Mom said Grandma & Grandpa wasted nothing. Including the tiny bits of dough that tend to cling to the inside of the mixing bowl - and that's why to this day mom scrapes the inside of the mixing bowl with the side of her hand: to bring the little "left-behinds" and "overlooked" into the main body of dough she was kneading (there must be a gospel lesson in there somewhere). She told me they didn't waste anything because they had so little. Their water came from two sources. Grandpa Haskell had two huge barrels on a wagon pulled by a horse. When the barrels got empty, he would haul them down to the creek and fill them with creekwater. This was their only source of water for cooking and drinking. For washing and bathing they would use rainwater that ran off the roof into rain barrels. Well, that night I went to bed at about 10:30. Mom and Terri stayed up until 1:30 talking (Terri also heard stories she had never heard before), laughing (just ask Brandi, who was trying to sleep in the next room), and making cinnamon rolls - for mom, probably for the last time ever. Now I love the homemade cinnamon rolls made with her recipe (that night I also learned the story of how The Recipe came to be), but mom ate more cinnamon rolls from that batch than I did. Seems she couldn't get enough. I sincerely invited mom to stay longer, forever if she wanted, but she declined. Our loss, Hal & Gaila's gain. During her visit I learned where I get all my sweetness - from my mom.