The Mystery That Is Man

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I've updated this post for our grandson Malachi.
He was over again today on one of his countless rescue missions in this now all-female household.
This time it was to fell an errant tree in the backyard that was in danger of doing damage.

As he headed his Eagle Scout self out back, he was armed.
Carrying a huge ladder and many sharp objects, including a fierce ax, he strode past me muttering enthusiastically about different ways to start a fire to burn the mountain of tree debris. Apparently green wood may need encouragement.

I listened in increasing alarm.

He mentioned that reinforcements had been called in to assist. His cousin and my nephew, Ivan, another male, is thankfully always willing to help us too. Mal thought that maybe he'd have some good ideas about that burning thing.

I was suddenly struck down by a wave of deja-vu.  "There it is," I thought.  "All over again, as they say."

Then from inside my head came a shout, "This kid reminds me of his grandfather!"

So, here's to you, Malachi.
And thank you so very much for taking such good care of us.
We never would have made it through the last year without you.



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I may have shared this with you before but my memory is like a sieve now. Anyway, this subject's been on my mind lately.
The subject of men that is.
Or more precisely the mystery of the male animal.
You'd think that since I've been married for half a century, and all that time to a man, and because I’m not a stupid woman, some kind of insight concerning male thinking would naturally develop.
Sadly you’d be wrong.

This "man pondering" was brought on by our gorgeous desert fall weather, by the way.
Let me explain.

It’s planting time down here in our sunny valley.
Other folks in the northern hemisphere may be putting up storm windows and shoveling flakes but I’ve been keeping a sharp lookout at the big box stores for the first six packs of flowering annuals.
I nearly shouted with glee the other day when I scored some Johnny-jump ups.
I swear they looked like little purple and yellow giggles bobbing in the breeze….you couldn’t help but smile.

I even managed to get them planted in the back patio pots all by myself.
Grandkids had previously lugged the heavy bags of potting soil and filled them for me.
I snuck them in among the petunias, geraniums and dianthus already getting started.

Then as I surveyed my work my eyes cast over our entire backyard.
When we moved here years ago there wasn’t a green growing thing anywhere.
A few dried tumbleweeds had blown into the corners of the block fence, the only sign of life to be found.
So we planted trees and shrubs galore, hoping for shade from the relentless desert sun among other things.

As I looked around I realized how wildly successful we’d been.
In addition to what we’d planted on purpose there’d been a couple of volunteers now grown to huge trees. One mesquite will soon reach above the house.

In fact, it’s kind of a jungle out here now.
Something will need to be done, I worried.
Then my eyes fell on a bare spot along the fence. Once I’d planted a beautiful “String of Pearls” bouganvillia there but it didn’t make it.
I remembered the day I found out why.
It was one of those “the mystery that is man” days.

It was the first February we’d lived here. All our plantings were still new and tentative looking.
All except the weeds that were coming up in a solid carpet of green where nothing but dirt had been when we moved in.
Somehow the winter rains had magically found weed seeds waiting for moisture.
Nature’s miracle had happened in our own backyard. Front yard too, actually.

Well, the miracle must be stopped.
And it must be stopped right away because the homeowners association would send us an ugly letter if weeds were spotted from the street.
Don’t get me wrong. We’re actually grateful for our HO. It protects the neighborhood property values from people like us.

So Larry was put in charge of getting rid of the weeds.
I didn’t even have to nag him because he’s afraid of the Homeowners Ass. (As he fondly calls it.)
I was thinking some kind of herbicide spray would do the trick. And maybe some pulling.
But then I was not Larry, who is a man.

The first thought that came to his mind when given the task of weed removal was to build a contraption out of a two wheeled dolly (that thing you move heavy appliances with), a long sprayer device, and a propane tank from the barbeque filled with explosives.
This wouldn’t have occurred to me.
His invention shot fire out the end of the sprayer and made a terrifying blasting, whoosing noise like a hot air balloon being filled before liftoff. A neighbor actually called.
He drug it along behind him as he went from weed to weed incinerating it. It left awful black burn marks all over the yard and caused dogs to bark from blocks away.
It was horrible.

One day our daughter and son-in-law came over when Larry was “weeding,” as he now loved to do.
Scott, who is also a man, thought this remarkable invention was a stroke of genius and asked to borrow it for their yard.
I joyfully convinced Larry that he needed to share. It made him sad but he agreed.

A couple of days later I got a frantic call from Kim.
“Ma, tell Dad to come get his fire blower. Scott is burning up the whole yard and black splotches are everywhere. Today I caught the boys looking at it and I know they were trying to figure out how it works. That thing is dangerous! Get him over here quick before someone gets hurt!”

I did notice that none of their five daughters were reported to have tried to figure out how it worked.
Only the males who would one day become men.
Apparently this thing starts early.

Anyway, a few weeks later Larry and I were again out in the yard working when I noticed my lovely “String of Pearls” bouganvillia over along the fence. This variety was a hard to find delicate pinkish white. I was anxious to see it in color.
To my great dismay it looked sick. In fact it looked dead.
I said to my dear husband, “Oh no…..look at my bouganvillia! And it was doing so well!

Larry stopped what he was doing and gazed across the yard to my poor plant.
“That’s too bad, Hon.” he said in a sympathetic tone.
He stopped to stare quietly for a minute and then remarked, “I think it must get too hot over there by the fence.”

“Too hot!” I cried. No, that can’t be it. Bouganvillia love the heat.”
I walked sadly over to investigate.
There among the black scorch marks on the ground were poking the charred roots of my once promising plant.

I turned and sent an accusing look over at my husband.

He actually said without shame, “Look….there’re no weeds around it.”

This whole thing got me to thinking about the scriptures.
Specifically about Adam in the garden of Eden. As I recall it tells about a time when Adam was left alone there.
Father looked down on him and said something like…….
“Will you look at that. There’s Adam all alone in the garden. Well, that certainly is NOT good!"

I think He may have added, "Good grief he needs help! Quick, hurry and get a woman or there’s no telling what will happen.”
Perhaps there wasn't room to include everything.

And so woman was put on the earth.
If you think about this even a little you’ll realize that one of the divine purposes of woman’s existence is to stop men from doing all the crazy stuff they want to do.
You can read all about it in the Old Testament.
You’ll notice that there’s no mention of Adam making a fire blowing weed killer.
Thank you Eve.

It’s amazing to me how the scriptures, most of them written long ago, still apply to our lives today.
I guess some things never change, do they?

A New Bedspread

There's an old Spanish proverb I posted in my classroom once.

"First we shape our houses. Then they shape us."

And because I remembered that saying I’ve been shopping for a new bedspread. 
And that reminded me of how troublesome men can be. 
And that got me to thinking of how troublesome it is to do the right thing in general. 
So now I need to vent.

I was shopping because our bedspread has issues. It's years old and looking dated to say the least. Even, I hate to admit, a little shabby. 
Because it came in a set and I used one of the smaller pieces to cover a window valance, replacing it means replacing the valance. It's going to be a lot of trouble and work. 
Well, the price of beauty is labor, as they say, and we've been counseled that our homes should be places of beauty, haven't we? 
So.

That inspired counsel given about our homes was certainly not that they be costly, or large, or of any particular style. But that they shouldn't be neglected. No matter where or what, they should be places that reflect intelligence and beauty. In fact, we’re supposed to create homes of such charm and grace that “angels will want to visit and rest there.” I read that somewhere important.

I know that several early Prophets have talked about the subject of our homes and surroundings. I think it was Brigham Young that said when people look at the home of a Saint they should say to themselves, “What a lovely little cottage.” 
So, this must matter to Father.

And if it matters to Father then it should matter to me.

I’d like to do the right thing here but it would be a lot easier for me to accomplish this if my circumstances were different.
There are obstacles, I can tell you. 
Sometimes money for one.
The man I live with definitely for two.

So, here I am. In the middle of the blazing Sonoran desert, in a tiny little house, (tiny by choice but nevertheless) with a shabby bedspread and a troublesome man. 
I’ve been told to create beauty. 
I’m thinking.

While thinking my mind wanders back to a fall day in the center of a Glendale, Arizona barrio. 
I was teaching at the oldest school in the city, one that, sixty or so years ago, I was shocked and dismayed to learn, had been reserved solely for kids who did not qualify as “White Only”. I hadn’t realized there’d been segregated schools in this state. Sadly, I found out, there were.

I was going out to visit the mother of one of my students. I needed her to sign some papers. She had several little ones and couldn’t come in to school herself. This happened a lot. So I drove along the street, passing small houses that were surely built at the same time as the school, looking for the address. I stopped at a house that couldn’t have been more than one room wide.

There was a short chain link fence with a gate in front. It enclosed a tiny yard with a patch of grass that was green and neatly trimmed. All along the fence, vines and flowers were growing in a narrow bed. As I came to the door I saw cleverly disguised tin cans and food containers also filled with growing flowers.You had to look closely to see what the containers were. A large and lovely vine which I recognized as a sweet potato plant, hung from a twine carrier and spilled down gracefully next to the front window. 
I knocked. 
The woman who answered was dressed in a colorful skirt and a clean white blouse. She was carrying a baby on one hip and had a little one grasping her skirts from behind.The small girl clinging to her knees had big dark eyes and pink bows in her braided hair. The woman asked me in.

It was the smallest living room I’d ever seen. It couldn’t have been more than 6 feet wide. 
The room was spotless and filled with light spilling in from the window. The floor was shining cement, the walls were adorned with lovely pictures, landscapes and religious subjects as far as I could tell. Some were in frames, some appeared to be cut from magazines and placed on colorful, lacy paper mats. All were carefully hung in groups to the glowing white walls. The only window sparkled in the sun and that lovely vine could be seen gently moving in the breeze outside. There was a little shelf holding a colorful scarf and a porceline figure on the wall. 
The only furniture was a small loveseat and chair covered with matching throws. A little painted chest stood against the opposite wall. On top of the chest was a television and a vase of the flowers I’d seen outside. Delicious smells came wafting out of the next room which reminded me that it was getting on toward suppertime. 
Without asking she immediately brought me a cold drink. We talked pleasantly, she signed the papers and I left to head back to school.

Well, it’s been many years since I sat in that little home but I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I was there. You could almost touch the peace, the beauty, the creativity and intelligence that dwelt there. The woman who created that home was magnifying her sacred calling. If I were an angel I would love to stop by to visit and rest awhile.

This got me to thinking about another one of my student’s homes.

It was during our mountain years. I was teaching in a wonderful little school in a tiny town with marvelous, down to earth people. It was lunch time. My kids were out in the hall getting ready to go to the cafeteria. A new student had joined our class that morning, a boy from a family just moving from the city. We were all standing in line talking together, waiting for the 4th graders ahead of us to get going. 
My kids, who were always friendly, were talking to the new boy, trying to make him feel at home. I was chatting with some of the girls with half an eye on keeping the line in order. I heard one of my guys ask the new boy where he lived. He told them. 
Someone else said, “Oh, I know where that is. Down at the other end of the street from the “junk house,” right? “Yeah,” some of the other kids chimed in, “That’s where it is. At the other end of the street from the junk house.”

The line started to move. The kids stopped their conversations

My boys didn’t even know that their classmate who lived in the “junkhouse” had heard them. They didn't mean to be cruel.

But I saw the boy's face. What I saw there broke my heart. 
There was shame and embarrassment. Feelings hard for a child to bear. 
But, I prayed silently, not, "I come from the junkhouse so I must be junk." 
Please Father, don't let him think that.

So, creating homes of grace despite our circumstances is important to Father. Order, cleanliness, and beauty might really be next to godliness. Maybe there's something to that old saying, "First we shape our houses, then they shape us

Back to the bedspread.

Gratefully, I have the means to buy a new bedspread. And I even have the grandkids who can climb a ladder and get the old valance down. 
What I don’t have is a husband whose grizzled gray and bearded face looks good under any sort of elegant covering. Every time I think I’ve found a new one (bedspread that is), I imagine his sleeping, snoring face peeking out from under the covers. 
I’ve tried, really tried people, but he just doesn’t match with any type of charming decor!
Some of you may be married to elegant or adorably cute men but mine is the rugged type. He now looks like a mountain man fresh from the hunt. An old one to boot. Burlap or buffalo hides are the only fabrics that come to mind when you gaze at his sleeping face. 
Back when he was younger he used to look like Sean Connery. Then a cross between Sean and Santa Claus. Then just Santa Claus. Now, it’s the mountain man phase. 
I’m not the only one who sees these evolving resemblances either. Once a few years back, in an emergency, I called Sears where he’d gone to buy some shoes. 
I asked for the tool department. I told the girl who answered that I needed to find my husband quick because our son had just called with last minute tickets to the ASU / UofA football game, and they needed to leave in 20 minutes. 
She asked what he looked like. I told her a cross between Sean Connery, Santa Claus and a buffalo. She said she didn’t see him. 
I said “He’s a good kisser.” She replied brightly, “Oh sure, there he is now!”

Yes, men can be troublesome indeed.

Even so, you’ll be happy to know, I am not deterred. 
Thinking about all this has strengthened me. 
I’m off on my quest for a new bedspread. 
And I’m going to try to create beauty by replanting my patio pots with hardy perenials that can perhaps survive in this blast furnace portion of the Lord’s vineyard. 
And I even won’t murmur against those people in San Diego or Flagstaff who have such an easy time creating beauty all around, and don’t appreciate it. 
On the coast I once saw tomato plants and flowers growing wild and tall as your head around the dumpsters behind a McDonalds! Tomatoes were everywhere and desperately needed to be picked. 
I almost had to cuss but “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s tomato plants” is a rule, I think.

Anyway life is full of obstacles meant to be overcome. I’ll let you know how this one turns out for me.

Man Survey

I’m very grateful for the blessing of eternal marriage.
My husband and I have been sealed in the temple for time and eternity, not just until death parts us.
It’s a good thing too, because it may take me that long to figure him out.
You see, the problem is that he’s a man and men don’t always make sense.

You’d think that being married for decades would be enough to teach a person all about the opposite sex. Well, not necessarily, is all I can say.
Men are still a mystery to me even after being married to one for all these years.

It must be like what some church authority once said about raising children. “Before we had kids my wife and I had lots of theories about the proper way to raise children and now we have lots of children and no theories.”
It’s the same way with men I guess.
There’s only one thing I absolutely know for sure about them and it’s this… they’re different from women. Really, basically, at a cellular level, different. They see the world from a uniquely male point of view which sometimes doesn’t make sense to a woman.
Let me tell you about a case in point.

One Sunday when we lived in the mountains I was standing in the church foyer after the meeting when my friend Sandy came up to me looking a bit dejected. I asked her what was wrong and she said that her husband Joey was mad at her and she couldn’t figure out why.
I asked her to explain.

“Well,” she said, “It’s about our porch. The front steps have been creaky for the last year or so and finally the top step got so loose that it was a hazard. I practically broke my neck the other day dragging groceries into the house. I’d asked Joey to fix them a hundred times and he always said he’d get to it when he could. Well, he obviously didn’t want to fix them so Tuesday I called a repairman who came right over and took the whole thing apart, rebuilt the top step and only charged me $60. The porch looks like new. I work part-time you know, so I paid him from my paycheck.
Well, when Joey got home he had a fit! He said he could have fixed that porch for free in less than 30 minutes and I’d wasted $60! Then he went into a long tirade about how I don’t know the value of a dollar….you know. I thought he'd be glad the porch was fixed. I don’t understand why he’s so mad.”

“I know exactly what you mean!’’ I cried. “I had the same thing with a toilet that kept running.
Larry said it was the flapper and he’d fix it when he got around to it. It drove me crazy for months. I finally called a plumber and then boy did we have a fight. I didn’t understand either. I thought I was doing him a favor. He obviously didn't want to fix the toilet.”

Sandy stood thinking quietly for a bit and then said quizzically, “Maybe it’s one of those man things.”
She was a newlywed, married only about 20 years or so and still at the trying to figure them out stage in life. I’d been married a lot longer than that and had arrived at the you’ll never figure them out so just deal with it stage.

“I wonder if they’re all like that,” I asked her thoughtfully.

She gazed off into space for a minute and then said, “Let’s find out.”

“How?” I replied.

“We’ll do a survey! Sandy cried. “Let’s start right here and now.”

And so the Man Survey was born in the church foyer.
We moved outside the building to the sidewalk to be respectful and if a man came out we asked him if he would take part in our survey.

Sandy explained the porch scenario, changing names to protect herself, while I told my leaky toilet story.
We then asked each man if he would get mad at his wife in the same situations.
We asked all kinds of men…… highly educated professionals, blue collar workers, old men, newlyweds, guys with manicures, fancy dressers, guys who needed a haircut and one guy with red suspenders and grease under his fingernails.
In all those surveys we found only ONE sensible man!
He listened intently to our stories and then asked, “Where’d she get the money?” We said she works part-time. At that point he exclaimed happily, “Go for it Babe!”

One man was an especially bitter disappointment. After listening intently he looked at us like we had lost our minds and said in a very serious tone, “My wife knows better than to do a thing like that.” He had three college degrees!

After we finished at church we were so perplexed that we decided to continue to survey men we saw at work during the week.
Next Sunday we met again to compare results.
“Go for it, Babe!” was the only sensible man we found. He alone didn’t get at least very annoyed with his wife.

“They really don't make sense,” Sandy said dejectedly. “How am I ever going to know what will upset Joey if he doesn’t make sense?”

“You won’t….but you’ll get used to it.” I replied knowingly.

Then, a few weeks later, I ran across another man thing that involved underwear drawers.
I quietly went up to Sandy after church.
I asked her if her husband kept strange things in his underwear drawers.

“Like what?” she asked, looking at me with a puzzled expression.

“Like socket wrenches, dead batteries, old car dealer brochures, extension cords, cable to an old VCR, various ammunition including shotgun shells, nuts, (walnuts, pistachios, and the kind you use with bolts), magnifying glasses and binoculars, lots of quarters with state pictures, expired coupons for free chile dogs, that sort of thing.” I said.

“Why yes!” she cried, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, Larry and I just had a “discussion” about a car part he had in with his socks.
I was putting clean underwear away and I asked him very sweetly, “What’s this dear?”
I held up a car part the size of a casserole dish to show him.

“It’s a filter and air cleaner from a 1991 Chevy Metro,” he replied. “Why do you ask and why are you bothering my stuff again?

“Well, cars are usually kept in the garage. Don’t car parts belong in the garage with the cars?”

“HA! That shows what you know! he triumphantly shouted.
“We don’t even own that car anymore!”

I just shook my head and walked away.
Eternity is a good long time.
I just hope it’s long enough.