Salt and No Wind

It's been a long, long time since I attended church for any religious purpose, about ten years. I've set foot in quite a few on social or family errands, and it's always been weird. Attending a niece's Roadshow of skits about local Mormon history last night was no different, though the stories were interesting because I love history and the kids were uber-creative and did a fantastic job. (One skit featured a banana-yellow plywood Hummer H2 that fit five. When was the last time you and I were that creative?) But the church! The feel, the smell, always so much farther from God than anywhere natural. Give me live lodgepole pines for my chapel walls, give me blue sky for stained glass, birdsong for a choir and wind for an organ, and I'll absorb myself in the pursuit of goodness and virtue all my life and nevermind the sermon. There's just too much organization in organized religion.

In honor of the day, I'll thank all veterans, thank you very much. Thank you Jerry, Uncle, though it's over seventeen years since I last hovered near your quiet, smoking, smiling form, wondering if it was really alright to sit upon your knee, or take the offered peanuts from your hand to feed your Omaha squirrels. Thank you Bartley, Grandpa, though it's six months since you lost the final battle you were ever called upon to fight, but cancer is an internal foe and ever so much more evil than any without, even Nazis. I have the picture of you in your uniform, slim and straight, holding two-year-old Dad in his matching homemade suit, complete with pointed GI cap. I keep it on the shelf where I keep your Army-issue olive linen hankie and Uncle Jerry's compass and pocketknife. Thank you Earl, James, Samuel, Edward, Nancy and Stu, Pete, Val, and Howard, Ben and Steve. Thank you for every chance I've ever had to be happy; thank you for my life.

I'm desperate for more time. I'm frantic to do justice to the regard for me offered by those who believe in me, before I lose them forever. There aren't the hours I need to paint and draw enough, to write enough, to make music enough to suit me, let alone enough hours to develop these abilities to the level where I'm proud enough to demand regard for them. But even more than that, I want more time with the people who told me there was nothing I couldn't do. I want another day to play hop-ching with Grandma before she can't see or grasp the marbles at all, another day to be awed at the store of knowledge Dad seems to contain like an enormous underground lake, another day to be amazed at Mom's unsinkable optimism and saint-worthy kindness. I want to keep more of them with me than just what's encoded.

The title of this post reflects the wishes of one woman who spent the winter of 1857 at what was then Camp Scott, on the Blacks Fork River. She was with a company of US soldiers who were escorting her husband to the Salt Lake Valley to forcibly replace Brigham Young as governor, but winter came early and strong and stalled them before they could make the pass through the Wasatch range. She faithfully wrote cheerful letters back home, praising her stalwart companions and their quarters (humble canvas tents), and lamenting only two things: the lack of salt to be had at the Fort, and the constant freezing wind typical of the region. When I think of all my wants and perceived needs, I'll try to remember Elizabeth, sensitive and observant, cheery despite her trials. She would have been perfectly happy with salt and no wind.