It is a beautiful sabbath afternoon, sunny and high in the 50's here in Southern Connecticut. I was able to run in shorts for the first time all season yesterday yet I ran in running tights and gloves just the day before. The weather is in its late winter undecided stage. And while I ran yesterday I thought how fitting a metaphor that is for so many things in our family.
Our "adopted daughter" Nicole Dew reminded me in a blog comment not too long ago that the "almost daily doings" are in need of a more regular refresh. I guess I had been waiting for something more monumental to happen to write a new entry about forgetting what our dear friend Ellis Ivory said to me in similar moment a few years back. Life is monumental. The daily doings, for which this Blog is named, in the aggregate may not seem monumental but just the struggles, joys and triumphs of raising a Latter-day Saint family in the East without benefit of family super close by that is monumental enough. The day-to-day tender mercies of finding lost items with a prayer or a son who in order to finish his Eagle scout requirements walked 65 miles in a single week. That's pretty darn monumental. Trust me I walked ten of those miles before my feet blistered so bad I could not stand. Some hand-cart captain I would have made! They would have left me in between!
The children are all in a bit of an in between it seems. Sarah is literally in-between jobs. Suzanne is in between serious relationships but seeing a very nice young man with a penchant for flying airplanes. Andrew is in between finishing high school and starting at BYU-I in the fall. Em is between finishing middle school and starting seminary and the excitement of DHS in
the fall.
Christie is in between being completely over the long recovery from her torn achilles and being back on the tennis court, we are in between being go everywhere, do everything parents of teens and the serenity and service filled years of being empty nesters. Just Em at home come the fall.
The company is in-between being a tiny boutique collective and becoming a real small company with multiple partners and a real office or two. And I am in between New York and Salt Lake quite literally several times a month. It is that growing duality that is making me feel perhaps the most in-between of all. I think of how easy and economical it would be to move to Salt Lake, to an Ivory Home with all their shiny amenities, or a rustic older home in Harvard/Yale, or something along Walker or somewhere in Holladay near Steve and Jen if we could ever afford it after selling our Darien house and paying off everything and everyone. Then of course I think of the dread of cleaning, curb-appealing, packing and selling our place and the state of the market and I am back to being just in-between.
So as much in between as things feel right now, something are not in between, some things are rooted, substantial and permanent and thankfully those things are the things that really count - our testimonies of the restored gospel, our love for each other, our commitment to the Church in serving wherever we are asked and our focus on being back to the very basics of life in the gospel. The other thing that is thankfully not in-between is the love and support of wonderful business partners, friends and ward members who we serve alongside. The quiet, marvelous way they serve and the examples they set fill our lives with love and gratitude.
Yes things are a bit in-between but that has a certain mystery and wonder about it. It's part of life's grand adventure. Christie and I once attended a church meeting where the speaker, the Branch President at West Point, said he loved when at a dinner you're told to save your fork because that means something wonderful is coming. That's very much how I feel about life right now. Soon we will hear the wheels of the sweet tray. Soon enough. But now, the table is laden with the dinner course still and we're feeling a bit, well, in-between.
