Mother's Day

This Mother's Day was unlike any other. Beside being the first Mother's Day without Mom, Tara and I gave talks in Sacrament meeting. We started the day by making Tara breakfast in bed. I made her favorite: a fried egg inside the hole of piece of bread that I cut out with a cup. She was pretty tired as she had been up until 1 a.m. preparing her talk. We had a week to prepare our talks and I, of course, procrastinated until Sunday morning to start mine. So at 9:30 I sat down at the computer for the first time to start working on my talk (our ward starts at 12:30).

I was asked to speak on how my mother influenced my life and also how I have been influenced by Tara being the mother of our family. I knew the talk and the preparation were going to be very emotional. I just sat at the computer and let it all flow out. Surprisingly, preparing and giving the talk were very therapeutic and somehow very fitting. I felt blessed to have the opportunity to speak about mom and how she impacted my life and to pay respect to her in front of so many people I care about. The bishop later commented that he had no idea that mom had passed away when he asked us to speak. What a neat bit of inspiration.

When we arrived at church, 20 min early, there was literally no where to sit. We wanted to sit on the front row so that as Tara and I took turns speaking, the other could be down tending to the children. We squished in next another family with like 5 kids and it was nutty. Bun was sleeping when we left, so she was still waking up when we sat down. Then she was hungry and the kids wanted to play with her and Lauren wanted to kiss her all over (I mean all over, her legs, her head, her hands, her feet, everywhere.) This made Austin edgy because she was all over him and to top it all off, it was hot. I was doing my best to just concentrate on my talk and not go crazy.

The primary children sang in Sacrament and that was beautiful and calmed me a little bit. Next Tara was up and she gave a great talk from her point of view as a mother. Everyone was touched and she gave a great message. When it was my turn, I didn't feel nervous and I just felt like the words just flowed out. I did get emotional a few times, but I feel like I held it together pretty well considering the circumstances. Below is the outline that I took up with me when I gave my talk. Of course it is not written in complete sentences, but you can get the gist of what I said:

"I affirm my profound belief that God's greatest creation is womanhood. I also believe that there is no greater good in all the world than motherhood. The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation." James E. Faust, April 1993 General Conference

How Tara as a mother has influenced me:

We had Ashlyn on October 1 of last year. I believe there is a chemical change in a man’s heart when he sees the woman he loves go through such a difficult and amazing process. Your heart grows in ways that you cant’s explain and there is a softness and a tenderness that can only come from the Spirit.

She makes it look easy – She juggles so many schedules I don’t know how she keeps up. We recently bought her treo phone. She has learned to tame this technology and become very organized. She keeps everything from Drs appointments to grocery lists in her phone and sometimes when I see her schedule, it makes me thankful that I get to go to work.

A couple of Saturday’s ago, she attended an all-day scrap booking event and asked if I could watch the children while she was gone. I said “sure hon, no problem. I can do this, you go have fun with your pictures and scissors.” She sent me about 15 text messages during the day to see if I had remembered this or forgotten to do that. When she came home, the baby was asleep, and the house reasonably picked up. She asked how it all went and I told her that it was fine. I don’t think that she could tell that I didn’t have time to take a shower that day, that the kids still had lunch on their faces and clothes, and I was only able to switch one load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. I honestly have no idea how she does it.

She has taught me to capture and appreciate the moments. She takes a ton of pictures. She shares pictures with family and friends. She has started a blog.

I see her influence and successes through the children. When I see Austin taking such sweet care of his baby sister and the tenderness that he has for others, I know that came from his relationship and influence of his mother. When Jessica was sad when we caught a rat in the rat trap in our garage because it was one of heavenly father’s creatures, I could just hear the countless previous conversations with her mother regarding animals and Heavenly Father’s love for them. When Lauren runs downstairs at night distraught because we “almost forgot family prayer.” I can see Tara’s commitment to keep the family strong through spiritual bonds.
Tara and I have amazing children and they are who they due to the tremendous amount of attention and love that Tara gives them on a daily basis.

How my mother influenced my life:

Today's Topic is near to my heart. This is a very personal topic yet one that I feel very comfortable speaking on. I truly have one of the most amazing mothers in the world. Every major decision I have ever made was done with input and advice of my mother, so in large part almost I can feel her influence every aspect of my life. My mother passed way from pancreatic cancer on March 13th of this year. It seems that when someone close to you passes, you reflect back on them, their life, and their impact on you.

To my mom, being a mother, was not a position or a title, but an attitude, a way of living and loving so that everyone around her felt her unconditional acceptance and love.

She was the oldest of 5 children….She was the oldest daughter of 5 children. Her mother worked outside the home and so all of the responsibility fell onto her. She had me a very young age and soon thereafter my sister came along. Then Sam 10 years later, just as Sam was preparing to graduate from high school, and then when I was 26 she had my youngest brother Skyler. Sklyer is now 6, the same age as my little Lauren.

She loved being a mother, not just to us, her children, but anyone or anything else that she could. We have pictures of her Maltese dog dressed up as a pumpkin for Halloween, and her cats had no idea that they were not human because they were treated as if they were. All growing up we had friends that felt comfortable coming to her with their problems, their trials, and their joys. When the word of her passing spread, there was such a tremendous outpouring of love that it hard to explain.

At her graveside service, the bishop that was presiding gave anyone a chance to speak that felt the desired to do so. One woman stood up, whom I have never seen before. She said that she had not spoken to my mother in almost 30 years, but that in high school this woman had not been very popular or accepted among the cool crowd. And that my mom went out of her way to talk to her to be her friend and to make her feel included. She said that she never forgot my mom or her actions. My mom would even mother her friends and those that she didn’t even know.

She felt it was her responsibility and duty to teach her children the basics of life so that when the time came to leave home we would not be lost without her.

She taught us how to wash our clothes; separate the whites, lights and darks, bleach only on the whites. If something is red, even if it is a light red, it still goes with the darks.

She taught us how to cook ; not gourmet, and not by microwave, but how to follow a recipe and the basics of nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

She taught us how to sew; we all learned how to sew on buttons, fix hems and rips.
She taught us strength – physical and spiritual

Physical – she was strong, from working and raising children, she had these biceps that were amazing. She would flex and all of my friends’ jaws would drop. I still remember in the eighth grade none of my friends could beat her in an arm wrestling match.

Spiritual – several times in her life she was faced with extremely difficult decisions that she knew would have an impact on her children for the rest of her life.

She understood and took very seriously the fact that her decisions that she made on a daily basis, to have family prayer, to read her scriptures, to pay her tithing not only affected her but me and my brothers and sister and our future families as well.

She taught us Love

While serving in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley said: "How fortunate, how blessed is the child who feels the affection of his parents. That warmth, that love will bear sweet fruit in the years that follow"

She was my biggest fan

She told me that I could do anything that I wanted if I would try hard enough. When I was 5 at my kindergarten graduation and the teacher was asking all the children what they wanted to be when they grew up and I said “Rockstar” she smiled and nodded her head. Later as I grew older and my talent for singing (or lack thereof) became apparent, and I decided to go to law school, she nodded and smiled again.

She was a friend

So often in life when I had good news or even bad, she would be the person that I wanted to tell first. I knew that she was rooting for me and was sincerely excited about the things in my life.
After I got married and my wife took on more of that role, she would be the second person I called and often had an interesting insight or idea. I loved and will always cherish those conversations.

Funny Sayings – Golly Sakes Alive, and I’ll be cotton pickin’ – she wasn’t from the south but sometimes I think she forgot that she had lived her whole life in California. She had other sayings that stuck with me throughout my life:

As a small child, I had a tendency to be curious about life, and to wander from my mother’s side when we went to the grocery store and other places.

I remember her saying in that whisper-yell voice that only mother’s can do, “I said STAY CLOSE.”

As I grew into my late elementary school years, and I would leave the house in the morning for a day of playing football, wiffleball, swimming and crawdad catching, my mom would yell out “Stay Close” as the screen door slammed and I rode off on my bmx bike in a blur.

As I grew into a teen-ager and started to gain my independence with a job and a car, she would hug me as I prepared to leave and whisper in my ear “stay close.”

Then as I left for my mission and entered the MTC, when you get that final goodbye where young, wide-eyed, and visibly shaking missionaries, start their new life, through tearful eyes and a joyful heart, she again whispered “stay close.”

Then again as I married my wonderful wife, her advice on how to have a happy marriage, she looked at me and Tara and said, “Stay close.”

As she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and my heart was broken, I sat next her in her hospital bed and asked her how I was supposed to live without her and she said, “don’t worry, I’ll stay close.”

It was a very emotional talk and one that I won't soon forget.

After church, we went to the Hurds' and the men (Jeff, Bill, Billy and I) made dinner for the women. We made them breakfast for dinner. I was in charge of the waffles and through a minor miscalculation (I put in 1/2 the milk that I was supposed to) some of them came out kind of um....heavy. But everyone ate them just the same and it was a great time.



We came home and Tara was a little stressed because the house was a wreck because we left the house in such a whirlwind to get to church on time. She wanted the kids to go to bed so we could have some "us" time, and of course I missed the signs and didn't understand her mood, and I let the kids stay up a late and watch the original Star Wars with me.

So all in all, it wasn't a very Tara oriented Mother's Day and I feel bad about that. There was so much going on and I feel like she didn't really get the recognition that she deserves for being the wonderful mother that she is. She really is amazing and I appreciate all that she does for all of us. Happy Mother's Day Mom and Tara.