I'm a starfish

So forgive me for oversimplifying, but in general, there are two types of sleepers: starfish and mummies. I'm a starfish. Gerald is a mummy. This has been a challenge pretty much since the day we got married. Starfish like to sleep, well, resembling starfish, arms and legs stretched out wide, taking up a whole lot of space in a bed, leaving little room for anyone else. Mummies like to sleep all curled up in the fetal position, blankets wrapped tightly around them (serious claustrophobia!). When a starfish marries a mummy, the struggle is real.

I've always thought that a king bed might ease that struggle, and on those occasions that we've been in a hotel with a king, it's been way better. But I've never forked over the cash to get one. Until now.

As many of you know, Seth is going to New York City in April, on tour with his performing choir. Such a trip requires some serious fundraising, and the first and biggest fundraiser happened to be a mattress sale. Could this be the impetus I needed? I could buy a king mattress set, and Seth would earn $125 toward his NYC trip. Done. And while I was at it, why not also buy a full-sized bed for Seth, who was sleeping on a million-year-old twin mattress? This purchase added $75 to Seth's trip; we were now $200 ahead!

Of course the mattresses didn't arrive in time for Thanksgiving when we had a houseful of people staying here, but they did arrive just after, two days ago to be exact. Gerald is working 15-hour days this week, and Seth is either in school, rehearsing, or performing pretty much all his waking hours, so that left Shulamith and me to set up these beds. Could we do it? Well, of course we could. "Who needs men anyway?" she proclaimed, as she unscrewed apart and then screwed back together my queen bed frame, in order to move it into what I'll always call "Isaiah's room," even though Isaiah doesn't technically live here anymore.

I thought the hardest part would be navigating the king mattress, but once we got there, it was actually pretty easy.

Can I just say, the Webster women rock! We set up Seth's new bed in his room, moved the queen bed into Isaiah's room, and set up the new king in the master bedroom. Woo hoo! By the end, we both had backaches, and even our arms were sore. We popped some ibuprofen and decided we should probably start weight training again.

So friends from out of town....come stay with us! We now have a lovely queen bed available in Isaiah's room. But more importantly, the starfish and the mummy will be sleeping well every night.

We gather together

Many families eat dinner together, all around the table, every day. We don't. We eat at the dinner table about twice a year, on Easter and Thanksgiving. What can I say?  We're just really informal about food, and we also eat many meals in restaurants.

So it's particularly joyous when we have a meal together, gathered around the table. Here is a picture of all of us on Tuesday, when we celebrated Thanksgiving two days early because my mom was in town to see Seth perform in Les Mis. Included here are four of our five beautiful children, along with Shulamith's husband and Eli's wife.

It's been a whirlwind of crazy! Grandma flew in from Portland Monday afternoon, and after grabbing some pizza, we all headed to Hillcrest High School to see Seth's performance. I had already seen it three times; yep, I'm that mom, the one who bought a ticket for every night. Nevertheless, closing night Monday was incredible! I was worried I might not be able to point Seth out to my mom in all eight musical numbers because he was positioned in different places throughout the auditorium, but  I think I succeeded.

Seth was in Carousel his sophomore year and Mary Poppins last year, but nothing compares to Les Mis. What a perfect way to end his high school musical tenure! It doesn't matter where I see this play; whether on Broadway or at Hale Center Theatre or even at a high school in Midvale, Utah, the story always touches my heart. The tale of redemption and courage in the face of oppression challenges us to look more closely at our lives. Indeed, it challenged Joshua Long, the director of Seth's show, to do just that. May I share a snippet of his notes from the program:

"The stories and experiences of Fantine, Eponine and Jean Valjean are still echoed in many people we see every day. We haven't figured it out as a society. Are we even trying anymore? I am so incredibly inspired by Enjolras and his army of young students who realized what was happening to the less fortunate around them, realized their privilege, and then dedicated their lives to doing something about changing things. Am I that brave? Well, I'm obviously not. I have not built a barricade and stood up on top it it to fight for those less fortunate than me. Could I be like that? Who needs me to do that for them?"

I echo his words.

This Thanksgiving, may we be grateful for all we have.

The past two weeks: A lot of pathos involved

A friend and fellow VIPKID teacher recently commented that she goes through all five stages of the grieving process every morning when her alarm goes off and she has to get up to teach. The other three of us in this text thread 100% agreed. With the recent time shift, prime VIPKID hours for us in the Mountain Time Zone are 4:00-6:00 a.m. I mention this because I'm going to discuss my own grieving process on a different topic in this post, and I wanted to be clear that, although the five stages of grief were originally drafted to explain the process we experience when someone we love dies, they can also apply to other unfortunate circumstances in life, even those that aren't tragedies.

So to be very clear, what I'm going to tell you about is not a tragedy. I've experienced tragedy. I know what that feels like. This isn't it. Nevertheless, I have been up and down, back and forth, in and out through all the stages of grief for the past two weeks, and that process continues right up to this very moment.

Backstory. Just shy of seven years ago, I sat in the living room of our Billings, Montana home and together with Gerald, Shulamith, and Mathew, plotted. We plotted out a future plan that, then, seemed so complex and challenging, it was more a pipe dream than anything. I'm not sure any one of us truly believed that this dream could become reality, as we sat together in our living room that cold December night. At one point Matt remarked, "There are just a lot of bridges we will need to cross to get from where we are now to where we want to be." Indeed.

And then we began to cross those bridges, one by one. We would need to sell our Montana home. We would need to secure employment here in Utah. We would need to find the perfect Utah house, one that included a separate apartment, because the goal was a home where we could all live together, but where Shulamith and Matt would have privacy, meaning a completely independent unit with its own entrance and kitchen. Also, I didn't want it to be totally under ground (those dark ones with super low ceilings that feel like caves).

That bridge took lots of time and effort. I came to Utah on three separate weekends, and Shulamith and I, together with our patient realtor Susan, looked at dozens of houses. While tempted to settle for less than the ideal, we didn't. We continued to search, believing that the right house for us was out there and that we would eventually find it.

And eventually, we did. Right here on East Angel Ct. It honestly had everything we were looking for. When we both felt it was the right house, we brought Matt to look at it and sent pictures to Gerald, who was still in Montana working. They both agreed. Gerald and I made an offer, and thus began the process to crossing Bridge #3.

In July of 2011, Seth and I moved to Utah and into our new home. Shulamith and Matt moved into the apartment once their lease expired in September, and Gerald and Eli came in October. We did it! We crossed all the bridges. We were here. It was so wonderful.

And temporary. It was always temporary. We knew it would not be forever; in fact, had I tried to predict, I would have guessed the Monson-Websters would stay with us maybe a year or two, until Matt finished his degree. That was 6.5 years ago. Why did we stay together so long? Because we all loved it! There were just so many pluses to the situation and literally only one minus: size. As the Monson-Webster family grew with the addition of three children, our lovely, but small, one-bedroom, daylight basement apartment, well...you can only imagine how cramped it became.

But back to the pluses. Oh my goodness, how wonderful joint living can be, given the right personalities, the right relationships, the right circumstances, and the right space. It fosters a blissful interdependence that eases burdens, reduces stress, and increases love:

Shulamith: "The kids are asleep, and Matt and I want to run out for some ice cream. If I leave both doors open, will you listen in case they wake up?"

Terrianne: "Hey, I'm stuck downtown, and Seth needs a ride home from school and some food. Can you go grab him and feed him?"

Shulamith: "Theodore was up all night, and I'm fading. Can I bring him upstairs for an hour and catch a nap while the big kids are with their grandparents?"

Terrianne: "I'm having a full-on clothes crisis! Can you bring up some shirts that might go with my gray skirt?"

Shulamith: "Matt wants to go play video games with Tyce and Cam, but I have VIP kids tonight. Can you hold Theodore from 8:30-10:30."

Terrianne: "Seth has my car, and I desperately need Diet Coke. Can I borrow your van for five minutes and run to Chevron?"

I could go on. And on. And on. From sharing food to sharing clothes, from providing needed recipe items to providing emotional support, from helping with each other's kids to helping with each other's housework, these past 6.5 years have been pure joy. Is it any wonder I'm swimming through the grieving stages day by day?

Denial
This is what we've done for the past year, pretend it wasn't happening. If we pretend it isn't happening, maybe it won't. This strategy has worked very well, by the way. I highly recommend it. Even now, I continue to be in denial most of the time. I pretend she's still here.

Bargaining
Maybe there's a way to work this thing so it won't be so bad after all? Hmmm. The worst day of the week is Sunday, when Shulamith is no longer in my ward. Like it really, really super sucks to be there without her. Because she and Matt are late for church literally every week (exception: the three Sundays they blessed their babies), I am accustomed to glancing back every so often to see if she's coming yet. Then I get so happy when I see her! Imaging the despair these past two Sundays, as I kept glancing back, only to remember that she wouldn't be coming.

My many Protestant friends are baffled: "Wait....what? In addition to all the grief you're going through already with this, now your church won't let her go there anymore?" Lacking the emotional energy to explain the many reasons for ward boundaries, my answer is, "It's complicated, but in a word, no. No they won't."

In further attempts to bargain our way out of this, we joke that we should just go to the Christian Assembly Church right around the corner. The sign says "Everyone Welcome," and they don't care where you live.

Anger
Most of my anger related to this situation is the result of what might have been. Shulamith tried her very best, twice, to move close to me. I will never forget that. She and Matt made offers and were under contract to buy two condominiums just across 80th from our house. But circumstances entirely unrelated to Shulamith and Matt (something about the condo association not maintaining sufficient funds in its reserve account) caused both deals to fall through. And these stupid condos are right on my walking path, and I get mad every single time I walk past.

"God doesn't want us to be together," I spewed in anger one day. Shulamith's reply: "Don't blame God. It's Satan who likes to tear apart families. Blame him." Good point. I'll direct my anger there.

Shulamith didn't tell anyone about their plans for a very long time, partly to protect me (and others). I remember saying to her:

"If someone dares to tell me I should be thankful you are still fairly close, I might snap.

And hurt someone.

And go to jail

And Seth won't have a mom anymore."

So maybe don't be that person.

It is so easy to project our own feelings onto others. I know I'm guilty of doing this. But really, there is no "should" in feelings because all feelings are valid. So telling me how I should feel or how you would feel, or have felt, or think you would feel under similar circumstances is pretty much irrelevant because we just can't compare pain. Everyone is different; all circumstances are different. May we seek to affirm rather than to judge.

Depression
With the holiday season approaching, I try not to live in the depression stage for too long though sometimes it's inevitable, especially when I think about our future here. I really don't know what the future holds; our long range plans are woefully uncertain. But whether it's one more year or 40 more, I'm pretty sure I'll always be lonely in this house without her.

Then there's the fact that it's very possible I'll never see Matt again. I saw him more when we lived in Montana. I used to fly down here each month to spend a long weekend with Shulamith, and in those early days, when they were dating and newly married,  Matt would hang out with us the whole weekend. He doesn't do that anymore. Truth is, I basically see Matt in just two scenarios. Sometimes we happen to be taking out our trash at the same time, and we meet outside at the trash can and say hi. More often, he's leaving for work at the same time I'm out walking, and we wave to each other. Since neither of those scenarios is likely to happen now, I'm pretty sure I'll never see Matt again. Which is sad. Because I really like Matt.

Acceptance
Nope. This one is not happening. Not ever. The best I can do is acknowledge my sincere appreciation for what we had. I got to live with my best friend for 6.5 years. And it was awesome.