Friday December 22, 2023
This morning Betty’s leg was feeling a bit sore, and it was raining, so she decided to stay home, and I went for a run on my own. I decided to run to the Gilbert temple -- hoping that the weather might afford me a good photo opportunity. Thankfully, the weather held up most of the time, and I didn’t get much more than a drizzle. It was good to stretch my legs, and clear my head, and the smell of the desert rain -- wet earth and sage -- was transcendent.
And then there was the temple with moody clouds and a dim morning light.
It was definitely worth the five mile run.
Uncle Steve came in the morning to say one last goodbye to us, and he brought his dog Pepper. She’s his new best friend, and it’s not hard to see why. What a fun dog!
After that, we drove to the house of Betty’s cousin Fina. She lives on the northwest side of Phoenix. Fina has always been kind to us, and today was no exception, but the visit was a challenge.
Let’s talk about Ian for a minute.
Ian is absolutely amazing. He’s kind and generous, and his talent is being talented. Pretty much anything he sets his mind to, he excels at. Harmonica? No problem. Rubik’s Cube? Give him a couple of days, and he’ll do it with his eyes closed. Ukulele? Of course. Sign language club? Best in the group.
But Ian also struggles at times with pretty crippling anxiety. And today, for whatever reason, he was feeling really anxious about being at Fina’s house. He was mad when we left Janie’s, he was mad during the drive, and by the time we got to the house, he was totally twisted up in knots. Anyone who has struggled with this knows that once the wave of anxiety comes, it’s really tough to get sorted again.
We got to Fina’s house in the early afternoon, and for the first couple of hours, Ian really struggled. He was just in a surly mood, and kind of treated everyone like poop. Finally, as dinner was about to start, I pulled him outside, and we had a good chat. I told him that he needed to do something to pull himself together because Fina had gone to all this trouble to make this delicious meal for her. Her kids were there, and they were all being super nice as well. All Ian wanted was to get in the car and go home -- or just spend the rest of the evening there -- but to his credit, he gave me a hug, turned around, and marched back into what was to him, the belly of the beast.
The meal was incredible, but at first, Ian was still determined to give everyone the cold shoulder. But after just a few minutes, someone asked him a question, and he responded. Then I saw the ice melt from his face, and he warmed up. After another few minutes, he was relaxed and joking with everyone. He was back. It was a remarkable display of courage and submission, and I love him for it.
Fina is the first of many visits to come to Betty’s family and friends. And if this is any indication of how things are going to go, I’m going to be glad for 500 miles of hiking in Spain to work off all the calories.
First off, Fina fed us a “light” snack of spaghetti, pollo asado, and orange chicken. I tried to warn the kids to pace themselves, but they are still amateurs. When actual Christmas dinner rolled around -- a couple of hours later -- they were still stuffed. Unfortunately (for them) Fina had loaded them each up with a plate of more spaghetti, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, green salad, Christmas turkey, rolls, and tons of soda. They all took one look at their plate, picked at them a bit, and the looked at me for help. That’s when I went into Dad mode. I couldn’t let all of that good food go to waste, so after downing my own plate, I proceeded to help them all with theirs. I haven’t eaten so many calories in years.
While we were visiting, Fina told me that her father had been a journalist in Mexico. His name was José Ramón Valdés Romero, and his column was called Las aventuras de un anciano lúcido y feliz . It’s an awesome name for a column, and seems appropriate for this trip. Betty tells me that the other interesting thing about José is that after a long life of what we might call “riotous living,” he found God in his old age, joined the church, and was baptized just two years before dying at over 100 years old. That’s awesome.
The other awesome thing about dinner was watching my kids visit with Fina’s kids (all adults). Their circumstances could not have been more different than those of our kids. They were raised in tough neighborhoods in big cities. Jonesville has 3,000 people. My kids are about as sheltered as can be. They think that the escalator at Hillsdale College (the only escalator in the county) is a roller coaster ride. They get anxiety about visiting new people. So these kids all come from totally different worlds, and yet they just talked for hours about life. It was just a really nice evening.
After dinner we had a long drive back to Janie’s, and after a tough evening with Ian, I thought I was free, but Anahi was waiting for her turn when bedtime came.
So now a word about Anahí.
She is gentle, and sweet, and deeply loyal to her friends. So many people are drawn to her. On Day 1, we gave her the nickname The Invisible Woman, and she kind of lives up to it. She is the quietest in our family. Like Kimball, she struggles with autism, and has a tendency to retreat into herself. It’s not uncommon for us to just lose track of her, and then find her as far from people as possible, poking away at her phone, or just talking to herself.
The other thing about Anahi is that she is a planner. Some people (Alicia for example) like to talk about what has happened. Anahi almost always likes to talk about what is going to happen. And that is a special challenge on this trip because practically nothing has gone according to plan so far. We are all learning to go with the flow, be flexible, and take things a day at a time, but that is harder for Anahi than for anyone else.
If I don’t have a plan for her, she will make one up. For this trip, the one plan that she has is to watch the movie Hidden Figures. She read the book quite a while ago, and she hasn’t seen the movie. The problem for her is that we don’t have a Disney+ subscription, and that is the service where it streams. But that shouldn’t be a huge problem here because on this trip we are staying with so many different people, and almost everyone has a Disney+ subscription. But the other problem is that nobody else in our family wants to watch Hidden Figures. I know, it’s a great movie, but it just hasn’t worked out for us to want to see it. At Janie’s house it was tricky because she’s got little kids. At Fina’s house, everyone decided to watch Hawkeye (our new favorite holiday movie tradition).
For days now, and unbeknownst to me, Anahi has been harboring this frustration about not being able to watch this movie, and tonight, just as everyone was going down to bed, she decided it was time to talk. And when Anahi decides it’s time to talk, she makes it known. She went off on me, her siblings, Janie, Janie’s kids. It was her own little breaking of the storm. So I pulled her in the laundry room, and we talked and talked and talked. And eventually, she was able to understand that at some point the circumstances will be right, and she’ll be able to watch Hidden Figures.
When I got that taken care of, I went to bed, and Betty told me that after all of the stress of the past few days, she was considering not taking the kids to Mexico, but rather that I stay with the kids in the US and that she could go on the rest of this part of the trip alone. I told her that was totally out of the question. Has it been hard? Absolutely. Is everyone on each other’s nerves? Without question. But the whole purpose of this trip is growth. And WE ARE GROWING. These kids need to meet these friends and family of Betty. They need to see where she comes from. They need the challenges this trip offers them, and I won’t deprive them of that. We are a family, and we are doing this thing together.
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