Like a Message from Heaven

 

Hello, sweet blog. It's been a hot minute since I have taken time to update you. But I had to with this amazing story ...

I'm not sure exactly why we still have our landline. At first we kept it because we weren't keen on giving Eliza a cell phone, so we wanted a way for her to call us in an emergency if she was home alone. But she's had a phone for awhile now. Who knows why I still have this home phone? I never answer it when it rings, and I rarely check the voicemails. Most of our messages consist of pleas from the Red Cross for us to donate blood, so I usually just ignore all of them. [side note ... I am pro blood donation and the Red Cross. They just call soooo often, that I don't bother answering. Go donate blood. Save a life!] But this week I got the most amazing message ever, making me momentarily happy that I kept this ancient relic of a phone line in our house. I was working from home one day when a call came through. I was mostly ignoring it, as usual, when I thought that I heard an important piece of info that might be something I wanted to remember, so I ran to the answering machine to replay the message. It ended up being a worthless message, but I figured that I should go ahead and delete the 50 old messages on the machine while I was sitting there. The next ten minutes went like this ...

• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! This is an important message from the American Red Cross .... DELETE.
• Hello! My name is [redacted]. I live in Iowa, and I found something that I think you would like to have. {DEL .... wait, WHAT?]

This WONDERFUL woman in Iowa was going through some boxes that belonged to her mother who was being moved to a nursing home. In one of the boxes she found four letters which my father had written to his parents when he was serving in the army during Vietnam. She read them and thought that there might be someone in the world who might want to have these, so she began to research who Ron or Clyde Landis might be, and it led her to me.

 I quickly went back to listen to the message and realized that she must have called me way back in October 2023. Oh no! I was terrified that she might have just tossed the letters when I didn't reply, so I immediately jumped on the phone to call her. [This is actually a really big deal for me. I hate calling people on the phone. It stresses me out, so I usually have to take a second to psych myself up for making a call. Weird ... I know.] But I got through and left a message, and she called me back that morning. 

We have no idea how her mother got these four letters. She lives in southwest Iowa near the town where my grandparents lived. This lady (I have her name at my other house right now, so I can't give her proper credit) believes that maybe it was thrown into a box she purchased at some estate auction or something, and for some reason she kept them. I can't imagine how she got to me after finding these letters since I don't have my maiden name on my facebook account, and there wouldn't be an obvious public record that would lead her to Melissa Blau, but when she mailed the letters to me she included a sticky note where she had done a bunch of research ... finding addresses for my grandfather and my dad, figuring out who the children of my dad were, and then listing my married name. She must have spent FOREVER figuring out who we were and where to find us, but she succeeded ... and all of this while she was moving her mother and her own family. What an amazing and lovely human being! She promised to mail them to me right away.

The letters arrived this week, and what a wonderful gift it was! My dad was drafted to serve in the army during Vietnam. He never really talked about it. Never. I don't think there was a reason for his hesitancy to share his army story with us. He just wasn't quick to share personal stories from his past with us ... at least not often. I have a few pictures from his time in the service, but most of them were (disappointingly) pictures of the hillsides in Vietnam. Not many people. In these letters he shared how much he loved practicing shooting on the range ... but how terrible he was at it. haha He shared the fatigue of dealing with unrelenting rains and foot deep mud. Most of these letters dealt with his work setting up new positions as his battalion relocated to new areas. It was also fun to see him responding to things that my grandparents shared with him about life back in Clarinda. Side note ... who is this Sam that he mentions in his letters? I couldn't tell if he was teasing him or was irritated with him in one of the letters. But I have no idea how this guy relates to our family (Maybe Aunt Rose might know???). My dad was so young. It blows my mind to think about sending such relative babies into combat. I wasn't even close to being on his radar at that time, but in a few short years he would become a dad. I wonder if he could have imagined such a life that was ahead of him as he slogged through the muddiness of the hills of Vietnam during his service. But I can catch glimpses of the trademark slightly irreverent sarcasm of his later years in these letters. We Landis folk are not always super conversational, even among close family, so it was wonderful to get this chance to experience my dad through letters. For all of us who experience our interactions primarily through the more transient nature of texts, I worry that we are depriving ourselves and our future posterity of the wonder of knowing who we are through our written words. 

I wish for all the blessing of Heaven to rain down on this amazing woman who reached out to me and brought me this wonderful gift. I felt as if it was my dad was sending me a little message from Heaven through this kind soul. This world is still full of good and kind and thoughtful people, and one of them blessed me this week. I will be forever grateful!

 

Grief

It's been awhile since I've blogged. It's funny, but when I take too much time between writing I feel really rusty, and I have the hardest time making my words match the thoughts and emotions in my head and heart. I get frustrated with the process, and I end up abandoning the writing, setting up a cycle that makes it to where I never actually sit down and write ... and this topic was important enough to me that I didn't want to flub it up. I have low expectations in myself today, but after waiting forever to finally say anything, I think it's finally time. Fingers crossed that I do my thoughts ... and my mom ... justice. I should probably apologize, though, to all those people who started following my blog because you were hoping for more awesome commentary on Sanditon. This writing is going back to my personal roots, but we saved our show (sans Sidney or Young Stringer or Babbington #tears), so it's all good, right?

My mom died last year on August 27, 2020. It was her 53rd anniversary. I thought she would live forever. Her body was the healthiest body I have ever seen. Her mind? Not so much. I don't think I ever saw her really sick a day of my life, but her mental illness made life a challenge for the last 25 years of her life. A challenge for her. A challenge for us. It was the absolute worst, and as complicated as it made life, it made processing her death almost as complicated for me. It has taken me forever to actually get a handle on all my thoughts and feelings, but I'm going to give it a go.
 

My mom was extraordinary in so many ways. She had a big heart and wanted to change the world in some small sort of way. She was a huge advocate for foster care and adoption. She and my dad adopted three boys throughout the course of their marriage and fostered a few children along the way as well. She worked with the Missouri Foster Care and Adoption Association, and for a time in the 1980s was in charge of their newsletter in a time where she didn't have access to a nice computer to make the job easier. She typed and formatted it all by hand and then worked to distribute it throughout the state. She once said that she wished that she had a way to adopt all of the children who were listed on the state's adoption availability rosters. Like I say ... extraordinary. She loved to bike, and I think that she was the driving force behind our family long distance bike rides of my youth. I think that she also was the brains behind creating a back yard skating rink for our family each year. The 1980s must have been WAY colder than today because I don't think that would work with the warmer Missouri weather these days. Speaking of brains ... as our family size increased, we needed a bigger house. I guess we could have bought a new house, but my parents liked their house, so they decided to just rip off the roof, raise it up a few feet, and add four rooms and a bathroom to what had been an attic. Most people would contract that out, but not my parents. My dad told me that my mom found some sort of book that explained what to do, made the calculations in her head, and then directed the work that our family completed when I was in junior high. Amazing.

But here's the thing. Lots of kids have complicated relationships with their parents during the stretching and growing years of their teens and early adulthood. I had that with my mom. It took me a bit of time to figure out who I was and how I wanted to interact with the world around me. My mom tried to guide me as best as she could, and I often was hesitant to take her advice, to put it mildly. We clashed a bit during the process. That's normal, right? But after those growing years lots of kids get the opportunity to form an improved and deeper relationship with their parents as adults. They begin to see some of the wisdom of their ways as they navigate their own paths through adulthood. Suddenly parenting decisions that seemed so punitive or restrictive when we were kids make perfect sense when we are parents ourselves. We get it. Finally. But I never got that opportunity with my mom. I never got the chance to ever really sit down with her and ask her to share her ideas about parenting as I raised my own children. I never got to really hear her share her fun life history stories with my children or me. Instead, I felt like within the space of only a few years I was thrust into the role of a parent for my parent, and, sadly, my mom was not so enthusiastic about that role reversal. She did not take my assistance kindly, and it made the last years of her life a mirror image of my teen years, except this time around it was my mom who held the role of obstinate and rebellious child, and I was the frustrated parent.

After I had left home and started my own family my mom had a mental breakdown. I think it was precipitated by my grandmother dying. My mom sunk into a deep depression as she worked to process my grandmother's death, and it ended up sending her over the edge. She stopped sleeping, and pretty soon her depression turned into the mania of bi-polar depression. Looking back, I wish that we had realized what was going on as it happened, but my family had never really seen mental illness up close before. We had no idea what was going on. We just thought that she needed more sleep. We didn't realize that some sort of switch had been set off in her head, and life would never be the same again. If you've never seen a person in full blown mania, you can have no idea how crazy it is. When my mom was in the midst of these episodes I would often call her "the woman who lives in my mom's body" because her personality was so different than what it normally was. Her facial expressions even changed to where she looked different too. Freaky. In the beginning my mom refused to believe that she had actually been crazy, and she harbored a good amount of anger toward my dad, Herman, and me for putting her into a mental hospital after that first manic attack. She would not take medication or see a psychiatrist. Outside of all the anger, she did get better, and life got back to a relative normal. That lasted a couple of years, but then she had another episode. This time we had a better idea what to do, but it was still awful. Luckily, she eventually admitted that she had a problem and started taking medication, which is its own sort of awful. Thus began a cycle of manic attacks where we needed to hospitalize my mom, followed by several months of medication induced stupor, followed by several months of mostly normal. Rinse. Repeat. For years and years and years. 

In the final years of my mom's life, normal days were hard to come by. The cycles between manic episodes came faster and faster. There were fewer moments of normal. The medications were stronger and stronger. The medical care was worse and worse. I am convinced that one quack of a psychiatrist gave her a stroke by performing a shock therapy on her, but instead of doing it every other day as prescribed, he decided to speed up the process so that he could send her home from the mental hospital sooner. She collapsed, had a seizure, and because they only saw her as a mental patient, they never treated her with the level of care that they would give to the average older patient. They never looked to see what caused the seizure, and it was only a year later that we found out that she had had a seizure from another horrible "specialist" who brazenly told my dad and me that she "had a hole in her head that had been there awhile." Not the way you expect to hear that your mom had had a stroke. Anyway, since that moment my mom was never quite the same. She struggled with communication, and her mental episodes were almost constant. During these episodes she felt as if she was perfectly fine. We were the ones who were in the wrong. She was particularly angry with me after we decided that the best course for my parents was to move them closer to me. She loved her Carrollton home, and she didn't want to move, and she especially didn't want to move close to us. She made life fairly difficult for me and my family as we tried to help, but it was nothing compared to how difficult life became for my dad. She could be so hateful to him as he cared for her. She couldn't see what he was doing to help, and she was a stubborn and obstinate patient for him. But they made things work. Dad had the patience of a saint and continued to care for her whether she wanted him to do it or not. There were moments of fun and happiness sprinkled among the hard. They just came less and less as the years went on. 

Everything completely changed in 2020 right about the time that Covid started spreading through the country. Mom had a manic episode right at the beginning of the pandemic when hospitals were locking down, and visitors were not allowed. We didn't want to put Mom into a mental hospital at this time because we were convinced that we would never see her again if we managed to get her in, and that was only if we managed to find a hospital who would admit her. She had a primary care physician who had a good relationship with me, so when I explained the situation, her doctor went ahead and did a medication adjustment for her to hopefully help her avoid hospitalization. Luckily, we didn't end up needing to hospitalize her, but soon after things calmed down she stopped walking. We have no idea what caused this. Doctors didn't know either, and because of the pandemic issues we were not able to really get her any specialized care at the time. Dad was using a wheelchair and a Hoyer lift to help her get around the house. As she stopped walking her legs began to atrophy, making it almost a given that she would not be walking ever again. That summer Herman and I went to Washington to visit Laney and Ryan, and while we were there Mom had something happen where Dad worried about her and ended up calling the ambulance to take her to the hospital in Lebanon. They hospitalized her, not ever actually diagnosing her with an actual diagnosis. But as she was there she wouldn't eat at all. They didn't want to release her until they knew that she could eat. I got back from Washington and came down to visit her in the ICU. She had been sleeping most of the day, but when I got there she managed to wake up a bit. I think she might have recognized me, but it was obvious that she was not doing well. She was repeating a phrase over and over and over, and the gist of it was that she was totally, totally, totally over all this. I was a bit freaked out about the experience. After a week of being in the ICU they finally released her with the recommendation that we seek out long term care for her. Well, at the time nursing homes were totally locked down. If we managed to find a spot for her we knew that we would not be able to visit her, and there was a high probability that she might die alone in there. Plus, my mom in better days expressed her feelings that she REALLY did not want to go to a nursing home, and I was sure that she would find a way to haunt me from the grave if I made the decision to send her to one for the last moments of her life. So she stayed home, and we did the best we could to care for her. She barely ate at all. Dad tried everything to help her to eat more, but she wouldn't do it. We took her to her doctor to see what she could do, and we talked about inserting a feeding tube to help her. At this point my mom was not communicating at all, but as we talked with the doctor about the feeding tube she got very agitated and looked like she was trying to jump out of her wheelchair. I became convinced that she knew exactly what we were talking about, and she was using all her power to try and let us know that she was not interested in a feeding tube. So we dithered a bit in our decision. 

Soon the decision became moot. On the evening of August 26th Spencer called me from my dad's house, saying that I needed to come look at my mom. Spencer and my dad were worried about her. She was making a weird yawning movement and sound every few minutes, and her muscles had gone completely slack. We brought over our pulse oximeter, and her oxygen levels were pretty low. Her breathing became slower and less frequent, and it was obvious that she was dying. She stayed with us until right after midnight, on her anniversary day. I am convinced that my mom decided to take control of her own destiny in as much as she was able, and she offered this one last act of love to my father who was unable to let her go on his own. He was in the process of doing whatever it took to keep her with him, and she knew that if he did that, it would make life incredibly difficult for him and tragic for her, so she made the decision to go out on her own terms. Or at least that's what I've told myself, and it gives me some degree of peace to think that's how everything went down that day.

So that's a long, but shorter than it could have been, explanation of how I have ended up struggling with how to process my feelings about my mom's death. It's been a journey, and I don't quite think I'm through it yet, but I'm getting there. This past month my feelings and thoughts have been close to the surface, and I finally started to see that it's taken a long bit, but I have been slowly working my way through the stages of grief. I don't think I've ever really experienced profound grief in my life, for some reason. Maybe it's because I park myself in the 'denial' stage of life and never move forward. I don't know. All I know is that this time around I can truly see myself working through the process, and it's been cathartic. So here's my journey, as best as I can explain it:

Mom and Dad pre-kids. Weren't they cute?

DENIAL

I spent A LONG time stuck in this phase, and I don't think I really saw that I was here. It is a strange feeling when someone dies who has been struggling for so long. My mom's struggles were somewhat unique because there were times when she thought life was AMAZING during her mania, but it made our lives a bit of a living hell. Then, toward the end of her life, my dad was spending all of his time caring for her. It was draining for him, but he didn't really complain at all. It was a living example of what it means to love someone 'until death do us part.' I'm sure that if my mom could express anything at all, she would not have wanted to live this way as such a burden on all of us. So when she died it was almost like a weight had been lifted from all of our shoulders ... and it felt awful to feel RELIEF at the loss. But that's how it felt, so I spent a good portion of time replacing that relief with numbness. I just didn't think about it. It was weirdly easy because during the last few months of Mom's life she did not interact with us much at all. She was often still asleep when I would come over in the morning, so it was easy to almost imagine that she was still sleeping in her bed while I was there. I spent so much time worrying about my dad and my brother and how they were coping that I never really allowed myself to think about what I was feeling.

 

My mom loved biking.

ANGER 

Anger. Boy, howdy, did I have some anger to burn. And still have anger. Who am I angry with? Who am I NOT angry with? I will say that, first and foremost, I have an eternal anger toward the mental health system in the United States. My anger knows no bounds, and until you have seen the process firsthand, you can have no idea how dysfunctional it is. First of all, they can't decide if they want to treat mental health as a medical problem or as a criminal problem. The first time that we took my mom to the hospital we had no idea what to do. We ended up taking her to the emergency room at North Kansas City Hospital. I will never forget that experience as my dad, Herman, my uncle, and my brother, James, carried my mom screaming through a packed emergency room while I sat at the admitting desk to sign her in. Oh how the people in that room laughed and laughed at the sight while I silently cursed each of them. I'm just grateful that this was before the age of cell phone videos or I'm sure my mom would have gone viral. I can't remember if this was the time that she ended up being admitted to a mental hospital in St. Joseph. They all blend together. But that was one of her first hospital experiences, and they treated her like a common criminal. It takes a court order to admit someone to a mental hospital if they do not sign themselves in, and I get why that is. There would be a whole other box of problems if we could just willy nilly sign people into institutions without having to prove that they belong there. But in this particular instance for some reason they shackled the mental patients together and marched them into a courtroom for hearings about whether they needed to stay there or not. In shackles!!!! It tore my dad apart to see my mom like this, and even though she probably needed extra time to heal in the hospital, he would not have it. He demanded that they release her. This happened all the time. He would see them treating her like a criminal, and he would decide that no matter how hard it was for him to help her, it was better for her to be home than treated like a criminal. 

I also noticed that mental hospitals seem to cater to drug addicts more than severe bi-polar patients like my mom. Drug addicts are calmer and easier to manage. My mom was a holy handful whenever she was in the hospital. They didn't want her there. They didn't like her there. And other than massive amounts of sedatives, they really weren't interested in helping her improve. I will say that many of the nurses who work in these hospitals are total saints. What a hard job to have! They were the ones who shouldered the burden of caring for people like my mom. The doctors? I'd love to say that they were super hands-on in their treatment of my mom, but they barely were present, popping in once in awhile to increase the drugs, but doing little else. One exception was one time at the University of Columbia when there was a doctor who took a particular interest in her case and spent tons of time trying to see if he could pinpoint the best way to help her. I wish all were like that.

Speaking of psychiatrists and my anger ... I went to a couple of psych appointments with my mom, and I left seething each time. We would show up and find a waiting room full of patients. Full. I would guess that each time there were at least 20 people waiting to see the one doctor. They would call my mom in and ask her how she was doing. She got five minutes. He looked at her medication list, made changes without explaining why, and sent her on her way. Grrrrr! This got worse and worse as she got older. If she was a young adult suffering as she was, I would like to think that they would work harder to help her manage her mania and depression, but as an elderly woman they seemed to just count it as par for the course. So much medication. So little counseling. And not enough time to really explore the underlying problems that might be causing her to struggle. 

These are all the medications left over after my mom died. These are the ones she DIDN'T take. The doctors often seemed to think that the only answer was complete stupor. Frustration can't begin to explain how I feel about this.

I was angry about the pandemic, upset at the disruption of services that might have led to a different outcome for my mom. I spend a good amount of time wondering if it was my fault that we didn't get the right sort of help for her as she needed it in that last few months of her life. I would get angry at the people who would complain about dumb things that they didn't get to do because of pandemic restrictions, when there were real world consequences that actually mattered in life and were hurting my family.

I don't think I ever allowed myself to get angry at God. I wasn't going to go there. But I did feel a bit robbed. That's been the feeling that I've been battling for the last few months. Every once in awhile I would see a facebook post from someone talking about missing a mother who had died or expressing gratitude for their relationship with their mom, and it would send me into this funk of feelings that was hard to manage. I am angry because I never got the chance to know my mom as an adult. I never got the chance to tell her that I was sorry for being such a butt as an adolescent. I'm sorry that I didn't let her do more for me as I was getting married. I'm sorry I didn't visit more often or call more often or have the chance to ask her about the things she liked best in the world. I never got the chance to see her thrive as a grandparent. I was upset that I didn't do more as she was dying to help her feel comfort and love. I was full of regrets. I missed everything, and it seemed so unfair. I would try to get through those feelings by thinking about all the ways it could have been worse, and then I felt terrible for thinking that. I read an article about the stages of grief, and they said that anger is just an expression of the intensity of your love as you experience grief, so that makes me feel a little better about all my feelings.

And I think that led me into the next stage of grief ...

My mom and dad with me as a newborn.

This is my mom with my brother, Bryan, after picking him up at the airport. He had flown all the way from Vietnam to be part of our family. That's why he looks so tired. I love this picture.

BARGAINING 

At first I didn't think that I did any bargaining in this travel through the stages of grief. What exactly would I be bargaining for? But I have learned that bargaining can involve a lot of 'what if' statements. What if we had recognized my mom's mental imbalance early enough that we could have headed off the worst of the mania in the very beginning? What if we had found a better doctor to treat her? What if we had been more forceful in demanding that she receive better care from an often indifferent set of medical professionals? What if Covid had never happened and we had felt better about getting her in-hospital care? What if? What if? What if? And those are just the what ifs dealing with her medical condition. There are a whole lot of what ifs that surround wishes for the chance to relive life as an adult with a mom who can help me navigate all the mysteries of parenting. Hoping for more chances to just change things and make it all better. But that's not the way life works, and that's not the hand we were dealt here. I've been hanging out in this spot of the grieving process for the past several months. It's a tough spot to be in because there isn't a lot to do about it. You can't go back and fix the past, so there's no way to find a satisfactory resolution to the problem. That leads to the next stage ...

Hanging out in my dad's uniform as he prepared to serve in Vietnam.

DEPRESSION  

 I think this month is the first time that my mom's death really hit me. It seems crazy to think that it took 16 months to get to this stage. Shouldn't that have happened last year? Thinking so much about the what ifs led me to feel intense sadness that my mom is gone. I've been looking at old pictures and seeing all the good things about my mom that was lost in those years where she suffered so much from mental problems. It had been so easy to forget the woman behind the disease, and now that I was remembering the good times of her life and our family life it made me incredibly sad for the moments we will never be able to experience. As Savannah had her baby this October I thought about how much my mom would have loved to hold her first great-grandbaby, and that made me super sad. But luckily, for some reason, this saddest of the stages of grief didn't end up lasting very long for me. I think that is because in the midst of this sadness I was able to focus on eternity a bit and think about rewards waiting for my mom in heaven. I thought about opportunities yet to come and that has finally led me on the way to ...

My family. I think this was right before Bryan and I graduated from high school.

My mom enjoying being a grandma. I think that this was in one of the good periods of time after her first mental breakdown.

ACCEPTANCE

I don't know if you ever really get to a total acceptance after a loss, but I feel like I am in a good place. I had the opportunity this week to attend the temple with my family. We were the only people there, and the wonderful temple president and his wife gave us as much time as we needed inside. I took some time to say a few things to my mom out loud ... things that had been bumping along in my head for awhile, but things I never really said out loud. I said all the things I wished I had said while she was alive. I took some time to offer all those regrets I had been feeling. I took some time to reflect on who she would have been if the effects of mental illness hadn't destroyed any opportunity for her to live her final years as she would have chosen to do. And I ended up feeling a tremendous feeling of peace as I sat alone and spoke those words aloud. I'm not sure if it was forgiveness I felt. I'm not exactly sure that that was even what I needed in that moment. I guess what I felt with such intensity was a feeling that this life is not the end for us. It's not the end for any of us. There is hope in this gospel, and that hope is the realization that we will not suffer the infirmities of life forever, and one day we will all have the opportunity to see our loved ones again. They will know us, and we will know them, and all those things that seem so hard and difficult about this life will have melted away, leaving only our love behind. How cool is that? I am eternally grateful for the peace that understanding gives me in my life. 

It's been a complicated life with my mom ... well, not the early years. The early years were fairly ordinary ones with the sort of ups and downs that come with living in a family. The later years were hard. I'm not going to lie about that. But that difficulty wasn't my mom's fault. It just happened through no fault of any of us. You can't control lots of diseases and infirmities that happen to us, and mental illness is no different. But despite the hard times I have never, ever wished to have a different life or a different mom. She was a woman who quietly went through life trying to make the world a better place. No one is going to write stories about the things she did. No one would ever recognize those good works. She may not have mattered to the world, but she mattered to me, and I cannot wait for the opportunity to know her again in the eternities, finally as the people we were always meant to be. 

Mom and Dad (and Hank) hanging out together right before she took a turn for the worst in 2020.

 Below you can watch a video of the finale of the slideshow that I made for my mom's funeral. This is mostly focused on the last few years of her life, but I like it a bunch, and I love the message of the song. 

(The video is too large to embed, so here's the link:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNi5nwH1NU 

And if this whole focus on grief has bummed you out (I hope that didn't happen), feel free to check out a couple of my lighter posts. Click HERE to read about JoJo's lovely poem about the murder of our pet goat or click HERE to read about my disagreement with the result of my buzzfeed quiz about which Disney couple Herman and I are most like. I forget sometimes how much I love to write. Maybe I'll try to do it more often.

In Defense of Mr.Sidney Parker

Well, here I am again, rising from my long blogging absence to once again blog about ... a television show. Yeah, that's right ... a television show. I can't explain how this little blog that I started to chronicle our family's adoption journey as we found our sweet Minsy in China nine years ago and then morphed into a little place where I could store some of my thoughts about life and family has now started down the path of television show critiques, but here we are. I think that if Sanditon had ended its first season with the cliffhanger that it did but had already greenlighted a second season to resolve that cliffhanger I would have been content to sit at home during this global pandemic and just dream about what was to come in the next season. But that's not what happened. Nope. The powers that be (I blame ITV) decided to axe this show right at the moment of tragedy. AAAAAAAARGH! What has happened as a result is that they have unleashed a gazillion Sanditon fans into the universe with the sole goal of making sure that the story does not end this way. We must have a second season!!!! Maybe this is the new plan of television executives ... create a lovely show with a central romance that viewers become increasingly engaged in seeing through to a Happily Ever After ending, only to end with a cliffhanger and no plans for a continuation of the story. Then these loyal viewers will do the job of marketing for the show, begging the world to watch and petition so that they can get more viewers and more money for future seasons. Brilliant. .... Okay, not brilliant. Infuriating! If this is the wave of the future I will be highly displeased.

Anyway, on to the meat of this post ... Sidney Parker (no pun intended). I've been thinking a bit about Sidney these past few months as I've watched and rewatched this show. I am definitely Team Sidney when it comes to who I wish for Charlotte to end up with. I've pretty much always been on his team, but as I watched the show I definitely went through an evolution of my feelings about this character and how I feel about him. There is some debate about whether or not Charlotte would be better off with Sidney or with Young Stringer. In fact, for some reason some people on social media accounts have gotten into heated arguments about the merits of each character. Why is this? I don't understand. I adore my husband and believe he is the most perfect specimen of man on the planet, but I don't need the rest of the world to agree. I'm okay if the rest of you beg to differ. I can be secure in my own feelings on this subject. The same goes for my feelings about Sidney. I'm going to take a minute here and explain why I feel the way I do about the Sidlotte romance, and to do that I'm going to do a bit of dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly about Sidney Parker, although, who am I kidding? There's no ugly. haha

I get the Team Stringer people out there. Stringer is an absolute sweetheart, and he is sooooo good to Charlotte. He obviously adores her. He wants her to be happy. He sees the good in her and would stand by her through thick and thin. I want for my girls to marry Stringers (so far, so good on that front), and I think I'm married to a Stringer. Everybody in the world needs a Stringer in their life in some capacity, don't you think? There's no hidden agenda with Young Stringer in this series. He is exactly who he shows himself to be. I'm sure if you unpacked the layers of Stringer you would just find increasingly stronger levels of kindness and honor and decency. He's just so good. I root for his Happily Ever After ... just not with Charlotte. So why is that? Why do I dream of a story where Sidney gets the girl? Well, that gets a little complicated.

First the bad ...

I will admit that when I watched the first episode of Sanditon and came to that horrible ending scene on the balcony at the ball I was not a fan of our Mr. Parker. What an arrogant little poopy head!!!! Okay, my real feelings about him at that moment contained a bit stronger language, but I was sitting with my family at the time. A little decorum was required. So poopy head it is! I wasn't thinking, "This poor man surely has a sad back story to explain his hateful manner." Nope. I just hated the guy. What a jerk! He asked her opinion. She gave it. She was complementary to him, and her comments about his brothers were not all that bad, but he lit into her. Interesting that he had no issues with what she said about Arthur, but her thoughts about Tom set him off. Also interesting that after eight episodes it turns out that Charlotte was really quite accurate in her assessment of these Parker brothers. Maybe that's what ticked Sidney off. I know that comments people make about me that are a little too close to the truth can be more upsetting than wild lies sometimes. But hearing Sidney dress Charlotte down at that moment didn't endear him to me. He had dug a pretty big hole, and it was going to take some time for him to dig himself out of it.

Things did not improve with episode two. When Charlotte came to apologize to him, and Sidney tells her that he doesn't think of her at all I wanted to reach inside my television set and strangle the man. Haven't we all had a situation where we do the right thing and apologize for some stupid thing we've said or done? Have you ever had that person refuse to accept the apology and just throw more anger or hurt into the situation? It stinks. Yeah, Sidney dug a few more feet into that hole he'd started. The saving grace here was that Charlotte began to punch back here and at the pineapple luncheon. I was not Team Sidney yet, but I was definitely Team Charlotte.

Now comes the famous scene in the cove, and here is where the good begins, in my opinion. Here's me probably overthinking things, but I think that when Sidney pops out of the water in all his glory and Charlotte sees way more than she expected on her seashell expedition it is symbolic of the rebirth of Sidney Parker The Good. Charlotte will strip his psyche down and begin to see him as he truly is. She will see the man behind the hurt and the pretense and the image that he projects to the world. She will begin to allow him to be exactly who he is ... eventually. But not yet. That's going to take a few more ups and downs and episodes.

Still, two more bads to add here ... Sidney freaks out and yells at Charlotte two times in this series. In real life if this were one of my friends I would be screaming "RED FLAG!!" at them if the man they liked screamed at them in public and in private enough to make them flinch like Charlotte did after admitting that she was helping Georgiana to contact Otis and set up a meeting. Maybe not a deal breaker, but at least a reason to stand back and really evaluate things. For a regency hero Sidney sure expresses his anger in public way more readily than the average gentleman. I get it. I really do. In one case Charlotte baselessly accuses him of overt racism, and in the other she had created a situation that allowed Georgiana to be kidnapped. I'd be ticked off too. But temper like that should give a person pause, perhaps. These actions, at least, might explain why some people can't quite get on the Sidney train when it comes to this relationship, especially if it somehow triggers feelings about our own experiences in life. The heart wants what the heart wants, but by the same token the heart repels what the heart repels. We all are just viewing these fictional experiences through the lenses of our own real life experiences.

Sooooo, after that rough beginning how did I end up rooting for Sidney to succeed here? I think it can all be explained by the man himself when he says:

It took awhile, but like Charlotte, I began to understand the man behind the arrogance in Sidney Parker. We don't get to really see the crazy self-destructive Sidney who ran away to Antigua after his heart was pulverized by Eliza, but we do get to see the cold and cynical aftermath of that decade of hurt and destruction. The Sidney of episode one and two is not interested in enduring love and happiness, or if he is, his belief is that it is for other people, not for him. Been there. Done that. Destroyed his heart in the process. When he makes the comment about women on the balcony with Charlotte about them doing basically nothing of substance while they wait to be married he's reflecting his experiences with Eliza. He doesn't trust women. He doesn't respect women. He keeps them at arms length. I've met people like that who push the world away to protect themselves from hurt. Haven't you? Sidney is no different. At this point in the story I personally don't believe that Sidney is in love with Charlotte or even thinking that he might be in love with her. He isn't expecting love, so he isn't looking for it. But he is intrigued by her. Charlotte doesn't fit into the tidy little box that he has created in his mind to explain women. She throws everything off. She doesn't simper and fawn over him. She stands up to him. She pushes against convention. She takes charge of situations. She's amazing, and he can't stay away from her. Watching this awakening in Sidney was lovely.

Jumping ahead a bit to the last balcony scene (I'm still furious with stupid Edward. ERG!), Charlotte got it right when she said that he is the same man, but much improved. (Swoon!) It's true. What happens through the eight episodes of this story is that Charlotte slowly allows the hardened outer layers of Sidney to be chipped away until the best and truest reality of the man is uncovered. Gone is the jaded man of the past and in its place is a man who can love and allow another to love him in return. I am a sucker for stories like this. I love it when the love and support of a good person leads another to become their best self. We can become buried underneath the hard experiences of our lives, but if we can somehow peels those hardships and struggles away we can find that most of us are basically good people, am I right? That's what I see in Sidney.

Now for the Eliza bit. Sidney has a bit of a setback in this story. Just when everything seems to be coming together for an epic Happily Ever After, after that transcendent dance in episode six when you could just see that Sidney was fighting the urge to kiss Charlotte, he looks up to see Eliza. I'm with Arthur on this one ... how could you ever trust someone like her again? Why would you ever think to give her the time of day after she ruined your life for a DECADE? But sometimes our head takes a second to get in line with our heart, doesn't it? Sidney had spent a decade mourning the loss of Eliza. That has to screw you up a bit in the head. He had probably built her into something that she was not in reality. You can't just turn off those thoughts and feelings, even if you really, REALLY should. Sidney had to learn this for himself, and luckily it didn't take him more than an episode to realize who was the companion of his heart. But still ... it burned a bit to see him jump right back into Eliza's path. But this little detour really helped the Sidlotte romance to progress because now Charlotte would not have to compete against the ghost of a romance that never was, his belief in his love for Eliza. Instead, he can see in real time the differences between the two women and who he is when he is in each of their presence. Charlotte wins this battle, hands down. Everyone can see it ... except for clueless Tom. (Fist shake!)

I'm going to ignore the ending of episode eight for a bit and believe that Sidney and Charlotte are going to find some way to their Happily Ever After. It's the only thing that makes sense in this story. I don't care that "in real life" people don't always end up with their first love. I don't care if there is some way to spin this as a positive ending for Charlotte. I care that this story is more than a romance. It is a story about redemption. I am Team Sidney for this story because his is a story of redemption. He was broken by life, but not defeated. He just needed the love of a good woman to help him see that he was free to be the man he always was. He had to learn to trust again. He had to learn to rise above his experiences. And he was doing it. He will do it. He will be his best self in the end, hopefully saving Sanditon in the process (without Eliza's help hopefully). The Sidney of episode one is not the real man. He's the hardened and cynical man. The Sidney of episode eight (before the fire) is the man who sees that life is not dark ... life is beauty and love and fidelity and peace. That Sidney deserves his Happily Ever After. And, by golly!, we deserve to see him get it! #SaveSanditon

My Journey to Sanditon

SPOILER ALERT: Have you watched all eight episodes of Sanditon yet? If not ... why not???? It's AMAZING. But you should know that there will be some discussion about some pretty important events of this series. If you don't want to know what happens, you'd probably better stop reading now.

In the past I've used this little blog for some easy self therapy. As I write down the jumbled thoughts of my head I can usually find some sort of clarity in my understanding of my journey through life. It's been nice. But it's been awhile since I regularly took time to do this. Life gets busy, you know? But here I am today ... because of a television show. Yeah. That's right ... a television show. We live in a world of chaos with so much craziness around us, but I'm here to work through my feelings about a show. So here goes ...

I love Jane Austen. Actually, I should probably say I LOVE JANE AUSTEN!!!! So much. When I was first introduced to the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice (on VHS ... yeah, I guess I'm that old) I watched it over and over and over again. Give me Darcy and Elizabeth sparring all day every day and I'd be a happy lady. But I'm not limited to just P&P. Mr. Knightley from Emma is my jam, my absolute favorite Austen hero (someday I'll explain why). I cheered with Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility when she says "to love is to burn, to be on fire." I got her passion, but I still cheered when she found true enduring love with Col. Brandon. Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey ... I loved them all for different reasons. I don't think there is a book in the world that Jane Austen could create that I wouldn't love.

With all that, somehow I had reached the ripe old age of [redacted, haha] without having ever heard of Sanditon. What was this book? How had I never heard of it? When PBS started advertising about the Masterpiece series beginning in January I was intrigued. I'll admit that I had some doubts. If this was really that good of a story, how come I'd never heard of it. Oh, I found out that it was an unfinished novel, so the writers had to finish it themselves. Sooooo ... Austen fanfiction? I was worried. I've read a few Austen fanfiction sort of books that bombed. It turns out that Jane Austen is hard to imitate effectively. Was this going to happen here? I had fairly low expectations, but the one ray of hope in this project was that Andrew Davies would be involved in this project. He was a master in my beloved 1995 P&P adaptation. Surely he could swing this one. I decided to watch.

For those of you who are megafans of this show, please stick with me on this journey. I'm one of you! I promise. But when I saw the first episode I had mixed feelings. I could see little elements of Jane Austen in the episode, but this story felt really different to me. I thought the music overpowered the dialogue in spots (to be fair after watching this series another 10 times I don't notice this as much, so I think I was just feeling skeptical that day). I knew that Sidney was meant to be our hero, but he seemed kind of mean-spirited to me, or maybe it would be more accurate to say he was just almost too angry. I get that some of our Austen heroes have a less-than-stellar introduction. Look at Mr. Darcy. But Sidney didn't impress me at first. I couldn't figure out how I felt about Tom or Arthur or Lady Denham. And then there were Clara, Edward, and Esther. Their story was shocking, to say the least. You don't see that sort of story line on screen in typical Austen adaptations. It turns out that this story shows on screen what Austen only hints at occurring behind the scenes in her books. What was I watching here?

But I continued to watch. I had faith that this was going to turn out okay in the end. I would not give up on it. I decided that I was going to stop comparing this story to other Austen adaptations. I would look for the good in this one. And I found good. Oh, man, did I find a story to love! With each week and each successive episode I found myself drawn further and further into this story. Every single character had depth that I wanted to explore. I fell in love with Charlotte and Sidney and invested in them finding a way to a Happily Ever After. I never doubted that they would find one. This is Austen, right? But along the way I was happy to root for Esther and Babbington to find a HEA of their own, too. Bonus!

I was floating through the series feeling all the feels. My heart was bursting with happiness. So many swoony little moments. So much sweetness. I was falling in love with Sanditon along with the characters on screen. That dance in episode six! Be still my heart. And then the boat scene in episode seven. I was ready to run out and buy my very own canoe so that Herman and I could recreate that scene in real life. haha And then Sidney's declaration at the end of the episode. Perfection. I'm not ashamed to admit that I watch that scene on repeat sometimes just to feel those feelings all over again.

But wait! There was one entire episode left to go. What could they possibly have to talk about in another hour? I know how Austen stories go. Hero opens up his heart and declares his love for the heroine. They get married. They kiss. (Or sometimes they kiss and then they get married. It all works out). That doesn't take an hour. Surely Sidney wasn't going to take an hour to get things done. Surely.

So now episode eight arrived. Oh episode eight, how I love you! And how I hate you! My family had not been watching the series with me, but my husband offered to be supportive and watch the end with me. I wouldn't let him. I said that he needed to see all the stuff leading up to the episode in order to appreciate it. So I went down to our basement television room and sat alone to experience what I expected to be an epic finale to a story that had captivated every bit of me for the past seven weeks. And for a bit I was in heaven. Sidney wastes little time in moving this relationship out of the friendzone. That walk along the cliffs was delightful. Their awkwardness ... can't we all relate to that? And then the kiss! What an amazing kiss! I have to say that that ranks number one among all Austen adaptation kisses of all time. Number one. Small complaint ... why didn't American audiences get the same kiss that the UK viewers got? In that version Sidney does this little squeezing of his eyes at the end that was simply lovely. It was like his face said "Finally!" as he finished. The pan out in the US version is not quite as cool, but it still rocked, in my opinion.

 But there is still 35 minutes left in this episode. That's a long time to plan and execute an Austen wedding. What could possibly be left to show? Oh, yeah ... another dance. Hooray! It was a bit frustrating to watch this dance play out. Why couldn't they just get a chance to dance? But watching them look to each other across the room while they were separated was lovely in its own way. They just seemed so happy. Everything seemed to be working out perfectly. Finally ... finally, they can be alone together, and Sidney's words were just lovely. (Am I using the word lovely too much in this blog? I can't help it. It was lovely). Okay, so this was the moment. Finally, there would be a proposal. Until ....

Edward! You selfish little cad! You ruined EVERYTHING! The moment was lost. But there was still 25 minutes left in the show, right? Enough time to fix it, I think.

That's when my world completely fell out of whack. As the fire was going on I started to really get confused and worried. This was a pretty major event. It's not the sort of event that shows up with 20 minutes left to go in an Austen story. This is the sort of event that happens in episode six when there is still time to fix everything. How could this be fixed in 20 minutes?????  There was no way.

And it only got worse. Tom, how can you be such a short-sighted idiot? How can you not think of others ever? Why do you let Sidney take on the total burden of fixing your dumb mistakes? Why????

So Sidney leaves for London. 15 minutes left to go. This is not making any sense to me. How can this story be tied up in a nice pretty bow with only 15 minutes left? Again, there was no way. I was feeling REALLY on edge.

And that's when the bottom fell out of this series. Ten minutes left to go, and Sidney saves the day ... and ruins Charlotte's future happiness forever. What the what??????? What just happened? This does not happen in an Austen book. It. Does. Not. Happen. Everything falls apart. Everything. I was freaking out. At this point in the story I still sort of thought that maybe they might be able to pull out a HEA ending. Maybe. But if it did happen it was going to be sudden and probably not very satisfying. They were going to have to wrap things up too quickly. There were too many loose ends. How could this happen? But I was going to be okay. As I saw Sidney race up to Charlotte's carriage as she left town I thought I could be okay with a rushed ending as long as they ended up together. But did they?

NO!!!!!!!

No. No. No. No. No. They did not end up together. The final scene has Sidney with a look of total despair on his face while Charlotte's is full of tears. That's it. The end. It's over.

I was devastated. My family heard my roars of anger from the basement. I raced to the internet to see when the next season would be available only to find that it was not picked up for continuation. NOOOOOO! More cries of anger. My poor family had not idea what was going on. Why was sweet mom in so much despair? What could they do to fix it? Well, at that point the only solution I could see was for us to win the lottery and start a production company so that we could finish the story ourselves. Weirdly, my family was not quite on board with that plan.

How in the freaking world could anyone who loved Jane Austen think that it would be okay to end one of her stories in such a manner? It defies all logic. I have become quite an internet stalker when it comes to all things Sanditon since that final episode, and I have seen some people connected with the production trying to pretty this ending up. I think I saw that Rose Williams (love her!) said that this was not so bad of an ending because this story was a story of female empowerment. Charlotte didn't need a man for her future happiness. She could survive without Sidney. Ok, yeah. I get it. We don't need to have a man to have worth. But, come on! People don't watch/read Jane Austen because they want to see the women survive without the man. They watch for the HEA. We want the wedding at the end. And I don't think that Charlotte's worth or dignity would have suffered one bit simply because she was now attached to Sidney. The two of them TOGETHER would be their best selves. No, I don't buy the explanation that this ending is okay because it shows a more powerful woman at the end.

I also don't buy the explanation that this ending is perfect because we don't always end up with our first love. Yeah, that may be true. It may be true that all of us have our own "carriage ride of despair" after a relationship ends. But, again, I don't watch Jane Austen stories so that I can see a replay of the stinkiest moments of my life. I watch to see the fairy tale endings. I want the HEA. I expect the HEA.

And then, today, the scuttlebutt on the internet is a Theo James interview where he says that he thinks the ending was great. He says that it is powerful as it is. In his opinion, if Sidney and Charlotte had come back and made things right it would be a weaker ending. Really? Really, Theo? Would it have been a better Pride and Prejudice if it had ended when Elizabeth looks out in despair and says, "I shall never see him again" after Darcy finds out that Elizabeth's family might be ruined? Does it really harm the story when Darcy saves the day and then comes back to her, proposes a second time, and then gets married in the end? Would it have been better if Marianne had just died of a broken heart after Willoughby treated her terribly in Sense in Sensibility? Is the story weaker because she gets better and gets to marry Col. Brandon? Is it? Sorry. I don't buy it.

I get that everyone involved in this production is trying to make the best of the situation. What can they say other than that they are happy with what they have produced? I don't blame them. I just want it to be made right. When you advertise a Jane Austen story we expect a Jane Austen story. No tears at the end, unless they are tears of joy. No terrible tragedies. Just a nice and tidy Happily Ever After. That's all. This has to be made right. As it is, this series does not feel complete. We need some closure.

So with that long rant, I have one more thing to add. Here are my reasons why Sanditon deserves some sort of continuation, either as continuing seasons or a movie special:

1. The most important reason ... Sidney and Charlotte NEED to be together.

You can't string us along for an entire eight episodes, leading us to believe that these two are meant to be and then end it with Sidney married to Mrs. Campion. You can't. Nothing in the previous episodes makes this make any sense at all. I don't care that in real life in the 19th century this would be a mroe realistic ending. Jane Austen's heroes and heroines always find a way to make it work. Always. I know that there is a way to make this right. They just need some time to work a plan.

2. More Young Stringer. And a Happily Ever After ending of his own.

I love Sidney, and I wish for his HEA ending, but there is no denying that Young Stringer is the real deal in this story. He is such a good friend to Charlotte, and if it weren't for Sidney I would be wishing that he could have his wish to be with her. I have to admit that in real life I would encourage friends and family members to go for the Stringers of the world, not the Sidneys. He is so good. He deserves more than the tragic ending these first eight episodes gave him.

3. A better story line for Miss Lambe.

How can you introduce the world to the first woman of color to have a significant role in an Austen story and then let her spend a good portion of it sulking while holed up in her room? In my opinion, this was a great injustice. Miss Lambe has so much potential in this story. She has wealth and wit. She obviously has some sort of back story that has not been adequately explained. She is more than just an angry young ward of Sidney. We deserve to see her get the chance to shine. This could be a groundbreaking sort of Austen story, but they just dropped it. She needs more.

4. Arthur!!!

I wasn't sure how to take Arthur at the beginning of the series with his hypochondria and silly comments. But, oh how he grew on me! I love this character! So much. It is easy to discount his conversations because he seems so silly at times, but Arthur could cut through the haze and get to the point of a matter better than almost anyone in this series. His comments about Mrs. Campion to Sidney were spot on. And then his interactions with Miss Lambe in the final episodes were lovely. My favorite scene was seeing them dance together in the final dance. They had so much joy, and Miss Lambe rarely got to show that level of joy in her life in Sanditon. When she bent down to kiss his hand it made my heart flutter. I don't know if they would be heading into romantic sort of relationship territory, but I do feel like Miss Lambe loved and appreciated the fact that Arthur treated her as a friend instead of an object of curiosity. I loved that. I want more.

5. More dances!!

Speaking of dances, I would love to see more of them. Dances are an integral part of Austen stories. That was the case in this one as well. The three dances in this series were all perfect in different ways. In the first dance I was really happy that Sidney didn't let Charlotte stand there alone after everyone else had been asked to dance, but he did all he could to avoid really looking at her during the dance. He seemed as if he would rather be doing about anything else in the world. But then there is that second dance. What a beautiful dance! It is unlike any other dance I have ever seen in an Austen adaptation, but it was absolutely perfect for this story. I've never felt my heart flutter like that during an on-screen dance. That's another scene I watch on repeat. And then the fun and optimism of that last dance. There is so much hope in the room during that dance. The series can't end there. These characters deserve more dances, and I have a feeling that Sidney is going to need a few of them to make his disastrous decisions at the end of this season right.

6. More Esther smiles.

They were few and far between, but seeing the Esther smiles made the journey worth it. Esther was a fascinating character in this adaptation. She may be the most complex and interesting of all the characters. At the beginning she seems so cold and calculating. It was hard to see much to love in her. But she has a difficult and complicated back story that slowly comes to the forefront. She was slow to unwind, but as she does it is simply lovely. Her bedside scene next to Lady Denham was masterful. Charlotte Spencer should get high marks for her acting in this role. Sure, she got the beginning of her HEA, but there is still so much more to know about this character. Plus, we'll get more Babbington, and he seems like he has more people to rescue in this struggling little seaside resort town.

7. Tom needs a chance to redeem himself.

I can't quite work out my feelings about Tom. He's like that brother that you have who you know you should love and support because he's your brother. But he does such boneheaded stupid and awful things that you sometimes have to talk yourself into that love. I feel like Tom is basically a good man, but he just can't see two inches in front of his face to see how his actions affect the people around him. I'm pretty ticked off at him right now. Sidney's life is ruined. Charlotte's life is ruined. Or at least their chances for love. But the workers in Sanditon are also ruined. His family is at the brink of ruin. And it is ALL HIS FAULT. All of it. Does he see this? Surely he does. But right now he is a total schmuck in my eye. I think he deserves to have his story further told. He might just get the chance to redeem himself. He rescued Sidney once. Maybe he can get it together and rescue him again.

8. What about Edward and Clara?

Yeah, they are a pretty skeevy duo in this story. It's hard to feel much compassion for them. I could go a whole lifetime without having to see their scene on the drawing room floor again. I'm not rooting for any relationship here. But I do think that the two of them are pretty fascinating "villains." Clara obviously has some backstory that could explain some of her current actions. I didn't get the impression that her story was over yet. And Edward might have a fascinating future story line now that he has been disowned and had to watch his sister find true love without him. He's a weirdo, but maybe there's more to him than we had the chance to see. I'd be interested in seeing that in a second season.

9. Let Lady Denham rise from the ashes.

As far as rich elderly Austen characters with lots of money and even more attitude, no one will ever beat Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Pride and Prejudice. But I still thought that Lady Denham played her part perfectly for this story. She could be humorous while cutting the people down all around her right and left. She has been ripe for memes created using her excellent quotes. She makes a confusing decision at the end of this season, threatening to put Tom and his family in the poorhouse because of his terrible financial management of the Sanditon construction. I get her anger, but it seemed over the top. And after her subtle references to Charlotte finding happiness at the last dance, I feel like she would not allow Sidney to do what he did. I don't know. I just feel like she has more to contribute to this story. Her manipulation of the people around her is not finished. She must live another day to step into this world and craft it to her liking.

and finally ...

10. Lady Susan has to save the day!

Lady Susan has a small part in this story, but it was an important one. There is no way that she'll let this tragic ending stand. There is no way that she will let Mrs.Campion get the guy. No way. The only thing preventing her from saving this train wreck from taking place is the fact that the story ended half-way through. She needs a chance to make things right.

I will say this ... having this story end like this is a travesty. I made a comment yesterday when talking to my husband and wondered if this was all intentional from the beginning just to increase audience online activity. I know that I have never interacted online about any show before this one, but I feel driven to do it now because they can't end it this way. They probably didn't do this on purpose. I have to believe that they had every intention of continuing the story. How could they do otherwise? But if this was just the beginning of a series, I do think that we could see the beauty in the ending of the first season in such a way. The tie to the beginning when Sidney asks Charlotte to tell him that she doesn't think badly of him was absolutely beautiful ... and heartbreaking. She had asked the same of him and got a hurtful answer in return. But now after so much had happened between them she answers him in a very different way. Like I say ... beautiful. At the half-way point in a story this could be appreciated. But as the ending it just left me feeling empty and angry and robbed.

I'm just one person. I don't have any pull in this world to make this happen. But in a world that already has enough sadness and despair, couldn't we take some time to bring happiness and hope to this little community? They deserve it. We do too.

Missionary Mom Madness

The picture above is not a package I put together ... not even close. This is one of the many pictures that pops up on pinterest if you search for LDS missionary care packages. In fact, I would say that this is not even that bad of an example of the type of packages that some Mormon moms out there are sending to their missionaries. Just take a look when you get the chance and you will see a smorgasbord of creative ideas for ways to wow your missionary with your gift sending skills.

They drive me CRAZY.

So. So. Crazy.

I get the motivation to want your child to feel your love. Because LDS missionaries don't call home regularly (only on Christmas and Mother's Day), we don't get to have that constant communication that we crave. We know that our young men and women are out serving the Lord, and often that service is HARD. We know that our sons and daughters get tired and lonely and discouraged. We want to bring them a touch of joy. I totally get that.

Bur, really, why do we feel this need to be so over the top with our packages? Why? Who are we trying to impress here? I'd guess, based on my limited pinterest research, that a lot of these moms put these packages together because they are either trying to impress the other missionary moms out there or because they are worried that if they just send their child a bunch of goodies in a plain brown cardboard box without fancy wrapping paper or cute little sayings or something like that, then our poor children are going to be laughed out of the mission office by all the other missionaries who see just how lame we are as moms. Will our child really know that we love them if he doesn't get the same level of creativity thrown into his package as his companion gets?

I love to look online to get ideas because sometimes it's hard to know exactly what to get them. I do want to be a little creative in what I send because I want to bring some extra joy and fun to my missionary. But I still want it to be clear that I put the package together, and if Spencer opened a box with some of these forms of mom madness stuck together I'm sure he would wonder who had sent him that package and what they had done with his real mother.

Today I sent Spencer a package to Poland. I figure it will get there right around the half-way point in his mission. Actually it won't quite be half-way because the missionaries in Poland actually stay 25 months for some reason, so he'll have a bit longer of a mission than normal, but still, it'll be after his one year mark. Like I did with his sisters, Laney and Savannah, I included a stuffed camel doll for him to half in honor of that milestone. But other than that, his package was full of a bunch of fairly average things. There isn't a lot of fanciness included in the box, but I hope he'll feel the love involved in the sending of it.

I was a lot better sending packages to Laney and Savannah. I made an effort to try and send Laney something once a month. It was a little expensive to send things to Chile, but not too terrible. I did a pretty good job. It was a piece of cake to send things to Savannah because she was in the United States. Hallelujah! It didn't cost too much, and I could always track the packages to make sure they got there. The biggest fear I had with her packages was that someone would grab them off the porch while she was away from home. Luckily, that never happened.

With Spencer, things have been A LOT more complicated. I think that customs stuff in Europe is more rigorous than they were in Chile, and that has been a pain for me. I sent him a small package early in his time in Poland. I sent it through the US postal system. It got there just fine, but I couldn't track the package, and it cost a fortune to send it. The real problems began when I sent him his Christmas package. This time I used a service called ParcelMonkey that was way cheaper than the post office. They put together bulk shipping through several carriers and find better rates. Plus, I'm able to track the packages all the way to Poland. The problem with Spencer's Christmas package was that I sent a big box and waited a bit too late to send it. That limited the carriers who could send it cheaply, and I picked a more obscure shipper. They did a terrible job of sending it. The package got stuck in Polish customs because they thought it was a business package, and they wanted me to fill out all sorts of forms and pay all sorts of fees. They sent all their requests to Spencer at first, but he didn't have time to deal with it. I tried to get the mission office to help, but they couldn't figure out exactly what the customs people needed to get. I finally got the customs people to send me the info, but it was all in Polish. We happen to have a friend who is a native Polish speaker, but she couldn't make heads or tails of it. She said she had never been asked to fill out these forms when she sent things home. So frustrating!!!

Well, Christmas came and went, and Spencer's package was still stuck in customs. I was about ready to throw in the towel and just forget about it. But I decided to try one last time. I asked all the moms in my Polish missionary mom group to say an extra prayer for this package to make it to Spencer. They did. In the middle of that week I got a message from the Polish customs lady who was working with me. She promised me that they didn't want to keep this package from Spencer. They wanted to help him get it. For some weird reason, that calmed me down, and I was able to figure out exactly what I needed to do. It ended up costing us an extra $80. I have no idea why, but at least it got to him, and Spencer was able to celebrate Christmas at the end of January.

That Christmas package debacle made me gun shy when it came to sending packages to Spencer, so I've done a terrible job of being consistent in the things I've sent. I hope he'll still love me. 🤣 Even though it will take several weeks to make it to Poland, I hope it gets there in time to bring him a bit of joy. I'll never be that cool missionary mom who sends the perfect gift box to my missionaries. You won't find me on a pinterest board any time soon, but I'm glad for the opportunity to send something their way. I'm super proud of my missionaries and their willingness to serve, despite hardship. It's hard to believe that Spencer is almost half-way done. It's crazy how time goes so slow and yet flies by at the same time. At the rate I'm going I'll get to send him another half dozen packages or so. I'll be an international shipping genius by then, I'm sure.

About Me

Well, I'm not feeling all that inspired today, so I'm going to just grab one of those facebook list things and fill it out. Maybe the world can learn something super (not) interesting about me. 😏

• Favorite smell- Freshly cut grass. Also, honeysuckle. Our neighborhood is filled with honeysuckle, and I love to sit on our back deck and inhale it. Weirdly, I also like the smells of coffee and pipe smoke. I think those smells remind me of growing up.
• First job- Corn pollinator for Pioneer Hybrids. Hated it!
• Dream job- Being a wife and mom. If I need to be paid ... maybe a historical archivist.
• Astrological Sign- Libra
• Favorite foot attire - Barefoot if at all possible. Otherwise, flipflops.
• Favorite candy - Anything dark chocolate.
• Favorite ice cream- Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey. It's my go to ice cream when I need ice cream therapy.
• Pet peeves - Racism. Unkindness.
• What are you listening to right now -- Nothing. I can't listen to anything when I'm trying to write. If I wasn't writing I would most likely be listening to an audiobook.Current audiobook: Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase. I know. It's total fluff.
• Favorite condiment - KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce or honey mustard
• Favorite Holiday - Christmas by far.
• Favorite book - Soooo many. I love Jane Eyre because it never ceases to move me. I have a hard time choosing just one book. I've loved lots of books for lots of different reasons. I love to read! You can see a previous entry I made about ten(ish) books that I loved and why HERE.
• Favorite day of week - Saturdays, I guess. 
• Favorite animal - hmmm. I don't know. I used to say cats, but maybe pandas or koalas now.
• Tattoos - No tattoos for me. Tattoos done right can be sort of cool in a way, though. Unfortunately, not a lot of people get them done right. They tend to only look right when a person has the muscles to flaunt them. Once the skin starts sagging? Not so cool anymore. They aren't for me, but I do get why people get them.
• Like to cook - Sometimes. It's not a passion for me, but when I have to cook I don't mind it so much.
• Can you drive a manual transmission- Yes. Thank you, Joe Hettinger!
• Favorite color- Purple
• Do you like vegetables- Yes
• Do you wear glasses? - Yes. But I usually wear contacts
• Favorite season - Spring. Where was spring, 2018? I missed you.
• Dream Vacation- A Mediterranean cruise visiting Greece and Italy. And then I'd love to grab a train and bop all over Europe. Then I'd like to finish up in Jerusalem. It'd be the best!

O Captain, My Captain

Yesterday Katie and JoJo started watching one of my favorite movies of all time, Dead Poets Society. I can still remember the day that I first saw this movie. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and I was in Columbia, MO for some reason. I can still remember the feeling of exhilaration I felt at the end of the movie. I felt like soaring. I was so happy and inspired. It was just the sort of movie that spoke to my teenage soul. Follow your dreams. Dare to be different. Be you. All of that thrown in with a good dose of awesome poetry and amazing teaching. I was a Dead Poets Society fan for life.

The power of that movie hasn't left me even after all these years. I still love it. Neil's dad and Mr. Perry still fill me with rage. And that final scene .... oh how I love it!

At the time as I watched that movie I always identified with Ethan Hawke's character, Todd Anderson. Here was a boy who had all of this passion and thought inside of him, but he just lacked the confidence to say it. He wanted to be himself but was too afraid to let go. That was me ... or at least that is who I thought I was. Looking back, I had way more confidence and managed to say quite a lot when I chose. I guess what I really responded to was his fear and lack of self-assurance that could help me to be exactly who I was without fear of what others may think.

When I first saw the movie I was with my friend, Mike Blotevogel, and I remember that he said that one of the things that he liked about that final scene of the movie was the fact that not all of the boys stood on their desks. It would have been awesome if they had, but realistically with the threat of expulsion from this elite school, not everyone would have had the guts to do it. Last year I was watching the movie with Herman, and he asked me something about whether or not I would have stood on the desk at the end of the movie. My answer probably says a lot about who I am ... or at least who I was as a high school student. I told him that I would probably have been one of the kids who remained seated, but then I would kick myself for the rest of my life for not having the courage to stand up like I wanted to. Yep. That's me to a T. Sadly.

It was fun to sit and watch this movie with my kids yesterday. I don't know if they were impacted by it in the same way that I was at a similar age. I hope that I have gained more courage in my older age so that I could do the right things no matter what pressure came my way. I love that movie! My favorite Robin Williams movie by far!