Segullah Journal

WHY IS IT THAT we are born into the world with clenched fists and leave with outstretched fingers? This question from the Jewish Talmud rises in my mind as I consider the writings in this edition of Segullah. None of the authors wrote with its title in mind, yet the themes of gripping and releasing, of [...]

I SHIFTED MY TODDLER’S weight a little higher on my hip, pulled the heavy glass door open, then followed my four-year-old into the restaurant, eyes scanning the lunchtime crowd for my friends. There they were, Justine and Kylie, waving and smiling from a padded vinyl booth across the room. This was a big day: after [...]

The other day my eight-year-old son, Matt, approached me in the kitchen. “Mom, I just realized something that’s freaking me out,” he said with a slightly furrowed brow. I was intrigued. “Oh yeah? What did you just realize?” His eyes widened. “I’m alive!” he announced. “I mean, I’m living. It’s so freaky!” I smiled, remembering [...]

I SAT DOWN LATE one night and wrote a list. The week had been a hard one—missed events, kids, chaos, catastrophes. Everything had frustrated me, and the ease with which I became frustrated had infuriated me. Why does letting myself become angry make me more angry than just about anything else? So I made a [...]

THE BOYS AND I I brought our first harvest home from the farm in June—a whole sack of beet greens. The bag sat on the table most of the afternoon and well into the evening when dinner should already have been prepared because, frankly, not only were these the first beet greens of the year, they [...]

ARMED WITH THE BROOM and dustpan, I head for the stairs. Hurry. Girls’ Squad is almost over. I know they’ll all stay longer than they should if they don’t think the job is done. This is our third year doing Girls’ Squad. An ambitious, creative friend found the idea in the Ensign and recruited four of us. We [...]

ON A DAY OF SMELLY LAUNDRY MOUNTAINS, a day when I felt mother-grumpy, my grandma’s letter arrived. She had typed it out and sent copies to all her young-mother granddaughters. I opened it hoping, in a weepy emotional way, for a tender mercy, something to ease my fatigue. The letter did not disappoint. My grandma wrote, [...]

GOD’S COUNTRY. That’s what my husband’s grandmother calls this land of rolling fields and sprawling cities. She grew up forty-five minutes from the University of Notre Dame, and when she heard Bryan had decided to come here for his PhD, she was thrilled. “You’ll absolutely love it there,” she told us. “That’s God’s country.” When it [...]

I LICK THE ENVELOPE and press it shut, affix the stamp, and place it in the mailbox with a sigh of satisfaction. This is my fourth letter to Amy. I’ve been writing to her every week since she checked herself in to a substance-abuse rehabilitation program. Amy, my neighbor’s live-in niece, first came to church [...]

The atmosphere in the newborn intensive care unit was hushed, the light dim. My son Sam, one week old, lay naked on a padded warming bed, covered with a mess of tubes and wires. IV lines in his hands and feet, monitor leads on his chest, a ventilator tube down his throat—all connecting him to [...]

FOR YEARS I HAD BEEN HALF-EXPECTING the phone call, but it still brought a jolt when it came: Thelma was in the hospital, expected to die within days. I was Thelma’s visiting teacher. Although she wasn’t a member of the Church, sending sisters to her home was a tradition in our ward. Her home was half [...]

MY SPOT IN THE HOUSE: standing at the kitchen counter. It’s where I’ve worn out the ground more than anywhere else in the house. It’s where my children will remember me standing as they retell their childhood tales to their children. This spot in the house helps define me, whether I’m making food, signing school [...]

MY ELDEST CHILD recently completed elementary school. On her last day I came to watch the “clap-out,” the annual farewell march of the sixth graders through the school hallways. Students, teachers, and parents lined up to slap palms with the graduates, while a tear-jerky song about friendship played over the intercom. As my daughter came into [...]

Introducing Segullah, Part I And Eve . . . was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression, we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. (Moses 5:11) I OFTEN PRAY WHILE DRIVING. Usually I’m discreet [...]

Introducing Segullah, Part II HERE’S A TRUE STORY: Two summers ago I was invited to go to lunch with a female professor who was visiting BYU. Though not LDS, she studies nineteenth-century Mormon women’s poetry, so she was here to give a lecture. Four of us ended up eating at the Museum of Art Café (you [...]

Introducing Segullah, Part III THE SOUND OF THE TELEPHONE awakened me from a sound sleep. My husband leaned over the nightstand to answer. Suddenly on edge, I mentally sorted the possible reasons for a phone call so early in the morning. Had there been an injury or an illness in the family? An emergency at Don’s [...]