Segullah Journal

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 [...]

AS I PUSH BACK the tent flap at 6:22 in the morning I look out over the calm of Moon Lake and up at the expanse of the Uinta Mountains, which, though shadowed by clouds, seem to be waiting for the morning sun to break over them. My gaze turns back to the campground and [...]

THE KEVLAR-CLAD GUARD hefting a large automatic weapon took the badges my husband handed him, nodded, and let our minivan full of children pass. We parked the car and approached the tall chain-metal fence, entered, then shuffled through another series of gates. More guards in heavy black gear greeted us and closely inspected my husband’s [...]

Morning’s easy light  Your warm and constant breath  The blue earth, spinning    It is hard to believe in death  Angela Hallstrom thinks sleeping in on a Saturday morning is one of life’s truest pleasures. Why does it have to be so rare? She’s the author of a novel, Bound on Earth, the editor of [...]

2009 Poetry Contest Honorable Mention Charles picks figs for breakfast. Hand stretches to tree, shoulders stoop, flannel sleeve pulls back, exposes a mottled arm creased by years. I take the bowl of dark rubies. He says he’s learning when to pick figs. If green and firm, skin tight, the meat is not ready. Wait. When [...]

HUME LAKE, CALIFORNIA, 1983. For the very first time, our whole family wasn’t there. My brother was on his mission and my mother stayed home, saying she had to work. My father slumped in his lawn chair while my sisters and I tried to occupy ourselves by weaving wildflower crowns, paddling in the waterfalls, and [...]

2009 Poetry Contest First Place July 26, 2007 Provo Temple, Utah   “In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Ephesians 2:22    These animal skin coverings feel soaked from floating  in sorrow’s brine, and we groan  under their weight, groan  towing tent and tackle up the foothills  [...]

VOICES FLOAT SOMEWHERE behind me, low pitched and somber. “Thank you for coming . . . Thank you . . . I’ll make sure she knows . . . Their two sons, just over there . . . Thank you . . . Yes, so unexpected . . . terribly sad.” I wear black, of [...]

“YOU KNOW WE’RE totally screwed, don’t you?” my husband said as he flopped backward onto the bed. It was our first night together as a new, blended family. At first, I was stunned. And then I figured maybe he was just joking, as he was prone to do, in an overwhelmed, I-can’t-believe-we-did-this sort of way. [...]

2009 Poetry Contest Honorable Mention You have come to me From the clutter of gumball machines, A bright trinket dispensed Into my waiting hand. Made in a place where no one can pronounce your names, molded, pressed out by the hundreds. Can you still be beneficent when no hand has carved you, painted your face, [...]

AS A MARRIAGE AND FAMILY therapist and a member of the LDS Church, I have been interested in how Latter-day Saints approach intimacy. In February of 2009 I began a blog, The Mormon Therapist, designed to provide LDS members with an anonymous venue to share personal struggles. I have been inundated with questions and stories [...]

Baklava by Michelle Lehnardt HE WRAPPED THE CABLE over both frames, around the slender necks, and threaded it between the spokes. Soon, our bikes were joined as one and secured to the iron gate. “I never lock it up.” I motioned carelessly to my rusted yellow cruiser. “Ah, but you’d cry if it got stolen,” [...]

2009 Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest Winner MY PARENTS DANCED in the kitchen. Dad would come home from work and sweep Mom into a fluid fox-trot on the brown and gold linoleum. The man could dance. He was smooth—transformed from the owlish, bespectacled engineer-high-councilor-family-fix-it-man into, well, Fred Astaire. Their graceful everyday duet enchanted me. Like [...]

Unhinged he looked at her.    Clenched jaw working like a throbbing naked heart  she scrubbed the carrot till its  flesh glistened raw,  stripped of bitter gritty skin,  then slammed it down  took up the knife  and slashed the thing into a dozen startled discs.    “She’ll get her finger,” he thought  (half hoped)  amazed [...]

2009 Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest Honorable Mention The biggest class I ever took at BYU had 3,000 students. We met in a huge auditorium with lighting and sound technicians to help the instructor go over the basics of American history. The room was dark, and runners carried a microphone to students with comments. The [...]

“HOW MUCH LONGER?” my eight-year-old wants to know. “Sacrament meeting is over when the long hand gets to the eight,” I hiss. Twenty-three minutes—eons. Please let the closing hymn not be “Love at Home.” A beautiful young woman is finishing up her talk. “I want to close with this quote I found on lds.org,” she [...]

2009 Poetry Contest Second Place —for Billie Jeanne Underwood    Just stepped outside when no one was watching,  screen door still swinging. . .   How could you be gone, truly?—  I think of you like Prometheus—  come from a dark place & carrying fire,  coming straight for us—  nimble feet, dark hair, dark eyes, [...]

In the valley between bone and bone  where my children stretched awake   and where a silent, sudden roll, a tumbling,  would slide into comfort again,  their movements, their proximity   made me safe.    So, when, in a recent nightmare, I glanced over  and my toddler was sinking through murky water  a boat’s length [...]

NATHAN IS RUNNING LATE. Heart thumping, face flushed, rushing, worried, ears attuned to the sound of the garage door rising. He has the bed he’s built fitted together tight and the mattress on, so the room isn’t a complete mess, but he has shoved the old metal frame out into the hall, and the sheets [...]

In fourth grade, at my mother’s suggestion, I read  How to Win Friends and Influence People,  wandered the playground, determinedly  “inquiring about the interests of others,”  and “using their names frequently  in conversation.” Useless. Nerdish. What I lacked  was a T-shirt with a puppy iron-on decal.    Amberly Dennery’s hair  feathered just right, her fat-  [...]

THE NEON’S BEEN ON THE VERGE of dying for years. Two years ago, after leaking oil all over the driveway for who knows how long, the head gasket blew. We spent several expectant days shopping for a new car, but ultimately Ed decided to pay $1200 (about twice as much as the car was worth) [...]

Three voices from Segullah‘s blog, with thanks to editors Leslie Graff and Michelle Lehnardt Ashley Stolworthy THE PAST THREE WEEKS I have enjoyed time off during my summer and fall terms, living life to its fullest. Camping, mini road trips, eating out too much, fewer workouts, and more late nights. I have not cracked a [...]

Three voices from Segullah‘s blog, with thanks to editors Leslie Graff and Michelle Lehnardt Ashley Stolworthy THE PAST THREE WEEKS I have enjoyed time off during my summer and fall terms, living life to its fullest. Camping, mini road trips, eating out too much, fewer workouts, and more late nights. I have not cracked a [...]

Three voices from Segullah‘s blog, with thanks to editors Leslie Graff and Michelle Lehnardt Ashley Stolworthy THE PAST THREE WEEKS I have enjoyed time off during my summer and fall terms, living life to its fullest. Camping, mini road trips, eating out too much, fewer workouts, and more late nights. I have not cracked a [...]

2009 Poetry Contest Honorable Mention October, 2007 Sharm el-Sheihk, Egypt  “But the Children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.” Exodus 14:29    I’m watching bodies  from where I sit at the end of [...]

You can tell a lot about people from the books on their shelves. On my husband’s shelf is Today I Will Nourish My Inner Martyr. He gave the book out one year for Christmas to our extended family so we could understand him better. Not that that is his only book. He also has a [...]

-for Ellen and Jim You know that old T-shirt of yours, puckered at the neck, holes worn of bleach and laundering, letters faded, shape stretched? That shirt that gets in the way when I fold clothes into stacks, That shirt I object to should you wash our car in it– (better you wash a car [...]

MADELINE WALKED OUT in the middle of sacrament meeting with her eyes blazing, her mouth set in a firm line, and her hands gripping her large black purse. Her friends and fellow Church members glanced at her quickly and then glanced back. She could see the questions in their eyes, but without a nod or [...]

2009 Poetry Contest Third Place Thanksgiving, 2009 Munich, Germany   “For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord.” 1 Samuel 1:27-28    She wept [...]

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO I emailed Louise Plummer to see if I could interview her and her husband, Tom, for our “Inside and Outside Marriage” issue. “Sure,” she responded, “but I’ll tell you right now, I’m not sure how much truth you’ll get out of us.” I was intrigued, because Tom and Louise have made a [...]