Nancy's Talk: Of Wells and Arks

Here is the talk that I gave in sacrament meeting:

Of Wells and Arks: Doing the Next and Necessary Thing

Since I’m speaking first, I’ll take a few minutes to introduce our family. We moved here in July of 2019, so we’re coming up on seven full years here, which is the longest that I have ever lived anywhere in my entire life—and by extension it’s also the longest my children have lived anywhere. Although I’m sure many of our children—particularly our youngest few—feel as if we’ve been here a lifetime, I don’t actually feel like we’ve been here very long at all. I’ve just never felt very settled here. Perhaps I don’t know how to settle. I don’t know…

But, here we are! We’re the Heisses. We have six kids. Our oldest Rachel is a freshman at BYU. Then there’s Miriam, who you hear at the organ each Sunday. Next is Benjamin, who made a goal this year to bake bread whenever he’s assigned to bring bread for the sacrament. Zoë is enjoying her last year of primary; she’s very excited to enter the Young Women program next year. Alexander was baptized this past November. And Phoebe is four and…we just…celebrate…that we’ve been able to get her to attend her own class. She’s very clingy. 

She describes herself as “snuggly,” but she’s clingy. 

Church, the work of Sunday

I was trying to schedule a time to video call with Uncle Patrick (in Austria, GMT+1) and Auntie Josie (in Utah, GMT-6) while being here (in Georgia, GMT-4). It can be tricky to find a time that works for everyone, but Patrick, being mindful of my church schedule, suggested 2:00 pm my time (noon Josie's time, 7:00 pm his time).

He and I were texting before Josie was even up. 

"We should jump on a call and talk about train tickets..." he suggested (Josie and I are going to visit him in May).

"Rushing to get ready for church atm" I said (atm = at the moment). 

We've been going early for morning choir practice, which already feels like a bit of a sacrifice. With daylight savings added on top...and with some late night excitement at our house (prom, among other things)...it felt like a real sacrifice this morning. We managed to get the choir people up and out the door in time to be just barely on time for choir, if not a minute or two late, which I felt was really pretty good, all things considered. 

But the joke was on me the whole time because I was accidentally left off the group text informing everyone that choir practice would be moving from 9:30 to 9:00 to allow us a full hour in the Relief Society room before the other ward kicked us out. 

So we walked in at 9:30, quite proud of our timeliness, only to be half an hour late. Not that I'm very sad about having missed out on that text message...because I didn't have to feel guilty about not being ready in time for 9:00 since I didn't know about needing to be ready by 9:00.

Prom: Under the Sea

Miriam's at prom tonight with a bunch of friends, who all decided against dates (which I'm not opposed to—pairing off can make things awkward at this age, especially with so few youth in our area). So, these three girls spent the afternoon together and are meeting up with other friends at the dance.

One of their YW leaders did their hair, and then they had dinner and took pictures at the park:

Birfday grill

While the rest of us played a ruthless game of Nertz (one of the things Andrew wanted to do after dinner), Phoebe decided she wanted to write a birthday letter to her cousin Oaklyn (whose birthday is tomorrow). She didn't really tell any of us this, so we all just thought she was happily drawing...until she said, "Can someone please tell me how to make an F? I'm trying to write Happy Birfday, Oaklyn..."

She had gone through several drafts by this point and was rather frustrated by her many false starts (you can see one paper in particular in the stack below with many attempts crossed out):

Dinner songs and yucky elbows

"A, E, I, O, U!" I sang at the start of dinner.

"I love you!" sang Miriam, Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander in response. 

"You can take me hot to go!" Phoebe sang loudly.

The first call and response was in reference to Muzzy, which I had thought that I had written about...but evidently have not. 

My Auntie Colleen once told me a story about when she and Uncle LeRon heard a song on a show that was so catchy. They would sing it to each other but they weren't sure what it meant. 

"Ah-ay-ee-oh-oo! Te quiero!" 

They decided they should probably look it up so they could know what they were singing. So they did and then felt silly because they were just singing the vowel names. 

We got really into Muzzy a couple of years ago so all the kids knew this song, but not Phoebe, who pulled from Chappell Roan instead—the line that comes after H-O-T-T-O-G-O. 

*****

We lived happily

Today the words of Ilya Kaminsky are running through my mind. I was fortunate to get to her both him and his wife speak at a poetry event a couple of years ago. His collection Deaf Republic is chilling.

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

It is a beautiful spring. And the world should be celebrating it together.

Stick it

One more story before I go to bed! 

I forgot that while we were at the playground today Phoebe asked to go on the swings. She wanted me to push her in the baby swing but I refused. She is four years old. It is time she figured out the big-girl swings. 

She reluctantly agreed to this and I set about pushing her...and coaching her on how to pump the swing herself (something she doesn't have a whole lot of motivation to do currently—she's so spoiled). 

I was pushing her from the front, encouraging her to stick her legs out straight so her feet could meet my hand...and then giving her a nudge to keep her momentum going...so she was going pretty high. 

Suddenly she says, "I want to play Stick It!"

"Ho-ho! I don't think so!" I started to say. 

*****

Stick It is a game the big kids play. I played it growing up as well, but didn't call it Stick It. I think we called it "Jumping Off the Swings Contest" or something like that. All the rules are described in those two names—you swing as high as you go, jump off as far as you can, and try to stick the landing.

Kids break bones playing this game...but...it's kind of a childhood rite of passage.

Winning at scripture study (some more)

We are only two months into the year and Phoebe has already memorized Moses 1:39, Moses 7:18, Psalm 119:105, and Proverbs 22:29. This last one has quickly become a family favourite because somehow or another we've taken to saying "business" in what can only be described as a Sam Eagle fashion.

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business?" we'll say, putting unusual and grunt-heavy emphasis on that last word. 

We all find that much funny enough all on its own, but then we had to have a discussion about what "mean men" meant for the second half, which says, "He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."

It just so happened that we introduced this scripture to the kids early in the year, soon after the, uh, "bog-standard cookie" incident—not a compliment, Andrew!—and so when we explained that "mean" here means, like, "average" and not "cruel," the kids really ran with it.

"You mean bog-standard men?!" Alexander howled with laughter. 

"Sure," Andrew said. "Bog-standard men."

That was all the permission the children needed. Now they all—including Phoebe—chant: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before bog-standard men."

We'll be lucky to make it through life without being tossed into a volcano.

Monday, Monday...

This week seemed like it was going to be incredibly stressful (and looking at the weekend's current events I think the week will continue to be at least a smidge stressful), but on Saturday one of my professors emailed and instructed the class to hold off on a major assignment due Tuesday because she wanted to talk to us about it more before we started it (I had finished all the readings for it but was still kind of like..."Uhhhhhh???"...and was going to cluelessly make something up...but now maybe I can create a more...informed...project) and then another professor emailed on Sunday evening to say that she was extending the deadline for our major project due at the end of this week for two more weeks. 

So that was all quite a relief, considering I was about to implode from stress.

I did have revisions of a paper due today (that is accepted for publication...with revisions) and I also had to review an article. And I, of course, have to be working on the aforementioned (and other upcoming) assignments. And I need to write a talk for Sunday and prepare another conference presentation for mid-March. And...so forth...

But I took the kids to the park this morning (since I didn't have a meeting this afternoon) and let them play for a while.

YMCA Championship Meet

First thing in the morning, I registered the kids for swim team. I had to be fast so I could be sure to secure a spot for Phoebe on the "futures" team, since space is limited in the "futures" program. Benjamin is applying to be a "futures" coach again. So we're gearing up for another busy summer full of swimming. 

We left for church an hour early so we could go to choir practice before church. We are just barely starting our Easter music...like today. It's rather late to be starting Easter music, but choir has been...to put it delicately...going through some hurdles...recently. So we're starting Easter music now. It'll be fine.

Grandpa joined us for our meetings this morning and then took Benjamin home from church ahead of us so that Benjamin could get changed and pack up some dinner for himself. They were just leaving for the pool when the rest of us arrived home from church. We met them at the Georgia Tech pool at 3:00 for Benjamin's championship meet.

Here's Benjamin diving into the water for his 50 yard freestyle (lane 9, closest to the audience there):