Winter Lessons

Marlowe taking care of Athena Christmas 1970

The winter winds blew so coldly and I felt so vulnerable as I left the pediatrician’s office with my 18-month old daughter, Athena. The doctor had said her cough wasn’t anything serious and hadn’t given me anything for it, but I was still worried. She kept coughing and coughing. It was only a few days before Christmas in 1970, and I was living in a small upstairs apartment in Bountiful, Utah while my husband was serving his second tour as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. My oldest son, Marlowe, had just celebrated his third birthday, and he held onto Athena’s hand as we walked to the car, telling her she would be better soon.

 Ed had left for Vietnam in mid-November and I’d felt very brave and self-confident then. But the cold, snow, and Athena’s cough, had weakened my resolve. But since the doctor had said Athena was “okay” I decided to do some more shopping. I just didn’t want to go home to my empty apartment. It was dark before I got home, and the phone was ringing. I grabbed it, and tried to get the children’s coats off as I talked on the phone. I was surprised that it was my dad. He was very worried and explained that he had been trying to locate me for hours. 

Beth Christmas 1970 Bountiful, Utah

“The doctor’s office called me when they couldn’t reach you,” he said.  “You had put me down as an emergency contact. The radiologist looked at Athena’s x-ray and said she definitely had pneumonia and you needed to get her back to the emergency room at Hill Field as soon as possible. They have medicine and treatment waiting for her.”

I looked at my toddler, whose coat I had just taken off, and who was coughing again. What a lousy mother I had been. I had kept her out all afternoon when she was sick with pneumonia! How grateful I was that my father had been able to get the message from the doctors and notify me. 

Later that same winter I was feeling lonely and isolated. I had no one I could relate to. I missed my two sisters who were closest in age to me. Both were married and living far away. One had one daughter Athena’s age, and the other was expecting a baby the same time I was, in February. How I wished we could do things together; but we were so far away and long distance phone calls were so expensive. Our mother had died not long after I had married so none of us had had someone we could call on for motherly advice.  Dad lived in the same town, but he worked swing shift. My younger brother at home was 16 years old; my youngest sister had just turned 14 years old. My mother-in-law lived several hundred miles away; she had remarried recently and her husband did not care for my husband, so I did not feel I could call on her for help or advice.

Marlowe & Athena 1970

One of the other “Waiting Wives” in Bountiful had three small children about the same age as mine, and I often thought to call her and do things with her. However, I knew she had many siblings who lived in the area, and I kept thinking that I was being a bother to want to do things with her when she was probably doing things with her family. When I went back to the pediatrician to have him check to make sure Athena was completely clear of her pneumonia, I met my friend there in the waiting room in tears. Her youngest son was very sick, and she had no one to take care of the other two while they hospitalized him. I immediately offered to take them home with me, and was surprised that her family had not offered to help her. 

“They are too busy with their lives. They don’t understand how it is to not have a husband to help,” she sobbed. 

I realized all the times I had hesitated to call her because I thought I would bother her when she was busy with her extended family, and she was just as isolated as I was because her husband was in Vietnam. I decided then to reach out to each woman whose husband was in Vietnam—whether they had a lot of extended family or not. We were in a unique situation; no one understood what it was like and how we could help each other like we could. 

Athena & Marlowe playing in the snow 1971

It was late in January of 1971 when I got my last lesson. I awoke to my three-year-old son crying. I went to him and tried to comfort him, but nothing would help. He was doubled over with pain. He was in so much pain that he couldn’t talk. Finally I realized that I needed to take him to the emergency room. It was about 3:00 in the morning, and I was frantic. I couldn’t take both children out in the cold to the emergency room, so what was I to do?  I prayed; I knew Marlowe had to go to the emergency room. Something was desperately wrong with him. 

I decided to call my father. He worked swing shift. He would come over no matter what the hour to babysit Athena while I took Marlowe to the emergency room. I called and he came right over. I’ll never forget what he said when he saw Marlowe. 

“He’s wheezing, Beth. He has asthma.” I was shocked. I had had asthma as a baby, and for a year as a teenager, but then I had mainly coughed continually. I couldn’t remember wheezing, or even what wheezing was. 

“Can’t you hear him wheezing?” Now that I listened of course I could hear the wheezing sound. “That’s why he can’t talk—he can’t breathe.” My father knelt down and carefully touched Marlowe’s doubled up diaphragm. Marlowe jumped and cried. “He’s wheezed and struggled to breathe so much that he’s pulled the muscles in his diaphragm, pour little guy. Get him up to the emergency room.”

All the way up to the emergency room with Marlowe crying and wheezing in his car seat, I kept thinking what I crummy mother I was—I didn’t even know when my own child had asthma and I endangered his life. It took my own father to tell me what to do. At the emergency room, they quickly treated him and told me what to do. 

I had felt alone that winter, and that year—and often very inadequate—as young parents often do. But I wasn’t alone; of course we are never alone. The Lord is always aware of us, and our needs; he uses those around us, then as now—family and friends—to help us meet the challenges of life.

Feeling Patriotic in an Anti-American Atmosphere

Being a soldier or a soldier’s wife during the Vietnam War was not easy. The war was not popular and many looked down on soldiers as easy scapegoats. No one knows why the soldiers became so unpopular, but from the war being unpopular, the soldiers soon became disliked and then called baby-killers. Before long soldiers were being advised to change into civilian clothes before flying home so they wouldn’t be targets of protests.

Was became the short-haired military men stood out so much from the usual long-haired hippies who weren’t in the military, that it was obvious that they were in the army? Even the non-hippies wore hair much longer than the military men. Everyone who watched the Vietnam War on TV saw the atrocities and they blamed the soldiers they saw nearby because they couldn’t accuse the ones they saw on TV. 

While Ed was in Vietnam the first time, I stayed home in Bountiful expecting our first child in 1967. I went to the University of Utah for one quarter, and I felt the anti-war animosity indirectly. Everyone seemed friendly until they found out my husband was serving in Vietnam. Then the hostility about the war came out. The Tet Offensive occurred early in 1968 which was a military success, but a propaganda failure. That was when the anti-war sentiment changed from just the college campuses and hippies to other Americans.  I had never felt totally “apart” from the rest of society, but after that it was obvious that I was different. I can’t explain it; I can’t describe it; but I felt it. The only time I felt accepted was when I met with the “Waiting Wives Club” a group of women whose husbands were serving in Vietnam. 

It was worse the second time Ed served in Vietnam in 1970-71 and I was alone with three children under three years. I remember the apartment complex I was in having a summer party and I was the only one not invited, because as one of the neighbors explained, “You just wouldn’t fit in.” I was in a ward of mostly older families and I felt like every sound my three little ones made in church brought a lot of censure because they were the only children there.  So I spent most Sundays in the Church hallway trying to wrestle three little ones, feeling as though we were nuisances in the ward. I’ll never forget one older lady (her son was my age), who saw me in the hall and put her arms around me. “I had six children and my husband was in the bishopric and the stake presidency. I spent many years walking these halls with little ones. My heart goes out to you.” I’ve never forgotten her kindness and compassion. 

The war was even more unpopular, and protests were much more vocal by then. The war had spread unofficially into Laos and Cambodia, and everyone kept hoping the war would end “soon,” but it didn’t look like it ever would.  I felt everyone hated the war—and the soldiers and their families who were reminders of the war.

Halfway through Ed’s year’s second tour, I was able to meet him for an “Rest and Recovery” in Hawaii--a week-long vacation from war. While we were on Waikiki Beach, “The Smothers’ Brothers,” our favorite musical group gave a free concert, especially for all the military that were there on "Rest and Recovery." We were excited to go it. 

It was my first live concert; I was so thrilled to see the Smothers’ Brothers and hear them sing. It was an open concert on the grass and we went early to get close seats. I had a really nice camera that Ed had bought while he was in Vietnam, and I used it to take good pictures of them performing. We enjoyed their performance and the music so much.

The Smothers’ Brothers were very popular, but their show had been controversial. Some of the satirical jokes on their show on race, religion, censorship and the war had been considered to be anti-government and disturbed CBS, their network. Their show was cancelled.  However on that summer day on Waikiki where their music and jokes rang out to thousands of military members and their wives and girlfriends, none of that was apparent. The Smothers Brothers kept telling the military how much they appreciated the work they were doing. They said their father had been in the military and they had been military brats until their father had been killed as a Japanese POW in World War II. 

How ironic that some performers who had been blackballed because of anti-war jokes entertained and praised the soldiers who most Americans reviled and spat upon! Young men the same age as the soldiers in their audience sang and joked to them and made the soldiers feel at home in an America that rejected them! Other performers like Bob Hope performed in Vietnam, and lifted their spirit during the war; that was important! The Smothers' Brothers performed to soldiers on R & R with their wives and made them feel proud to be soldiers; and that was just as important.

Smothers' Brothers performing on Waikiki Beach

  

It was one of the few times during the Vietnam War that I felt proud to be a military spouse; one of the few times that I sensed Ed’s service, and my support was valuable. I never forgot the concert—or the feeling the Smothers’ Brothers gave me during years when I felt America resented my husband’s service.  God Bless the Smothers’ Brothers.

My "Little Women" Doll

I was named after Little Women’s “Beth.” As many of you know, she was the very good, self-sacrificing third daughter of the March family in Louise May Alcott’s civil war book. In 1949, my parents gave me a Madame Alexander “Beth” doll for Christmas. I can remember how excited I was that Christmas we spent at my Grandmother Hansen’s house in Monroe, Utah, and I saw that big doll (15 inches high) under the Christmas tree. I thought it was the most heavenly present I could ever get. 

The years prior to that had been very hard financially for my family; however, things had looked up and I think my family splurged that Christmas. I know that doll must have cost a lot more than any other gift I ever got for Christmas before or after that year. 

1949 Madame Alexander "Beth" doll

I loved that doll. It was special to me because it had my name, and as I got older, my mother told me about the story of Little Women and their life so long ago. I always took very good care of my doll. I never got her dirty, or acted like she was a baby doll. I knew she was special. As I became older and read the story, I identified, not with “Beth,” but with her sister, Jo, the author of the story. 

That doll was very precious, and as our family grew to seven children, that doll became a symbol of a time when I got a very valuable and expensive present.

When I was nine-years-old my mother had her first bout with breast cancer, and money became very tight. I shared a room with my two younger sisters and had very little privacy, but my doll was a symbol of something precious that was my own. I adored that doll and took very good care of her. I didn’t play with her a lot, but always made sure her clothes were clean, neat and that she looked very nice. She sat on a special place on my bed.

As I grew, I didn’t play with the “Beth” doll, but I always made sure she was in her special place. I always made sure her hair was neat and the little hair net kept it from being messy. I never lost her shoes or socks, and never let my younger sisters play with her. I told them she was not a “play doll” but a “collectible” doll—one you just looked at. 

When I was 14-years-old my mother had her second bout with breast cancer, and she was never really well again. As the oldest girl in the family, I had to take over a lot of the housework, and the care of the younger children, including my youngest sister, (I was 13-years-old when she was born). 

I worked part time after school my senior year to earn enough money to go away to college. I finally had my own bedroom, and my “Beth” doll said in a place of honor on my hope chest, as I dreamed of what I would become in the future. More and more I knew I wanted to write like Jo in Little Women. I also was very rebellious as a senior in high school, and as I looked at the “Beth” doll, I thought how I couldn’t be like her. I felt like I was letting my mother down, not being her ideal “Beth” as she’d dreamed I would be; but I also knew I had to be myself.

I went to Utah State University the fall after I graduated from high school; I left my bedroom to younger siblings, and all my belongings, too. I was so excited about my new adventures; I never wondered what would happen to my precious “Beth” doll.

When I finished my first year of college and moved back home, no one knew where my “Beth” doll was. It was gone. My youngest sister remembered playing with it, but nothing more than that. No one knew what had happened to it. My mother was dying, and the house was in turmoil. I became engaged the summer after I moved home, and got married that fall. I never did find my “Beth” doll or what had happened to it. 

My first Danish doll

I began collecting dolls after I got married, when my brother was serving a mission in Denmark and sent me a Danish doll. Since then I’ve bought many dolls from many countries, including a complete set of eight inch Madame Alexander “Little Women” dolls. I even have dolls from all over the world showing women doing different work. 

But I’ve always told my children about my conflict about being named Beth, but feeling like Jo. (Although, in the book Beth catches scarlet fever, and dies; in Hawaii, I caught scarlet fever and was very sick, especially when I developed glomerular nephritis. However, unlike the fictional Beth, I recovered.) I recently took four of my granddaughters to see the musical “Little Women” at Centerpoint Theater and told them the story of my name. 

Several years ago, my oldest son in Seattle had twins, a boy and a girl. He told me they’d named the girl after me. They’d named her Josephine—but planned on calling her Jo—my alter-ego. We had a good laugh because I know that’s the closest I’ll come to having any grandchildren named after me. 

My current "Jo" Doll

My current "Beth" doll

Eternal Perspective

I went to the Atlanta Temple that spring day seeking comfort and strength. My problems may have been small compared to others=Cbut that day they appeared huge and insurmountable. The skies were leaden; the rain had been coming down in sheets for almost a week. The air was heavy and oppressive as I yearned for the sun to pierce through the gloom and warm my soul. 

Sitting in the chapel in my rented temple clothing, my tears fell like the rain outside. One of the temple workers patted me on the back and whispered that it would be "all right." I looked at the name of the sister whose proxy I was that day, and wondered if all her days had been sunny; then the thought struck me with great force—of course not. Life on earth contains both joy and sorrowCtoo frequently we dwell on the sorrows and forget the joys. 

That thought struck me with the force of an electric shockCperhaps our existence on earth was similar to the view we focus on when looking through a camera=s narrow lens. We determine our individual focusCwhether we set a mental telephoto viewpoint which magnifies the large, immovable rocks, the encompassing weeds and the dreary mud. Or we decide whether to enlarge our focus to catch the rainbow on the edge of the sky, the gardenias blooming with breathless perfection, or the softness of the green velvet grass. The gardenia blooms whether we see it and appreciate it or not. Nothing limits our view except ourselves. If we move our imaginary lens too rapidly, the landscape around us becomes an incomprehensible blur of color and texture. But if we focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else, we may miss the significance of something else. When we try to broaden our focus to include everything in sight, the panorama becomes so wide that we can see nothing distinctly. We pick and choose the focus which we concentrate onCand that affects our whole vision of life.

As the temple session began, I still slumped wearily in my seat. Although my thoughts were whirling with new insights, my shoulders still bowed with the accumulated problems of a lifetime. However, as I concentrated on the endowment ceremony, I felt an unnatural need to sit up tall, to slough off the sorrow and hold my head and shoulders high. I consciously decided I would do so, reflecting that I needed to represent the sister whose work I was doing with dignity and respect, for she was not sorrowing this day, but rejoicing in the eternal significance of the blessings she was receiving. Throughout the session, whenever I would begin to slump, I would immediately catch myself, determined to represent the sister for whom I was proxy in a stately manner. As I concentrated on the words of the temple ceremony, and considered what they meant to her eternal progression, my mood began to change. It was as though I was adjusting the focus of my "mental" camera, and seeing things that had always been there, but which I had missed previously.

I reflected on the wonderful blessings I had been endowed with during my life, and gloried in my knowledge of the plan of salvation. I gave thanks that I had the blessings of the restored gospel during my lifetimeCthe Holy Ghost to guide my decisions, priesthood blessings to strengthen me, and covenants to give direction to my existence. I wondered about the sister for whom I was proxy, and if her mortal life had been difficult or easy, rich or poor, exalted or lowly. Most of all I wondered what her perspective on life had been. Did she mourn what she lacked, or did she see the joy and beauty which surrounded her? Whatever her life had been, I knew she was grateful for the service I was doing for her that day. For that I felt a special fellowship.

As the endowment session came to its conclusion, I looked down at my rented temple clothing, and another thought struck me. I don=t know which mode of clothing the sister whose work I had done may have worn during her lifetime. She may have worn simple, homespun clothing, or native dress. As unlikely as it might be, she may have even worn rich satins, embossed with jewels. However, nothing she had ever worn in her lifetime could compare in significance with the simple rented temple robes that I had worn for her that day. For the robes I had worn symbolized covenants and promises that would not disintegrate and decay in earth=s fragile atmosphere as their earthly counterparts would.

It was still raining as I left the temple that day, but I did not feel its sting, nor did I notice the puddles it left in its wake. It seemed that my focus had shifted imperceptively during the temple session from the mundane and dreary to a more exalted view. I looked out over the vista of Atlanta from the heights of the temple mound, and my heart took a snapshot. The scene had not changed since I entered the temple, but my focus had. The temple had helped me see with an eternal perspective.

My Monstrous Miller Hair

I love to do genealogy. I especially enjoy seeing photos of my ancestors to see how they looked when they were younger. 

However, I don’t have to look at photos of my ancestors to see them; all I have to do is look in my mirror—I can see my ancestors’ in my horrible hair. For I have the “Horrible Hansen Hair.”

My Mother and her naturally curly hair

As far back as I can remember, I was cursed with the “Horrible Hansen Hair!” 

Technically it isn’t Hansen Hair—it is Miller Hair as it is from my father’s mother’s Miller side of the family. 

My mother on the other hand, had beautiful, thick, naturally curly hair; while mine was thin, fine and absolutely straight. I can recall my mother trying to do something with my hair, but it defied all her efforts to train it. So she would end up braiding it. Then she would look at my father and say, “She has your mother’s Miller hair.” 

For my father’s mother was a Miller from Southern Utah. They were very proud of their heritage as pioneers who had been the first teachers, school superintendents, and educated people in the area where my father grew up. And they let everyone know about it.   But they also had the finest, thinnest, wimpiest hair in the West. And it started to recede from a man’s hairline when he turned 21-years-old.

There was nothing that could be done with the “Miller Hair” as my mother discovered. She took me to her sister, who was a beautician, but it wouldn’t take a perm very well, and then it frizzed instead. If you managed to curl it by sleeping all night on curlers, they immediately drooped and fell out. My mother finally gave up and I lived with braids for years.

My Grandmother Hansen

My Grandmother Hansen (from whose Miller blood I inherited the monstrous hair from) had hair that was thin, but she worked hard to keep it looking good. She was a very elegant lady, who dressed to the nines, and she wouldn’t be caught dead with her hair not dressed perfectly. All I had to do was look at her sisters with their thinning, fly-away unkempt hair to know what mine would look like if I didn’t work as hard as my grandmother.

 I am pretty sure my grandmother went to a beautician regularly, just because of who she was—a proud Miller, the captain of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers chapter, and very involved in town life.

By the time I was a teenager, I had decided that perms and short hair were the only way for me to go (long straight hair was not popular then). I couldn’t afford to go to a beautician to get a perm so I’d buy a perm and have my sister, mother, friend, or anyone I could to give it to me. Even when I married and Ed had to go into the military and we were living on air and dreams, I told him that perms had to be budgeted in; I couldn’t live without them, even if I had to give them to myself. 

All my life I’ve fought with my hair—with perms and keeping it short, and cursing it. All I had to do was look at my dad with his balding thin hair, and it would remind me what my hair was like and I’d go get another perm. I tried various hairstyles, but I had a round face, so I needed height on top, so leaving it long and straight or pulling it back into a ponytail just didn’t seem an option.

My straight-haired daughter and granddaughters

 Out of my five children, only one of my children, (unfortunately a daughter) inherited my hair, but long straight hair is popular, so she just goes with it. It has more body than mine, and she can do more with it than I could, so she doesn’t stress about it. Both of her daughters inherited it, (de ja vu), but they keep in long and trimmed nicely. None of my sons inherited my father’s baldness (thank goodness).

My mother's mother--Grandmother Hendrickson

My mother’s mother, my Grandmother Hendrickson, had thick hair, but I don’t know if it was straight or curly, as she died when I was about six years old. But I do know that in every photo I have of her, her hair never turned gray. It stayed glossy and dark even to her death in her sixties. That gave me hope that maybe I wouldn’t go gray early, either. (My mother died at 48 years old, so I didn’t know if her hair would have turned gray or not.) 

But I began to hope. Maybe if I had one bad hair gene, I’d be compensated with one good hair gene. And it worked. Here I am almost 70 years old, and I have very few gray hairs. My hair isn’t dark so the gray doesn’t show up. 

Maybe there is some justice in life’s genetic hair lottery after all.