Vol. 25, No. 11

Dear Family,

When Hannah was born — 25 years ago next month — all four of my grandparents were still living. Less than a month later, Bertram Trowbridge Willis, the younger of my two grandfathers, died. He had recently turned 84. My other three grandparents would follow him over the ensuing five years, culminating with the departure of Bertram’s wife, Jean Cannon Willis, on November 28, 2001, twenty years ago today.

The flight from D.C. to Salt Lake for Grandma Willis’s funeral was among my first following the September 11th attacks, which at the time were still very much at the top of everyone’s mind — especially when boarding an airplane. Twenty years. It seems to have passed so quickly in hindsight, yet, paradoxically, also feels like a long time ago. It’s kind of jarring to realize that my grandparents have been gone for so long. My memories of each of them remain vivid. I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget their voices or how they looked (at least how they looked as grandparents). The further into the past they recede, the more I seem to recognize and appreciate the extent to which their collective goodness has shaped and blessed my life.

I had already sent my November 2001 letter when Grandma Willis died, and so my admittedly lame tribute to her had to wait until the December 2001 edition. (One of the ways you can tell that I don’t go back and selectively edit my old letters is that they retain their unsightly double-spacing after periods.) If I had been writing these letters as a kid, as Grandma Willis asked (explanation here) those letters likely would have chronicled the involvement of all four of my grandparents not only at graduations, weddings, and every other important life event, but also at piano recitals, soccer games, shooting baskets in the driveway with Grandpa Willis (and then playing chess with him), playing cards with Grandma Henrichsen and Grandma Willis (though the two women could not have had more diametrically opposed views of what a good card game entails), making breakfast with Grandpa Henrichsen, and any number of other things that seemed inconsequential at the time but in hindsight were actually of great consequence.

I mentioned to Dad after Thanksgiving dinner that I couldn’t believe it had been 20 years since his mom died. I don’t think he realized it either. He shook his head slightly as he processed it and said something like, “You know, you are really lucky to have had four truly wonderful grandparents.” He paused briefly between each of the last four words for emphasis and effect, as is his wont. (I often catch myself speaking in the same way.) He then spoke about the goodness of his own grandparents, which naturally got me to thinking of what a blessing my children’s grandparents are to them (and to me).

I realize there is nothing novel here. Good grandparents are great — everyone knows this. I’m just feeling it a little more than usual this month and wanted to get it in the record. And if you think this is all just prelude to my announcing that Crystal and I are about to become grandparents ourselves, we are not. Not to my knowledge, at least.

On to the monthly roundup.

Though one might reasonably call my objectivity into question, I feel comfortable asserting that Grace performed beautifully in Northwood High School’s production of All Together Now earlier this month. The show, a revue of some 15 show tunes, featured impressive and fun dance choreography and (at times) phenomenal singing. When the featured singer was less phenomenal, the sound engineer admitted to sometimes cranking up Grace’s microphone. With all the performers masked, it may not always have been obvious to everyone whose voice they were hearing. Those of who recognize Grace’s voice could tell.

On the Saturday of Grace’s final performance, the four of us posed for some professional photos at the temple. This was not our idea and, above all, did not cost us anything. The church locally was running its annual #thankfulforthetemple social media campaign and invited a bunch of families from the District, Maryland, and Virginia to come get their picture taken and write why they are thankful for the temple.

This sort of thing (like most sorts of things) would ordinarily irritate me, but it was not a lot to ask and we had a nice time. (And we are indeed thankful for the temple.) The weather was bright and sunny all day except for the half-hour or so we were there, when it rained. You may have to look closely to notice that our clothes and heads are wet, which is part of the reason we are laughing at each other.

The main reason our family was asked to do this has to do with Ari. Ari is the preferred name of the person you know as Lucy. They are not especially militant about what you call them and, in my experience, will answer to Lucy without correcting you. I try to remember to use their preferred name, but it isn’t easy to start calling somebody something after 22 years of calling them something else. Fortunately, Ari is willing to cut their parents (and others) some slack while our brains adjust. I think we’ll eventually figure it out. Anyway, the people running the social media campaign wanted different kinds of families and the woman in charge of recommending participants from our ward wanted to see Ari in front of the temple. And so that’s what they got.

This is the photo of us they used in the temple’s social media feeds. You may have seen it.

But they took a bunch of others. Here are some of them.

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Ari was especially happy this month because included a one-week visit from their friend Bebhinn.

Bebhinn (pronounced “bevin”) is British but her mom is Irish, which accounts for the spelling of her name.¹ She is one of a group of internet friends that Ari joined to produce “Zombies Run: The Musical” over the past couple of years. These friends hail from various places in Europe and North America, but it turns out two of them live in Silver Spring. Bebhinn is taking a study abroad year in Fort Worth, Texas, and so the three of them (plus two others) decided to meet each other here in person (for the first time) over Thanksgiving.

Bebhin flew in on the Thursday before Thanksgiving and stayed with us until the Friday after Thanksgiving. (The others stayed elsewhere.) She was a delight even as I peppered her with a nonstop stream of annoying questions. Sometimes I asked out of genuine curiosity, but usually I was just making conversation because I liked listening to her talk and I enjoy embarrassing Grace.

Me: Since you don’t have Thanksgiving in the U.K., how do you know when to start decorating for Christmas? Do you even have Christmas?

Her: We have Christmas. We usually start decorating at the beginning of December.

Me: Since you don’t have Thanksgiving in the U.K., how is it that you have Black Friday sales? How do you even know when it is?

Her: We have Amazon. Amazon tells us.

Me: How come you pronounce the letter ‘h’ haitch instead of aitch?

Her: [I actually can’t remember how she responded to this and most of my hundred other similarly stupid questions, but it was always polite.]

Bebhinn joined us at Grandma’s for what felt (to us) like an intimate Thanksgiving dinner of just 20 people. Though it was obviously bigger than last year’s Thanksgiving gathering, which did not happen at all, it was smaller than usual and it was odd to be able to fit everyone around just two tables. The youngest person at the adults table (in the actual dining room) was 38-year-old Peter and no one at the kids table complained about being relegated to the kitchen.

We hope it was not a super-spreader event. Everyone was fully vaccinated and I believe everyone at the adults table was boostered (some more recently than others). Check back with us in a couple of weeks.

We also got to speak to Sophie in Ukraine on Thanksgiving and ask whether she felt any concern about the looming Russian invasion. She did not seem worried about it — possibly because she did not seem to know about it,² which I guess is okay. If the people she interacts with every day aren’t worried about it, then maybe she needn’t be. (Of course, the people she interacts with every day already speak Russian, so there’s that.) She lives 150 miles from the Russian border and 400 miles from where the Russian troops are amassing. Not unlike the 20-years paradox, this simultaneously feels safely distant yet uncomfortably close. I take some comfort in knowing that the Church does not put or leave missionaries in conflict areas. There are no missionaries in Donetsk, for example, which is in Sophie’s mission and technically in Ukraine but in reality controlled by pro-Russian separatists. The Church may continue to make inscrutable decisions about unit boundaries where we live (we somehow just got ourselves a second YSA stake) but it tends to act wisely when it comes to things that actually matter. The Church will know what to do. Check back in a couple of weeks.

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This weekend marked the return of the Montgomery County Road Runners Club’s annual Saturday-after-Thanksgiving “Turkey Burnoff” 10-mile run at Seneca Creek State Park. I think this was my sixth time doing it, but my first since 2017 (and my fastest since 2014, so how about that — don’t jinx it but I think my right calf might finally be all the way better). What made this year’s race different from any other is that I actually volunteered to help.

This is news because I am not a very good volunteer. If someone personally asks me to help with something, I can usually be counted on to show up, but I am generally not one to raise my hand.³ I am trying to be better at this and the running club is always looking for volunteers to help at races. I’m up pretty early in the morning anyway and so I signed up to arrive at 6:15 (the race started at 8:30) and be part of the setup crew.

It was actually kind of fun. In addition to setting up tables (which I’m pretty good at because, let’s face it, it’s something I get asked to do at church at least 25 times a year) I got to set up cones, carry boxes of bananas, hoist the big finish line clocks onto their tripods, help tape down timing mats, and, best of all, open all the port-a-johns for business by cutting the zip-ties that were keeping them closed.

Have you ever had the privilege of being the first person to break in a freshly opened port-a-john? I don’t mind telling you it’s worth getting up early for.

Once the start/finish area was set up, I got to direct traffic. Have you ever had the privilege of standing in one place for an hour in 20-something degree weather without a coat? I don’t mind telling you it’s not worth getting up early for. I was able to leave my traffic post 15 minutes before the race started. I spent about 14 of those minutes in my car with the heat on full blast trying to get the feeling back in my fingers and toes. It kind of worked but I didn’t really feel warm again until mile 3 of the race.

But it was a good experience for me if for no other reason than I got to meet some really nice people. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed (you probably have) but people who volunteer to help tend not to be jerks. I’ll probably do it again. Maybe someday I’ll become a non-jerk, too.

I am genuinely thankful for you.

Love,
Tim

1. I learned this week that there is no letter ‘v’ in Irish. The stated reason for this is something like, “What do we need a v for? We already have a ‘bh’ which makes a v sound.” (“mh” also makes a v sound in Irish — sometimes — except when it’s making a w sound.) This is a little little like saying, “Why do we need the letter ‘f’ in English when we already have a ‘ph’?” I don’t know why we have an f, come to think of it. We could also get rid of the letter ‘k’ since we have a ‘ch,’ which makes a k sound in words like school, scheme and schedule (except in Britain, where they pronounce schedule like an elementary school student encountering the word for the first time).
2. This is not surprising. I was a missionary in Normandy when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991 and would not have known about it if the mission president hadn’t brought it up at zone conference.
3. This is especially true at church when a teacher (or whoever) asks, “Would anyone like to give the closing prayer?” It’s possible that at some point in my life I have responded to that kind of blanket invitation, but I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time. If I’ve ever done it, it’s probably been at least 25 years.