Dear Family,
One kind of person I have never been able to understand is the hobbyist. Don’t get me wrong, I have many people whom I love who are hobbyists––Luke being among them––but I have no idea how they do what they do.
Luke has always had a serious interest in guns and shooting, despite him growing up in one of the least gun-friendly places in an admittedly very gun-friendly country. This month marked the second year that he has decided to apply his interest in firearms to hunting.
He has gone hunting three times this year, and he only committed a crime once as far as I know.
While hunting ducks earlier this month, he did not manage to kill any ducks. He did get one mourning dove, which was legal, and one pheasant, which was not. Pheasant season was still a few weeks off.
Because he’s a good sport, he reported himself to the game warden, who drove to him, wrote him an official warning, confiscated the poached pheasant, and asked him if he had any family nearby.
Luke, unsure why he was asking and assuming he wanted to know if he was hunting alone, told the warden he was alone.
“Are you sure?” the game warden asked. “Because if you did, I could donate this pheasant to them. And they could do…whatever they want with it (wink wink).” I’m not positive about this, but I think he may have actually vocalized the winks.
When Luke was telling me this story, I didn’t quite understand what illicit activities the warden was implying, but to Luke it was clear that the warden was exposing the loophole in the required donation of illegally hunted game.
So Luke called a close friend, Yadon, who was kind enough to drive to the slough where Luke was hunting, accept the pheasant donation from the warden, and then “do whatever he wanted with it.”
And what he wanted was to meet Luke at a nearby Maverick and gift the pheasant to him.
And so I can tell you that pheasant tastes like chicken. Mourning dove, on the other hand, is gross. Luckily, it only produces meat about the size of two kidney beans, so you never have to eat too much.
I have to say that Luke is certainly much more responsible than the imaginary boy enamored with guns that I always pictured when I was in high school, which is something I appreciate and respect. While hunting, this responsibility is very important (I imagine) and I trust everyone else going hunting on the weekends he goes to be equally responsible.
I’m always a little nervous when Luke goes hunting. Each time he’s gone hunting, he’s warned me that he’ll probably be outside of cell service and that if I don’t hear from him by a certain time, I should call 911 and direct them to the pin he sent me ahead of time.
Thankfully, he’s always come back safe and sound. His last hunting trip could have ended disastrously, as his car got stuck in the mud while he drove through the wildernesses of Box Elder County outside of the range of cell service. It was already dark, he couldn’t call anyone, and he couldn’t get the car out of the mud.
Providentially, he had passed some campers a half-mile back. He walked back to them, and one man was able to pull his car free of the mud with his vehicle. Luke then decided to backtrack and camp near these kind people rather than driving closer to his eventual hunting spot and risk getting stuck again.
They fed him a warm dinner. I am grateful to them.
And Luke has still not yet managed to catch a deer. I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed other than because this means he’s going to keep hunting at least until he gets one.
And so Luke’s hobbies continue, which I think is great. I honestly admire people who can learn a new skill all on their own without anyone putting deadlines to them.
I require deadlines, structure, reminders, whatever. I’ve never been able to just learn how to crochet or sew, no matter how many times I’ve wanted to develop these skills as hobbies.
The closest thing I have is my piano, which I don’t usually count, mostly because I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to play piano. But even my piano is often neglected on a day-to-day basis until someone asks me to learn a specific song to accompany them in church.
Which is why I’m grateful that Luke used his influence as ward choir director to get me called as ward choir accompanist this month. And he sure knows how to pick pieces with difficult piano accompaniments. So that’s keeping me good and busy at the piano.
This inability to become a hobbyist is I think a large part of the reason I love my free Spanish class so much.
I’m still the most consistent attendee, and I’m still learning and enjoying myself. I feel a respect for the teachers who volunteer their time to teach a class of usually just me and one other student, and I feel a respect from them in turn.
My favorite moment from Spanish class this month was when we had a lesson on giving and receiving directions. My teacher very helpfully explained that, “In Mexico, people won’t really understand if you tell them to go north or south. That’s not a helpful direction there.”
One of my classmates said something like, “Oh really? Interesting.”
And I laughed! Because nowhere in the developed world besides Utah considers the cardinal directions to be a useful contribution to a navigational conversation. So, I am enjoying my Spanish class.
My aversion to hobbies also contributes to my love for my little customer service job. I doubt there’s much in the tasks themselves that I personally enjoy—sending emails to confused customers is perfectly pleasant, but not necessarily thrilling—but I appreciate having another demand on my time when Felicity is asleep.
It’s a new experience to me to work remotely, and it introduces some interesting, new relationships into my life. My boss, David, for example, is someone I now interact with regularly but very rarely see. He’s probably a year older than me and I have often wondered how he became the owner of this small company, since I’m pretty sure he isn’t the original CEO.
But we don’t chat, you know? We have friendly interactions during which he gives me a task and I say, “yes, boss,” and then we pretty much part ways.
But one day, David texted me.
“Do you have a crockpot?” he asked.
I had no clue what to make of this, and my first assumption was that he meant to text a different Sophia, one who he might consider borrowing a crockpot from.
But then I thought, “Maybe he needs a crockpot for an ad he’s filming?” This would be weird, as we sell bike racks, but it would at least explain why he thought to ask me.
My next thought was, “Maybe he has no friends?” Followed by, “Or maybe all of his friends are single men who don’t own crockpots.”
I’m a little ashamed of these last two thoughts and how judgmental they feel. Especially since, as a married woman, the answer to this question was, “I do not.”
“But I have an instant pot.”
And the conversation ended.
Two weeks later, he sent me another text, telling me to pick four frozen meals from Citrus Pear. “They should work with your instant pot,” he said. And that made me so so happy.
Never have I had a job where a boss bought me something! Except for that one summer when I interned at RiskSpan under Dad. He would buy me lunch frequently. But this is different! It makes me feel very appreciated and I am grateful for my job.
And are you proud of me for getting this far in the letter with only one mention of Felicity? Or are you disappointed? I’m pretty pleased with myself, and I’d like to remind you that you’re not allowed to care about Felicity without also caring at least a little bit about me and Luke.
Luke’s work threw a little party for Luke under the guise of a surprise baby shower. Considering that I’ve never heard of a postpartum baby shower, I think the surprise was effective.
Luke’s work have long been an incredibly generous support to him, both financially and socially. His bosses are a married couple who act rather paternally towards Luke and to me by extension. Mary reached out to me in late September to invite me to bring Felicity to the office for a Friday lunch turned surprise baby shower for Luke and I was looking forward to it all month. That anticipation was a great gift to me, and then the party itself was a wonderful time.
We played games, we ate Texas Roadhouse (which you may recognize as a treat for Luke), and everyone in the office gifted Felicity a few of their favorite childhood books to contribute to our library.
I feel like employers have an incredible potential to make one’s life terrible or wonderful, and I’m grateful to Bruce and Mary for maximizing their ability to bring joy to the place where Luke works.
I am grateful to them.
Felicity completed her second month of life on October 20th, and on that day, we had her two-month doctor’s appointment. I had been anticipating this appointment because there Felicity would receive her first round of vaccinations!
What I was not prepared for were the developmental questions the nurse asked me before the doctor came in.
I’d say I pay a lot of attention to Felicity generally, but this nurse was asking me a bunch of questions about behaviors I hadn’t thought to keep track of. The first few questions I felt pretty confident about and they made me think that all of the answers to the questions they ask ought to be “yes,” or something might be wrong.
But as the questions kept coming, I began to realize that I really wasn’t sure if Felicity was capable of turning her head in the direction of someone speaking across the room.
One question that caught me off guard: “Can she bring her hands together in front of her?”
My response: “I mean she can, but I don’t see that she ever has any reason to.”
Which, in retrospect, is the funniest and most unnecessarily defensive thing to say. I really wonder what the nurse marked down on what I imagine was a “yes/no” answer sheet. Because if I were her, I’d be really torn.
I can confirm that, since this appointment, Felicity has demonstrated that she can and does bring her hands together in front of her. Why? I don’t know. But she does it, and I won’t stop her.
Luke and I are still waiting to see whether Felicity’s eyes will change to brown from their current blue, which we’re told can take up to a whole year if the change is going to happen. Luke is really sad every time I remind him that they might change, because he really wants them to stay blue.
I try not to be offended by this, but it’s a little hard sometimes. I asked him the other day if he hates brown eyes, and he said, “they’re fine.”
In case anyone can’t remember and hasn’t intuited it by now, his wife has brown eyes, and likes to think that this is not something he had to overcome mentally when he decided to marry her.
But I can’t be too angry, since I’ve also kind of fallen in love with her blue eyes, mostly because they’re hers and I love everything about her.
I’m honestly waiting to see if she has the gene, passed to me through my mother’s mother, that makes me sneeze when the sun gets in my eyes. There have been a few times when she has sneezed when the sun got in her eyes, and so I’m thinking she’s got it.
When I asked Luke if he has this gene, I said to him, “Do you sneeze at the sun?” He had no idea what I was talking about. I think he thought I was asking whether he holds the sun in any particular regard or if he purposefully disrespects it, which itself is hilarious.
When I explained what I meant, however, he laughed and said, “Can you imagine? What, getting the sun in your eyes and sneezing? How embarrassing.”
He doesn’t like my EYES and he laughs at my SNEEZES. They say that having children challenges a marriage and now I understand that it’s because your spouse reveals all of the parts of you they hope their kid doesn’t inherit. Well, I hope she gets my eyesight, Luke. How about that?
I hope she does get his teeth though, as he has never had a cavity and my teeth feel like they’re going to cave in on themselves any day.
Some other milestones include her first trip to St. George:
Her first General Conference:
And her first Halloween:
I wrote most of this letter on a plane to Maryland. Before Felicity was born, Luke encouraged me to buy a ticket to visit family for sometime around Thanksgiving. But tickets around Thanksgiving are expensive and tickets for the first week of November are way less expensive, so I’m visiting home for Halloween and Voting Day, which gets my mom off work on Tuesday.
On Halloween, Matt, Grace, Ari, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Coco got to meet her the first time. It was incredibly special for all of us, and I’m grateful to Luke for supporting this trip and for his sacrifice.
If you’re in Utah, please feel free to reach out to him and offer your time and company. I know he will appreciate it.
I love you all and hope you are well.
Love,
Sophie et al
Senior Contributor to The Famlet Monthly