On Crystal’s new job, Hannah’s old one, and further evidence that I may have been born in the wrong country (vol. xxvii, no. 4)

Dear Family,

Before I get to the France trip, let’s get some church business out of the way.

A month ago, right around the time I was posting the March letter, the bishopric in which I was a counselor was released. The new bishop¹ happened to be the husband of the Relief Society president, and so his first order of business was to find himself a new one of those.

To almost no one’s surprise, he chose Crystal. Her initial reaction was to wonder how she was going to squeeze it into her already-busy life that — between her teaching² and her master’s program — was already feeling pretty close to capacity. But she ultimately concluded that she’ll try to do the best she can, and that really ought to be enough to keep the ship afloat. And she’s right. If this church — run by tens of thousands of mostly untrained and entirely unpaid pastors — were sinkable, someone would have sunk it a long time ago.

As for me, I managed to make it through almost all of April without having any church responsibilities whatsoever. I don’t recall when this last happened — it has to have been sometime in the 20th century. 

During one of my unemployed Sundays, I was asked (via text) to substitute-teach the CTR 6 class.

I texted back that I would do it but that I would need some direction about where to go and when and what and how to teach. Back when I was in the business of training church leaders, my counsel often included something along the lines of: When asking people at church to do stuff, don’t assume they have any idea how to do it.

Like almost all of my counsel, this continues to go largely unheeded.

I certainly had no idea how to teach a class of 6 year olds. As a substandard father whose youngest child turned 18 last month, I had no functional memory or understanding of what a 6 year old even is, let alone what kinds of concepts they are capable of grasping. I asked Crystal whether 6 year olds know how to read. I gathered from her response that they can read words but not usually well enough to learn much from them.

Armed with that knowledge, I assembled some fun facts from Matthew 15 – 17 and found my class at the beginning of Junior Primary singing time. 

“Hi, I’m Brother Willis,” I said to the boy next to me. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Logan,” he replied. “It has an ‘a’ in it but you can’t hear it. That’s because the ‘a’ makes a schwa sound.”

So that is what a 6 year old is, in case you were wondering.

The class went better than I expected. Our ward has a number of Primary teacher vacancies, and so when the new bishop summoned me to his office the following Sunday morning before church, I expected he would ask me to fill one of those positions, or possibly the Sunday School teacher position being vacated by one of his new counselors.

I was wrong. 

The bishop said he was calling me to be the Primary pianist.

I laughed a little before replying, “You’re seriously asking me to do that?”

It’s not that I objected to the calling. On the contrary, I had basically been openly campaigning to be the pianist in Primary for like the past 25 years. (That and ward organist, but we already have a good one of those — I just need to wait for him to graduate from high school before I can start gunning for that job again.) Actively seeking specific church positions is generally frowned upon and typically viewed as the most surefire way not to be chosen for them. But it seems to have paid off for me this time.

I don’t know how long they’ll let me ride the piano bench in Primary, but for now, I’ll just keep praying like Homer:

France

Crystal, Grace, and I spent spring break, which this year was the first ten days of April, in Paris, Normandy, and the Loire Valley. Ari stayed home to work and Aunt Coco moved in for the week to make sure Ari did not get too lonely, which we greatly appreciated. For more on Ari’s life, be sure and read the latest issue of Epistolarius. (I’ll put a link to it here when it’s posted, but it’s also not hard to find it in the feed at famlet.org.) 

We flew there on something called Royal Air Maroc, a carrier I was not previously familiar with. My stated reason for going with them was because we changed planes in Casablanca and none of us had ever been to Africa. In truth, that was about 1 percent of the reason. We mostly went with Royal Air Maroc because it was by far the least expensive option. So much cheaper that I had to do a little Googling to make sure we weren’t getting ourselves into what I like to call an “Aeroflot situation.”³ But it’s a totally legit airline. Even in coach, the food, while perhaps not Air France quality, was better than anything you get on a U.S. domestic flight, even in the front of the plane.

We didn’t really see any of Morocco, apart from virtually every square foot of the Mohammed V International Airport, but at least I can say I’ve been in Africa now.

I thought I would tell you about the rest of the trip (beyond the exciting details of how we got there, the lot we parked in at Dulles, etc.) by answering the three questions I am most frequently asked. I will endeavor to be concise, but let’s face it: if conciseness were important to you, you wouldn’t be here.

Question 1: How was France? What was your favorite part?

France was practically perfect in every way. Wonderful and beautiful — easily the most photogenic place I’ve ever been. I have not been to all that many places, but I have been to Hawaii. When asked what my favorite part of the trip was, I don’t know how to answer. With the possible exception of the Palais de Versailles, I loved literally every part of it. And I had no particular beef with the Palais itself. There were just too many damn people and I was in kind of a grumpy mood.

We watched with some concern in the weeks leading up to our visit the social unrest, garbage strikes, etc.,⁴ and wondered what Paris would look like when we got there. But this seemed to be all over by the time we arrived. The trash had been picked up, everything was running on schedule, and the only evidence of the protests we saw was a bunch of lingering “64 ans, c’est NON!” graffiti, stickers and signs. 

Naturally, we have hundreds of pictures. Too many, really. So many that it’s hard to curate a manageable number that any reasonable person would want to sift through. So here are a few that more or less follow our itinerary. They may not be the best ones, but they’re representative and the most that the Geneva Conventions permit me to subject a person to.

I can’t really say we did anything beyond your basic tourist stuff. In Paris we went to the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, (but not l’Orangerie – the timing just didn’t work out), Sacré Cœur/Montmartre, and the other places literally everybody hits in Paris. We stayed in a swell little Airbnb apartment three blocks from the Eiffel Tower. It was great.

From Paris we drove west into Normandy for a couple of days, stopping in two cities where I spent 8 months of my mission: Rouen (in upper Normandy) and Caen (in lower Normandy). We also went to Mont-Saint-Michel, which I had never previously visited. We stayed at another great little Airbnb on the coast in Langrune-sur-Mer. Too early in the season to wade out into la Manche,⁵ but it was still pretty to look at. If you know your D-Day landing sites, we slept basically equidistant from Omaha Beach and Gold Beach.

From Normandy, we took a quick trip down to the Loire Valley where we stayed in yet another charming Airbnb on the Cher. 

Some of my favorite pictures from the trip were of sunrises taken during my morning runs. (I logged 33 running miles over there – not bad for vacation.)  Also, nobody asked, but 30+ years on, I can still navigate Paris pretty well without a map.

Question 2: How has your French held up?

I would characterize my proficiency as a French speaker in the same way I would characterize my proficiency as a runner: better than average, but far from where I would like to be and by no means elite. I considered it a win whenever I got to the end of a conversation without the other person switching into English. This happened most often outside of Paris, away from tourist centers, and it always made me happy.

There were two occasions in Paris that might have gone more smoothly if the other person had switched over to English, but they didn’t:

The first was the guy at the rental car counter. We were going along okay until we got to the part where he started selling me the insurance. In America it’s easy. I just say “no, thank you” a bunch of times and that’s the end of it. 

But I had not researched whether (or the extent to which) the insurance I have at home would cover my bad driving overseas, and so I figured I probably ought to get something. The agent explained three different options, which I sort of understood, but it turns out my vocabulary of insurance terms isn’t all that great. I picked the one in the middle and probably got ripped off.  

The second occasion involved an airport police officer giving me a hard time for being in the wrong terminal without a boarding pass. I just typed the whole story out and realized it’s not the slightest bit interesting, so I deleted it. But I said there were two and that’s the second one.

Question 3: Did you meet anyone from your time there as a missionary?

No. I can think of maybe five old friends in France who at least occasionally read these letters. None of them live in the places we visited. I’m sorry to have missed you! I’ll do a better job of communicating my next trip there ahead of time and we’ll figure out how to make it happen. 

Question 3a: Did you make it to the Paris Temple

No, sorry.

Hannah

I have three noteworthy bits about Hannah this month, which is three more than I usually have. I considered spacing them out over multiple letters but was afraid I’d forget them. Any questions you might have about these three things should be directed to Hannah. Or to Hannah’s mother. Or to her siblings. Anyone but me. (You can ask me for details if you want, but you should know that I will be making them up.) 

Bit 1: Hannah is resigning her position as the director of nursing (or maybe it was the assistant director of nursing – or the assistant to the director of nursing – I can never remember, and she does not appear to have a LinkedIn profile) at the start-up hospice provider where she has worked for the past two(?) years.

The move will require her to return her company car, which would not seem to bode well for Sophie, who had effectively taken possession of the car Hannah actually owns. Hannah believes she may have a work-around for this, but the semester is over and Sophie is coming home on Monday, and so it does not have to be solved immediately.

Hannah is returning to her old job at the Utah State Hospital (a psychiatric facility in Provo) where she feels her schedule will be more conducive to completing the master’s degree in health informatics she is currently working toward and the psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner (or “PMHNP” – if there’s an acronym in more desperate need of a vowel, I haven’t heard it) degree she plans to pursue after that.

Bit 2: Hannah’s divorce became final this month.

Bit 3: Hannah and her new girlfriend Emma came to visit us last weekend. They flew in Friday morning on that popular Delta redeye from Salt Lake that gets into BWI at 6 a.m. (when it’s on time – it’s Delta, so it wasn’t). 

Their visit was short but enjoyable and action packed. After a Friday of mostly relaxing and wandering around the woods behind our house, they spent the evening with us at Blake High School’s “Swing Night,” where my nephew Ben is the drummer in the Eubie Blake Jazz Ensemble. (The group’s pianist is also our ward’s organist, so I was acquainted with half of the rhythm section.) We were guests there of Grant and Jen, who had purchased a table and (as I subsequently learned by reading the program) are “Conductor’s Circle” boosters of the school’s music program. It was a lot of fun.

Hannah and Emma spent most of Saturday downtown with us doing D.C. stuff. It rained but we had a nice time anyway. On Sunday after church we took in the blooming azaleas at Brighton Dam and then had dinner with Mom, Dad, and Peter at our house. 

And then in a blink on Monday morning, Hannah and Emma were on the 7:05 flight back to Salt Lake (it may have arrived on time – I don’t know, there’s a first time for everything) and we were left with just the memory of a pleasant weekend. I enjoyed getting to know Emma a little – she is lovely. I enjoyed even more getting to see my oldest daughter for the first time in what seems like forever.

They grow up so fast.

Love,
Tim

1. Note to the uninitiated: What we call a bishop is what most other Christians call a pastor or a priest — the person who leads a single congregation. Pastor (a Latin word meaning shepherd) is probably the best term for describing what bishops in The Church of Jesus Christ actually do, but we use all kinds of unusual words for things — it’s part of our charm.
2. Apparently there is (or has been) a widespread shortage of ADHD medication. Perhaps no one felt this more acutely than the nation’s special education teachers.
3. Crystal is the only member of our family who has flown Aeroflot. It was back in the old Soviet Union days and, based on her description, sounds like it might have been roughly the equivalent of flying one of those 1978 Ford Pintos with the rusty gas tanks.
4. All I can say about a place with a life expectancy over 80 where the people are willing to go to the barricades over an increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 is that I was clearly born in the wrong country.
5. ”La Manche” (literally “the sleeve”) is that arm of the Atlantic Ocean that English speakers typically refer to as the “English Channel.”