I HAVE A BRILLIANT NIECE

My brilliant niece with her granddaughter--who has Oreo-teeth--at a party thrown for Lezlie's parents (my sister and brother-in-law) celebrating fifty years of marriage.

My niece, Lezlie, took her boy to BYU Idaho to start school this last week. They were standing in line for him to get his ID photo taken. When it was finally his turn the woman in charge said something like, "His hair is too long. It touches his ears. You will have to take him to a barber and come back."

(BYU rules are very strict. The kids have to sign a moral code and there are dress and grooming standards. If the kids want to go to school there they live by the rules.)

~~Now, if you ever get a chance to meet Lezlie you are in for a great experience. She is quick. Quick witted. Quick to do everything--she graduated from college and had her first baby when she was twenty--or maybe she was nineteen and turning twenty that year, I can't remember for sure. She graduated in Journalism but raised a family of six instead of going to the TV studio every day. She has written ten books (and more under contract) for children. She is a love--I am enchanted by her. She sparkles, she grins, she teases, she is a deep thinker and works hard at everything she does. She has taught each one of her children to hold to the standards of their religion and they are all smart and savvy. They will all make major contributions to the world.~~

So, when that woman said the words "barber" and "come back," and Lezlie and Daniel had already stood in that line FOR EVER Lezlie wasn't buying it.

"Do you have a pair of scissors?" she asked the woman. I'm sure she used her innocent-I-need-help face. When you see that face you would do anything for her.

"I think so," the woman said, digging through her stuff. You know about women's "stuff." There could be anything inside the depths of a woman's purse. She produced a pair of scissors, which Lezlie borrowed and in a minute or two Daniel was up to the grooming standards, got his photo ID taken and hopefully will have realized that he has a pretty smart mom.

Now, if that had been me I would have drug my child to the barber, got back in the l-o-n-g line and missed my plane. And that is why I am a mother of old children who know how to handle their lives and sometimes mine too. Bless all of our little cotton socks.

Long live young mothers who know what to do and how to do it.

PS If Lezlie couldn't have found scissors she would probably have gnawed his hair off because, after all, she's clever and WAS NOT GOING TO THE END OF THE LINE. You should buy her books for your wee ones. I tell you, she's brilliant.

I RODE ONE OF THESE EVERY DAY FROM 2ND GRADE THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL

Even the year it was -40 degrees everyone in town went to school on the bus. There was a layer of ice on the inside of every window. It never occurred to our mothers to drove us to school in a heated car.

That is the year I bough a winter coat with an inside lining of knitted fabric. It was built for the Arctic. I still have that coat. It weighs ten pounds and is an attractive Army green.

Carl Spafford--a grandfather--was our bus driver. When we got too noisy he pulled over to the side of the road and waited.

Once I was sitting with my feet on the top of the wheel-well when Carl ran over a boulder. It hit my wheel-well and punched the sheet metal up about two inches. My feet stung for a long time but I didn't even bother telling Mom about it. After all, if she didn't drive us to school in -40 degree weather why would she worry about my arches being driven through the top of my feet?

These buses look very lonely. What is their destiny? If they are lucky they will be purchased by an interesting man like my Dad and be used to drive the grandkids around. Who knows?

PHONE CALLS FROM THE KIDS

I "Googled" "phone images" and got page after page after page of cell phones. This was the ONLY non-cell phone I got until page seven. Phone calls from the kids:

Today one of my boys called from the grocery store, asking what went in lasagna. Then he and his wife bought everything for lasagna except lasagna noodles.

Later he called with good news about his and his wife's education. I was so pleased for them. Three miracles--or tender mercies--for them. They will both graduate earlier and don't have to take some of the classes they thought they had to--money and time saved.

My daughter called to ask us to dinner but I didn't have time to talk to her because I was busy taking the "old-woman" out of my hair by making it brown again. The color is called, "Brandy." I don't drink it but, obviously, I wear it.

When I called her back to ask if I could bring something to dinner Phil said, "They've gone to the movie." Just then the "beep" beeped and I left a message, not to them but a discussion with Phil about how I would have gone to the movie with them.

"Only one problem, " Phil said. "They didn't ask you,"

I pouted with words and whined a bit and then, when I had made my point, I hung up. Then, after we had been to Costco--WITH AT LEAST SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE IN UTAH--I called again and she said she had made everyone listen to my message and that her husband said I was crazy. And then I heard him correct her. "Crazier!" he said.

So today was a fun phone-calls-with-the-kids day.

That's all. Such a little thing but it means so much to a mom that I can have fun with my kids on the phone, and that they call when they have good news, and that they call for cooking advice, and that we can laugh at and with each other. Little things like that mean so much to me and probably every other mom on the planet. We're funny like that.

So, call your mom and ask a cooking question or tell her some good news or just breathe into the phone. It will give her a thrill.