Christmas Memories

It is almost Christmas . . . that magical time of year that I have always loved and looked forward to. I’m wondering just why Christmas has always meant so much to me. The memories go back to when I was a child.

I remember it was in the first grade that I was selected to be on the big stage at the college. I wore a red dress made of crepe paper and I remember my dad proudly holding me in his arms while people made a fuss over me.

Christmas always meant special dresses and music. I remember walking down the isle in the big auditorium dressed in an angel costume with a silver garland around my head, carrying a lighted candle, singing “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” Once I was a Snow Queen in a white sparkling dress, carrying a white basket with sparkle in it, and on cue I crossed the stage and sprinkled the green people dressed like pine trees! I remember other Christmas times when I wrote little plays and read the lines while others did the actions. Later there were times when I sang solos for programs and a time when I sang with Loni and Monette in costumes I made of red velvet and white fur. One year I made a Mrs Santa dress and entertained at a rest home for older people. In addition, there were times I sang in chorus’s and in groups. Sometimes I was asked to lead the chorus . . . I remember the women’s chorus with my son, Dev, playing the drums . . . wonderful memories.

Yes, for me there was always Christmas and music . . . but more than that, there was always family and gifts. My husband, Milt, always did special things for us, all while he teasingly complained, “Christmas . . . humbug! This year we are cutting down!” Then he’d be sure to check to see if I’d forgotten anything!

For me Christmas was always a time for sewing! Everyone had to have a holiday outfit. I made outfits for the girls, shorts and matching ties for Dev and dresses for the girl’s dolls. Christmas was always a time to get a special gift for everyone, things they’d been needing all year and we’d saved the ideas up to be sure we had a very special time for everyone on Christmas. We always made as big a deal as we could for Christmas. I saved up for Milt and always got him a special tool and something to build with. I knew about tools, as my dad always had special tools and I knew about them from him. The first year I bought Milt a drill, then an electric saw, etc. He started building rabbit pens when all he had was a hand saw and a hammer! When I saw his first ones I said, “Milt you need a square,” recalling my dad building things. Milt didn’t know what a ‘square’ was.

Christmas is a time for family . . . a time for remembering family and the special blessings that come from being part of a special family. How we love and appreciate ours. As I look through my journals there is always a lot about Christmas. It was always about family coming home to eat, being together the way my children are now their own families. The best times, the things that last when the busyness of life is over, are the memories and I’m sure they will go home with us . . . to our Heavenly Home, when we again join our parents, where we were before we left.

[Pictured: My girls, Judy and Vicki, at Christmas time.]

Lessons From My Mother’s Love

In Memory of My Mother

Edna Elnora Laker Cook (Oct, 3, 1896-Oct. 9, 1945)

Mother’s Gone

By Shirley Sealy

My mother was gone. The moment I had dreaded, been warned of, and lived in fear of, was here and she was gone. I looked down at my hands and they were lying still in my lap. Why wasn’t I shaking? Why wasn’t I screaming or going through a dramatic scene like the terrible ones of my dreams when I’d searched for mother and couldn’t find her? Then I’d wake in a cold sweat and call her on the phone and know she was still here. Not this time. This time she was really gone and I was wide-awake.

As I left my duplex apartment to go to my sister’s house, to be with what was left of the family in this hour of shock and sorrow, I knocked on my neighbors’ door to let her know I’d be gone. As I talked, aware of her shocked expression while answering sympathetic questions, my chin began to quiver. Just that. No more. My chin uncontrollably quivered as if I was cold . . . but I wasn’t cold.

It has been many years since the terrible accident that took my mother from me and I still marvel at the way we all stood it. Mother had taught us so well, taught us of a life to come, where we would all meet and be together again. She had gone on ahead, as usual, to show and prepare the way. Mother had always prepared the way, been an example of what to do, how to act and what to say. Mother had earned a rest and we all knew she had gone to the best place possible because that’s the way she lived, doing good always. We didn’t resent her leaving anymore than she would ever have let us resent being born.

Mother’s funeral was different than most funerals. I wanted to go. Until that time I’d always said I couldn’t stand funerals, that I wasn’t going to my own if I could get out of it. However my mother’s was different. The foolish girl inside that thought it was “big-time” to stay away suddenly grew up, becoming a woman, with the announcement of my mother’s death.

Mother was taken at the same time that I was expecting my second child at any moment. I couldn’t do the running around and our father was in the hospital as a result of the same accident, so my sisters’ made all the arrangements and I sent the telegrams.

“Accident late tonight” . . . stop . . . “Mother killed” . . . stop . . . “Father in the hospital" . . . stop.

The words went round and round in my head like a broken record, snuffing out sleep, tearing at my overtired, numbed mind. I needed rest. I wanted to sleep so that I could attend mother’s funeral. As I tossed in my bed, suddenly a calm came over me. It was the same calm that I’d always felt when mother sat beside me and we talked. It was as if she was there beside me now, on the bed, and I fell into a deep, quiet sleep that I didn’t wake from until the morning sun fell on my face.

I felt the calm feeling again at the funeral when we stood beside her casket for the last time. We didn’t cry. It would have been selfish to cry, I felt. I remember the feeling there, as if her spirit was with all of us, busily doing things for others as she’d always done. We plucked flower after flower from the bouquet that covered her casket and we gave them to all those who wanted one to remember mother by. We were reluctant to leave that sacred spot, not because it was sacred, but because we felt her closeness with us there.

Mother’s teachings were so consistent. I know today, this very minute, what she would say if I asked her advise on any subject. She’d listen to me, weigh both sides, comment on each, express the good and the bad, and then leave it to me to make up my mind, knowing I would make the right decision. She had a way of pointing out truth that couldn’t be ignored and she always had faith in our ability to follow right. All of her children still live by that rule, remembering mother’s faith in us. And even now, I can see her smile, hear her voice in my ears, and remember what her gentle touch on my face or arm was like, even though she has been gone for many years.

Mother had a way of making each of us, all seven of us, her children, feel special. We were “heaven-sent gifts to brighten her life,” she used to say over and over and we believed her because she made us feel that way.

We had little of the comforts of life that money could buy. Mother dressed herself and all of us on a budget most people wouldn’t believe. We had little more food than the fruit she bottled in the summer, the milk our one cow gave and the vegetables she planted and took care of in our garden each summer. Father worked away a lot. It was a time when building was scarce and my father was a carpenter and had to go where he could get work, first at one end of the valley and then the other. Yet, I never heard about the sacrifices of motherhood from our mother. I only remember how often she told me what a blessing her children were. I felt loved all my life and I know my brothers and sisters were equally loved. I wonder how she made me know that?

I remember when we had company. Sometimes relatives from out of town came to stay, or friends from the surrounding towns. When they stayed overnight we would double up on the floor, but always mother made us feel good about it. Like when she fixed dinner for company. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food for everyone so she’d ask us to be good and not say anything and after the company was gone she’d fix us something together in the kitchen with her. She ate with us and always made us feel so good that we didn’t miss what we didn’t get.

I remember times of illness, waking feverish and full of pain, to see my mother sitting beside my bed, her cool hand on my hot head as I tried to sleep. I remember sweat baths and mustard plasters, and sponge baths and clean sheets. Mother was a good nurse, had a natural touch and a divine sense of what to do in case of illness. When the fever was gone and I was still bedridden, she’d tell me stories and give readings for me. She sometimes gave her comic and serious readings in public gatherings, but when I was ill she’d do them just for me.

Mother liked to laugh. Always busy, she had only a little time for fun, but she had a way of making everything seem fun. She loved movies and especially the musicals that Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald did together. We saw the movie musical “Rose Marie” one afternoon and I remember my little sister telling Daddy she saw the man fall off the barrel three times. When the acting, the story, and the music were good, mother could watch a movie over and over!

I remember the way mother sewed. She could take an old coat or heavy dress, rip it apart, wash, press and turn it inside out, cutting a new dress from the pieces that was a modern creation of the latest style.

Mother had a way of talking, of letting me talk, of listening to my friends and making them feel welcome. My friends all loved to come to our place because mother made them feel welcome. Mother was our friend.

I believed in my mother long before I understood about God. Gradually, as I grew older, I transferred that faith in mother to a belief in God, my Father in Heaven. I can’t remember when I made the change. To me, mother and Father in Heaven were synonymous. I was quite grown up before I realized my mother was really very human and that she sometimes could make mistakes, even though she’d always told me that she did.

I liked the human side of mother too. I liked the way she frowned a little when an off-color joke was told or crude language was used, the way she fell asleep when I combed her hair, the way she smiled when she looked into the faces of her children, and the way she screamed when she saw a snake.

Mother was my cushion against the world. I could tell her more than I told any girlfriend. I could depend on her keeping my confidence, listening without judging, and punishing me when I needed it. Usually her look of disapproval was more punishment than when she deprived me of things that would help me learn.

Mother encouraged me in everything good and told me story examples of everything wrong. I was always proud of her. She always looked nice, though she worked as hard as any man, and she had to stretch a dollar a dozen ways.

We often had troubles at home, the same fights and differences all siblings have, but I don’t remember them because mother helped us work them out. We were usually sent to separate rooms to play alone until we could kiss and make up, then we’d talk the problems out and the hurts didn’t stay.

When I look into the faces of my five children I find it hard to believe they didn’t know my mother . . . the mother that has influenced their lives so much. She is still so much a part of my life that it seems only natural that my children would know her too.

Many years have passed and I’m still trying to be the kind of mother to my children that my mother was to me, not perfect, but fulfilling. I try to teach and encourage them, love them as she loved me. She showed me the way and I hope I’ve showed them the way and that they’ve showed their children.

Sometime I think of all the things I’ve missed that we might have shared together all these years that my mother has been gone, but those things are overshadowed by the knowledge of all the things I am and hope to become because of the goodness of her life.

One more thing . . . Mother, I’m remembering how we used to laugh together when people talked about the sacrifices of motherhood because you taught me that motherhood is the “best,” the top, evidence of the Lord’s love for women because His plan allowed us to learn from His children. You said it’s the best college education we can have . . . trouble, expense, effort, study, confusion, and the greatest blessings and benefit of any career. And mother, I have found out it’s true!

Angels Are Still Here

Whenever heaven wants to announce something big it is assigned to the angels to make the announcement. They have often been seen. They sometimes carry trumpets, sing and make an historic declaration as they did when the Christ Child was born. But sometimes they are just here, ready to help, hoping to be asked, ready with necessary equipment, unrecognized, not asking thanks, ever ready and willing.

It was a beautiful day. My daughter was driving our Toyota. I was in the front seat beside her; my granddaughter and her small son were in the back seat. We had just left Bear Lake where we had been overnight guests. As we’d packed the car with our overnight gear we’d noticed one tire, the back right one, seemed a little low, as if it might be losing a little air. Evanston, Wyoming wasn’t far away so we decided it would be a good idea to roll into a Big O Tire and have it checked before going on.

We found help and waited while the mechanics checked it out. It wasn’t much of a problem and soon it was all fixed and we were on our way again. We were driving from Evanston, Wyoming at a regular speed, where the highway separates into three highways, one turning left going around Echo Lake going to Salt Lake and the right one that cuts off going to Ogden. It’s a very dangerous spot with heavy traffic buzzing around each highway. As we began to round the corner, just barely before we hit the turn, there was a zzzzzzzzz sound and we knew the tire had blown!

“Don’t hit your brakes!” My granddaughter wisely reminded my daughter from the back seat.

“I’ve got to stop,” returned my daughter as two cars swerved around us, trying to get out of the way. We quickly came to a stop just as another car swung around us from behind and squealed to a stop in front of us, his car facing ours.

The girls got out and opened the trunk. The unidentified stranger in the miraculous car leaned over and picked up a toolbox that was evidently sitting right beside him in the front seat of his car. He picked it up and came to help us. He immediately changed the tire and put everything back and left as quickly as he had appeared. All I had time to say was a quick, “Thank you,” before he was back in his car again and gone.

Who was he? I don’t know. He came, did his work and was gone before I realized what had happened. Later I tried to remember what he’d looked like or if he had a name. He appeared, helped us and was gone!

All the way home I tried to remember what the stranger looked like and if he had said anything. All I could remember was that he came to help us and then left as quickly as he’d appeared.

Yes, he was an angel all right! They are everywhere. They ask nothing and give whatever is needed and then move on. That’s one of the way angels work. I thank that angel over and over whenever I think of him. I am so grateful. Yes, angels are still here and they help us more than we know!

“We [angels] hold your hand literally and figuratively throughout your life. Occasionally you are aware of our presence, yet most of the time you do not know that we are there.”
~ Doreen Virtue, My Guardian Angel

“Heaven sometimes inspires everyday people to act as earthly angels.” ~ Doreen Virtue, My Guardian Angel

“I testify of angels, both the heavenly and the mortal kind. In doing so I am testifying that God never leaves us alone, never leaves us unaided in the challenges that we face.” (“The Ministry of Angels,” General Conference, October 2008) ~ Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

[Pictured: My great granddaughter, Acacia.]

Ten Cents Worth of Hamburger

Pictured: My mother, my husband, Milton, and my baby sister, Claudia

My mom had unique ways of teaching lessons. Even though she has been gone a long time, her children are still using "Mom's Method" to teach their children and their grandchildren. My mother knew exactly how to use a teaching moment. One I will never forget is the incident I lovingly refer to as, "Ten Cents Worth of Hamburger."

In today’s market I don’t know what anyone could do with ten cents worth of hamburger, but when I was a child ten cents could buy a pretty good size chunk of ground beef. It was enough to add to a pot full of garden vegetables and make a nice stew or soup for our family of eight children.

I was about seven years old and “money was hard to come by,” as the old saying expresses quite well. It was the era before World War II and the beginning of the Great Depression, before inflation became a common word. On this particular summer day, mother called me and made a request.

“Please take a dime out of the money drawer,” she said. (The money drawer was a small drawer in the kitchen cabinet where mother put a few coins to be used for emergencies.) “And go to the butcher shop and get ten cents worth of hamburger,” she instructed.

Mother had already put on a pot of vegetables ready to make stew. I loved going to the store or the butcher shop. We lived in a small area and all of the available stores were built around a four square town. In that small town we were reasonably safe to go places alone, even as children. Mother sent me to the butcher shop, which was in the middle of the second block of town. The butcher shop was locally owned and the meat was always very fresh.

I went to the drawer to find the dime and indeed that was all there was in the emergency drawer . . . one single dime. I took it out and then consulted mother once more before leaving.

“Mom, if there is any money left over, can I have it?”

“There won’t be any money left over. One dime buys ten cents worth of meat and that is all.”

“But if there is any left over can I have it?” I persisted.

“There won’t be any left over.”

I persisted with the same question several more times and mother, finally tired of explaining said: “If there is any left over, of course you could have it, but there won’t be any left. Believe me.”

With the dime in my hand I started happily off for my trip around the boardwalks that circled the four blocks of town. One of the stores along the path was a penny candy store where we could buy a large stick of candy for one penny. I thought about it I decided if I only got eight cents worth of hamburger there would be two pennies left and mother had said if there was any money left over I could have it. I justified my plan with my mother’s words and honesty felt I would be satisfied.

As I rounded the corner of the first block, I realized due to the path I had taken that I would pass the penny candy store before I came to the butcher shop. It was then the second plan formed in my head. Why not buy the candy first and then go on to the butcher shop to get the eight cents worth of hamburger?

We had very few sweets in our family in those days and I dearly loved candy, so I was satisfied with my justification. As I approached the penny candy store I put my creative ideas into action and walked in, selecting two nice sticks of candy. I handed the lady my money and she gave me the candy and the change, which consisted of one nickel and three pennies.

I opened the candy and began eating it as I skipped along to the butcher shop in the middle of the next block. While I enjoyed the candy a little guilt formed inside of me. To see disapproval reflected in my mother's eyes was always my worst punishment. I'd been taught to be honest, but even more than feeling pains of dishonesty, I wanted to avoid the disapproval in my mother’s eyes. I decided to make sure my mother would never know she had only eight cents worth of hamburger instead of ten.

I had finished the two sticks of candy by the time I arrived at the butcher shop. I went inside and gave my order to the butcher for eight cents worth of hamburger.

“I'm sorry,” said the butcher that knew my family and me very well. “We are out of hamburger. We're grinding at the slaughter house this morning, but we should have some this afternoon.”

Holding the pennies and nickel tight in my fist, I left the butcher shop with a very sick feeling inside my stomach. Never, in all the times I'd gone to the butcher shop in town with my mother or alone, had I ever known them to be out of hamburger before. I hadn't planned on that possibility. What would I do? I envisioned the look I knew I would see in my mother’s eyes and I wanted to die on the spot, or at least fall in a hole and be injured so badly that I wouldn’t have to face my folly.

Unfortunately, I knew I couldn’t depend on a hole in the ground to open up for me, and out of the few cars we had in that day there wasn’t a chance that I could be hit by a car, or even run over by somebody’s horse. I walked home slowly while my mind racing, searching for a plan. By the time I arrived I’d decided that I would slip in the house, put the money in the drawer and then go for the meat later in the afternoon.

I got in the house and put the money back in the little drawer without detection. “They are out of hamburger,” I quickly announced to mother. “They'll have some this afternoon. I'll get it for you then.”

Mother nodded, trusting me and went on with her work. With my mind relieved and my stomach partially unknotted, I went outside to play. However, an incident latter in the afternoon brought the knot back with double grief.

I was still out playing when mother decided it was time to go to the butcher shop again. She asked my younger sister to get the dime and go for the hamburger. I came in from outside just in time to hear my sister’s report after she’d searched for the dime in the drawer.

“Mother I can't find the dime,” she said. “There's a nickel and three pennies, that's all.”


At first I wanted to offer to run to the butcher shop. The next minute I wanted to run and hide so I wouldn't have to face what I knew mother had already discovered. I ran to hide, but I could still hear what was being said.

“No dime?” my mother continued. “Did you look carefully?” Mother didn't like to believe anything bad about her children, but she always had a way of finding out everything we did. As I listened to the conversation from my hiding place in the upper bedroom, my throat was so tight it was difficult to swallow.

The talking stopped and the silence that followed was even harder to listen to. I knew my mother was checking the drawer. A few minutes later my sister was on her way to the store with the nickel and pennies and mother was on her way to find me.

I wasn't very good at keeping things from mother, least of all, a secret hiding place. When she called within range, I came out of hiding, but pretended complete innocence.

“What can you tell me about the money in the drawer?” she asked, using a direct approach.

“What money are you talking about?” I said nonchalantly. I can't believe I said it even now! I could tell my mother had figured out exactly what occurred that day. And she could tell that I was aware she knew it too.

“Where is the dime I sent you to get? There was only one dime in that drawer,” she said.

“I put it in the drawer,” I said grabbing for a half-truth. I had put the money in the drawer, but I hated the thought that my mother knew I had lied.

From that moment on there was no silence. First mother talked about how important it was to be able to talk to her. She inquired, “Hadn't she been my friend as well as my mother? Couldn’t I tell her the truth?” As she continued to speak to me, I felt worse and worse. My mother was the dearest person in my life and each lie I told only made my inner pain deeper. Yet I wasn't willing to admit what we both knew was true. As was her usual approach, mother didn’t ever lose her temper and there was no sign of mistrust in her voice, at that point. She didn’t punish me in any way or directly accuse me of lying to her. I think I’d have felt better if she had accused and sent me to my room, or given me a dozen other punishments. However, she didn’t do any of the things I imagined she might do. I was allowed to play without retribution until dinnertime.

As I finished setting the table she asked me again if I had told her the truth. I nodded. My mother suggested I go to my room to be alone while the rest of the family ate dinner, just so I could think and be sure I had told the truth. She said she wanted to make sure she understood what I was thinking. I was just as sure that I didn’t want her to know any of the things in my mind at that time.

I went to my room and took the pain in my stomach and the hurt in my heart with me. Dinnertime was a nice time at our house. As the family gathered and sat down I could hear them talking and laughing and I felt very much alone. While the family was eating, mother came to my room to talk to me again. She asked again if I had I told her the truth? Still she didn’t ever accuse me of telling a lie.

I don't remember the words that finally brought about my confession. I do remember that no matter how terrible I felt, I could not bring myself to admit the lie. Mother sat beside me and talked and asked questions and somehow she finally helped me say the words. When the confession was out at last, I burst into tears. I cried and cried, sobbing uncontrollably. My mother lovingly took me in her arms and rocked me, thanking me for telling the truth.

“You’ll feel better now,” she said as she rocked and held me close.

I remember that I did feel better. Until I confessed the lie, I felt only anger. I kept thinking to myself, “Mother knows what I did. Why is she bugging me about it? Why can’t she just let the whole thing drop?”

That was not my mother’s method. She knew how important it was for me, not her, to confess the wrong I had done. She had been just as determined that I should confess my guilt, as I was that I would never admit it. At length she won and when at last the admission was over and the tears finally dried, my mother said gently, with a smile, “Let’s go down to the kitchen now. I’ve saved you a plate of dinner. We’ll eat together.”

Years later, as a young mother myself, this recalled incident taught me the wisdom of my mother’s lesson. She had been a young mother then, with no formal higher education. Her own mother had passed away when she was 14 months old. How could she have known how important it would be for me and to the rest of my life, to admit the lie we both knew?

I am grateful for that memorable time of hurt, that time of guilt and that time of confession and repentance. I am so aware now that we only progress when we take responsibility for our own actions. Even when Heavenly Father forgives us, and in this case, my mother forgave me and told me she would forgive me even before I admitted the lie, we still have to forgive ourselves before we can move forward. My mother knew this and didn't give up until she had helped me to forgive myself. The lesson learned was more valuable than the ten cents worth of hamburger. ~ A True Story, by Shirley Sealy

[The picture above was taken about 1940, prior to my high school graduation. My mother died five years later on October 9, 1945.]

North Star

I grew up in a small town where the stars were visible almost every night, where neon and bright lights weren’t plentiful or bright enough to block them out. Sometimes I sat beside my father in the dark looking up at the stars. He taught me how to locate the ever changing big and little dipper and directed me from the pointers on the big dipper to find the ever-constant North Star.

It was a special time in my life to have my father’s complete attention. I was number three in a family of eight children. My father worked away from home often, so it was a real treat to capture his attention just for me.

My father was the Latter-day Saint Bishop in our ward. He was a singer. He had a beautiful tenor voice and he was in constant demand to sing a solo at almost every funeral and special gathering we had. My father had been on an LDS mission. He knew the scriptures of the Bible and the Book of Mormon very well. He could recite from memory many verses from those special books.

Dad was a theatrical man. He acted in many stage plays, going from town to town to take part in the entertainment. He was a good looking man, always the hero of the play. I was always amazed at the many things he knew and did. To have him take time to sit on the back porch with me in his lap and talk about the stars was a real thrill.

Living in a small town where the stars were bright, where each constellation seemed to be a special light, and with my Dad explaining each one to me, is a memory that has lived with me for over 80 years. I have stargazed in many other places throughout my life, but I never look at the sky without searching for the big and little dipper and then following the pointers of the big dipper directly to the North Star. The North Star is the guiding light for those who use it to let them know where they are, like my father was to me.

“Celebrities come and go, flashing across the sky like an occasional comet; but true heroes are as consistent as the rising sun and as timeless as the sparkling stars.” ~ Lloyd D. Newell

Sweetie Pie

My grandson, Derek, was only four years old when he lost his mother to a dreaded disease. He was my daughter, Judy’s baby, and they'd been very close. He called her “Sweetie Pie.”

Not many days after her funeral he called his Aunt Vicki, his mother’s sister. “It's Mom's day at school, Aunt Vicki. Can you come and go with me and be my Mom?”

“Of course I can,” she said lovingly.

“And can we pick up the other kids like Sweetie Pie used to do?”

“Of course. You show me where they live and we'll pick them up.”

Derek had been close to his Aunt Vicki. His mother had ‘shared’ him with her sister from the time he was born. When his Mom had to go out of town, it was Aunt Vicki that he stayed with. However, Aunt Vicki lived thirty miles away and couldn't see him as often as she wanted to.

Anxious to be his substitute mom, Vicki drove the distance and picked Derek up at his house. He showed her where to pick up the other children. It was Pre-School Mom's Day.

As they gathered into the car, one of them said as honestly and outspoken as only children can be, “Derek it is so sad that you haven't got your mother with you for Mom's Day.”

“But I do have her with me,” he answered confidently, with a kind of inner glow.

“Oh, no you haven't,” one of the children persisted.

“No,” another added. “Your mom's dead. We saw them put her in the ground.”

“Oh,” he said brushing off the comment. “That wasn't her,” (he couldn't say his “r's”). “That was just her body. Her spiit [spirit] is still alive and she goes with me everywhere. She’s always with me, every place I go!”

The eyes of Derek’s friends were wide with admiration. “Oh,” they exclaimed in wonderment. “How neat! She goes every place with you?”

“Sure. You can't see her spiit, but she's with me all the time,“ Derek smiled as his friends looked at him as if he was superman. And the way he strutted with pride, with his Aunt Vicki beside him as they entered the schoolroom, no one doubted what he’d said or felt.

[Pictured: Vicki and her little sister, “Sweetie Pie,” as children]

The Joys of Womanhood

I’ve always been glad I was born a girl, so I could become a woman, a wife and a mother. Even as a child, I believe I was aware of how special it was to be a girl. I’ve always felt that women were created with special gifts of spirituality, different than those of men, closer ties of communication with Heavenly Father, guardian angels and the Holy Ghost. I’ve always felt a little sorry for men . . . that they missed out on these particular special tender gifts, perhaps that is why Heavenly Father made it possible for men to hold the Priesthood, to make them equal to mothers.

Through out my life I have always been aware of the power and influence and responsibility that go with being a girl. Much has been written about the influence of an honorable woman, wife and mother. I have often felt this power or the lack of it, when I was young and even more so as I’ve gotten older. Life is easier if we have models to follow and I was fortunate to have goodly parents and to be raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with specific role models to follow. I loved studying the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ and Lucy Mack Smith, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s mother. I dearly loved my own mother and wanted to be just like her and tried hard to follow her example. I think we should live our lives as if we might become the mother of the next prophet, president, or the greatest teacher, piano player or movie star . . . something that would put our whole life into print. How scary . . . but famous people have mothers too. What if we became one?

Sometimes we live with people that are the opposite of what we want to become. These people too are examples for our lives. I had a friend whose mother was a ‘shouter’. She always spoke in a voice of command and my friend had a difficult time getting along with her. But my friend was wise. She disliked those qualities in her mother so much that she decided she would never be like that and she learned not to yell at people, or to judge and to be very forgiving. Knowing the circumstances of her teen years, I was amazed that she became such a soft-spoken kind person, building good communication with her husband and children. I asked how she did it and she said she constantly reminded herself of the person she wanted to become, learning to change negative feelings to positive ones. She also married a very good man who helped her in her guest. How did she get so lucky to find such a man? She became that kind of person herself.

This is the trick that I have learned and I’m still working hard at it . . . to become the kind of person I want to marry, to treat others the way I want to be treated, to love my children as much as I want to be loved. These are simple rules, but full of power to change our environment and thus our lives.

I have always liked movies and have followed the lives of my favorite movie stars quite closely at times. I find it is all about choices. We don’t change others . . . we can only change ourselves. Others may change if they admire who we are, but it will be their choice. People don’t change just because we want them to. So many of the movie stars and other famous people marry the wrong spouses, get a divorce and then marry the same kind of person all over again. It’s not only movie stars of course; their lives are just made more public and easier to study.

This is a wonderful age to live in! There are so many choices available. Today women can make their own opportunities, they can get education in many fields, and information and help are everywhere. Because there are so many choices it is also more difficult to decide and easier to make mistakes. However, mistakes are methods of learning and forgiveness is a blessing. We need forgiveness for our own mistakes as well as learning to forgive others. Our mistakes teach us to make better choices, not making the same mistakes over again.

A blessing that I have found to be so important to my life, is to remember the tender communication, the special blessing of womanhood, the spiritual ties that bind us to our Heavenly Father and Mother. We are born with those special feelings; those ties are always there, unless we break them. They are held strong with obedience to the commandments Heavenly Father has given us that keep them strong. However, if we break those ties, communication lines are down, we are alone and we feel that despair. Repairing the broken ties is difficult and painful, but it can be done. It’s called repentance.

I’m remembering the special times in my life . . . my happy days of growing up in a family of love, the sometimes sorrowful times of growth, the thrill of being a wife, bringing a new baby home from the hospital, and the joy of talking, playing and being with our children. The only advise I feel qualified to give is, “Enjoy being a girl! Feel the power of doing the right thing at the right time. Live each day caring about other people, listening to others and learning how to please our Heavenly parents.” This has been a guide in my life. If I can just please my Heavenly Father and Mother, then I can feel good about myself. Self-confidence comes from the approval of our Heavenly Father. Enjoy being a girl! ~ Shirley Sealy

We Have Come a Long Way

We have come a long way from George Washington’s rules of etiquette and My Fair Lady’s reference of murdering the English language. The culture of South and West Virginia in the beginning of the new world, as they struggled to build a country of refined cultured and educated people, while fighting poverty and resources, can hardly be found in our advanced nation of electronics and trips into outer space.

In today’s advancements in filming, computers and the net, that can open up the world to resources of knowledge at the touch of a key . . . what has become of good old-fashioned culture and respect?

I grew up in a family that worked hard to develop means of expressing ourselves in dignified ways. We loved cowboy shows of the Old West, where they often shot each other, but their language didn’t consist of expressions about the private parts or activities of one’s body to make the point of the conversation more emotional.

I grew up in the days of the Golden Era of Hollywood, where the movie stars protected the image they displayed before the world. I loved the stories they portrayed in Hollywood, where when the hero did the wrong thing they had to live with the consequences, and the good guys were the ones who cared about their fellowmen. Our movies didn’t portray violence in every scene, like blowing up the neighbor’s car, or scenes of constant adultery. The argument today seems to be that those stories weren’t real or truthful. Sure some of our closets were covering secrets, but the truth is still the truth. What we live for and earn we attain, and when we break the rules of integrity and go to war with ourselves and our fellowmen, we have to pay for it one way or another, individually, or as a nation and a world.

I remember when someone could ask the question, “What’s going on here?” without added a swear word or the name of deity. I remember when someone could get angry and not include parts of our bodies or Heavenly beings in the discussion.

Every time I hear someone include necessary but indelicate acts of our bodies as just a means of making the conversation crude, I wonder what other countries think of America as they watch television.

As I attend movies today, and I try to be careful and check ratings, I realize that the entertainment field needs scripts; they need stories with feeling and people caring about each other. Sex is only as wonderful as the feeling between the two people who indulge, and sex without spirituality is a crude form of physical gratification without responsibility.

I want to pay tribute here to the courage and dignity of the youth of today who live with crudeness all around them and refrain from indulging. To those who still feel the beauty of nature and learn to emphasize their speech without vulgar, crude words that embarrass those that hear them, I commend you. We need more forgiveness, more understanding, and more love and examples like George Washington, who cared enough to want the nation to learn of culture, etiquette and good manners. It hurts to see beautiful people use ugly crude expressions.

All right, so I go way back to the good old days. I love dignity, beauty, pretty flowers and little animals. I look for stories with tender feelings that bring me to tears. I care about people who love honesty, who fight for right and want to help others. I long to live in a world of love and caring, where emotion is real and gratitude a common expression of how we live . . . And let it begin with me! ~ Shirley Sealy