“How Ill White Hairs Become a Fool and Jester!”

“[I]f there were nothing to complain about, there would be no post-Adamite mankind. But complaint is profanation in the absence of gratitude. There is much to complain about in America, but that awful keening noise one unhappily gets so used to makes no way for the bells, and these have rung for America, are still ringing for America, and for this we are obliged to be grateful. To be otherwise is wrong reason, and a poetical invitation to true national tribulation. I must remember to pray more often, because providence has given us the means to make the struggle, and in this respect we are singularly blessed in this country.” —William F. Buckley (1926-2008)

The highlight of the week was the electronic appearance of our family pictures, which so brilliantly captured the radiance of our ladies, their jackets matching their roseate faces, against the frosty backdrop of a favonian falling snow. The plaudits have come in from around the globe—some charmed by the sight of the girls racing down vaulted corridors with temerarious abandon; others by Lia, stunning in her borrowed pink coat, as Justin looks on in uxorious adoration. But while the results of the pictures were copacetic to say the least, we cannot help wonder at the contrast between the avalanche of ovations that greeted our family pictures and the stony silence which customarily follows our weekly contributions in all the florid majesty of our pellucid, potent, periodic prose. The pen may be mightier than the sword; but the image is king. [Photo: Eli so often is found in the oddest places and positions, and with the most random accoutrements.]

Monday (February 25): Justin spent the day like Prospero, rapt in secret studies. Toward 5 o’clock he maundered across the New Haven green to the chambers of the Honorable Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals where he and Guido were to resume their recording of the latter’s oral history. Arrived at the chambers Justin learned, to his horror, that he had no blank tapes (several tapes full of their old interviews, but nothing new). The upshot was that the interview was rescheduled for Friday and Justin can now claim to have been called a klutz by a smiling federal judge and former dean of the Yale Law School. Meanwhile the ladies and the bull were running a host of errands, one of which included the lamination and framing of an illustrated poem by Lia’s mom which now hangs in the girls’ bedroom.

Tuesday (February 26): Lia and the girls babysat Itamar each of the first three days of the week, including today. They all went to playgroup together in one of the Bull’s first experiences housing three car-seated passengers in the back seat (Julia has actually graduated to a booster seat). In the evening we were generously invited by Yifru Hailu, a dear friend and ward member from Ethiopia, to attend his farewell dinner for the Sevys. Yifru is a spectacular chef, and the toothsome repast—which included a luscious plate of pasta prepared with Justin’s mission memories in mind, as well as a rich array of Ethiopian dishes—was enough to make us forget our sorrows at the Sevys’ imminent departure. [Photo: Julia in the beginnings of her teenaged-telephone-junkihood taking a call from Mayah. Judging by the length of this call, let us hope we never contact nor hear from Mayah once she's safely situated in China.]

Wednesday (February 27): Lia, the girls, and Itamar, went to a Joy School goodbye party at the Thompsons’ this morning. This was Itamar’s first encounter with the world of Joy School. It consisted principally, in Itamar’s case, in the consumption of cupcakes, of which he ate seventeen or so. No wonder, he thought, these children are so joyful. It was, in other respects, a doleful encounter. Julia and Mayah would not see each other again before the latter’s family moved, and in the end their mothers had to tear them from the clasp of the other’s bosom amid ululations and caterwauls of mutual despair, mitigated only by the promise of a rendezvous this summer at the Washington D.C. zoo (“I’m not going to miss Julia in Washington D.C.,” as Mayah repeatedly put it, “but I am going to miss her when I go to China”). With Mayah gone, Julia is left a lonely gadabout, burdened by the inner efflorescence of an unrequited vivacity.

Thursday (February 28): To temper the onset of Julia’s separation anxiety, Lia tried to take the girls to the New Haven Children’s museum. After struggling mightily to find parking (and not succeeding), Lia was informed by a neighborly onlooker that the museum is not open on Thursdays. They then tried to go to the Peabody museum instead but, parking proving impossible, they went home and returned on the Yale Shuttle Bus, much to the amusement and delight of our bus-loving daughters. [Photo: we also did laundry. This is the girls helping. Quite helpful.]

Friday (February 29): For date night we took the unusual step of going on a date. Justin’s reward for serving as a volunteer Institute teacher was “An Evening with a General Authority”—in other words dinner in the CES hall followed by a satellite broadcast of an exclusive message from President Boyd K. Packer, doyen of the Council of the Twelve and long and influential presence in the world of religious education. The dinner, lovingly prepared by Marci Durrant, wife of our intrepid Institute director, Dwight Durrant (whose brothers Devin and Mark are former BYU basketball luminaries), was fantastic and abundantly shored our reserves against the approaching fast Sunday. President Packer’s message was wonderful. Warmly informal and instructively anecdotal, he was, as ever, the consummate teacher. We were richly taught.

Saturday (March 1): A month ago our ward temple trip was cancelled when the Boston Temple was closed for President Hinckley’s funeral. The trip was rescheduled for March 1st. On Friday evening we learned that, in the face of a menacing northeastern snow storm, the temple was to be closed on March 1st as well. So, with our Saturday thus freed up, we thought it best to put it to good use. Lia spent the morning crisscrossing the state of Connecticut in search of a baby shower present for Gretchen Cheney, for whom a shower was being thrown in the afternoon by some of Kirk’s classmates at the Law School. She finally found a present in a little shop about forty-three feet across lots from our apartment. With all things in readiness, then, she went to the shower in the early afternoon. Justin stayed home with the girls and together they had a series of picnics in Eli’s “cottage” (the living room space between the glider and the wall) before Justin pronounced himself tired and peremptorily ordered one and all—including and especially himself—to bed.
The real festivities were reserved for the evening, when we met up with a host of friends from church and school at a hockey game that pitted our beloved Yalies against R.P.I. (the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—an acronym egregiously inviting R.I.P. signs from clever undergraduates). We sat on the front row of course, so that Julia could engage in the venerable tradition of pounding on the fiberglass and urging the local heroes to fisticuffs with the villains from abroad. The event was a thing of poetry, with the violence on the ice equaled only by the violence of Kirk Cheney’s oratory from the stands. Usually a man of mild and measured cadence, Kirk pulls out all the stops at hockey games, haranguing the officials with unbridled ferocity and remorselessly challenging the masculinity of Yale’s opponents. Gretchen, inexplicably, sat next to Lia for most of the game, some yards away from her vociferous husband. The highlight, however, came in between periods when a referee named Cooke (upon whose name Kirk had moments before been heaping imprecations) tapped on the glass to get Justin’s attention before tossing over the game puck for him to give to Julia. We’ve never been prouder. In addition to bringing home the puck, Julia had a blue ‘Y’ painted on her cheek by a friendly soul at the kid’s table.
After the game we invited the gang back to our place where we ate some sumptuous cinnamon rolls, another of Lia’s gustatory marvels, and, when the timid had gone home, played Time’s Up with Kirk and Gretchen. We played boys against girls and, in deference to Gretchen’s advanced pregnancy, the former let the latter win.

And so we leave you for another week. In two days Hillary Clinton makes her last stand, a shrieking personal Alamo before her campaign bows the inexorable tides of Obamamania, tides ridden gleefully by an enamored nation who, dazzled by the canorous incantation of Mr. Obama’s oratory, blinks willfully at the arrant thinness of his policy proposals. May Hillary’s fall be swift and splendid.