“Too ponderous for the wings of wit”

Our senior editor tears himself, reluctantly, from the enthralling pages of Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints in order to make his contribution to the latest installment of this our illustrious Review. What Brigham said is endlessly more interesting than what we do, and writing is never quite the pleasure that reading is. To have written, on the other hand, c’est un autre chose.

The main event of the week was the registration of our minivan, who will never wear so apt and awesome a sobriquet as “The Bull,” in the state of Connecticut. This required us to insure the new beast and to get Connecticut driver’s licenses. This last required each of us to visit the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles.

Dante, the world’s greatest poem assures us, once came face to face with Brutus, Judas, and Satan in the depths of Malebolge before returning to earth’s surface and a starlit sky. Had Vergil led him downward still, however, il Fiorentino would have seen a blazing banner bearing the inscription, “Welcome to the Connecticut DMV,” and he would then have better understood the famous inscription on the gates of hell (and the office door of Professor Madison Sowell), “Abandon all hope, O ye that enter here!”

We need not describe in detail the agonizing particulars. Suffice it to say that the DMV has become a parody of itself—a great, grand, bumbling parade of inefficiency and ineptitude; of lines endless and immobile; of visages of grief, sorrow, boredom, and despair; of customers fashioning sabers of paper and employing them in the effectual effort to stab themselves in the aorta. To get a new license, Justin had to sign a form, hand over eighty dollars and his Utah license, read a single-line vision test, and have his picture taken. This took four hours. He even had to bum a quarter off a fellow sufferer to buy a pen, the DMV itself declining to provide them. Lia endured similar indignities the next day, emerging from that infernal cesspool of bureaucratic stupidity with a primal cry of “Red States Forever!” that shook the governor’s throne. For any sins committed in former lives, we have been duly punished.

But now the beast is registered, and we are proud owners and drivers of a minivan. We pause to comment that the “resolutions for a lifetime” that Lia made as a youngster under the coercive influence of officious young women leaders have fallen one by one at Justin’s hands—“Never marry someone I met at BYU”; “Never let a mere male cheat me out of serving a mission”; “Never allow my husband to leave the house in shorts, high tops, and ankle socks”; “Never read sonnets for date night”; “Never buy a minivan . . . .” One sister in the ward teased Lia about having “the complete package” at the tender age of twenty-five: a minivan, three kids, and an uncommonly good-looking husband. Lia noted acidly that she had always imagined the “complete package” to include a house.

Julia started ballet on Wednesday, an adorable wonder in her purplish tights and her purpler leotard. As far as we can tell, she loved it, though she complained that the first day’s fare was limited to the intricacies of the tandue.
Eli grows ever more accustomed to her glasses. Once this week she accosted a neighbor of ours, a gentle giant of a scientist from Jerusalem, with the proud declaration that, “My glasses are cool!”, pronouncing “cool” as though it contained twenty-three “o’s.” When our neighbor adequately expressed his admiration, Eli went on: “And they have be-yooo-tiful butterflies.” And they do. Eli bonked her glasses though, and they now don’t stay up on her nose but slide down the end of it, giving her an air part impish, part professorial. We’ll try to get them readjusted tomorrow.

One of Lia’s visiting teachees had a baby Thursday, so Lia devoted Friday to a marathon session of babysitting for the other two children of her visiting teaching charge. The girls, of course, got no nap that day. They got no nap the previous day either, which they spent at the beach, nor the next day either, when we went to Boston.

Saturday’s trip to Boston was an authentic highlight. Justin got to be in the Temple when our friend, Yifru Hailu, received his endowment. Yifru, originally from Ethiopia, was baptized last June and has been a great addition to our ward and a great friend of our family. Justin got to sit in on some of Yifru’s missionary discussions, and it was a great thrill to be there when he received his endowment. He even got to show Yifru around one of the sealing rooms and to explain the imagery of the mirrors. We also met up with our old New Haven friends, Oliver and Elise Hahl, who have since gone on to graduate school at MIT and live within a mile of the temple. Oliver came to the session as well, while Lia and Elise caught up on important matters and admired one another’s children. After the session, we all went to the Hahl’s apartment and Lia admired that too (Justin admired their books—Oliver got the full Everyman’s Library collection as a graduation present). The week, in short, ended better than it began.