For a’ Their Clish-ma-Claver

We write amid the lingering glow of General Conference, another banquet at the Lord’s table, this time crowned by the announcement of a temple in Rome. Saturday afternoon there were a couple messages on our phone from Justin’s old mission companions, one of whom said he hoped Justin managed to keep his composure when the announcement was made. He did not.

This week has been momentous for other reasons. Thursday was our fifth anniversary. Our home teacher and his wife, rightly opining that our recent purchase of a minivan might have left us financially broken, furnished us with free babysitting and a $50 gift card at the Outback Steakhouse.

We had a fine meal. When we arrived our waiter asked if we’d eaten at Outback before. Justin responded that he hadn’t, but that he was familiar enough with the Outback itself, having seen in his day such classics of film as Quigley Down Under and Crocodile Dundee and having had no fewer than two Australian mission companions. He then proceeded to order a Bloomin’ Onion with considerable dash and flair. Lia had steak; Justin ordered shrimp (with appropriate "on the barbee" quips). Both were eminently pleased with their selections.

We then went to the Divinity School library where we sat in comfortable chairs beneath a bust of Dante on the mantle (an odd choice at a Protestant school, but an appropriate homage to earth’s greatest genius from Paul to Shakespeare) and wrote out goals for where we want our family to be on our tenth anniversary. We then compared notes and the common goals made their way into the official family journal. We walked home in a chill wind, holding hands beneath a bright and starry sky. We record with gratitude the names of Brady and Whitney Pope who made the evening possible.

Better even than an evening out were our presents for each other, at least Lia’s presents for Justin. Justin opened his first present just before breakfast, a copy of Hugh Nibley’s Abraham in Egypt. The other gifts were to come later, but Justin’s rhapsodic response to the gift conquered Julia’s resolve. “And there’s another book just like it!” she cried. Indeed there was, and with the cat thus peremptorily ushered out of the bag Eli was commissioned to deliver another volume in the Nibley series, this one the recently published Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple. Justin’s joy was complete. Still, there was more, and the reader can imagine his delight when Julia presented him with four packages of index cards—“To help you learn German!” she explained—and a couple boxes of pens—“To protect you from Mommy’s depredations,” chimed Eli, referring to Lia’s inveterate habit of “borrowing” and losing Justin’s pens. At this, the cup of our hero’s felicity ran over, and he nearly fainted. Lia’s gifts set a new standard. And we are told there is another to come in next week’s mail.

Justin, more prosaically, sent Lia flowers and a feeble, if adoring, note. She was grateful all the same.

So much for Thursday and our fifth anniversary. May we have at least threescore and ten anniversaries more.

Wednesday was a big day too. Nature pals in the morning, ballet in the afternoon, and in the evening another nice dinner at someone else’s expense. Some of the attorneys from Justin’s summer firm were in town for on-campus interviews and they invited us to join in on a dinner for new recruits. We ate at Ibiza, a Spanish restaurant down town. The meal came in several courses, each announced in a thick accent by a waiter whose rigor and precision left one with the feeling of having been roundly harangued by General Franco. Surface similarities to El Claudillo notwithstanding, the explanations were helpful, and the food was fantastic. Justin rejoiced at being seated opposite Lia: the combination of a fine meal and a pair of eyes wondrous fair lent a fantastical air to the entire event. Gratitude here is owed to Peter and Elizabeth Bracken, who kept watch at our place while the girls slept and who repelled their insurrectionary efforts at sneaking out of bed.

Earlier in the week we received another huge package of clothes from Grandma Patti. There were even clothes, as well as a new book of Elder Holland’s collected sermons, for Justin. The girls were in predictable raptures and have largely remained so to the time of writing.

Because Justin’s new occupation has him reading something on the order of a hundred books a week (or so it feels), we hereby inaugurate the practice of closing with a recommended “Book of the Week,” which we know our readers are sure to race out and read for themselves. This week’s winner is Patriotic Gore, by Edmund Wilson. Wilson was America’s greatest literary critic of the twentieth century—at least until Rosalyn Collings Eves stormed onto the scene in the late 1990s, but most literati agree she belongs to a later century. Patriotic Gore is Wilson's panoramic, unfailingly brilliant, survey of the literature of the American Civil War and the decades that followed. Don’t read the whole book. Start with the chapters on Lincoln, Sherman, and Oliver Wendell Holmes; then turn to whatever else sounds interesting.

We know our readers need no added incentive to read this blog. Still, we have been known to write, on occasion, with such turgid density that even the most intrepid readers may lose heart. It is hoped that the thrilling prospect of discovering a new “Book of the Week” at the end of each post will cheer the faint of heart onward to (what we hope will not often be) the bitter end.