I started painting pictures of a river and the ocean when I got home from seeing Stephen off at the airport. I only had a few days left before I needed to hand in my final projects in my watercolor class, and now I had something important I really wanted to paint.
My stomach felt kind of queasy, but I knew it was just homesickness and not the flue. My sisters came over during the morning to help mom pack. She and dad's house was almost finished in Snowflake, and mom had been dreading this part of their move, so it was nice of my sisters to come help. It really wasn't a good time for me, but I stopped painting for a little while so I could talk to them.
My sisters were really going to town when I walked into mom's kitchen. They were boxing up everything!
“Leave me some flour and sugar and stuff,” mom told them as they went to work on her pantry. “When dad and I come down I'll still need to cook.”
“Oh, you probably won't be doing any baking,” Linda told her.
“At least leave some cereal and canned food,” Mom asked them, getting up from her chair at the kitchen table to supervise.
“Go sit down,” the girls ordered her. “We'll do this for you.”
“I'll need a couple of those mixing bowls,” mom tried again when they started stripping her shelves. “And leave me some dishes and cups and silverware for us when we're here in town.”
“Don't worry about this,” the girls told her as they kept right on pulling stuff out and putting it into boxes. “Just sit there and rest, we know what we're doing.”
I stopped wiping off shelves and turned to my sisters. “Guys, you don't need to pack everything up today,” I tried to tell them. “Mom really is going to need a few things when she and dad come down, and there's plenty of time to pack her stuff up.”
“We're doing this, now. Today!” my sisters informed me huffily.
“But lets not wear mom out,” I tried again, wondering what their big hurry was? “And you really don't need to pack everything, you know. After all, the house still hasn't sold, and mom and dad will be coming and going on and off until it does. Mom's going to need some of her stuff, you know.”
That was the wrong thing to say, I guess.
“Mom and dad are not coming back to Gilbert any more!” the girls informed me angrily. “They are moving up to Snowflake, and mom is going to stay there!”
I looked from one sister to the other. What on earth? But one thing I did not do, and that was cause contention. Especially for mom's sake, I was not going to get into an argument with my sisters. I had to get my art projects ready to turn in anyway, so I went back to my side of the house and back to painting.
A few minutes later, my sister Linda came over to talk to me.
“I'm sorry, Gale,” she began. “I hope I didn't hurt your feelings just now, but I'm really concerned about dad driving back and forth between Snowflake and here, and I have been hoping I can keep mom up there with me from now on.”
“I understand,” I assured Linda. “It is a long, hard drive, and dad's driving isn't getting any better, I know.”
We had a good talk. Linda was afraid I thought she and Alan had forced mom and dad to move up by them, and I assured her that I knew it was best for mom to be close to Alan so she could get good medical care. In a way, I did think they had kind of pushed this on mom, she had told me quite a few times that she wished she hadn't been so sick last year when dad first decided they should move up next to Linda and Alan. She really, really didn't want to go, but it was too late now. Dad was set on moving, thinking it the only way he could keep mom with him for the next few years, and although I hated it, I was sure the Lord would watch out for them and everything would be OK.
To tell you the truth, I was feeling pretty bad for complaining. Dad, for whatever reason, felt like he and mom needed to move. Selling the house affected me, of course, but it didn't belong to me anymore than the cabin had. It didn't matter what reasons dad had for going. It didn't matter if dad was premature or unwise in the way he tried to sell the house, or in building such a big house in Snowflake. None of that mattered. I needed to stop complaining and just start supporting them.
And I really was excited that we might be able to move up to Snowflake, too. It was just hard having to wait in Gilbert until the house sold, and then trying to figure out how to have enough money to move. But again, I knew the Lord was in control and he would take care of things.
I finished my paintings, and my sisters finished packing mom. The next morning mom and dad drove away. Our house felt totally empty, and I was all alone. My heart, my insides, ached. In fact, I felt like throwing up. It was just too much for me, saying goodbye to my parents and my son all at the same time.
“If only the Lord would show me where I was going,” I thought to myself sadly. “I feel so unsettled, so out of control.”
I got out my scriptures and opened up to where I was reading in the Book of Mormon.
“And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness,” I read in the 2nd book of Nephi, chapter five, verse 27. Really? Nephi and his family had left their home, their whole world behind them, and yet he said they lived after the manner of happiness, and they prospered. A little glimmer of hope sprang up in my heart as I pondered. I believed that was what the Lord had in store for me, too. Maybe I didn't know how it would happen, but I knew it would. And it did.
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