“I’ve heard the doctor in charge is a tyrant…” Nurse Bryony Sellers remarks to a handsome stranger who gives her a lift from the station to her new home. But soon after starting work at the Highfields Nursing Home in Cornwall she finds herself wishing she had never been so indiscreet. For the handsome stranger turns out to be none other than her new boss, Dr. Ellis Crosland, and he is not amused!
It was cold.
It was very cold.
We knew it would be cold.
We didn’t know it would be that cold.
The girls were dressed in nice school clothes to start with, but I brought along multiple changes of clothes and shoes, as well as a big, warm blanket in case the girls got chilly while they were standing around. Unfortunately, when we got to our first stop, I didn’t think we’d be gone very long, so I left everything in the car as we set off on foot and started climbing.
Big mistake…because when we got to the top, the location was so nice we ended up staying for quite a while and froze our tookuses (or should that be “tooki”?) off in the process. With their practical winter clothes packed snugly in the car, the girls gamely navigated the snow field in their school shoes, occasionally breaking through the frozen top layer and disappearing up to their thigh in the snow.
Fortunately, Wynona‘s husband had come along as our Sherpa guide and had packed a quilt and a Thermos full of hot chocolate up the mountain. So, after a while, more out of necessity than anything else, she wrapped the girls up in the quilt and gave them some hot chocolate to try to warm them up.
(The photo above is Emma finishing off the last of the hot chocolate and looking quite pleased with herself…and Zoë looking a little less pleased.)
Apparently, the quilt was almost an afterthought, but it saved the day. And just as we were heading back to the car, the sun broke through the clouds and Wynona asked the girls to stop one last time so she could take a few final pictures…and I am so glad she did.
We were near the top of Emigration Canyon, where Brigham Young famously looked out over the Salt Lake Valley and proclaimed, “This is the right place,” but I’ll bet you even he didn’t have lighting that dramatic.
Just look at those faces. Hypothermia has never looked so cute!
We’re having some official “family photos” taken tomorrow. At least, that’s what I’m telling the girls.
In reality, I’m taking the girls up to Little Dell reservoir where they will have their picture taken by Wynona Robison, an outrageously gifted photographer, while I stand to the side and worry about whether, years from now, they will look at the photos and say, “Dad, I can’t believe you used to dress us like that! What were you thinking? We look like feral children just back from a successful raid on a thrift store dumpster!”
To appease the girls, I’ve agreed to sit in on a couple of the shots, but future generations will look at those photos and wonder why two beautiful young girls would want to have their picture taken while standing on either side of a giant boiled parsnip.
Seriously, I’ve got two highly photogenic daughters, but me? Not so much. The girls always ask why I’m not smiling in the pictures on my drivers license or employee ID badge, and they don’t seem to understand when I explain to them that if I attempt even the most simple of smiles when I have my picture taken, it always comes back looking like I’m wearing a partially-melted latex clown mask.
The weather is going to be dicey tomorrow, so we may all end up looking like drowned cats. But, even then, they would end up on Cute Overload with an adorable caption like “Soggy Kittehs!”, whereas I would only show up in Google searches for “waterlogged stray with mange.”
The Long and Short of Marriage
This is a picture of an idea — and an ideal.
It is a picture of two fine young newlyweds — a tall, handsome, wholesome young bridegroom and a sweet not-so-tall young bride. They have stars in their eyes — stars of eternal hope and happiness.
But the artist intended to suggest to us far more than this. He has here painted the dreams of every normal, healthy young man and young woman — a dream filled with a honeymoon, a happy home, laughing, loving children, faith, trust, honor, achievement — all these and a never-ending love and life together.
Ask any starry-eyed newly-wedded couple how long they want their marriage to last, and the answer will come easily: “Forever!”
Forever? Do they really mean forever? Not to end in divorce court as thousands of American marriages now do? Marriage till death? Yes, that long and longer — for even then separation forever would be tragedy.
Theirs is the hope of eternal living and learning and loving together — an ideal — an eternal “togetherness” of parents and children in the old hallowed patriarchal pattern, consecrated and enriched by the blessings of a loving and eternal Father in Heaven so long as love and faith and fidelity shall endure.
There you have it: the long and the short of marriage. Which will you choose?
BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF
Lovely young Mary Loring, her nurse’s training behind her, came home to the north country for two reasons–one, to help the people in this vast wilderness land; the other, locked in her heart, to work with young Dr. Ken Shannon who was coming back here to start his practice.
But when Ken stepped off the plane, beside him was a beautiful, titian-haired bride. Now Mary wanted only to escape — from this man she could never have, from her beloved north country that would always remind her of him.
It took a startling confession from Ken, and a danger-fulled mercy flight with a devil-may-care pilot named Eddie Garrett, to show Mary that she didn’t have to run away–that a girl doesn’t always know the secrets of her own heart…
There’s a lot to love about this book. First, there’s the cover, with Nurse Mary Loring’s crisp white uniform seemingly unaffected by the ash and soot spewing out of the blazing inferno behind her.
Second, the blurb on the back, which gets extra points for the use of the term “titian-haired bride.” (“Titian,” by the way, means “bright golden auburn.” I had to look it up. And let me tell you, it’s a sad day when can’t read the blurb on the back of a romance novel without having to break out the OED.)
But the absolute best thing about this story of a woman who has dedicated her entire life to improving the health and well-being of others is that deep within its nicotine-stained pages is a full-page foldout advertisement for cancer sticks.
