Tag: Dana

It’s Time to Start Something

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2011Leave a comment

Dear Will:

Well, we’ve done it. Or should I say, we haven’t.

For the last 20 years or so, we have sent out Christmas cards to friends and relations around the globe. In most years, that card has included a letter of sorts, one into which we have invested a considerable amount of time and effort in order to make it witty and worth reading—even if you don’t find our children as interesting as we do. In some years, I have had to submit multiple drafts to get it past my wife (Editor in Chief) because the initial versions were either too boring or too inane or too vacuous or maybe all three. It was sometimes arduous, but we did succeed to some extent in making our letters entertaining enough that some friends encouraged us to keep ‘em coming.

It was a lot easier in the early years, when our children were cute and spontaneously funny in the way that innocents tend to be. But as they have gotten older and we have used up a variety of editorial tricks and angles, making our annual letter even somewhat engaging has become a difficult chore. You yourself may recall a time or two when our effort has fallen well short of the mark. For these and a variety of other reasons we decided that enough has finally become enough. Thus this year there was no card and no annual letter from the Watkins.

When Dana and I finally gave ourselves permission not to send out Christmas wishes, it should have produced in me a great sense of relief. (Confession: My first and only draft of Christmas Letter 2011 was rejected out of hand by the Editor in Chief.) But rather than feeling like I had been let off the hook, instead I have felt great pangs of regret and even guilt for breaking the streak.

The truth is, it’s hard to start something worthwhile, harder still to keep it up over a prolonged period of time. We’ve all embarked on one-day diets or thrown ourselves full force into what proved to be a two-week workout regimen. My wife is one who works out six days a week (every day but Sunday), even when—or I should say, especially when—she doesn’t feel like it. If she’s sick or sore or injured, she refuses to give into the discomfort. “I’m afraid that once I let myself off the hook it will be too easy to stop altogether,” she explains. “And I can’t afford that.”

Several years ago, my son Luke went his entire freshman and sophomore years without missing a day of Early Morning Seminary. He hadn’t set out to have a perfect record, but once he was two years in it became a matter of pride to him. No matter how tired he was or how good an excuse he might have had, by his junior year he refused to miss. Every day, no matter what, he arose before 6 a.m. and made his way down to the church. It was impressive.

Then one day in his junior year it happened: He somehow slept through his alarm and accidentally missed Seminary. He was very upset that his perfect string had been broken. But once it had been broken it became very easy for him to miss again. He still attended, but once he got out of the pattern it didn’t matter as much to him to keep up the consistency.

So it is with many worthwhile endeavors: eating right, visiting the elderly, attending Sunday services, working out. Starting is easy. Stopping is easier. It’s only through consistent follow-through that we can turn good intentions into quantifiable results.

You know why I bring all of this up, don’t you? As we embark on a new year, we’re pondering resolutions and commitments and (if you’re like me) contemplating what we can do to make this year better than last year. The next few days will be filled with good intentions. The question is this: A year from now, which of those good intentions will have transformed us and which will be mere memories? It’s time to start something. And when you do, don’t stop.

PW

Neither Strangers Nor Foreigners

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20101 Comment

Dear Will:

When my wife Dana and I were first married, we lived in a two-bedroom duplex apartment in Westwood. We attended church in the building just north of the Los Angeles Temple, with an interesting cross-section of Angelenos: from young, poor married couples (mostly UCLA students like us) to wealthy, established families of Bel Air and Beverly Hills; we had Frenchmen and Persians and Iraqis and Nigerians mixed throughout the congregation along with the usual collection of expatriates from Utah and Arizona. And of course, there were lots of Californians. It was an interesting crowd, full of both ideas and faith. We loved them and loved attending church with them.

Eventually work (and children) made it necessary to move to Orange County, and the initial transition was difficult for us. It took us a few years, but eventually we found our way to Orange where we settled—quickly—to establish a permanent base-camp for raising our children.

One of the things that made it so easy to set down roots here was that the people we met at church—members of the Orange 2nd Ward—were so quick to take us in and treat us like family. We’re not necessarily an easy bunch to warm up to (too many idiosyncrasies, I’m afraid), but the locals were undeterred. They welcomed us, befriended us, cared about us and our children, loved us into submission. Even on the first Sunday we attended our church services, I can remember saying to my wife that it felt as though we had come home.

That was over 12 years ago. A lot has changed around these parts since then, as you know. Especially in the last four or five years, economic and demographic shifts have begun to take their toll on the area. Many of the people we love the most have cashed in their real estate and moved away; others have been driven out by the soaring cost of living and the battered job market. The spirit of the place hasn’t changed for us, but many of the faces have.

Such population trends have consequences, of course—which is why it was not altogether surprising to us when last week the Orange Stake Presidency announced a redrawing of the various boundaries to turn seven wards into six. So today we attended the first-ever meeting of the Santiago Creek Ward, which now meets at 1 p.m. in the Stake Center down on Yorba. Our friends who live east of Cannon are now members of the adjacent Peters Canyon Ward, and we in turn welcomed many new friends from the west side of the city. It was a strange day, meeting in a new place, greeting new faces, making a fresh start, as it were, even without having moved to a new place.

That’s one of the things that makes our church unique, I suppose: We don’t attend meetings based on convenience or preference; rather we are assigned to a place and time based on where we live and nothing else. That’s a hard practice when it means that you’ll no longer see good friends on a regular basis. But it’s a comforting practice as well, because it means that when people like us move to a place like this, we already have a family waiting for us—a group of instant friends who we can count on to help us settle in and feel at home.

I guess I look at it this way: Rather than losing old friends, we now have an opportunity to make new ones. Thus we will strive to emulate the teachings of Paul, congregating neither as strangers nor as foreigners, but as “fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19)—regardless of where we live or how we speak or what we look like. Our common bond—our faith in Jesus Christ—will provide us with instant unity, enabling us to call each other brother and sister even when meeting for the first time. Just how Christ would have wanted it, don’t you think?

PW

Let’s Start with the Obvious

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2008Leave a comment

Dear Will:

So the ol’ 401(k) statement arrives in the mail and I think to myself: “Don’t do it.” I hold it there, knowing that what lies within is the grimmest of grim news, a financial plunge of historic proportions in what has generously been called our “portfolio.”

Knowing better,  I open it anyway . . . and it’s horrifying. Stupefyingly so. But as is so often the case, stupefaction leads to a moment of clarity and self-awareness not seen since I acknowledged in the 10th grade that I would always be a lousy golfer. In this golden moment, it occurs to me that I never  had enough in the 401(k) plan to retire anyway. Not even close. Wouldn’t have survived the first winter without begging lumps of coal from the local soup kitchen. So what if that super secure Lehman Brothers bond hadn’t exactly paid off? In times like these, there is comfort in incompetence.

Which sort of begs a question (for our present purposes, anyway): What other “blessings” do we have to be grateful for? Let’s start with the obvious:

Dana took Bryn to see Twilight—while Seth and Peter stayed home and watched the ballgame. If that’s not a blessing, what is?

Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. He gets to sleep in every day, treat every meal like a buffet, come and go as he pleases, all without the daily scrutiny of his overbearing parents. What could be better?

Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. More time to focus our daily scrutiny and overbearing parental instincts on making Bryn and Seth miserable instead! What could be better?

What could be better? How about family vacations?

Who doesn’t love a scraped-up minivan with a busted air conditioner?  Well, we don’t, for example. But when you have to make twice daily round-trips to the ballet studio, a buck eighty-seven for gas is pretty nice. You know, considering.

Rat traps. (Don’t ask.)

Almost forgot: Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. Now Seth doesn’t have to share a room and instead can devote precious real estate to the 140-or-so stuffed animals with which he shares his bed. Which doesn’t explain why he continues to squeeze his scrawny nine-year-old frame into the narrow patch not covered by his velveteen menagerie, but at least he now has options.

Then there’s the President-elect. Seems like we ought to say something about him since he got Dana to work the phones and Bryn to wear his shirts and even Seth to stick stuff on his bedroom wall. Luke even worked the polls this year (twice, though he hastens to point out that it was a non-partisan endeavor). Now if we could just get that annoying bumper sticker off of the scraped-up minivan, Peter would be happy too.

There’s other stuff as well. Like a job, for instance. In this environment, that’s a pretty great thing. Food on the table, even if it isn’t served buffet-style as in the dorms. Oh, and Jason Mraz (Bryn wants him in here too). Teachers. Coaches. Friends. Microwave ovens (when you get home from ballet every night at nine, that’s pretty important). Yoga. Belts. Laptops. iPods (unless you put them through the washer). Chocolate (dark especially). Books. Rain (yeah, right). Sports. The Maple Conservatory of Dance. And of course family. Dysfunctional though it may be, it’s the most precious thing of all. You know, considering.

PW