I’ve always loved 4 things in my life: food, reading, music, and the church. Other interests have come and gone but those 4 have pretty much always stuck around. And these 4 loves brought me to my fifth, and probably most important, love: my John.I’ve always loved food. I grew up in a family where food was central. We always had good, full meals because my mom is a great cook. And when I say food, I don’t really mean desserts. I mean meat and potatoes, vegetables, salads (the real stuff). I was the kid who would secretly get into the refrigerator and help herself. I skipped the treats and went right for the butter. I also loved lettuce and carrots and anything that would go in a salad. Because of this, my mom used to call me her little rabbit. My favorite help-myself snack was a freshly washed iceberg lettuce leaf with a little salt and pepper on top. I LOVED that! My other favorites were radishes, celery, and carrot sticks. And I love meat. Beef, pork or chicken, I love it all. Anyway, when I was a kid, my mom would always dish us up a plate, even if we weren’t there. If I went babysitting, I could count on my mom showing up with my plate. If I had to work, I knew I would come home to a full dinner plate saran wrapped in the fridge. It was awesome!
Well, when I moved out for college, I found a replacement for my mom’s cooking. My best friend/roommate Kaylyn loved food as much as I did. Only she came from a big family and was used to cooking for and eating with a lot of people. In short, she was a social eater, so I agreed to help buy food and then help her eat whatever she made. She was a great cook and I couldn’t have been happier. Kaylyn and I also had a rule that if we ever went on a date and there was no free food (breakfast, lunch, dinner, ice cream, something), there would be no second date. When we came home from a date and someone asked how it was, we would say, “Well, we had dinner so it was all good.”
So it was about this time that John Payne came into the picture. I’m not sure that he knew about my love of food but, knowingly or not, he definitely played into that. John was our home teacher and he was always bringing us treats that he had made. His specialty was banana bread. I mean, come on, how many guys make homemade banana bread? And his was amazing!! Then one day, he asked us if he could make us (his home teachees) dinner? As I said, we never passed up free food so we agreed. John made us pork chops, homemade mashed potatoes, and apple sauce. It was the best food I’d had since I’d moved out of my parents’ house. John was also always throwing huge barbecues and pancake breakfasts. They were amazing. I think one time he fed about 200 people (he provided all the food himself). And last of all, one weekend, a few months before we started dating, John had invited a bunch of us to a “Steak dinner” after stake conference. I couldn’t go because I was taking my boyfriend at the time home to have dinner with my parents. I came home that night and opened the fridge and there was a full dinner plate saran wrapped. When I asked my roommates about it, they said that John had made it for me because he felt bad I couldn’t come. I was so excited and the food was great. Talk about a flashback. John says he was just planting seeds.
This brings me to my second love, reading. I’ve always liked reading more than just about anything else. My most memorable gifts as a kid were always books. The best place my parents could take me was always the library. I could go and wander around there for hours (I still can). I liked playing outside and with friends, but I was just as happy lying on my bed or some forgotten corner of my house with a pillow, a blanket, and my latest book. When I got to college I decided to major in English teaching because of this love and some great teachers I had in high school. I don’t think I ever took a literature class that I didn’t like. My favorite part of the semester was going to buy my books at the beginning of the semester. It was so fun to get to see what I was going to read that semester.
Well, I always hoped I’d marry someone who at least liked reading. So right after John and I started dating, I helped him move and I was pleasantly surprised to find that he owned a lot of books. One that really caught my attention was a big, thick biography of Tennessee Williams. I don’t know that I had discussed reading with John, but being an English major, this of course impressed me. He also had books on great mathematicians, and a few science fiction novels. It definitely looked like he liked to read in his spare time and that his taste was eclectic like mine. I found the whole revelation very encouraging. Later I found out that he belonged to the Book of the Month club and he kept forgetting to send back the little cards. But at least he belonged to the Book of the Month club. This, on top of the great things he could do with food, was making him look better and better.
My third love has always been music. I can’t say that I’m an exceptionally talented musician, but I think I’m a pretty good listener. Some of my best memories as a little girl involve listening to my record player and dancing around my room. I begged my parents to let me take piano and took it for a few years. I loved it. When I got into junior high, I joined the band and played the trombone. While I wasn’t the most diligent at practicing, I always enjoyed the music. I played in the band all the way through high school and met some of my best friends there. In college, I took a guitar class and continued to fool around on the piano when I could. All along I kept listening. I had a pretty big selection of CDs which included a little of everything. I liked classic rock, modern, popular, classical, jazz, musicals, children’s, folk and big band. One of my roommates said that she never knew what I would be listening to, that I was always surprising her. So when I saw the wide variety of CDs that John owned when I helped him move, I was pretty excited. He owned everything from ZZ Top and CCR to Frank Sinatra and Henry Mancini. Later when we were engaged and went to Buffalo, I learned that he had been awarded the Most Valuable Band member award his senior year in high school. He played pretty much anything that was a woodwind, including barry sax, alto sax, clarinet, and bass clarinet. Furthermore, I discovered he has near perfect pitch which is great for me because I don’t. He tuned the guitar and I played it. Things kept looking better and better.
Fourth and most important, I have always loved the church. Even as a little kid, I always liked going to church. It just made me feel good. As I grew older and developed my testimony, I realized that I really wanted to marry someone who was devoted to the gospel. In high school, I classified this as a return missionary. But as I dated in college, I met a lot of return missionaries whose testimonies weren’t really that important to them. I dated a couple of them and just knew that I needed to find someone who would encourage me to be strong in the gospel, someone who would pull when I needed pulling, not someone who I would spend my whole life pushing. So as I got to know John I realized that he really was the nicest guy I knew. I knew him for a year and half before we ever went out on a date and I saw how generous, nice and faithful he was. He was the membership clerk in our ward and he knew everyone after about the first week of school. Later we were partners as Ward Family Home Evening Coordinators. He always pulled his weight and then some. And then I found out that he worked one day a week in the baptistery at the temple. The Church was obviously very important to him. And I loved that.
Taking all these things into consideration (and probably 1000 more), when John asked me to marry him after only about 4 weeks of dating I said, “Sure,” without really agonizing over it. I just felt good about the whole thing. I had a roommate at the time who had been trying to decide whether she was going to marry her boyfriend for about 2 months. When I told her that John and I were engaged, she spit out the water she had been drinking and looked at me in shock. “How can you just decide like that? I just found out you were dating.” I didn’t know. When we told our bishop, he actually didn’t believe us for a few seconds. He thought we were just teasing him. John did promise to cook for me every day so that made it easier. And I knew all the other things I really loved were covered too. So I guess my fifth love has turned out to be the best of all. And, looking back, he didn’t lie. I have eaten really well.
And Shannon Hale has almost single handedly resurrected the fairy tale genre. (Although Gail Carson Levine (author of Ella Enchanted) and Robin Mckinley have also written some great fairy tale spinoffs.) Her book Goose Girl and its sequels are amazing. All of her books are very well thought out and beautifully written. She won a Newberry Honor for Princess Academy. Now I have to say that her books take a little to get into so give them 100 pages or so before you give up, because after that you'll love them.
I could go on and on. Joan Bauer's books are amazing also. And they don't read like kids' books. She takes different professions and explores them in novels and she is very funny. She has different ones about a waitress, and a shoe salesperson, and a championship pumpkin grower. They are some of the best books I've ever read and they make you see the world in a whole new way while you're laughing out loud.
