cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"This was the week I received The Call every Father comes to recognize must someday come. It was 9:06 PM Thursday evening, and I had just got home from the Potential Fields SIG (Special Interest Group), at which my friend and first boss while I was going to school at The University of Utah, Parker Gay, spoke. I was reading the e-mail which had come to the house, including an `opportunity' to save $50 by paying for walden3d.com for the next several years in advance; an update on Vpatch from Roger Anderson; some insurance changes I forwarded from Continuum; some information about a heads-up display Albert Boulanger found and sent me; a note from Diane Cluff saying her son Ben received the call to serve in the Mexaco Chihuahua Mission today; the first e-mail from Roice since he moved to Austin with a software package he built for me attached; and three messages in Mochin Digest 1055 from Project Mind. As I was reading these the phone rang.
I picked it up and kept reading. The voice on the other end said, `Mr. Nelson, this is Jared Wright, you know Melanie's friend.' As I continued to multiprocess, I responded that of course I remembered him. He said something about hoping to come and talk to me personally, and the words triggered in my mind and I said, `So Jared, is this The Call?' He kind of chuckled and said, `Yes, this is The Call.' The conversation was polite, the questions direct, and hopefully my responses were fair and expressed the love and concern I feel for Melanie. I did not attempt to grill Jared. I told him it was very nice of him to ask me, and that I don't have much say on what Melanie does, as she kind of does what she wants. I did say I could give a lot of advice, and I won't until I'm asked. After he asked for Melanie's hand in marriage and after I said yes, he said he planned to ask Melanie Friday night, that she did not know she was going to be asked, and that they intend to be married in the Houston Temple in July or August. I encouraged him to call Marti and tell her, and then I went in and told Andrea with tears of joy and hope filling my eyes.
On the personal front, I never expected to make The Call twice in my life. And since I did, and since each separate experience effects different ones of you, I am going to recount or point to each separate experience. My personal history is certainly not complete without a description of these two momentous occassions. And when I did a search on `Calf Springs Ranch' and `engagement' the only thing I found was a summary of when I proposed to Andrea (../9906.html).
I remember making The Call to Emmit Sharp for permission to marry Marti. He did not say much, just kind of silent. Grandpa Sharp was a very intelligent man. He served in World War II, and thanks to the G.I. Bill had a Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in Ithica, New York. He was the black sheep, only non-religious, member of a family with 13 children from Winthrop, Arkansas. His father, Thomas Barnabas, was the presiding elder for The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for eastern Texas and western Arkansas. Thomas Barnabas had a strong burning testimony of The Book of Mormon. I never had the chance to meet Grandpa T.B., and I enjoyed the stories I heard and read about him. If in some future year one of you are reading this for the purpose of family history research, be aware there is an excellent journal written by Grandpa T.B. which describes his conversion to The Book of Mormon, his baptism in a lake in the middle of the winter and the miraculous warmth that overcame him as he walked out of the midst of the floating sheets of ice. He preached too hard, and Emmit rejected his preaching. Emmit loved Marti, and in many ways did not know how to show this love. The dirty stories, lewd remarks, anger, and alcholism conspired to keep him from being as close as he might have been. At the time I asked him, he was in the first stages of divorce proceedings, and certainly this is one of the reasons he did not say much. I felt like I was simply preinforming him, as much as asking him. And I'm sure I felt Jared was playing a similar role with me. Wonder what Jared would have done if I would have said `No?'
The Call to Emmit occured at Spring Break in 1973. Marti flew over to Salt Lake from Ft. Collins, and we drove down to Cedar City. I had arranged for my friend Bill Hanson to drive down to Cedar City to join us for an engagement party. I had attempted to get Marti's best friend, Elaine Thacher, to also come down. She was not able to join us. It turns out Elaine is Marian Pickerd cousin. For those who have not lived in Nottingham Country Ward, Marian's husband Mike Pickerd was our Bishop when Roice and Ben went through High School. The day after Marti and I got to Cedar City I took her out to show her Calf Springs Ranch. About the time we got to Newcastle, 30 miles west of Cedar City, she turned to me and said, `You say you love me, and you never talk about marriage. You know love and marriage are suppose to go together like a horse and carriage.' I responded, `Maybe I don't think it's my idea yet.' It was too early in the spring, and because of the snow we had to hike most of the five miles into the ranch. On top of the ridge, where you can look down into the valley and see the ranch, the snow was up to our waist. I remember saying, `This is something we can tell our Grandkids about.' Marti later said she was thinking. `You can't tell your Grandkids about it if you don't have any Grandkids!' When we finally got to the ranch, I unlocked it, started a fire, cooked a steak, and sang a song which I had written to propose to her with (see page 233 of Prime Words for the words). This was the weekend we made the `Melodrama,' which is now on video. When Marti accepted I never dreamed our marriage would end up as it has. I did try as hard as I knew how to, to see our marriage work. Even though life is wonderful for me now, I do hope and pray that none of you will ever need to even consider divorce as a solution to the challenges of marriage.
It was too late to make The Call to Morris Shirts after Randy and Katheryn reintroduced me to Randy's little sister Andrea. Grandpa Shirts had died from complications with diabetes over a year before our 30 year High School Class Reunion. For those who did not know Grandpa Shirts, he was brilliant. Mom says he was the best teacher she ever had, and Mom spent years and years going to school. Morris Shirts was raised as a sheepherder over by Bryce Canyon National Park. Paul, this is the same place where you and Brandon Peterson went to stay with his Mom's (Patrice's) relatives. Morris served as a radio operator in the U.S. Air Force in the Far East. His crew flew several missions over Japan. Morris got his Ph.D. at Indiana University, thanks in part to the G.I. Bill. He taught at BY High School, which is also where Susie Smart Gardner (Ray Gardner's wife) went to High School. Then he and his family went to Iran for two years to set up teaching schools, and moved to Cedar City when Randy and I were in fourth or fifth grade. Once in Cedar his influence, through his son and my friend Randy, had a major impact on keeping me from making any of the serious mistakes too many adolescents make.
So I made The Call in person, and asked Mrs. Shirts and Andrea's oldest brother Russell for permission to marry her. Grandma Shirts seemed flattered and pleased. I remember her saying something like, `I'm pleased and even if I wasn't Andrea never listens to me anyway.' As mentioned above, I described our engagement in the Thoughtlet titled Engagement (../9906.html). You have each had the opportunity to observe the impact of my marriage to Andrea. Although I do not recognize feeling much different than before we were married, I have had too many friends from too many different sectors of my life tell me how much happier I seem to be these days to not acknowledge how good it has been for me to be working together with someone I love to create an eternal marriage. I hope each of you find the same joy.
Nate and Melanie each sent a very nice not about last week's Thoughtlet: Eternal Families. Nate it is good to hear things are going great for you and Heather. Moving is always hard. It is neat you have the opportunity to be a part owner of your company. What is the cost and the exposure? Politics are important, and it is neat you are involved in the primary process, in addition to your callings with regards to temple preparation and temple activity. Set realistic goals, do not try to run faster than you have strength (Mosiah 4:27 and D&C 10:4), pace yourself, and rest when you need to so you don't collapse. It is easy to use activity as a distraction from the grieving necessary to work through the pain of your Mom's unwanted death. There is no question about how proud she is of you. She is in a place where she can watch you across time and space, and she want's you to endure in the race to the end.
Melanie, thanks for your note and The Call tonight. It means a lot more than I have words to say to receive a caring and loving note like the one you sent last Monday. I also hope my money challenges at work become less of a strain. My experience is that newly wed couples tend to have at least one part of their relationship which becomes a strain, and we usually bring this into the marriage with us. I hope you learn money management now so this is not the strain in your upcoming marriage. It was sure fun to hear all of the details of the proposal. I'll probably get parts of this wrong, and this is what I recall hearing. Jared had told Melanie he could not visit her this weekend, and then he arranged for his cousin Naomi to take Melanie out to dinner. When she returned he was hiding in her closet dressed in a suit. He had put a TV in her room queued to a scene from Melanie's favorate movie `Sleepless in Seattle,' and had their song playing on the stereo. When she came in she realized he was there because of the music and didn't turn the stereo on. Jared came out and and handed her a piece of dental floss, got on his knee and asked her to marry her, as the ring slid down the dental floss. Sounds like it was right out of a movie. Or maybe I am simply remembering the future (Alma 13:1).
This last week life at work started to pick up speed again. On Monday I took the Lexus in for a 15,000 mile check-up. We met most of the afternoon preparing for an investor meeting on Tuesday. Rachel did Family Home Evening. we played a game called tennis shoes among the Nephites. Tuesday morning I met with a potential investor in Continuum. Good guy, good meeting, and hopefully we will know what their intentions early next week. I went to the GSH luncheon to listen to my friend Wulf Massel (Sara, this is the geophysicist who hired me as a consultant when I was at The University of Houston, so we could afford to pay for your birth). Good talk. Rick Zimmerman has not recovered from his broken leg yet, and he had to cancel our dinner appointment Tuesday. I used the time to figure out how to do something on the web I've been thinking about for about six years. I'll dedicate a Thoughtlet to this topic later. Wednesday there was a meeting HARC sponsored to describe OilPlan to potential oil company consortium members. Wednesday evening Andrea's Laurals were responsible for the Joint Activity. They had an Articles of Faith evening, where you got ingrediants for an ice cream sundae by going to one of 13 tables and passing off an Article of Faith. It was a fun evening. Thursday morning was the Sales Forecast Meeting, then I spent a couple of hours with one of the authors for the May 2000 volume of The Leading Edge, which I am responsible for collecting the papers for and editing. I spent the evening listening to my first boss, Parker Gay, describe how residuals of full waveform aeromagnetics allow mapping of basement faults. Good talk, and interesting side conversations. I could write a couple of Thoughtlets about this evening. I stopped at Oshman's and bought on my credit card a treadmill for Andrea's 45th birthday on Sunday. Larry Law drove down and helped take it out to the house. I got home just in time for The Call from Jared.
Friday morning started with a C.E.S. call and on-line demonstration. I had a Viet Nam lunch at The Blue Orchid with Townsend Dunn. There were a lot of e-mails during the week about The RC-SIG, The Leading Edge articles, The World Future Society, my keynote talk at GeoCanada 2000 in Calgary in June, etc. Richard Uden gave a great, what I saw of it, CoReExplorer presentation on displaying public domain data in 3-D in the Theater. I left early for a scout campout with Matt. We went out the other side of Columbus to Bill Hagen's 15 acre ranch. As part of my normal documentation, I wrote a song about the campout which summarizes some of the events of Friday and Saturday. I named the song: Hagen's Escape.
It was a lot of fun. When we got back and I got cleaned up I tried to find Rob to go to Bicentennial Man. He was at Jason's playing video games, and I couldn't find him. I got back to the house just in time to receive The Call from Paul. It is not appropriate to go into details on this conversation yet, and I'm sure you can all imagine, based on sibling competition, the topic of conversation. Later in the evening Andrea and I went to see `The Cider House Rules.' The movie has beautiful cinematography and great acting. However, it is a not-so subtle justification for murder, abortion, lying about professional credentials, and in general about burning the rules if they don't fit your circumstances. It is the worst side of William James' relativistic philosophy I've ever seen. There is not an acknowledgement of eternal truths, responsibility for actions, telling the truth, and other basic principles I believe our society is built on. Even though it was rated PG-13 I do not recommend anyone see this movie. When we got back I found Todd and Michelle had made The Call to us on Friday in the form of an e-mail with their important announcement:
This morning we learned from Gary Jones that Donette Jones received The Call to serve her mission in St. Petersburg, Russia. Paul, she wants to talk to you and learn more about what to expect. Gary and Roetta's phone number is 281.578.2356. Also Andrea's Brother, who teaches seminary in Couer d'Alene, Idaho called today to wish her a happy birthday, and he was wondering, Paul, if you know an Elder Cox from there who served in the Novosibirsk, Russia mission.
So how do I feel, at the end of the week I received The Call? Elated, excited, concerned I have not properly taught Melanie (and each of the rest of you) everything she (you) need(s) to minimize problems and find happiness, peace, and joy. Time will tell, and as long as I am alive I am here to help in any fair way I can be of use."