Neylan McBaine

Honoring the Past

Somehow I ended up with the scrapbooks. Thirty-four in total. Beige leather binders, about a foot square each, with silver rings to hold the pages in. Under the plastic covers of those pages, my mother spent hours each year pasting in programs from every performance, pictures from every vacation and cards from every birthday.

From 1968 through 1992, the yearly scrapbook was my mother's journal, her collage for remembering events. She started with the blossoming of her career: her waist-length, straight brown hair flowing as she poses for a college production of Traviata, newspaper clippings announcing her as the fiance of "San Francisco's most eligible bachelor". She petered out when my parents' marriage became too unpleasant to relive. Cheery photos with adoring voice students and programs of memorable performances couldn't hide the fact that things were rough at home.

After their divorce, it was always assumed I would care for the scrapbooks. But I didn't even realize I had them until the other day when I opened a steamer trunk that had been in storage since my mom left Nebraska last summer. She'd sent them to me when downsizing and I hadn't even known they were there. Now, as I get ready to move myself, I have the unexpected pleasure to review them after a period of absence. They seem dearer to me than ever before.

Since my mom stopped creating her yearly memorials in 1992, I have lost all of my grandparents, as well as my own father. I think of them certainly, but my life now is filled with the young: children and my own school friends and other young mothers. To my surprise, these older people dominate the pages of the scrapbooks. How could I have forgotten what a huge presence Boompa was in my early years? Or how Grandma Jane always invited me to pick something "from the closet" for my birthday? (She claimed it held priceless porcelain, but somehow the offer was always forgotten by the time I visited her in San Francisco.) These were the faces of my growing up, and yet I've shamefully pushed them aside over the years. In a culture that holds such little reverence for the elderly and deceased, my focus has been entirely on the future.

Every once in a while, I'll have a strange moment while walking on a New York street when I see someone who reminds me of my dad or Boompa or my grandfather Turner. A gentleman in a suit with manicured hands. A portly Santa Clause-of-a-figure in a jumpsuit. I'll feel their spirits close. The women I sense less often: Grandma Elna was a woman of few words and although I loved her dearly her personality was overwhelmed by the vocal men at her side. Grandma Jane I associate more with places: 1000 Mason Street, of course, her apartment on Nob Hill where she had lived as a child and where she returned for her twilight years. And here in New York, the River Club where I was introduced to the most exotic dessert my simple young palette could relish: orange Grand Marnier sherbet in a hollowed out orange.

But as I look at the photos of these people, all now gone, who more than once sat through hours of bad teenaged pianists playing Chopin just so they could hear me play a 4 minute etude, I wonder desperately: How can I ever repay them for their dedication? Even the satin nightgown Grandma Jane repeatedly had her personal shopper buy me for Christmas year after year is a part of who I am, a dot in the pointillism of my life that might very well be an eye on a face or the center of a flower. Details, but me nonetheless. Did they ever know that? Can I tell them now?

I am about to move to Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm doing it for my future, for the future of my young family. We're doing it so our kids can know their grandparents, their aunts and uncles and cousins. Because even if I've forgotten how important my grandparents were to me, I recognize how vital they are right now in the lives of my little girls. Their love, their experiences, their gifts augment my mothering in a way that nothing else can. I want my girls' futures to be filled with the faces of older people who love them and who are completely dedicated to them. I remember now that I had that. By shaping a similar future for my children, I hope I am honoring the past.

Remembering Dalloway's Blessing

How do you get your child to feel the presence of the Holy Ghost? I have always believed it takes more than just setting a good example: yes, I can take a casserole to a sick neighbor, but how is my child going to know that good feeling is the Holy Ghost unless I tell her it is? So not only do I have to create opportunities for the Holy Ghost to pay a visit, but I must then identify the feelings we have during those visits. So much responsibility. This part of being a mother has always scared me.

Fortunately, the Lord has been kind to me in this regard. But early signs suggested I was going to be an utter failure as a spiritual teacher. When explaining the Resurrection to Esme, then three years old, I explained with great sincerity and humility that Jesus rose from the tomb. A pause, a cock of my daughter's head as she looked at me with narrowed, thinking eyes. And then, a "Nawww!" as big as a yawn from the little one as if I had just told the best joke she'd ever heard. It sounds like a joke to a lot of grown-ups too, but I knew I had to do better.

My chance came last Christmas when we gathered as a family to bless Dalloway in my in-laws home. My older two daughters responded to the blessing with their individual personalities: Esme bowed her head and folded her arms, eager to follow the rules and be the responsible one. Auden, free spirit, stood directly in the middle of the circle of men, looking up from underneath to the father, grandfathers, uncles who held her baby sister above her head. "Mommy, mommy!" Esme tugged at me during the meal following the reverent moment. "I felt so happy when Dalloway was being blessed! I was sitting there and listening quietly and I just felt so happy."

And there it was, handed to me on a plate. "That was the Holy Ghost, telling you that what we were doing for Dalloway was good and special," I explained. There was no gafawing this time.

Last week, Esme and I sang together in my ward's Relief Society meeting. I pulled her out of Primary, had her sit with me in the back of the room during the announcements, and then she boldly stood in front of the upright piano. I played the introduction to "Teach Me To Walk in the LIght of His Love," one of our favorite Primary songs. Esme started the first verse alone, a clear voice free of any fear. I sang the second verse, the parent's verse, from the piano and we sang the last verse together. I had grown up singing this song with my own mother. My mom had seemed to feel the Spirit every time we sang it; she'd get all weepy and declare her love for me while I just squirmed, rolling my eyes, beside her. But I'm not my mom and Esme is not me: I got through the song without breaking down and it was Esme who was most touched by our duet. Out in the hall afterwards, before I took her back down to Primary, she hugged me as hard as she could.

"Remember Dalloway's blessing?" she whispered, arms still tight around me.

Coming to Peace With Freckles

After taking my three young daughters to Spain for two weeks, I’ve returned with a few profound learnings: Little girls care more about purchasing the flamenco dress than watching the flamenco show; they can subsist for weeks on cured ham, baguettes, and packaged Nestle ice cream products; and, lastly, the Spaniards love freckles.

My five-year-old sports a few hundred freckles. Not Julianne Moore-style -- alas, no accompanying red hair -- but concentrated right across her nose and cheekbones, with a few stragglers fanning across her forehead. On her gorgeous, open face, they are the most distinguishing characteristic.

She’s always been ambivalent about her freckles. There was the time last summer when a boy in her camp asked to have a playdate with “the girl with the freckles”. I couldn’t tell if she liked this moniker or if it bothered her, which was uncharacteristic for her communicative nature. I’ve tried to be particularly sensitive to her feelings on this subject since the freckles came from me.

Actually, they came from my dad. And from his mom before him. And before her, from my great-grandfather John Francis Neylan, a bootstrapping Irishman. Neylan succeeded in channelling his tenacious personality to become one of the most powerful men in California in the 1950s. I like to think a little of his persona has trickled down through our family’s speckled skin and that this is the gift given to the Neylans by our long-ago motherland.

The heritage has proved a curse, however, even if it does carry the mark of the fighting Irish. My father died almost a year ago from skin cancer. His California youth of sun-drenched tennis and golf games ravaged his sensitive skin. My skin will, hopefully, only be the death of me in figurative terms: no combination of creams and lotions seems to make it cooperate.

But Esme has yet to find all this out. Right now, all she knows with clarity is that her freckles give her an identity, something to grasp as she starts to shape a vision of who she is. And the Spaniards who paused long enough to call her “Guapa!” or “Preciosa!” all seemed drawn to those markings so foreign to Mediterranean cultures: “Mira las pecas!”

And by our last day in the country, Esme’s feelings on the subject of her freckles became clear. With glee, she engaged her sisters in a game in which she pretended to grab millions -- in her estimation -- of her freckles off her face and give them to her sisters so that they, too, could have something worthy of the Spaniards attention. A happy currency indeed.