From the Homefront: Quiet book

Back in October, a group of gals in our ward got together to create quiet books for our kids.I was invited because my three boys win the Hands-Down-Most-Irreverent Award. So we were No. 1 candidates for the quiet book. It's something I'd wanted to make for years, but I never had the drive to actually start and finish it by myself. The team effort finally got me going.We met weekly after our kids were tucked away in bed and painted, glued, traced, and sewed. For someone who has never crafted anything, this was a major feat. By the end I could almost sew in a straight line. And the pages were absolutely adorable: Moses unzipping a blue felt sea, a missionary with a removable tie, baby Moses nestled in his basket in the bulrushes, a whole army of animals marching into Noah's Ark, and a teensy clothesline with laundry to dress the children for Sunday. This was a true work of art, and I was proud.The great unveiling came on Christmas morning. Amid the stacks of presents, the kids weren't too excited about the floppy book with no flashing lights. I showed them the pages, they feigned excitement, and dug into their stockings for more candy.Then Sunday came. Jackson leaned over in sacrament meeting and said, \"Mom, can I play with the quiet book?\"I pulled it out of its place of honor in my church bag and handed it to him, cradling it like a newborn baby.He opened the book to the church page, where all the pieces of the church fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. He began to rip off the Velcro pieces one by one. The door . . . rip! The steeple . . . rip! The cloud . . . rip!I froze. The cloud was very much a permanent fixture, not attached by Velcro, and I knew because I had steamed it on under a damp cloth on an ironing board in my bathroom at midnight.Jackson dumped all the pieces of the church on the pew and flip to the next page.\"No!\" I whispered, thinking of the night I spent trying to maneuver those pieces under the unwieldy sewing machine. \"Youre supposed to put them all back before you turn to the next page.\"He wasn't listening. He was already entranced by the Noah's Ark page, pulling off the little wooden animals and tucking them into the ship. A small yellow giraffe slipped off his lap and onto the floor. I swooped to pick it up.\"You have to hold on to these animals or they'll get lost!\" I hissed into his ear. I rounded out all those little Velcro pieces while watching a six-hour BBC adaptation of \"Tess of the DUrbervilles,\" and I know because it took the entire six hours to snip all the corners off.My husband, Seth, rested a hand on my arm.\"Honey, you might want to quiet down a bit,\" he said under his breath. I gave him a patient smile and turned to Jackson, who was trying to unclasp the clothes from my tiny clothesline. The clothes pins, smaller than my pinky nail, were threatening to snap.\"Careful with those!\" I said.That page alone took me two weeks of four hours each to complete, because I kept burning myself on the glue gun. Glue guns and I have a rocky past.Jackson grabbed one of the shirts off the clothesline and stuck it on the outline of the little girl. Then he pulled it off, and both pieces of Velcro came off. He looked at me, chagrined.I grabbed the piece from him and tucked it in my purse. I was starting to break into cold sweats. Just a few days earlier I had made the following announcement: \"If the whole house burns down, the only thing I would be sad to lose, besides my journals, is this quiet book, because it took me a million hours to make.\"I watched animals and felt pennies and Joseph's coat of many colors spill to the ground. Velcro got lost in the groove between the benches. I was Van Gogh, and this was \"Starry Night\" getting colored with crayons. I was Michelangelo watching kids swing from the arms of the \"David\" like monkeys. My children would have no scrapbooks, no crocheted blankets, no hand-pieced quilts to remember me by. This was my lasting legacy, and it was falling apart before my eyes.Jackson gave a happy sigh and handed me the quiet book. It looked like a sandwich with all the fixings spilling out.\"That was really fun, Mom,\" he whispered.My heart melted, and I smiled. Some works of art are best housed in fancy museums. Mine belong scattered across a church bench.(Tiffany Gee Lewis is the mother of three young boys. She and her husband, Seth, live in Austin, Texas. Tiffany received a degree in journalism at Brigham Young University and has done work for National Geographic Magazine online, the Liahona, and The Miami Herald. She is a freelance writer for the Austin-American Statesman and Meridian Magazine. Her passions are reading, gardening, music and getting a full night's rest.)