long time no see

May has definitely been the busiest month of the year. Work has become increasingly insane, church callings, studying for the MCAT, lots of rain that kept us indoors, yada yada yada... It's gone by fast. Three of the highlights include:

1. I started reading Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City and Esquire's review perfectly sums it up: "The heart of the story is so good, you find yourself asking how you could not know this already." That is honestly what I ask myself every time I turn the page: HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS BEFORE!? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

2. The month of May was mostly rainy, which is why Memorial Day especially felt like the start of summer. We spent so much of the day outside in the sun, reflecting on family and our country and the things we easily take for granted. Memorial day in some ways feels like the prelude to the Fourth of July, with flags waving on street corners and front porches.

That afternoon Max and I spent some time with my dad who shared this with us, which was especially fitting:

"I sometimes wonder how we can best honor our forebears. Might we not best honor them by honoring one another? A watch tick in eternity, you know, and we will ourselves be ancestors. What would we desire most from our posterity? 

Personally, I feel that I should not care if my posterity failed to do special homage to me on occasions like this. But I am sure I should be unhappy if they failed on all occasions to be kind, considerate, helpful to one another. 

If Father and Mother were to reprimand me today, I am sure it would not be for thoughtlessness regarding them. It would rather be for thoughtlessness regarding my living brothers and sisters, my failure to draw nearer to them in these hard declining years, nearer to them in sympathy and helpfulness. 

Why not in the future make our reunions something that will draw us all a little closer together in understanding, sympathy and love."

-Parley Alma Christensen

Parley Alma Christensen is my great-grandfather. We visited his grave that afternoon together, and I hope I get to meet him someday. If he was anything like his son, and my grandpa, (and it sounds like he was) he is someone I hope I can be like too.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

3. Max had a Birthday! Considering Max and I met when we were fifteen, birthdays always feel a little extra special. There is something so rewarding looking back and seeing how far you've come, and how far you get to go with each other. We celebrated the big day together up at Sundance, and I think I told Max at least half a dozen times that we have to spend more time up there before our move next summer. 

And that is that. May was a busy month, plenty of highs and lows included, but I can't complain. And now that I think about it, I've been to In & Out twice this week which is a telltale sign it's JUNE.
I can't complain about that either.