The Cost of Ignorance And The Light of Knowledge

Let me tell you a little tale that leads to a big lesson for me.

Last August we went to the Shaklee convention in Nashville. We got as far as St Louis by plane, but they were late arriving and we had to drive in a rental car to Nashville late into the night to get there in time for the main meeting of the convention early the next morning.

We were staying in a hotel with a large indoor pool around which the rooms were arrayed, on 3 or 4 floors. Our room was not among these but required passing through the large courtyard the pool was in to get back and forth to the convention buses.

The first afternoon, on returning to our room, I had a great deal of trouble making the walk across the lobby floor. I didn't have the energy to carry my tote, and I basically had to take small shuffling steps the whole distance. I didn't get respite from this problem until we returned to Anacortes.

We supposed the problem was the chlorine from the pool. I was marginally better at the convention facility, but not by any stretch normal.

I secretly assumed I was about to have a heart attack. At one event, held outside, several ambulances were standing by (which I guess is not unusual at an event for 10,000, several of whom are over 80). I kept an eye on them, I was so convinced I might need one any minute. I took charge of walking w/ Kay just to hide my slowness: she has Parkinson's, is on meds, and can't hustle as she used to. Good thing for me!

Even when we were back in Anacortes, I didn't walk that well. I was really slow on hills around our house.

When we were in China, we walked everywhere. It was nothing to us to go many miles a day (mostly on the flat, except for stairs in the classroom buildings). Beijing is at low altitude, so that was no challenge.

On returning from China I had a very bad summer, mostly due to wheat - as I later discovered. We did very little walking. But when we returned to Tucson, with the wheat issue resolving due to my changing my diet, I felt well enough to take up tennis, and enjoyed playing all winter w/ Tonie and Theresa.

Then it grew hot, and the tennis faded away. It was too hot to walk. When we got to Anacortes a year ago we walked but then that was interrupted by our trip to Alaska, 5 weeks of mostly riding in the car. It was just after that the incident in Nashville happened.

When we got home from Nashville I was discouraged that I couldn't walk, even though we went out every day. Gradually the weather and short days took their toll and we walked only briefly - 30 minutes most days. I was still plodding along and felt I would probably do that for the remainder of what would certainly prove to be a short life.

It was in this state of discouragement that it came to me that we should go on our mission right away, not several years in the future after we were well settled into retirement. There were other contributing factors, but this was a big one: if I didn't go now, I would never be able to go.

D and I talked about what could be going on, and one possibility came up, that I was anemic. The intestinal problems, whether poor absorption or bleeding, could have been contributing. We reasoned that anemia could account for not being able to move very fast, and further that the effect of the chlorine could have been due to further inhibiting oxygen absorption, or perhaps the effect was more of a toxic one.

Nonetheless, I secretly thought it could be heart disease. My mother had a heart attack at about age 52, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart problems by the time she was in her mid-60s. It was reasonable enough. Plus, when I walked, I got tightness in my chest.

I didn't want to go to a doctor because I didn't want to get a hefty diagnosis that I'd have to live with.

I determined that when we got back to fair skies in Tucson I would start an earnest exercise program. I began to walk the mailboxes and do the Canadian Air Force exercises, as noted here, so I would not have restrictions on my papers that would hamper our ability to serve anywhere in the world. The motivation was primarily the mission, since I wasn't sure health was an option for me any more.

In the course of getting ready for a mission, a large number of the tasks center around medical poking and prodding, so of course I knew I'd be found out. That gave me at best a couple of months to build some stamina and perhaps some normal speed.

So out I went and began to walk. Sometimes I was breathing hard by the time I got to the mailbox. But I forged ahead, and most of it is recorded here: I made real progress. Pretty soon I was walking at a decent speed, certainly a normal one - no more plodding or shuffling along. That was such a relief.

The first medical clue of what had been happening came when I had my physical and got bloodwork done. I was anemic! HURRAY! In a perverse way it was good news - it opened the real possibility that anemia was a contributing factor to my problem.

During the physical I suggested to the doc that I have a stress test. By now I was doing better enough to want to know what the situation was!

The test was scheduled for April 28, Monday of this week. I had an enjoyable time with a fascinating set of procedures in the category of a nuclear stress test. It is thorough!

Today I got the results.

My heart is completely normal. Exercise ecgs are normal. No blockages. Great blood pressure (which I knew). Great recovery. EVERYTHING about my heart was normal.

The whole thing was a chimera. My fear prevented me from pursuing knowledge that would have put my mind at ease and allowed me to look for other causes. Something appeared to be quite real, but when I pushed against it, I found it was merely a deceit.

So I am rejoicing. I am a well person. I am still anemic. That was a little worrisome, and my main doc was a bit freaked by it. But another doc pointed out it wasn't all that bad: hemoglobin of 9.4. Basically it's enough to account for slow walking but not enough to do something drastic about.

The lesson I take from this has to do with faith and self-trust: if I had had a heart problem, I would have found solutions or adjustments that were suitable for me, with the Lord's help. If not this mission, then that one. And I would have adapted. It's also about humility: I was too proud to accept a label that would indicate I was less than fully capable. And a third lesson comes straight out of D&C 129. I leave it to you to apply that as the Spirit moves you.

In the end, light and truth and knowledge are the choice. Ignorance and darkness and fear have no place among even the weakest among us. That is what I have learned through this year of worry and enlightenment.

Update 4/29/08

Tomorrow we meet w/ the Stake President. On Thursday, May 1, they will push the button on the online recommend system and the package will instantly arrive in Salt Lake, 6 months to the day before our availability date of Nov 1.

Then we wait.

But not for long! Two weeks, they say...

I will not be surprised to have a few surprises along the way.

Meanwhile we are finishing up here at the house. We have multitudes of unknowns still ahead of us, most of them - we think - during the month of May.

Just so you know. PL

Lovely Sunday

Today we had stake conference so the afternoon was wide open. Our home teaching team came in the afternoon: Lem and Janie. We had a great discussion. Then in the evening our two oldest grandchildren came for dinner, along w/ our second daughter and her lovely family, including the three nearly perfect children. I have great photos of the 5 grandchildren, ranging in age from 22 to 19 months, playing with sidewalk chalk together on the back patio.

About the time dinner was over, the phone rang. It was the stake executive secretary setting our appointment with the stake president for Wed evening at 6:30. YES!

Friends from our ward just got their call. They are going to Orlando FL.

Family Day

Today we had a lot of fun.

We got up early to take friend Judy to the airport and start the drive to Phoenix. Not too many people were on the road!

We got to the temple just after 9 am so we could help take care of kids while Garrett got married. It didn't work out exactly as planned, but one of the moms, and the grandma and grampa had fun tending to 5 kids under 7, a pretty good ratio I think! It was of course sunny in Phoenix, but not truly hot - pleasant enough in the shade. Soon everyone came out of the temple and our duties were over.

Then we went to a temple session ourselves and did work for Mercy Jones and her son George Clendening.

Then we had a quick bit of lunch and drove home. Katie and family passed us on the way.

Then we took a quick rest, and went to Garrett's reception and saw the kids again. I had made friends with Dessa, a 4-yr old cousin, and it was fun seeing her again at the party, as well as seeing the other kids and their parents...and the bride and groom.

Then we went to stake conference and heard wonderful talks on preparedness of all sorts, including an MD's view of the Word of Wisdom. Bottom line: trust the Holy Ghost and the scriptures, even when supposedly new breakthroughs are announced.

A great day!

Milestone

Tonight our completed papers went to the Stake President.

Introducing Elizabeth Wheeler

Elizabeth is our antecedent through this line:

Me - Christopher A Adams (b 1908) - Ida May Tanner (b 1886) - Charles Tanner (b 1849) - Elizabeth Wheeler (b 1811)

We didn't know about her until this year (thanks in great part to Bonnie's research) and didn't know her name till 2 weeks ago. I have redone the entire tracing and landed in the same place.

In the 1840 census we find Elizabeth married to George Bailey, the mother of several children. In the 1850 census we find her married to Charles W Tanner and the mother of three more, all little boys (William Charles, Frederick, and Charles). The first of these was born when Elizabeth was 35. At the time she married Charles W Tanner, he was 20-ish.

They all lived in Calne, Wiltshire County, England, though Elizabeth was born a few towns away in Laycock, Wiltshire.

After that we lose track of them for a while, but now they have re-emerged: I found them living in Bristol Rhode Island in time for the 1860 US Census. According to later census reports pertaining to my great grandfather Charles, they immigrated in 1853.

After that one sighting in Rhode Island, they all disappear except Charles, who reappears 20 years later in Norwalk, married to Mary Jane Reynolds.

Other than the 3 little boys, Elizabeth's other children did not come to America with her. Some were quite young (12+) still when Elizabeth and her new young family immigrated. We may be able to get clues about her parents by looking up where her left-behind offspring lived and who they lived with.

Isabelle's Life

Having found Isabelle in the 1910 census, and not seeing her in the same household in 1920, I began to search for her and her family.

The place to begin was Norwalk. The family had been centered on Norwalk for 40 years if not longer. Norwalk is a small city in Fairfield County next to Darien. Fairfield County was homebase of virtually every ancestor in the Adams lineage going back to before 1800, the exception being the Fagans.

The 1920 US census record did not show a John Gilbert family, nor an Isabelle Gilbert, living anywhere in Fairfield County.

I decided to look for one of the daughters. Marion Gilbert is a unique enough name so that I could go through the candidates presented by ancestry.com one by one to see if they offered any clues.

What caught my eye right away was a Marion F Gilbert living in New Haven. New Haven County is the next one up the coast from Fairfield County, and New Haven itself is about half an hour from Norwalk on today's highways. But I didn't know of any reason for a New Haven residence, especially since this Marion Gilbert was living as a niece in the home of someone named John Fenner.

It seemed unlikely, but I took a look anyway. It turned out that John 'Fenner', as the indexer interpreted the census record, was actually John Tanner.

The Tanner name couldn't be a coincidence! Isabelle was born a Tanner, and now someone with her daughter's name was living with a John Tanner.

This Marion F Gilbert was 11 years old, just the right age. The rest of the household consisted of John's wife Clara, his in-laws (the Nicholses), and another niece Sarah E Gilbert, age 8.

No John Gilbert, no Isabelle, no Ida Gilbert...

Where was the rest of the family?

I looked for John Gilbert again in Fairfield County. I found one living in Ridgefield, an inland Fairfield County town north of Stamford, a place where I lived for 11 weeks when I was 6. This John was living as a boarder with a family. He was the right age, and he was listed as a widower.

I think this was Isabelle's husband John, and I think he was indeed a widower - that she had died.

I think that Sarah was her daughter, and that possibly she had died at the time of Sarah's birth.

John Tanner and Clara appear not to have had any children of their own. I tried to find John in earlier censuses, but have not been successful. If Isabelle died it would not have been unreasonable for a family member to take her children.

Two mysteries remain: who is John, and where was Isabelle's oldest daughter, Ida?

As for John Tanner, I believe he is an older brother of Ida May and Isabelle Tanner.

Going back to the 1900 census, I noticed that Mary Jane was listed as having had 7 children. This is something I had missed entirely before. It also said that 4 of her children were currently living.

We knew not only of Ida, and now Isabelle, but Mary Jane's son Charles Ernest, my dad's Uncle Ernie. These were born in 1883 (Ernie), 1886 (Ida May), and 1888 (Isabelle). John's age listed in the 1920 census indicates he was born in 1881, so he could have been an older son.

I have no proof that he was, but a further indication is that in the 1920 census he states that his mother was born in CT and his father in England. That is true for the other three of Mary Jane's children: their father Charles Tanner was born in Calne, Wiltshire, England.

(The three children who had died could have been from Mary Jane's supposed first marriage.)

In looking at Charles Tanner's record, we see that he had been married for 19 years at the time of the 1900 census, or in other words late 1880 or early 1881, which is compatible w/ having the four children of the ages listed.

You may recall that Mary Jane listed herself as a widow in 1900, but she wasn't: she and Charles were separated and Charles was living in Wilton, a town carved out of the northern part of Norwalk, with Charles Ernest, now 17, at the time of the 1900 census.

From all this I conclude that it is most likely that John Tanner was the eldest of the family that included Isabelle and Ida May.

So what about Ida Gilbert?

I didn't find her until I searched for her independently. She was actually hiding right under my nose, enumerated in the 1920 census with her grandmother Mary Jane, her aunt Ida May Adams, her uncle Chris Adams, and her cousin Christopher A Adams. In other words, she grew up with my father. He was her first cousin, she was just somewhat older, and in fact I believe I have a photograph of her:

In my father's trunk is a photo of an old lady sitting in a chair, with my grandmother Ida standing protectively behind her. Certainly this old lady is Mary Jane. To the left in the photo is my father, about age 10. He is standing next to a girl who looks somewhat like him and was of a similar age. I had asked my mother who that was, though unfortunately by the time I found the photo she was already blind. I described the scene but she had no idea. She just said that my grandmother had taken a lot of people in and this could be one of them.

In fact it was. My grandmother and great grandmother were raising Ida Gilbert. My father grew up with his cousin but never mentioned her in later talks about family.

My guess is that this photo is a birthday picture of Mary Jane. I need to get the photo out to check how old my father might have been to see if I can pin down which birthday.

So what happened to Isabelle's girls? I lose track of Marion F and Sarah E Gilbert. I would need a marriage record, and haven't found one so far.

But as usual, that big multi-generational house they all been living in in Norwalk furnished another clue: In the 1930 census we find Ida, Christopher, Ida's new husband Ben Porter (Chris Adams, her husband - known to us better at Christopher J - had been killed in 1921 in an automobile accident), and some boarders: Ida Champagne and her husband Edward. I had little doubt this was Ida Gilbert.

Ida and Ed were 29 and 23 at the time of the census, and had been married for 3 years. At this point they had no children, and the 1940 census is not yet available (not till 2010).

But in checking the Social Security Index records, I find that Edward Champagne, born July 4 1900, died in August 1977 (the same month and year as my father), and Ida Champagne, his wife, born August 5 1906 in CT, died May 9, 1994. Both died in Covina CA. In the Social Security record, Ida's mother's maiden name is given as Tanner, and her father as Gilbert.

That's the end of the trail for now. It means that while we were here in Tucson my father's first cousin, who knew him as a child and my grandmother and great grandmother as her caretakers, lived a day's drive away in CA. How I would have loved to meet her! All I can do now is to make sure she gets sealed to her parents and sisters, which I know is something Mary Jane wants for Isabelle.

Finding Isabelle

Sometime in the 1980s I stumbled on a mystery named Isabelle.

I was checking out the 1900 census record looking for my grandmother Ida May Tanner, I found her listed as the daughter, age 14, of Mary Jane Tanner. The record also included another daughter, Isabelle, age 12.

So I asked my mother who Isabelle was. Ida was my mother's mother-in-law, and my mother had known her. If she'd had a sister, my mother felt she would have known about it. But my mother had never heard of Isabelle, and questioned whether she could really be Ida's sister.

In all the questioning of my father about his family that I did as a child, he had never mentioned an Isabelle, either.

So for years I wondered who she was. The 1910 census record had entries for Mary Jane Tanner, head of household, age 50, widowed, Ida May Tanner 14 - daughter, and Isabelle Tanner 12 - daughter. Some boarders were also mentioned. It also noted that Mary Jane was renting this house, in Norwalk CT.

More recently I had returned to that record and again mulled over the fate of Isabelle. The only conclusion I could draw was that she had died sometime after 1900.

Then a few weeks ago we went to the temple and I did the work for Mary Jane, whose name before she was married was Reynolds.

(I am not saying it was her maiden name. We have evidence that she had been married previously and don't know if Reynolds was possibly her earlier married name.)

In any case, I did the work for Mary Jane Reynolds, and from that moment on it became easy to piece together Isabelle's existence. Maybe her mom wanted her found.

When we got back from that long day at the temple and the 200-mile round-trip, I walked into the house and straight to the computer. I had a general desire to find Isabelle, and just wanted to give it a stab.

I always seem to gain a little something when I revisit old sources, so I went to the 1910 census, sure I had checked there before, but - why not give it another shot?

What I saw was a little surprising and made me think maybe I hadn't seen it earlier. There, in the same house as 10 years earlier, was Mary Jane, her daughter Ida (now Adams), her son-in-law Chris Adams, and her grandson Christopher A Adams, age 18 mos. What a thrill! I was peeking into the home of my father when he was a toddler! As usual, Mary Jane also had a couple of boarders that were listed as members of the household.

No Isabelle! I concluded she must certainly have died sometime in the previous decade, though of course she could be married and not living there any longer.

I tried to find a death record for her. The death records are fairly incomplete on Ancestry.com, and I found nothing.

So I went back to the 1910 census, looking for those little clues. Mary Jane was still the head-of-household, still renting, still boarding...

I looked at the boarders, this time a couple. John Gilbert (interesting name for me - I know someone named John Gilbert), his wife Belle, his daughters Ida May Gilbert and Marion Gilbert...

HOLD ON! The boarders named their daughter after the daughter of their landlord? Dubious...maybe John was a relative of some sort?

Then it dawned on me. The wife, Belle, was Isabelle.

It was so thrilling! She hadn't died! She was there, married, living with her mom, her husband, and her two little girls, ages 3 and 1. Isabelle herself was now 22, so she had probably married at 18.

So I immediately went to the 1920 census to see if they were still living there. Mary Jane was, and so were Ida and her family. But John and Isabelle and daughters weren't.

What I did find is another story for another day.

Progress

As of tonight, the bishop has the last of our papers, my medical report. (It had been sitting on the doc's asst's desk for 10 days...).

So Sunday we have our official final appt w/ him. And then we can sign up for an appt w/ the stake president, though he has Stake Conference to think about next week.

That means the most likely day is Sunday, May 4 - an auspicious day! Or possibly during the week either just before or just after that.

Since we want him to push the button on May 7 to send the papers to SLC, all seems to be in order.

The moving van comes here on May 20, and we drive out on May 22.

This all puts us in position to open the papers at Chris's on May 28, the day he, the Romneys, and D and I are doing the sealings for some 30 family members.

The day after or so, we leave for Anacortes.

This is our plan.

Sticky Spots

We seem to have little cul-de-sacs in our progress. I think it's inevitable. One is that my medical papers are 'lost'. I don't believe they're really lost, they're just not found at the moment. I gave them, in an envelope addressed to the bishop, with adequate postage on it, to my doctor. After our first round of physicals, he called and talked about which category he was going to recommend for my mission service (A, unrestricted - able to work 6 days a week, walk 6 miles a day, and stand several hours a day). I agreed, and he said he was putting it in the mail. That was just short of 2 weeks ago. The bishop hasn't received it yet. The system is such that I can print out another copy and put it into the system again, but by then the old one will have shown up. I just know that - it's the way these things work.

Another sticky spot is just the long string of medical things to do that don't seem to move along very smoothly: get a referral, but they never call.

We think it's all in the nature of hobgoblins and their obstructionism. But it won't make any difference.

Once upon a time, waiting to push that final button until May 7 seemed like we'd be treading water for quite a while. Now it looks like just the most earliest likely date. That is 6 mos from the report date of at least one of the missions we might get called to. Out of several hundred.

Mission Papers

There's progress!

It took a while, but we finished all the applications, lists of credentials, doctors' reports, dentists' reports, and all else required of us, and the papers are now in the inbox of our bishop.

The hardest part was coming up w/ a photo of the two of us in mission clothing.

We have our interview next Sunday w/ the bishop, and then if all is well, we will have an interview w/ the stake president. We have Stake Conference on the second Sunday from now, so we'll have to wait till after that to meet w/ him. Say, around May 4.

Then if all is well, he pushes the final button, and off it all goes to Salt Lake.

Then we wait. Maybe not for long. The earliest we could hear is about May 12, and the latest is about May 23, a day or two after we leave here.

We're tempted to have our call sent to Chris's so we can get it as soon as possible!

It was back in January that we began to initiate the first steps of this process. Now we're well down the road. Preparing the papers were just part of it.

I took my little break from writing in this mission blog on March 14, and started again on April 14. On May 14 we could have our call. We'll let everyone know!

Update, a month later

For Me and My House, this has been a busy stretch, also a challenging stretch.

I found out from mission-related doctor visits that I am once again seriously anemic. That meant upping the iron, and that meant changing the diet and that meant having a major rebellion on the part of my tender gut. And that meant too much to deal with and write too.

Well, of course I do publish a newsletter every month, and that takes a week out of things.

But the biggest discovery was that I get a whole lot more done when I'm exercising, and so now I'm back to it after a big break. It's warming up here in Tucson, so that's more and more of a challenge, esp w/ the sun getting up around 5:xx. So now we are going at sunset, around 6:30 pm. Of course I still do Air Force exercises in the morning (though I took a break from those, too - YUCK!).

So now we're back. Thanks for asking. It's nice to know someone stopped by in my absence.