Sweet As Honey

Dear Oma and Tante,

Last Saturday was BIG SISSER AND MAMA DAY! Big Sisser And Mama Day is really RUN ERRANDS DAY! But with ice cream at the end.

Mama and Sisser went to Deseret Industries to look for play-outside-in-the-dirt-shorts-for-everyone.

Mama says that Deseret Industries is the Mormon version of The Salvation Army. All the Mormons give all their old stuff to Deseret Industries and Deseret Industries sells it and gives jobs and lockers and showers and pride to people who don’t have those things.

Everyone here calls it “D.I.” It took Mama a long time to find out what they were talking about. They call it “Deseret” because everything here is Deseret. The Mormons wanted to name Utah Deseret because it means honeybee in the Book of Mormon. They think they are just like honeybees because they are communal and work hard like bees and their labor has sweet results. Mama says Mormons always leave out a few parts to the story, like that real bees have a girl in charge and bees sting you when they get scared.

(Mama also says that the government said “nope” to naming Utah Deseret for the Mormons and named it Utah for the Ute Indians who used to live here. Ute means “People of the Mountains” but now they are mostly just people of the reservation. Mama says they’d probably rather have the land than the name but it doesn’t look like we’ll be giving either one back.)

Anyway, at D.I. Mama also said that Sisser could chose one book for her and one book for me. Sisser looked at a bunch of books. Mama helped her choose To Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street and the Lady and the Tramp. Mama says these are good books and so far I agree!

At the register Sabrina figured out that Mama didn’t buy some Googley eye book about animals in the Bible. Well, Sister started crying. She cried and screamed, “I WANT IT!” She cried and screamed, “I WANT IT!” from the checkout stand all the way to the car. Mama had to carry her to the car and there was crying and carrying-on and foolishness the whole way.

On the way to the car there were some very nice people speaking a totally different language in the parking lot, and it wasn’t just because they are Mormon. They looked at screaming sister and smiled at Mama and didn’t act mad but just like they understood. Mama says tantrums translate.

Mama told Daddy that sister actually did a good job because she was howling, “I WANT IT! I WANT IT!” all the way to the car but it sounded like this: “I WANT IT! I WANT IT! I HAVE TO GO POTTY! I WANT IT!”

Mama did an ABOUT-FACE with Sisser and marched that crying screaming howling yowling little girl right back into the store. The Mormons must have thought that Mama was crazy or was a Gentile come to test their faith. Sister just continued the tantrum all the way back to the store, through the store to the very back to the bathrooms, through the process of going potty, and all the way back to the car.

Mama says she did a good job too because she didn’t get mad at Sisser and finally just told her that if she didn’t KNOCK IT OFF they would go home and Big Sisser And Mama Day would be OVER. Mama says it was also a good job she didn’t buy the googely eye book because it was a “short insipid little number whose main attraction was the large pair of googley eyes that each animal sported” and that there are better uses for our 50 cents.

Love,
Little Linnie Lou-Hoo

P.S. Mama also let Sisser buy a little plastic cup shaped like a cow. One for her and one for me. Sisser says I get the yellow one and she gets the pink one. She’s always taking the pink one of everything. Pppttthhhhhhhhhhhhh.

P.P.S. Did you know Big Sisser calls me “Little Honey” now? We call Sisser “Big Honey” since Sisser calls me Little Honey. We’re all very sweet. But don’t tell the honeybees. They might come and try to get us.