Introducing Lala, The Matriarch

When it comes to introducing the love of your life, it can be kind of a daunting task. Especially since she’s my proof-reader. But when it comes to making introductions, there are few people in the world I can spend more time talking about than my beloved wife. She’s the matriarch of our little clan, and is really one of the main reasons that our little Zion Family Homestead project is possible. Because not only do her kids love her, but, as she proudly points out occasionally, they like her enough to live close to her, too.

That’s bigger than you might think.

Born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, Lala isn’t terribly well traveled, despite flying to Australia in 2001 in order to meet, woo, and bring me back home to meet the family. She’s had two previous marriages, which, regardless of their duration or quality, blessed her with Hurricane, Perfection, and Grouchy, so she counts them as blessings. They made her who she is today, and prepped her for me, so I suppose I am grateful for them, too.

Having earned a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Lala handles the family bills and finances, helping us all make good decisions regarding bigger purchases and financial management in general. She is one of our principle crafters, and can be found sitting quietly in a living room crocheting while the madness circles around her, listening to the conversations and speaking up when she has an opinion. Crocheting is probably the only thing keeping her sane out there, because when I say madness, I mean it! We used to run a daycare, and it was less busy than that living room at times.

Perhaps her biggest love, though, aside from family, is streamlining. She loves to organize things to run just a little better, a little more efficiently, a little more smoothly. It has served us well in most parts of our marriage, though I’ll admit, at times I just want to “let well enough alone” as my Granddad would have put it. Nevertheless, she continues to streamline different parts of our life, from the layout of our room, to how we work, study, and play. I’m a lot better off for her streamlining.

She loves her animals, and between the animals we have purposefully collected and those that have slowly made us their owners, we have 4 cats (Ghirrash, Lovey Dovey, Meow, and Ziggy) and a dog (Kaiyah) who is actually mine, but I wouldn’t have bought her without Lala’s influence and encouragement. Those animals live primarily in our room. We don’t believe in outside cats, with their shortened lifespans, and we don’t really want muddy paws all over our bed and room from leaving Kaiyah out much of the time. So they crowd into our bedroom and basically live in there with us. We have been accused of being crazy cat people, but each of our cats fulfills a different need of love for us. They’re full of personality.

She loves words, and is passionate about their proper use. Woe to any that misuse a word and try to stand against her in a battle of words to determine which is the correct usage! More seriously though, she helps me a lot with my writing, and often has great insights into the written word of the scriptures based upon the choice of words used by the authors.

As a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she has had to give up a lot of things from her past, including tattoos, coffee, immodest clothing, and the like, and while she may not always give those things up with excitement, she’s one of the most obedient people I know when it comes to hard and fast rules. If it’s what you’re “supposed to do” she does it, with few questions. That also leads her to be a lot more productive around the homestead than me at times, as she takes care of what needs to be done when I just want to play and do fun stuff.

On the religious front, she was the driving force behind our conversion. A long-time Pagan, her conversion was perhaps almost as shocking as my own from Atheism, but that’s a story for another day.

All told, Lala is our beautiful, crafty, brilliant, eccentric, lovable, wordy, opinionated, fierce, kind, generous, devoted, obedient, willful, and wonderful matriarch. She doesn’t rule over the family with an iron fist (though sometimes she might like to) but instead is always there when her family needs her, whether she has to wake from a dead sleep to go rescue someone broken down or hold a crying child until they fall asleep, she’s always here for us, and we wouldn’t have her anywhere else.