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I'm afraid that if my two oldest granddaurs could see me here today, they'd be a little disappointed.

My daughter heard them telling their other grandmother that I worked at BYU, even though she already knew it.

When she asked what I did here, they said, I took care of the why.

Oh, she said, what does she do with it?

They told her my job is to protect it and keep it white. I don't know if I could even make the hike up there.

So I'm apparently off the job right now. I actually think their grandpa added those extra details and talking to them once,

and I think they thought it sounded much more interesting than what I really do, which is teach and write. They know teachers, and although they like their teachers,

teaching is not anything special, and about the writing, they know I have books published,

but Lauren, the seven-year-old, is writing a book of her own, so no big deal.

Actually, Lauren's book fascinates me.

First is the title, The Neverlasting Love.

That really is a catchy title.

When I was last at my daughter's home, I asked Lauren if I could read her book.

It isn't done yet, she said.

But she would let me read what she had written so far.

She brought me a sheaf of papers numbered from one to 15. Her writing stopped at the top of page 11, but the other pages had numbers on them, but nothing else written yet. I read her story as

far as it went. It's a story of a poor girl named Jess who lives with her parents in a far away

time and place. Jess is a nice girl and the family is a happy one, except that they don't have any food,

except for birthday cake and ice cream. They have interesting daily routines such as saying goodnight

...