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Show in my father's house/ 151 him our small gifts or an offering of nuts and candy from our stockings which he placed in a box beside him "for later." And so, as he spoke of the death of Joseph Smith, I thought of him, bleeding "from worry" as my mother said -- worry that the authorities would swoop down and dissemble his family with their barrage of laws and social services. And the meaning came increasingly clear to me: God's Chosen should expect to suffer, to carry a cross, to pay for each blessing with a measure of misery, to give up family, security, and even life to the Lord. In those days, I didn't know about the horrors of eastern Europe, of the atrocities committed against Jews and others. I had no understanding of the profound human capacities for suffering or cruelty and so had no measure, but my vague knowledge of the Crucifixion, of persecution in its fullest, physical sense. All I understood was that persecution was pain and that it lay ahead of me, somewhere, ready to enfold me at some undisclosed moment. This intuition had the effect of sharpening life: the outline of trees was more distinct, the mountains more rugged, the pucker of lemon more sour. It seemed to force the flow of time into a higher pitch, a quicker pace so that sitting in the parlor at my father's feet became an adventure, an experience as total as my first dip in the cold artesian waters of our swimming hole. My father spoke of the meeting of 1886, of John Taylor's |