In the just-past general conference Elder Gong told of his wife’s grandmother.  The grandmother had a foot pedal installed on her butter churn so that she could make butter, knit, and read all at the same time.  That impresses me.  I think it’s marvelous.  It’s said that you can only do one thing at a time, but she was doing three!

This reminds me of the challenge that kids give each other which takes great concentration and which is difficult to do.  The challenge is to simultaneously pat the top of your head with one hand, and rub your tummy in a circular motion with the other.  Once you manage to get both operations going, you’re then told to make the hands switch duties so that your tummy is being patted and your head gets the circular rub.  The grandmother was doing something similar, but being productive.

To accomplish what she did she had to have repetitive motions for both her hands and her feet to do that didn’t require thought.

This grandmother was of the generation of my mother-in-law’s mother.  My mother-in-law’s mother spent every spare minute in the summer knitting socks for her children.  Each had to have two pair.  These weren’t socks like we wear today, but long ones the length of the child’s leg.  They were held up by garters, and were to keep the children warm through the winter.  They were made of wool, and were itchy.  One pair was worn all week, and the other pair, a white one, was worn to church on Sunday.

The weekday pair became stinky after several wearings.  As a girl my mother-in-law used to hang her socks out the window at night in hopes that they’d air out and not stink.  It didn’t help much.

The grandmother who could do three things at a time, I m sure, was knitting socks.  She had done it so much that she didn’t have to even look at what she was doing.  She had trained her hands in their duty, and she could think of other things while her hands carried on their work.

Churning the butter was a repetitive motion that her feet could do.  They didn’t require supervision, either.  The grandmother was able to concentrate on her reading and the improvement of her mind while producing two useful products.

Can I do more than one thing at a time?  I suspect that this is an area in which women excel over men.  The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is that I can prepare my talks while driving.

I asked my friends at the temple if they could do more than one thing at a time.  The initial answer was always no.  But when they thought about it, they sometimes changed their minds.  Boyd Hill said that he prepared all of his talks while driving his tractor.  He also recalled that he sang as he milked the cows as a boy.  I liked that.  I’m sure that had a calming effect on the cows.

That reminded me of Spencer W. Kimball who put a card on the ground beside his milk pail and memorized the Articles of Faith as he milked.

This is called time management.

I’ve tried to think of examples in the scriptures where someone did more than one thing at a time.  I think that there are probably multiple examples of Jesus doing several things simultaneously, but the only other one that I could come up with was David.  His job was to watch the sheep.  He used the time to become an expert marksman with the sling, and also to play the harp.  He became so good as a harpist that he was sent for to play for the king when king Saul got into his dark moods.  His ability to accurately hit a target with the sling was what enabled him to save the nation.  Both skills were acquired while watching the sheep.  Watching the sheep didn’t require a lot of thought, so he used the time for other things.  That’s time management.

David could do two things at a time, but Elder Gong’s grandmother could do three!

So can my wife.

Several times a day my wife sits down at the piano and plays.  She does it for pleasure, she does it for practice, and she does it as a mood lifter.  She has done it all her life.  When she did it as a young mother the children would climb up on the bench beside her and stand behind her.  They liked the feelings that the music brought, and they liked being close to their mother.  She taught them all of her songs and how to sing and to harmonize.  As she was sitting there at the piano she was practicing, teaching, entertaining, watching the children, and binding them to herself and to one another.

My wife is also a dancer.  Her feet can effortlessly do complicated routines that my feet can’t duplicate even with my utmost concentration.

The best example of her doing more than one thing at a time was once when she was pregnant.  My parents worried that Marjorie was overloaded and over-burdened with many children to care for.  But one day my father arrived without being noticed.  As he passed the window he stopped and stared into the kitchen in amazement.  What he saw was a very pregnant woman preparing dinner while dancing around the kitchen and singing.  It was truly a sight to behold.  Marjorie was very embarrassed when she finally looked up and saw him with his nose literally pressed up to the window.  She says, “I wish you could have seen his face!  If I wouldn’t have had the radio up so loud, I would have heard him arrive.”

He went home and said to my mother, “We don’t have to worry about Marge.”