Twenty-One Years

Other than a few traumatic, life-altering moves, I had a normal first twenty-one years of life.  I was a happy child, a depressed teenager, and a mildly wild young adult. I am grateful for the influence, the care, and the love of my parents and eight siblings during those years.  The things I experienced and learned continue to affect my life on a daily basis.  They always will.

As of today, I've been married for as many years as I was single-- for exactly half my life. Nothing from my youth can compare to the joys or the pains I've experienced in the last twenty-one years.  

Roger and I were married in the Salt Lake City, Utah Temple, the same place both our parents were married.  There were times when I wondered, did we do the right thing?  Did we know enough to make the right decision when we got married?  For years I joked that we were both insane at the time.  In a way, we probably were.  We married quickly-- just three months after we met.  We were together for twelve days, and then apart for as long as we'd known each other.  He left for three months of Air Force training.  I went back to my old room, my old job, my old life.  My old boyfriend came back and asked me to run away with him.  Of course I didn't.  It was awful. 

Three months of being alone later, I packed up Roger's little red Honda Civic with all my worldly belongings-- a few clothes, a few wedding presents, a few books, and the only possession I really cared about-- my guitar.  My mom and I drove from Utah, stopping in Dallas to pick up my dad from a business trip, then on to Biloxi, Mississippi. 

They left me there with the stranger I'd married.  Gone was my home, my job, my friends, and my family.  Those were lonely days before e-mail-- I've never been a phone person-- the letters were few and made me cry.  I was isolated in a land of mossy trees, strong spices, and humidity.  While he studied too much and did his military duties, I spent hours and hours on the beach.  I made a few friends.  I waited for him in our hot apartment by the train tracks that crossed our asphalt front yard.  The walls shook when trains passed.  I was homesick and then sick pregnant.  He discovered my faults.  I discovered his.  It wasn't an easy first year.  Without temple covenants, it might not have lasted.

I was six months pregnant with Sarah when his training ended and we found out he'd be stationed at RAF Bentwaters in England.  It was while we were living in Leiston, England that we healed, grew up, and truly learned to love each other.  England is a beautiful, romantic place. For three years, we lived by the North Sea and its cliffs, near an old ruined Abbey, by fields of red poppies, purple heather, and yellow gorse.  We traveled around the country, up into Scotland and Wales, staying in bed and breakfasts and camping by wild horses and on windy hills.  We went rowing with swans in Thorpeness.  In Aldeburgh, we ate fresh codfish and chips wrapped in paper and drenched in brown malt vinegar.  We toured castles and butterfly farms.  We took a hop to Germany.  Sarah and Hannah were both born in Ipswich, in an English hospital.  Our friends became our family.  I'll never forget those years. 

Then we moved to Tacoma, Washington for a little over a year.  We fell in love with the Puget Sound and its islands, Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium with its beluga whales and walrus, and the rhododendron gardens with their bright pink and purple blooms.  Alena was born in Fort Lewis.  Hannah learned to talk.  Sarah went to preschool.

Then it was out of the military and eleven years in Salt Lake City.  Roger finished his degree, we bought our first home, Mariel and Owen were born.  We spent many hours in the mountains and with our families.  Though I struggled with Utah, one year before we left, I realized I'd learned to love it, that it finally felt like home.  Sometimes I miss the desert and the stars.  I miss Antelope Island and Wheeler Farm.  I miss the lake, still as a mirror reflecting mountains and clear blue skies.  I miss my gardens, my lilac bush, and the quaking aspen trees we planted that are now grown up and gorgeous.  It was hard to leave our families.  Even so, I don't think we'll live there again. 

We were led to New York.  We've been here for nearly five years, more in love with each other than ever before.  We have learned to enjoy the apples, the trees, the lakes, the festivals, and the people.  He has flown small planes.  I have flown a bicycle.  We lost a baby.  Our children here are growing up and leaving home.  I don't know how long we'll live here.  It doesn't really matter where we go or if we stay.  He is my home and my heart.

I wonder what will happen in the next twenty-one years.