The Fathered Five Story, Part 4: Kids Get Married
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Part One: Smitten | Part Two: Burned | Part Three: A Reunion, A Parting |Part Four: Kids Get Married
My life was exactly on track: I’d done what was expected of me by going on a two-year mission for my church and was engaged to my first love and high school sweetheart within two weeks of coming home. We set a July wedding date. The interlude was a blissful seven months of carefree dating, planning, and dreaming about our future together.
At least, I think we planned. That’s what engaged people do, isn’t it? In fact, I don’t even remember now what we planned and hoped for. Her Hotness planned the wedding reception colors and menu, but that’s all I remember. Surely we must have had some idea of where we were going and what we wanted to do with our lives? We never once talked about finances, never looked at our incomes to see whether we could support ourselves. We didn’t discuss career plans, though we knew vaguely that I would go to school and do something productive. Never talked about how many kids we wanted.
Bizarre? You have no idea. We were simply too young, dreadfully unprepared to handle such a major life event. But no one told us any differently, and we wouldn’t have listened if they had. We were kids in every sense of the word, simply doing what our culture had taught us to do. I was 21, she was 20, and neither of us had any life experience to speak of. We thought it would all work out and that somehow we would be taken care of. And it has, we were, but it was so much harder than it needed to be. That’s why we look so happy in our engagement photo: ignorance is bliss.
We are only partially to blame for our dismal lack of preparation. It’s a fact of Mormon culture, especially in Utah, that young people are encouraged to marry as soon as possible after the man serves a mission. This is not doctrinal—not an official position of the church—but it’s the message many kids get and internalize, like we did. We were taught that we should follow our leaders, pay our tithing, and be obedient, and we would be blessed. It would all work out. Faith came first, with life skill and practical planning a distant second.
That was true in our case, but it is not for everyone. (And I think the trend is diminishing.) I can point to relatives who got married very young, with little life experience, and who were much better prepared. I don’t know why this is. The only way to explain it is that they are smarter than we were, for they were raised in the same culture but with quite different results in terms of the struggles they faced in marriage. We each have our own crosses to bear, I suppose.
July 8, 1989, finally came and those two kids made vows they were unprepared to make having little idea of what lay in store. Maybe it’s best that way. Maybe no one would ever get married if they knew it was going to be so hard. And marriage is a good thing, I’m convinced of that. But it’s also damn hard. Maybe it’s a good thing because it’s hard.
Ignorant of the struggles that lay ahead, we two kids set up shop as a new family unit. It would be two years before we would muster the chutzpah to decide we wanted to have a child. And it ischutzpah—we literally create a new person with our own bodies and desires as raw materials. Now that I’m finished creating children, I see that we made the decision far too lightly. “Wanna have a kid?” “Sure, why not?” No, it wasn’t really like that.
If I for some reason found myself with a new woman who wanted to have a child, it would scare the double helix right out of me! Create a person?! Are you NUTS?? But remember, I was 23, she was 22, and we couldn’t see anything further down our path than the next day. So Girl 15 began to take shape in our imaginations. She was now the twinkle in my eye that would change me, body, mind, and soul, like a Body Snatcher or a Master Sculptor. Choose your metaphor.
