Fathered Five

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Part One: Smitten | Part Two: Burned | Part Three: A Reunion, A Parting

Holding hands during the movie that day was a glorious first step down a long path of discovery. We “went together” intermittently during junior high school, which meant we saw a lot of each other and held hands on our walk home from the same school. In the company of my two buddies, Mark and Thadd, who never quite resigned themselves to a girl in our midst. I mean, our idea of fun was arguing about who would win: Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris (Bruce Lee, of course!). Now there was a girl, and she not only knew nothing about the issue or the players, but she thought the whole argument was silly. It was an adjustment for all of us.

Our first kiss was at a church youth group activity, an irony that still makes me chuckle. (You’ll understand later.) It was on a 3-day water skiing trip to a local lake. 20-30 teenagers were on the trip, along with a number of adult leaders and chaperons. On the first night we found a way to break away from the group and steal down to the beach.

I know now that we didn’t fool anybody. Our leaders knew where we were, and even drifted by casually every so often to check on us. Somehow, though, they were respectful enough not to demand we return to the safety of the fireside and Koombaya. They allowed us space to be teenagers—an act of grace I don’t think I could duplicate now that the tables are turned, nor one that I would want my teenagers’ leaders to emulate. “What are you, nuts?? You let them go to the beach alone at night?? In the dark?!”

For whatever reason, they left us mostly alone. If I was excited by holding her hand, that was nothing compared to the raw rush of our first kiss! Or even the second, or third or any that followed that night on the beach. I was 14, she was 13, and we were the center of the world. The news was all over church on Sunday. I wonder if any parents called the leaders to…complain?

We broke up and reunited several times through the next three years, making lots of memories and lots of high school dance pictures. We learned some things about relationships and got a sense of the power of the biology that was driving us. We were in love, of course, without wondering or caring what it meant or where we were headed. She left a void whenever we weren’t together, but it was easily filled because she lived right around the corner from me, no more than 100 yards away.

Now, you have to understand something about the dating scene in Utah in the 1980s. Both of us were from conservative Mormon households, staunch church-goers ourselves. In fact, one of our dates was a day-long event at Brigham Young University, the church-owned school, listening to what amounted to sermons! It seems strange to me now, but did not back then, nor was it an unusual date by our community’s standards.

For some orthodox Mormon teens dating seriously in a long-term relationship, dating becomes an battle with biology—the pressure not to have sex is enormous (a fact for which I’m glad today, as a parent). I had been taught since I first noticed that I liked girls that sex before marriage was one of the most serious sins, and avoiding it became a schizophrenic game of twisting the tiger’s tail. On the one hand, testing the limits felt great, but on the other, it left me tormented by guilt and dreading the next date, even while holding my breath until it came. It was an emotionally draining time. Some of you will think our actions, or lack thereof, strange and twisted. I’m not saying that what our culture taught us about sexuality was healthy or wise—only that that’s the way it was. I didn’t choose it; I just did my best to navigate those waters.

Our final high school break up was about midway through my Junior year—the year this picture was taken. My first love was a sophomore. Her mother had wisely seen that we were spending too much time together and that our relationship could not progress any further without sexual activity. Since that wasn’t an option, she convinced Mothered Five that we needed to break up. And so we did. I thought my life was over, then, and I entered the universal ranks of every teenager who’s ever been smitten and every adult who’s ever known the all-consuming fire of devotion to another. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I thought I was all alone and no one had ever lived through such pain. Youthful angst is nothing if not romantic.

The same forces that brought us together and had possessed me, mind, body, and soul for four years ensured that we got the attention of wise parents who cared about us and could see the turbulence we were riding when we couldn’t see it ourselves.

We each went on to have our own adventures and to date other people during the next two years. Circumstances could not keep us apart, though. Destiny is bigger than human intent, and I was reunited with the one person I then understood was forever part of me shortly before I turned 19 and left the country for two. Long. Years.

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