Home

The word “home” carries with it such comforting connotations. After a hard days work, I just want to go “home.” After a long and adventurous vacation, I just want to get “home” to my own bed. When I sleep at night, in my crazy dreams starring my wife and family, friends, and the occasional special guest star (Alan Alda has appeared more often than any other) and myself, I dream of “home.” While I lived in the Dominican Republic my waking and sleeping thoughts often led me to my “home” with my father, brothers, and sister.

Oddly enough, the “home” that I see doesn’t reflect my current living situation. Even though I love my house, my wife, my cat, my birds, and my brothers, I dream (as in asleep and dreaming) of another home. I dream of a home in a quiet neighborhood with a drive-in theatre at the top of the street. I reminisce about the big tree in the backyard where I could climb up high and escape the world below. I see the home with a dog in the backyard, and many lost Star Wars action figures under the big bush in the front yard. I dream of the home where I grew up in Lakewood, Colorado.





More than ever I find myself daydreaming over this home. It wasn’t just a three bedroom, one bathroom house that six kids and my dad occupied. This structure served as a person factory: a place that manufactured six responsible, mature, adults…okay maybe two or three, but a 50% success rate is pretty high in the research and development field.

My Dad started the mortgage on his house back in 1968. Real estate back then showed a different face than it does today. Though his monthly rates varied, they never topped over $100. As our family grew from four, to five, to six, to seven, and eventually to eight people, we learned to make do with the limited space. Two bunk beds sat in one bedroom, and two beds in the other (Anna’s room). The brother who slept in the room with the baby (Anna) was the brother who had to get up the earliest. I had a paper route for a couple of years, so I occupied that bed for a while.

When my Dad and Mom split, all six of us stayed with Dad. Mom told us that Dad was crazy possessive about the house, and didn’t want her changing a thing about it. During the 1980’s and 90’s he had a couple of opportunities to remarry, but when talk turned to selling the house to make room for the new additions to the family he called off the engagements. I always thought that he was over-attached to the house; I didn’t know that he made a salary of $12,000.00 a year—and that made us poor.

When Dad did remarry in 1999, I questioned whether or not he would actually make the vows. I asked him what he planned on doing with the house. He said that Larry and Darin would live there, and he would move into his new wife's house. That’s when I knew that he had really decided to get married: to leave his home—unthinkable.

I know the reason why I think so much on this home these days: I am selling it. My dad died last October and I have the dubious honor of being his chosen representative for the estate. Brad came down from Alaska and put a lot of time and energy into cleaning up the house. We had it on the market for less than 72 hours before we got a good bid. I accepted the bid and now we are working towards closing the deal.

I have mixed feelings: on the one hand I've had a lot of stress dealing with the end-game of my father’s financial life. I know that we need to sell the house, and I am relieved to see that it has gone so quickly in this slow real estate market. On the other hand, this is the home of my childhood. I stand at the base of the big tree and wonder that I ever dared to climb so high. I look at the yard and think of all the fun of playing with the dogs of my life, and my Star Wars guys. My kids will never know the joy of this home…so I will have to teach them the joy of our home—the home where we live. Hopefully they will base their dreams in that home.

Still…I am going to have the bushes removed in the front: I want my Star Wars men back.

The Courtship

I had known for some time that I wanted to marry Jen. We both, in fact, knew for a long that a happy marriage awaited us. We only had a few obstacles that kept us from kneeling at the altar: about 3000 miles and the time it would take to finish our missions. I left for the Dominican Republic in November of 1993. Jen left for British Columbia in September of 1994. I would be gone a total of 24 months, while Jen would return in 18 months. Let me save you the calendar math: I would get home 3 months before her. Spending the time apart had its good points, but it also had some stark drawbacks.

We only had two weeks together, in person, face to face, before I left. We knew how we felt, but we didn’t really know each other very well. Sure we tried to fill each other in on our lives real quick-like, but it was a lot of information to disseminate in such a short time. It wasn’t until we started writing letters that we really learned about one another. I knew that she was from Hawaii, but I didn’t know that she lived on the north shore of Oahu, that her dad was her bishop for most of the time that she lived there, and that she spoke a strange language called Pidgen. I knew that she had only sisters, but I had really only met two of them (maybe three) before I left. I knew that she liked country music, but I didn’t know that it was a relatively new fad for her.

She knew that I had not been active in the church for long, but she didn’t know that I had once counted myself a Buddhist. She knew that I came from a big family myself, she even had met a brother or two of mine, but she didn’t know just how cool my family would treat her. She knew that I had played the part of rebel through my teenage years, but she didn’t know about the punk rock band and Mohawk.

Mostly we both were able to learn about how we felt about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we each learned something new from the scriptures, or had a testimony affirming experience in teaching the gospel, we didn’t hesitate to share it with each other. We also reaffirmed our love, often, just to let the other person know that we had never fallen out of love.

Those were the good points. Here is the formula for the bad stuff:

(Distance) + (Bad Communication) = “Dear John”

Yeah, that’s right; I got the “Dear John” with only 8 months left to go on my mission. To be fair, I prompted the letter with a poor-pity-me letter of my own that did not communicate well my emotions. She thought that my feelings for her had died, and did not want torture herself with continuing a unrequited relationship. I tried to write “Dear Friend” letters, but that was not how I felt. In the end we just stopped writing. The last quarter of my mission sucked. It just sucked.

I returned home, went on a date or two, but just couldn’t get Jen out of my heart. We had some unfinished business, namely eternal marriage. After being home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and not hearing from her for what seemed like forever, I did a no-no: I got a phone number for her and called her. We made small talk, and acted like we had no 900 pound gorilla sitting on the loveseat between us. Finally, as were about to say our good-byes, she did what I could not: she said that the letter had been mistake and that she wanted to come home to me. I could not agree with her more: both letters were mistakes and she should come home to me.

On March 28, 2006, on her birthday, she came home…to me. The night she came home I proposed. We weren’t exactly rich, so I bought her the best ring that I could. If you held it up to the light, squinted a bit, and looked real hard, you could see the tiny diamond in its loose setting. We married in June of 1996.

I knew that I wanted to marry Jen. I knew it.

All I Wanted Was a Kilt

Is that such a horrible thing? Is it so wrong to have wanted to wear a kilt to my wedding? I'm part Scottish, don't ya know...








Let me flash back to the blessed day. No wait...I will have to go further back still. Let me go back to when we met. No wait...she didn't like me then. So we will have to speed up a bit then to November 25, 1993.

By this time in my life I knew a few of things for certain: 1) that it was my birthday and I had just turned 24; 2) that in a couple of weeks I would be off to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT to learn Spanish and prepare for missionay work; 3) I did not want a girlfriend while I was on my mission. Guys who pined over girlfriends were lonely losers and I didn't want to be one. Besides, the only girl that I really liked thought that I was annoying.

Only really cool people can laugh at their own jokes...

So there I was ready to embark on a great new adventure. I had one date to go on before I left, it was more of a friend thing than anything and I almost cancelled. I went because there was talk of lasagna...and I am a sucker for lasagna. While we ate the phone rang, another friend of ours was "sick." Partly out of worry for our friend, and mostly because dinner was over and I only wanted the same for the date, we offered to take her some food.

The "sick" turned out to be a surprise birthday party for me. Lots of people were there, some of which I actually knew, and one of them being the only girl that I was interested in at the time. That is the night that it all started...still, I did not want a girlfriend.

Now flash forward two and a half years: June 29, 1996. After writing that girl and pining for her for two years -- After I finished serving my mission and she had even come off of a mission of her own -- we had set the date for marriage. We would marry at the Denver Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She would wear white and I would wear a tux.

No, not a kilt, but a tux.

So that you all know: we did not fight bitterly over my attire. No, I would not celebrate my Scottish heritage by wearing the costume of my forefathers and eating haggis. I would stand and beam lovingly at my new wife, marvel at the beauty of her in her white lace wedding gown, and wonder how I got to be so lucky to get to marry Jen.

Maybe I will wear a kilt at our 50 year Anniversary. Happy 12th anniversary, baby!