Opening up is never an easy thing to do for anyone. For so many reasons… for me it is mostly letting people see you without any defenses, it is allowing them to take cheap shots at the things that matter most to us, and for some reason the things which are most beautiful and powerful to us are also the most fragile… Crystalline towers that can be toppled with just a breath. The anonymity of the internet provides some cover, absolute strangers comments can hardly matter and besides they don’t know who I am. Strangers aren’t the only people who read this though, friends and family visit here. I’m not to worried I’m not going to tell you anything that haven’t become comfortable with at the same time I won’t be editing myself in order to create some type of pseudo personality. We are all a series of masks that we wear so comfortably, so completely that if they were all torn away, I fear none of us would recognize ourselves… or perhaps they cannot be all torn off, co-opting another phrase “it’s masks all the way down”. Whatever the case is we create our history as much as it creates us. Memory is not a static uninvolved observer, it is not a digital camera that slowly records our lives, what the conscious and subconscious bury and forget is just as important as those more cherished wisps of the past.
So what wisps do I hold dear? I don’t know it changes, I’m not a finished product, to steal another saying I am still in the refiners’ fire, at times one part stands out and others I focus on some long forgotten moment that now seems to be so integral to my life. I guess in order to start this story right it is best to start at the beginning, where most story’s do… I was born in Tuscan, AZ to loving parents who already had one child, a boy. It was 1981, and stuff I’ve never taken the time to look into was happening, probably important, but I was busy filling my belly with milk and my diapers with stink. I spent the beginnings of my childhood in Arizona and Utah, but I don’t have any memories of those places, at least ones that are not suspect, some that are hazy and indistinct and seen from afar I think I made from hearing stories told over and over. My family eventually settled in Southern California and it is here that my earliest memories were formed. I remember an apartment complex that to my tiny mind seemed vast and in my memories the building tower above me, truly cyclopean in construction. I don’t remember much I have vague ideas of what the apartment looked like and who my friends were, I remember there was a pool in the center of it, with large wrought iron gates. And it ends there. I can’t tell you anything else about where I grew up until I was 4. We left the apartment and the suburbs of a major southern California metropolitan area and moved to La Quinta, about 30 minutes from Palm Springs, when we did no one knew where La Quinta was and almost no one lived there. Some of the streets were unpaved, none of them had gutters, there were no street lamps or stop lights. It was in the middle of a mostly inhospitable desert, that was empty half of the year. I loved it, I still do though it has changed so much since those days, there are gutters, lamps, lights and thousands of more permanent residents, I don’t think I could move back there though, it has outgrown me… When I walk down the streets I once knew so well, all the empty lots and open fields where I used to play are gone, Only my memories keep it as it once was. I wanted things to stay, but I went unheeded and time rushed in on my hometown and irreparably destroyed it for me.
The most powerful force in my life growing up the one that dominated every aspect of my public and private life was not my friends, family, or my own personal beliefs and convictions, it was the LDS Church. Most of my memories, good and bad can be tied to, ‘The Church’ which was how it was referred to be myself, friends and family. Like it’s name it’s presence was monolithic. At the heart of the Church’s message was God’s love for his children, his sacrifice of his beloved son, Jesus Christ, the veracity of his prophet’s (Joseph Smith) message, and his continual control and direction of his church here on this earth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Growing up my social life was centered on the church, every Sunday my family attended it for three hours, once a week at the church my cub scout and when I was older boy scout troop met there (it was an LDS troop). Weekends (Fri. and Sat.) were spent on camping trips or socials. All of my friends were members of the Church and they stayed so until my freshman year of high school when I befriended a few non-Mormons. My family has and does pride itself on being good Mormons, who have done their duty (for 7 generations). I am probably my parents greatest disappointment and failure. This fact causes me no end of pain.
There is of course much more and I am going to say it all here, but this post is growing long, longer than I thought it would ever be (I don’t know why I thought telling a life, any life, could be quick…). I will continue it tomorrow or Sunday.
