The Constitutionalist's Daughter

Though his voice was not raised and his words were simple and concise, it was obvious, even to me, that my father was utterly furious… In Mormon culture (and perhaps Christian culture in general) the term 'still, small, voice' is used to commonly refer to your internal voice and the Holy Ghost in tandem.  This is the little voice in your head that tells you when something seems a bit off, warns you that what you're thinking of doing or what you're about to do is inherently wrong, and sometimes inspires you to do things that later reveal themselves as fruitful or even destined.  Outside of religious culture it is often simply called a conscience, but this word only describes, in my opinion, a small portion of what the voice concerns itself with; letting you know when you're wrong.  As an adult and at the time of this writing, I have no further religious associations between my internal voice and a devout ghost whispering in my ear but the voice itself is stil...

The first time I saw him – with his sunny blond hair, chiseled jaw, and crystal blue eyes – I knew that he would devastate me… My father was an exceptionally hard-working man who never seemed content to sit still for very long.  Everywhere we went he had projects underway to keep his hands busy at all times.  I've never been much of a Reba McEntire fan but the first time I ever heard the song 'Daddy's Hands' I instantly understood and identified with the lyrics in a profound way.  My own father's hands had always held a position of special significance to me.  It baffled me how he could be so tender with them when brushing my hair on Saturday mornings while my mom was working at the hospital or while tending to my plethora of scrapes and bumps from being a reckless adventure seeker, yet exhibit so much strength with them while swinging a hammer or digging a hole.  I marveled at how steady they could be when he was drawing and painting, at how calloused and...

The Virgin Town Water Tank - Photo Courtesy the Virgin Town Website She'd only been my new best friend for a little over an hour when I realized that establishing my new identity was going to be much more difficult than I had originally surmised… After having driven around for several hours trying to find our new home, my parents had finally turned the family truck toward St. George, the largest city in Washington County, Utah – which really isn't saying much.  The irony is, as we were driving around in circles through the various plots of horse country and farmland, my sister and I were utterly oblivious to the fact that we were lost.  We were in the camper in the back of the truck, after all, and not privy to whatever conversations or navigational concerns our parents were expressing amongst themselves down in the cab.  We were watching endless miles of open nothingness pass by the windows and assuming that we were still simply on our way to wherever it was w...

As I watched our television being loaded into the back of my sister's father's best friend's truck I realized that my days of using the coffee table as a surfboard were over… The year was 1993 and my sister and I were now the only kids still living at home.  My oldest brother had moved out shortly after returning from Desert Storm and the other brother had gone away to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil for a two-year religious mission.  It was the dead middle of summer in northern Utah, around June or July though I forget the precise month.  I was ten years old and my sister was fourteen, both of us would be having our birthdays later in the fall.  Somewhere among the lectures, seminars, and meetings that my parents attended for people who were wary of Big Brother and all of the strange happenings of the government, my dad had befriended a man named Dave Seich and had arranged the private purchase of some land in a tiny town called Virgin, Utah just outside of Zion Nation...