Brave Enough To Ask The Questions

Apparently there had been an email from the psych professor that three of her students didn't get.

Julie the cowgirl and hockey player, Dan the polygamist's son, and me.

We waited around for a while, each of us in our usual seats. I was in the middle of the room, Julie was up in the front left, and Dan was on the back row.

Julie looked like she could take most everyone in the class down. Dan had revealed to the class in a comment a few weeks before that he'd come from a polygamist family, and that his father had four wives. He said that like he was mentioning the weather, or having had soup for lunch. I was dying to ask him about that.

Realizing that the class must have been cancelled, I took a deep breath, turned around in my seat, and said, "Dan, you mentioned you're from a family with four wives." I gulped, not certain I wanted to hear what he might feel comfortable telling me.

What happened next was unexpected. Dan began to open up about the way he was raised. Julie, curious, moved to a closer desk, as did I.

"Having four moms was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," he told us, which shocked me. He talked about what it was like at his home. 'Big as a shopping mall with twenty- three bedrooms,' he claimed, 'Seven bathrooms, too.'

He described how wonderful it was to have multiple siblings run to greet you when returning home from work, how he felt he had celebrity status every day. He told of how his older sister decided to make the boys her 'project' by teaching them public speaking skills through a very effective program she'd developed herself. He spoke of his love for his father, the vast amount of respect he had for the man.

"I wouldn't have wanted to grow up any other way," he said, "It was wonderful."

The darker part came when he spoke of his marriage. Their 'prophet' had chosen someone for him that he would have never dreamed of having for a wife. While he'd been a quieter type, she'd been the Homecoming Queen type. At first he was thrilled, but there were soon problems with the match that surfaced not long after the wedding.

"In polygamist families, the girls all know how to run a household by the time they're around fourteen. They can budget, cook, and balance the checkbook. She didn't know, nor was she interested in doing any of that stuff," Dan said.

A failing marriage wasn't going to fly in their polygamist community. It was shameful. More than that, a man's religious authority was in jeopardy, should a divorce ensue.

It did.

Dan, disgraced and unable to fully function as a member of his compound and religion, left the town for Babylon.

"I cried for a month and a half, lonely and scared in my apartment," he told us, "It's been the hardest thing I've ever done."

He'd watched the previously forbidden and evil tv, had gotten himself a non-member girlfriend, and was going to a college with worldly students.

At intervals, Julie and I asked questions, fascinated by the story being told. Before we knew it, the three hour block was spent. We all had places to be, and so we said an awkward goodbye. It was strange to go from being so intimate to being so public again. Perhaps Dan didn't feel that way, but what we'd just witnessed would have been impossible to replicate. In the weeks to follow, the three of us never did connect again the way we did that day. It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.


I went home and told the experience to my husband and children. Having been privy to the inner life of a polygamist family was incredible. Not a believer in polygamy, I wasn't expecting to hear the positive angles I'd certainly never considered before. The careful education of the kids, right down to their ease of public speaking. The love and cooperation among the women and children. My mind was churning with this new information.

Getting someone to talk to me like that was a trip. I wanted more; I wanted to know people's stories. Not just their surface stuff, but the nitty-gritty pivotal-moments that made them who they were.

I couldn't sleep that night, so revved up with processing the information I'd just gained. I'd been fortunate enough to talk to someone who was extremely forthright with their personal tale. Surely there were more out there like him.

I wanted to find them.