Category Archives: History of Us

This is an article I wrote for my Alumni Newsletter (Waterford) about a year after returning home from China.

The marketplace was a living collage of sights, sounds and colors. There were bright costumes and silk scarves hung across cords that stretched the width of the market. Toothless men sung in foreign tongues to the music of dutars.  Treasures collected dust in the open air. And then there was the overwhelming scent of spices that inspired wars.

The Uyghur (pronounced wee-gr) market was everything one imagines when thinking of the infamous Silk Road.  It was the largest market in Urumqi, the capital of the XinJiang province in Western China. Marco Polo purportedly visited this city in the heart of Asia—the farthest city in the world from any ocean. While Urumqi stands like a mirage in the Gobi desert, the mountains that shadow over it, Tian Shir, (the heavenly mountains) create a contrast in landscape paralleled only by our own Utah.

The history of XinJiang depends on with whom you are speaking. The land consists mainly of two ethnicities—the native Uyghurs, and the ever increasing migrants of Han Chinese. According to the Uyghurs, the province was an independent nation until approximately 60 years ago. According to the Han, it has been part of China for over a millennium. The debate to whom XinJiang belongs is a political web I cannot attempt to untangle here.

Wyatt (my husband) and I spent 6 months living in Urumqi in the spring of 2002. While there we were fortunate to associate and become friends with both Han and Uyghur alike. I want to talk about the Uyghurs here only because I have found that very few people in the U.S. are even aware of their existence.

I first met Raxida and Akrem Yahaksimisas when I spotted a treasure buried beneath a pile of furs in their small stall in the market: traditional, hand-carved Uyghur dowry chests. They were too big to take home, but too beautiful to leave behind. Negotiations were long, weeks went by, and each time we went to the market we would stop by to barter a little more. One evening my husband and I split up for our own adventures, and when he returned that night, surprising me with the chests, he told me of how he had visited to barter once more. When they settled on a price, and the transaction was complete, he was invited to eat dinner (a chicken of his choosing from their small flock outside the apartment building) with the family. Now they wanted us both to visit their home again.

Visits with the Yahaksimisas became a weekly thing, and then twice weekly, and then almost every day. Often we would eat, either at their home or at traditional Uyghur restaurants in the area. Sometimes we would go to the Mosque (Uyghurs are Muslims, and since I studied Islam extensively in college, and Wyatt lived in the Middle East, we were able to respect and understand their religious culture to an extent that I think they found exciting). Sometimes we would just sit in their shop and shoot the breeze. We spoke no Uyghur, and they spoke no English. We both spoke very little Mandarin but between that and some fine-tuned skills at charades, our communication was adequate for daylong visits.

At some point we began to know others in the market as well. There was Ibram, who ran the dutar shop. He spoke some English, and talked to us about how he had been taught since childhood to make the traditional Uyghur musical instrument, hand carving the decorative birds and dragons at the end, and painting each one by hand. He made them during the winter in his hometown of Kashgar, and then returned to the market each spring to sell them through the fall.

Almost everyone in the market was from a town other than Urumqi. Most came from farmer families, who would send one person to run a shop in the market.  The market meant money to a people who survived mainly on subsistence farming.

Finally it came time to return home to the states. On our last day in the market Akrem wanted to give us something.  We understood his pantomimes but pretended not to, wanting to avoid the situation. Not to be deterred, he pulled Ibram from his shop to translate. “You must walk from shop to shop and choose something, and then we will give it to you.” Everyone in the market followed behind as we went through each shop. We chose a dutar from Ibram with a small bird carved at the top. They determined it wasn’t enough, and also gave us a beautiful silk rug. Then Raxida handed us each a Uyghur hat. “You must promise to wear these on the train to Beijing,” Ibram translated. “Then everyone will know you are friends of the Uyghurs.” I saw in Raxida’s eyes what it meant.

Just one week after we left Urumqi, the government closed the market. They opened a new “Uyghur Market” inside a building, with shop rent almost three times what it was before. Most people couldn’t afford the new cost, and planned to return to their native towns to participate in the markets there.

When I think back on the market as I knew it, the sights and smells overcome me, and I remember my friends, the Uyghurs. I want the world to know of them, and that I am their friend.

Wendy was going to Virginia. She was going to school. She was getting away. She was going to be free. We always talked of the adventures we would have together — sipping hot chocolate in the street side cafes in Paris, riding the gondolas in Italy, riding horses down the green in Kentucky. We were going to do it all and be it all.

Wendy was that girl everyone wanted to be — I wanted to be. Outgoing, friendly, wild. Always ready for an adventure. And now her time had come. Graduating from high school, she chose a school back east, ready to start living her life as soon as possible.

I went to see her off on this last adventure. I borrowed my mothers car and made the five hour drive to St. George. From there we all piled into Aunt Draza’s old Ford Taurus. Between my aunt and uncle, Wendy, her boyfriend, me and Shelly, things were a little tight. We set out at eleven o’clock Utah time for Las Vegas. We were half way there before we realized Vegas was an hour behind us, not ahead. That meant we would have four hours to wait instead of two. Oops.

We pulled into Vegas at about eleven Nevada time. After driving up the strip a dizzying twice, we decided to hit the airport thinking maybe there would be some excitement there.

Not so much.

So we sat at the gage with nothing to do. Wendy and her boyfriend sat in the corner saying their goodbyes. Uncle Terry and Aunt Draza sat in the front window watching the blinking of the lights out in the darkness.

And I sat alone in a chair near the corridor. I sat watching the people come and go. Not really bored, nnot really entertained, just in a state of indifference. In an amount of time, the woman sitting behind me came into my awareness. She had dark leathery skin — a result of too many hours in the oven no doubt. This only seemed ot emphasize the hard wrinkles etched into her not-young-looking face. Her clothes were wrinkled and reeked of cigarettes. Her makeup was heavy, her hair limp and crusty with layers of aerosol hair spray. And her fingers were heavy with the metal of rings–three or four per finger.

“Wow! I like your rings!” I lied. I hated rings. I’m not a jewelry wearer. Even as the words came out of my mouth I tried to figure out why I had said them. Why would I strike up a conversation with this lady? She and I could have nothing in common, I was certain. Wat’s more, if I was talking to anyone, it should have been my own family, just a few rows away.

A smile pulled the leather of her skin — it looked painful. “Thank you.”

“Where’d you get them?” I asked, and then “Shut up!” I scolded myself inwardly.

“Oh, all sorts of places.” She started to pull at a ring on her finger. “This one I got from my son. He lives in Florida.”

“Really” I did my best to not be interested.

“Yeah, he as three kids and one on the way. Course the first two are from a different mother. She never was good news anyway. She’s in prison in Colorado, so he has the kids. The oldest is headed in the same direction as his mother though.”

“Hmm” more disinterest.

“And this one is from my grand-daughter. She’s not the dauther of the son in Florida. She’s my dauther’s daughter. She’s 23. She’s a flight attendant in Georgia. She and her boyfriend have two kids. Can you believe it? I’m a great-grandmother!”

“No way!” I tried to sound shocked.

One by one she went through the rings on her hand, telling me the story of each, and how she came into the possession of them. I was right. Her stories certainly didn’t resemble my life in any way. Yet with each story I felt a sort of kindredness growing between us. We didn’t have much on the outside in common. Yet on the inside we both were creatures who loved and had friends and family who loved us. She had treasures on her hand to remind her of each.

Two hours passed, and she sat and told me the stories of her life. At last the call at the gate came, and it was time for her to board her plane.

“Oh, I’ve got to go” she said in a rush as she reached to gather her bags. “here, let me give you this” she pulled from her finger one small silver band. “I want you to have this.”

I looked at the treasure in my hand. Before I could even look up to thank her, she was gone. I watched her board her plane, then turned to my family, still sitting at the window.

I do wear rings now. But not just any rings. Rings with stories. Rings that remind me of people and places and things that I love. And every time I get a new ring, I remember her and my treasure.

Wyatt and I were married on the Last Day of Summer in September, 2001. We were married by Elder Richard G. Scott (not of the quorum of the twelve) in sealing room B in the Salt Lake Temple.

A few of the details I remember about that perfect day:

Wyatt was late getting to the temple. We were supposed to meet there at 11:30, but he didn’t arrive until closer to noon. I had a brief panic attack while waiting for him. I could just imagine him ditching me!! But he didn’t. He actually stopped to talk to a homeless man outside the temple.

My brother Danny was late to the temple, so everything got held up for a bit. Wyatt and I had to wait in the celestial room before they took us in. I remember I could hardly breath in my dress (wedding dresses are made to be beautiful, but not neccessarily comfortable!) if I tried to sit down. Ha ha ha ha!

I never thought I would want to have a wedding. I always imagined an elopement, or at the very least, a private small ceremony, with little or no celebration afterward, would be more my style. But then an old friend said something to me years ago that made me rethink my position. He said something to the effect of “Weddings aren’t about the bride and groom, much as they like to think they should be. Weddings are for everyone who’s cared about the bride and groom, who’s helped in some way to raise them. It’s closure, a final farewell. An opportunity for those people to see how you turned out, and celebrate in the success of their years of work: your happiness.”

After that I decided I would have a wedding, to say thank you to everyone who loved me. And it was wonderful to have everyone I love come celebrate my happiness with me. That was the best thing about my wedding; the massive amounts of love in the air!

The day before Olivia was born we had gone into the doctor’s office to have our visit, and he scheduled us to be induced the following Monday, Halloween! I didn’t really want a Halloween baby, but it didn’t look like I had a choice, nothing was happening, and I had no signs of going into labor!

I went about the rest of the day running errands. My last errand was to stop by my aun’ts house, who’s a beautician, and have my hair cut. After she had cut my hair, we sat and chatted about my baby, and the upcoming wedding of my cousin, her daughter.

Olivia’s nursery was all ready.

Suddenly, I felt a leak. I thought about it for a minute, and the felt another BIGGER leak. I stood up and said “I think my water just broke.” Just then a GUSH came! I ran to the bathroom, but it was too late. I was soaked. I borrowed a couple towels from my aunt and called my husband to come get me!

For six weeks every time I had called, he would answer with “Are you in labor?!” And for six weeks I had told him no.

This time when he answered, he immediately began small talk. I finally had to interrupt with “My water broke, come get me!”

As we drove out of the neighborhood, Wyatt rolled down the window and yelled at the missionaries that were walking by “We’re going to the hospital to have a baby!”

At the hospital we went up to labor and delivery. I beamed when I told them my water broke. The nurse was very nonchalant about it, telling me they’d have to do some tests before they could admit me.

But when she came around the desk and saw the wet towel wrapped around my waist she turned back to the other nurses and said “we have a positive wet towel test!” Everyone laughed. They didn’t do any more tests after that. I was admitted immediately.

Because I wasn’t having any labor pains, they had to induce contractions. Even still it took a couple hours for them to really kick in. By 8 hours into the process I had only advance a 2 centimeters. It was now closing in on midnight, and the nurse said “you know, if you get an epidural, you can sleep through this whole thing!”

Sign me up! I’m pretty tough when it comes to pain (although I’m sure labor is a different ball game when it comes to pain) but I don’t do well without sleep! The epidural was the most painful part of the whole process.

After that I slept. At four in the morning, the nurse told me I was fully dilated and could start pushing if I wanted . . . or I could sleep, and they could do it in the morning. I slept.

At seven I was ready to start pushing. My doctor was in for the day, and since I was his only patient in labor at the time, he spent the full hour I pushed with me (none of that run in just in time to catch the baby stuff!)

I pushed almost a full hour. I had a “Birthing Music” play list set up on my ipod, mostly opera and instrumental, one religious choral. But I had one “come into the world” song that I wanted Olivia to be born to-”Lightning Crashes” by Live. It’s a very-um-different type of song than the rest. Dr. Larson said we were just about there, and Wyatt pushed play for the song.

I’ll always remember. Dr. Larson, a . . . well, nice, but in my mind, old man, cocked his head to one side and said “Is this Live? Is this the placenta song?” (The song very successfully uses the word “placenta” in it). We were all a little distracted for a moment at the fact that Dr. Larson knew Live.

And then, as if on cue, with one more push, Olivia was born.

I don’t remember much after that. They gave Olivia immediately to me (on my insistence) instead of taking her to the warmer and cleaning her up and doing all the regular tests.

Welcome to the World

I held her for an hour before I finally gave her up to the nurses to be poked and prodded. I fell asleep.

When I woke up, Wyatt was holding her, and on the phone, calling and telling everyone (we didn’t tell anyone that we had gone to the hospital). Wyatt’s a very different sort than I. When something big happens in his life, he wants to tell everyone. When something big happens in mine, I want to retreat and hide out for a while to think about and process it.

As a result, he called all of his friends and family, and I called no-one. I didn’t even answer my phone the entire time of being in the hospital.

But Olivia was here. She was so beautiful and perfect. It was amazing to finally meet her.

My Grandma was a spy for the FBI. Most people look at me funny when I tell them this because they know that I like to make up stories, and they wonder if this isn’t just another fanatical dramatization in my life. But this one’s true, promise. She was a spy on the Communist Party in southern California in the 60′s, 70′s, & 80′s. Cool huh?

Actually, everything about my grandma is cool. In the 1940′s she became the first ever co-ed to take an auto mechanics class at Brigham Young University. She writes books. She does geneology. She tried to join the Peace Core once, but they wouldn’t let her in because of her FBI background. She raised a family of seven children in a two bedroom, one bathroom home. And she makes the best salsa in the world.

I ran away to my grandma’s house once. It was the summer I was twenty. Too old to run away? I did it anyway. I had just broken up with a boy I was sure I loved. After I broke up with him he told me he was about to buy me a ring. Try that for changing a girl’s mind. But you have to stick to your guns . . . I guess.

So I ran away. I didn’t want him to call me. I didn’t want the concerned, pitying looks from my family. I wanted to get away to somewhere were no one knew anything about what had happened. I had a cousin in town who was driving down to see my grandma. I went.

Grandma didn’t know anything about what had been going on with him and me. Then my dad, overly concerned I might do something irrational (like what? Run away?) called, and told her. She asked me about it the next morning. “Are you sure about breaking up with this boy?” she asked.

“Yep,” I was afraid I was in for another lecture like the countless I had received all summer.

“Okay then” she said. I never heard another word about it.

Grandma makes the best salsa in the entire world, and I am the greatest fan of it. She sent me cases of it to school every fall, and it was always gone before the Christmas holidays. I’m addicted. Just the smell makes my tongue salivate, and my tummy feel comfy and roomy — and I think to myself “I should like some chips and salsa now” and then Grandma asks “Would you like some chips and salsa” and I say “yes.” And then we sit at her table in her kitchen decorated with sunflower pictures and a stool painted green with a sunflower on top of it, and we eat chips and salsa and Grandma tells me stories.

Grandpa & Grandma

My Grandpa ran away to the circus. Promise. It was the Depression, and things were hard, and he didn’t really get along with his dad. So when the circus came, he went.

I used to daydream about running away to the circus. When I was about fourteen, my best friend Andi & I snuck into one. Barnum & Bailey. It was great. There were dancing elephants and flying trapeze artists and bareback riders! Andi and I wanted to go with them when they left. We would be the new bareback riders, and our horses would be beautiful and snowy white with long magical manes and silvery tails. The whole rest of the day we talked about it as if it were true. As if we were already part of the circus. As if we already had our horses, and we lived an enchanted life of riding and dancing and showing and BEING in the circus. We were sure anyone who might be listening would think we were famous riders, and they would be impressed.

But my grandpa really did run away to the circus. He wasn’t a bareback rider. He was more like a stable boy. But then he did Black Face comedy. It was style common in the 30′s. The actors would paint their faces black and do slapstick skits. He was great.

Then the war came, and he joined the army. Besides the cirucs and the army, he was also a miner. When I was a little kid, my dad used to tell me stories about him. The only one I really remember was the one where Grandpa was walking home form the mind down to his camp. He was walking and he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around, but all he could see was the darkness. He walked a while longer, and still he could hear the rustling of something behind him. He turned–nothing. On a few more yards, and the sound was closer. He turned, and there in the darkness, all he could see was two golden eyes glowing in the darkness. That’s where my dad would stop . . . leaving me to the mercy of my five year old imagination.

Grandpa was a photographer too. He was really well known in LA. His studio was at the bottom of the hill where they lived. My dad showed it to me when I was a kid. Last time I was in LA, I drove by. It’s been torn down, and the house had been changed dramatically — it was for sale.

I’ve seen some of his work — pieces for newspapers, portraits of famous people, but my favorite is one that hangs in my Uncle Bub’s house. It’s a picture of a church window – with the light filtering through, illuminating the dust in the air. And through the window you can just catch the soft outlines of buildings outside . . . life outside.

Grandpa met Grandma while he was in the army. She was the one that introduced him to the Church. He joined, and a year later they were married. He was 36, she was 22. “Weren’t your parents worried about marrying someone so much older?” I asked as we sat in the kitchen, eating chips and salsa.

“Oh, they probably were. But I had prayed about it. And I knew it was right. So I didn’t worry about it at all.”

** Click here to read an article written about my grandparents and their experiences as FBI informants, from BYU magazine.

When I gave my talk today, I asked everyone who were converts or decendents of converts to raise their hands. I had borrowed the 1st Edition of the Book of Mormon from a distant cousin that Joseph Smith gave to your Great-Great-Great Grandfather George Deliverance

George Deliverance Wilson

Wilson in 1831, one year after the Church was organized. The prophet wrote a note to him on the Title Page of the book. (Collectors value a 1st Edition of the BofM at over $100,000, but I think that book is priceless.) I held it up in front of the congregation….that this was the book that converted our family. And that everyone has THEIR OWN first edition of the Book of Mormon that converts them, and that that book should mean just as much to their descendents as it does to them. (George Deliverance Wilson had consumption, now called tuberculosis, and had heard that a man named Joseph Smith could heal him, so he traveled – mostly walked – 1,000 miles to meet him in Kirtland, OH.

Joseph told him to read the book first. He instantly knew it was true, was healed, and lived 50 more years, was one of the 500 men that heeded Brigham Young’s call for volunteers to serve in the Mormon Battalion, and died and was buried in Hillsdale, UT on Hwy. 89 in the 1880s.)

Later, in 1838, Philandra Merrick, had had her husband shot and killed at Haun’s Mill, and her son mortally wounded, and he died a month later. The mob stole the $700 he had in his pocket that they got for selling their home in Missouri, so she was left penniless. She made it to Nauvoo with the help of Brigham Young, and Joseph Smith took her family in to live in the Nauvoo House with his family, where she lived for several years doing sewing. She was there with Emma during the 6 months Joseph was in Liberty Jail (D&C Sections 121 & 122.) In August, 1842, Emma came to her room and told her to put things away and to come down stairs because Joseph was going to organize the ladies of the Church into their own organization. There was just as small group of ladies that were in the room that day, Charter Members of the Relief Society. In 1846 she remarried in the Nauvoo Temple and came into our family, and had 2 sons that rode with the Pony Express, so they would have worked under the supervision of Major Howard Egan, your Great-Great-Great Grandfather on your mother’s side, who was one of 143 men and 3 women that came into the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young on July 24, 1847. So, your ancestors knew each other from both sides of your family, and they were all well acquainted with the prophets Joseph and Brigham. This is something of your ancestors.

George Deliverance Wilson built saw-mills, and so when Brigham was sending out people to colonize a new town, he would send those that built saw-mills first. So it was that George D. moved to found and settle 17 different times. The story is told that after many years of this, on one occasion the received word to move to a new location and his wife told him she had her home and she wasn’t coming. As he went back and forth from the house to the wagon without saying a word loading up goods, she followed along beside him, telling him she wasn’t coming. Finally, when everything was all loaded aboard, she came running out of the house hollerin “Wait for me George, Wait for me.”

I suppose you know of your ancestor Joel Hills Johnson, who wrote “High on a Mountain Top,” and founded Johnson’s Fort (now Enoch, UT). He was on the Cedar City Stake High Council and became aware of the plans for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and rode hard to prevent it, arriving too late, but was later one of the key witnesses in the trial of Bishop John Lee, who was executed. His brother was Lyman Johnson, who participated in the 1,000 mile march of Zion’s Camp in 1835, and one of the first Quorum of the Twelve called by Joseph Smith. So, it was a small world back in those days, with many faithful Saints.

I guess such it was for the pioneers–illness, mobs, forced to move, the sufferings of the Battalion, settling in harsh conditions—-that movie Legacy tells the story of your own ancestors much more than you think. They were there for all of that. Some years ago I read the journal of George Deliverance Wilson describing the sufferings and starvation they went through while with the Mormon Battalion. Just reading it was so depressing and discouraging, day-after-day, page-after-page of the same graphic depressing notations, that I finally quit reading it. I know that sounds wimpy, that I can’t even read for a few hours what he actually endured for days and weeks and months. I think that sometimes we glamorize their sufferings and sacrifices, until we read about how truly real and truly pitiful it was. I am amazed that they were able to keep their faith after what they went through.