Dear family,
February has been an exciting month, even a life-threatening one. But I suppose I shouldn’t blame the month of February for Luke’s and my decision to drive to Colorado Springs during the weekend of a snow storm.
We’ll start with that, I suppose.
Luke has an aunt an uncle who live in Colorado Springs, and, in light of our tradition to visit nearishby family on three-day weekends, we decided we’d drive over to celebrate President’s day with them. Michael and Courtney are so very kind and we had a lovely time with them. They are so kind, in fact, that they made sure to inform us beforehand that there was a winter storm warning and that driving through the mountains could be extremely dangerous.
We (mostly Luke) still wanted to try and beat the storm, and my only condition for going was that we made sure to account for the fact that I had a scheduled exam at 8 am on Saturday morning that could take up to three hours. But, we were scheduled to make it to Mike and Courtney’s by around midnight on Friday, so there were no foreseeable issues with the plan.
Other than, you know, the deadly-when-icy Colorado mountains.
A funny thing about Luke and me: we’re pretty good communicators about things like feelings and daily plans, but I’ve realized that we are too prone to assuming we’re on the page about things like travel.
Our first date is a good example. We planned to hike together at one of the three worthy and somewhat accessible hikes in the state of Maryland. We had discussed a few options and, somehow, I came out of our planning phone call with the understanding that we’d be hiking the Billy Goat Trail, which was a little closer to both of us, and Luke came away with the impression that we would be hiking Maryland Heights in Harper’s Ferry, which isn’t terribly close to either of our houses. Luke had suggested that I drive to his house and we go together from there, since he lived closer to the hike than I did. Looking at my Google maps, I was pretty sure he was wrong about that and that it would make no sense for me to drive the half hour to his house and then backtrack with him. I suggested he pick me up, and he, I suppose not wanting to call me an idiot before we’d even gone on the date he’d proposed, assented.
This is the set up that led to what Dad refers to as an incredibly ballsy first date. As soon as Luke got to my house and I saw that he had Harper’s Ferry in his navigation and that it was about an hour and a half away, I realized what had happened. And I chose to say nothing.
Why? Because he, evidently, wanted to hike Maryland Heights and why should I prevent that?
What could have been a really long and awkward date turned out to be a really long and pleasant one, so I can’t say that our miscommunications are such a terrible thing. I mean, hey, we’re married.
But then again, if our getting married means that we end up dying on a mountain in Colorado in February because Luke thought that the dangerous mountains we had to worry about were the Utah ones and the Utah ones were totally clear, then maybe those communications aren’t a great thing.
It’s really unclear.
Of course, we made it just fine, and Luke was the one who got us through. He is, without a doubt, the best driver in unsafe road conditions I’ve ever known. Even on roads completely unaffected by weather, he is a remarkably safe driver (though he does enjoy taking liberties with Utah’s lack of red-light cameras).
Whether he is a safe enough driver to survive I-70 in a snowstorm, however, remains to be seen, as the road was shut down moments before we made it on to the dreaded Vail Pass. We ended up driving back an hour to the nearest inn under $700 a night, snatching up their last room, and crashing into bed around 1 am.
The road closing was frustrating and the whole night terrifying, but I’m (not-so-) secretly glad for the closure. We said a few prayers for safe arrivals that night, and I’m guessing God works through road closures likely more often than he works through near misses.
But that’s how I ended up taking my PRAXIS teacher-licensing exam in an inn in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
While I took my exam, Luke went out and bought chains for dinky little car, fully preparing himself for another full day of driving.
I have to say, I would’ve been perfectly happy to go home and pick a different weekend for our visit. Especially when we made it to the opening of Vail Pass again that morning and were again turned away for dangerous conditions.
But my husband is a determined fellow.
Michael and Courtney (and later, Luke’s mom when she found out we were still trying to get through the mountains after being turned away twice) told us that they appreciated us trying but that we should probably call it quits and return home. I’m sure if I had begged him he would’ve considered turning around, but he was determined not to let something as trifling as weather stop him from accomplishing his goal for the weekend.
We ended up detouring south and adding a few hours to our trip, making our way through the backroads to Colorado Springs. Around 6 pm on Saturday, we finally made it to the loving and befuddled embrace of our aunt and uncle, who thought we were a little ridiculous for how determined we were to make it, but still seemed happy to see us.
And a lovely and relaxing weekend ensued. Mike and Courtney were so generous and such good company. I’d drive back to Colorado Springs in a heart beat…in the summer.
The rest of our month hasn’t been quite so eventful. Luke finally managed to make me open a Roth IRA and buy stocks and I’ve already lost twenty dollars. He and I both still enjoy our jobs, and I’m still waiting to receive the results of the licensing exam I took over President’s Day weekend.
I’ve discovered that I adore substitute teaching elementary-school children, who are always entertaining and often just as happy to give me a hug as they would be to give their real teacher a hug. One of the more memorable classes I taught this month was a group of first graders which had an array of vibrant personalities. I knew it would probably be a fun day when one kid walked in, blond hair fluffed out to make his whole head look two inches bigger all around, and said to his table neighbors, “Okay, who here voted for Donald Trump?”
Let me tell you, this first grader did NOT. “I voted for Kamala Harris,” he said, and waited for his friends to tell him who they voted for. Why he chose this random day in February to bring up the already long ago decided election, I will never know. But he certainly was entertaining.
It reminds me of my own early political opinions, which Dad enjoys reminding me of. I believe it was first grade for me too, in fact, when I became a staunch supporter of Barrack Obama. I don’t have many memories of that time in my life, but I do remember my classmate, Ayu, cheering Obama’s name one day in class. I went home that day and, upon seeing Obama on my parents’ TV, exclaimed something along the lines of, “Yay, Obama!”
I was a little dismayed when my parents told me that they weren’t planning to vote for Obama, but I don’t think it built too much of a divide between us.
Anyway, there’s my story of how I became a democrat. I find it unlikely that this first grader in Utah has the same origin story, but maybe I’ll be able to find him again one day and we can compare experiences.
I’ve also found it surprising to encounter so many people with similar political alignments to me out here in Provo. Of course, I am in the humanities, so I suppose it isn’t too surprising.
I recently had a few of these humanities friends over for a little Much Ado About Nothing watch party, and our post-watch talk took us in an interesting direction. As people were walking out the door, someone brought up the topic of how utterly weird it is that BYU produces so many couples that consist of liberal women and conservative men. My friends seemed to consider this type of relationship to be regrettable.
I found the conversation very odd and only didn’t pitch in my thoughts then because it was past midnight and I haven’t consistently stayed up past 10:30 since December (barring things like spontaneous camping trips and unexpectedly complicated drives to neighboring states).
Since that conversation, though, I’ve enjoyed pondering the topic a little more.
You may have guessed by this point, and if you know Luke at all, there’s a good chance you can tell that my husband is a republican.
A republican!*
*Luke here — despite the fact that it adds nothing to the narrative, I thought I’d interject that I am not a republican but in fact a registered libertarian. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
There was definitely a time in my life when I considered myself too afraid of republican men who weren’t directly related to me to imagine marrying one, but that probably gradually changed during my time at BYU. It’s a little hard to avoid republican men completely, and, as with most large groups of people, they’re a lot less scary when you know more than two (and those two are the most outspoken and intentionally controversial people in your high school/seminary class).
I’m guessing that my female, liberal, and perhaps more timid friends feel similarly about republicans to how I felt in high school, and so I’m guessing that, because they’ve met Luke and consider him to be a pretty friendly, pretty harmless guy, he must be at least somewhat in line with their political beliefs.
And if you’ve met Luke, you probably know that he really isn’t a scary guy.
I mean, just look at him.
I bring up our political differences because I honestly think that disagreeing with someone I trust and value the opinion of so much has been helpful for me, despite the potential for serious contention over pretty important issues.
I’m not someone who easily disagrees with people, but sometimes Luke just says things that are so remarkably in conflict with something I’ve always taken for granted as agreed upon by all reasonable people, and I feel the need to say something. After hearing him explain his thought process though, I understand him and a lot of other people a lot better. Even if I still disagree, I can see my worldview expanding beyond what my school peers all believed to be the default understanding of good people and gain a little more empathy for those whom I never let myself listen to as an adolescent.
And so, the next time the discussion turns to the incomprehensibility of politically mismatched relationships before the clock has struck twelve and I’m ready to be a pumpkin already, I’ll probably throw in my two cents.
I’m grateful for Luke, for the way he sees the world, and for the love he has in his heart for so many people, even if those things sometimes manifest themselves in ways that I disagree with. I like to think that our country would be a happier place if we all listened to each other a little bit more and with a little more desire to make a relationship work motivating our words and actions.
I also know that many of the people reading this, being my family, are probably politically right-leaning as well. I hope you know that I’m not writing this to make fun of republicans and that I’m not scared of you either. I’m maybe writing it a little to make fun of Luke, but I love him most of all. Mostly I’m writing it to express gratitude about the influence that a diversity of opinions plays in my life and, I think, in the progression of our country.
I’m grateful for all of you, especially in our differences of opinion, and I love you too.
Until next month,
Sophie
Senior Contributor to The Famlet Monthly