Montpelier, Idaho--Round Two

We moved back to Montpelier in the late summer of 1990, and I became a teacher.  Fortunately, we could take up residency in the basement of my mother's home--a cozy albeit sometimes tricky arrangement.  I was used to my children; my mother was not.  But we made it work.  She provided untold emotional support to me for which I am eternally grateful.  My life was in disarray.  I was regrouping.  I was creating a fallback plan--nothing to sneeze at.  

One of the first things we did was buy Taggart a bicycle.  One of the next things we did was begin a major mouth reconstruction for Shelly.  The first step was a palette expander which I had to turn each night with a little device.   From there she went into braces.  We also bought a little red Ford Festiva from my new friend, Russ Peterson.  

The superintendent did some shuffling in the school system and created a position for me as the district elementary media specialist.  Can we just all genuflect in front of that job?  It provided the necessary funding to finance our lives as well as a huge fulfilling distraction from my woes.  The school children were my complete therapy.  For three years I read them stories, wiped their noses, pulled a few teeth, and generally absorbed myself in the pure world of children.  By day I was an animated storyteller.  By night I was Mom.  By dark night I was in a pretty bad place.  But fortunately the dawn came each day, and in time my world righted itself.

We made a life for ourselves in Montpelier following the divorce in May.  That fall we bought a little house, got a guestbook, and in the spring we added a dog.  I also began taking classes at Idaho State University in Pocatello towards a formal teaching certificate.  We were making it...  The kids made friends and did well in school.  Moving out helped us achieve some independence.  The Everyone had  his own own room.  Taggart got a paper route.  We bought an inexpensive piano, and Saint Kim volunteered to give Shelly piano lessons at no cost.  There I told her secret.  Statue of limitations has expired on that, Kim.  I also began to earn some side money making appliqued sweatshirts--a skill I had honed in New Jersey.  I began keeping books for Pine Creek Ski Area, so the kids and I were given passes to ski.  The Jacobsens helped get everyone outfitted.  We did that every winter for the next six years.  We befriended Janet and Russ Peterson and spent nearly every Sunday night just walking into their house without knocking and sharing their popcorn.  More healing.  Russ gave me a stock tip one Saturday morning:  Buy some Ford stock.  I doubled my money in six months.  We also started an investment club a few years later.

I was now a divorcee--a highly uncomfortable status for me.  I was embarrassed and completely saddened by it deeply.  My grief was almost crippling.  Where once I had felt elect, I now felt completely alone--semi-abandoned by God.  That pendulum had swung into a pretty dark place for a while.  It took me about four years to completely come out of it.  I remember the weight of it all which fell like a guillotine blade the second consciousness arrived in the morning.  I contemplated the future.  How would I afford to send missionaries out?  How would I ever afford to educate my kids?  Heavies.  But little by little I came out of it.  

At about the same time I was reassigned to the high school to teach English.  I grieved leaving my media job.  I had loved it sooooo much.  But the high school job was a blessing in disguise.  I just didn't know that yet. I jumped in with both feet and spent about 20 plus hours a week outside of the regular 40.  It was all consuming.  But I found that I had the temperment and skills to pull it off quite well.  Glay Homer became one of the best friends I'd ever had.  Bruce, Patrick, Steve, and then Tricia all became family to me.  My healing was nearly complete.  Except for some minor relapses, I was ready to join the human race again.  I let my creativity bust loose.  I was enjoying it too--the literature and the writing.  I was loving it.  

I had some car challenges.  Coming home from I.S.U. one night a deer jumped out and landed smack on the hood of the Festiva and totalled it. Cheryl Belnap and I limped back to Soda Springs, and Bruce came and got us.  The fry sauce on the the dash didn't even spill, but the car was NO more. My mother came to the rescue and sold me her Thunderbird.  A couple of years later, Taggart totalled that a few weeks into his driving license. He was driving into some early morning sun and hit a parked truck.  Thomas flew up into the front, but he only had some scratches.  Tricia and Taggart escaped with nothing.   Merritts sold us a big old tank of a Park Avenue.  It had a series of issues which the men at school helped me work through.  Everyone was so kind and helpful.  I'm sure they must have silently groaned every time I came through the office door.

On the day of Taggart's accident we had begun to hold auditions for "On the Bethlehem Road", a three-stake Christmas pageant, written by some local talent and performed every seven years.  I had been called by my stake president to direct it.  It was a gargantuan all-absorbing undertaking.  I dedicated the majority of my waking hours to it for the next four months.  It turned out to be an incredible adventure, and we were ALL blessed immeasurably--so many miracles touched so many lives.  I remember thinking during one of the lower moments when the days just weren't long enough, "If I had a husband he wouldn't have allowed them to call me to this!"  But in retrospect so much healing occurred.  I surrounded myself with very very capable people.  We all worked together so well.  Misty McOmbie, Robin Homer, Tricia Albright, Lynne Etcheverry, and of course, Glen and Annell Williamson.  And we got Matt out of the deal too!

The kids were all growing and developing into decent human beings.  We filled our home with as many friends as wanted to come.  We had slumber parties and birthday parties.  Derby had puppies.  I finished my studies at I.S.U.  The paycheck came in each month and EVEN throughout the summer!!!  What a killer deal is that?  I taught gospel doctrine for awhile and then got called to the stake YW presidency working with Ruth Thompson whom I dearly loved.  Shelly and I attended a couple of girls camps together.  The boys got caught up in scouting, and some great men guided them through that.  They have some high adventure stories to tell for the rest of their lives.  Thomas was the first to juggle for five minutes, so I bought him a unicycle.  Taggart got to spend a summer in North Carolina with the Taggarts.  Shelly worked in Lagoon and stayed with Nancy and Doug.  Everyone was on the move all the time!

This was all interrupted in a major way when my mother died at the end of the school year in 1996.  I limped through that.  It was so so hard.  I grieved for so long.  Derby passed away too.  And good friend Lana moved away to Arizona.  Then in the Fall, Opie came from Jakarta, Indonesia, to stay in Paris and ended up finishing out her American experience at our house.  WE LOVED HER. She was so so wonderful in every way.  She came to DC a few years ago, and she and Shelly got to spend some time together at Shelly's home.  I hope to visit her some day.  She is my daughter, and I am her mom.

Then Shelly left for an exchange in Japan.  Taggart and I went with a large group of students and leaders to London and Paris for two weeks.  He tried to buy some obscene little gorillas.  One day he was lost ALL day in Paris!  But we found him. Thomas took over the paper route, and Tag got a job stocking shelves at Broulim's until he lost that. I loaned him the money for a little Ford Ranger he thought he needed.  We had a tragedy in the valley and went to funerals EVERY day for a whole week.  Another exchange student from Japan, Mie, came for a few months.  She was pleasant to be around and seemed to enjoy her experience.

Taggart and Mie both graduated.  I took another student trip to Europe--my second.  That was also the summer I traveled to Japan and Beijing to meet Jerry Hadd.  Shelly came home and headed to make her fortune in Jackson.  She took a bundle of hard-earned cash and headed off to Utah State for a semester. And then everything changed.

(Shelly's U.S.U. friends bike around Bear Lake on
Mother's Day Weekend)

(engagement picture on the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu--
New Year's Eve 1997)

(bridal shower with friends)

(from my blog, April 2013)


I've been keeping a guestbook since 1991 when my kids and I bought a little A-frame house, moved in, got a dog, and hunkered down for the next eight years.  That book filled up, we got another etc. Last week headstone salesman/good friend Scott wrote the last comment in our 5th book.  Replacing a guestbook isn't as easy as one would hope.  They're very very challenging to find-- white wedding ones being dominant.  Our last book has a moose, a wood duck, a fish, pine cones and an Adirondack chair on the cover.  Outstanding as far as guestbooks go--top in its class!  I found it in a gift shop of a restaurant on Lake Superior in Minnesota.  I should have purchased two.

I curl up in bed with these guestbooks sometimes.  They make great reading and infuse one with nostalgia.  Several languages appear, some addresses and emails, art, jokes, recipes, and even titles of books or dvd's that have been borrowed.  Some people just sign their names.  Others write epistles.  A few just parrot back what the person ahead of them wrote.  Some signatures are illegible.  The next time we're all together, I think we'd better do some deciphering.

These books chronicle exchange students, wedding dinners, slumber parties, book clubs, knitting groups, baby and bridal showers, home evenings, class visits of my students, investment clubs (both inceptions and founder's days), family visits, fundraisers, missionary farewells and homecomings, Eagle Scout parties, graduation parties, birthday parties, cooking demonstrations, Chinese New Year celebrations, BINGO, Old Movie Club, new Beagle puppy baby  llama and  newborn alpaca visits, Halloween donuts visits, moving away farewells, moving in welcomes, visits from church people, strangers passing through who came to dinner, guests who stayed overnight or for multiple months, students who brought college roommates or fiancés or new babies to introduce, relatives in town for a funeral, friends who came to wallpaper or paint or start a furnace, guests using our NJ home as base for NYC visits, missionary meals, llama and alpaca shearing events--in other words, lives lived.

One small guest recorded losing a tooth at our house that day.  One guest was traveling through on horseback from Colorado.  He stayed for a week, cutting wood, making fabulous omelettes, and filling our dinner table with such stories. Another guest proclaims she's "Going out to see the world!" At last report from her mom, Marti is living in Italy, so I guess she is! Eight senior citizen cross America bikers that I met in a camp by our home came for dinner.  They wrote:  "Thanks for stopping to inquire about our trip.  It was so nice to meet your son and friends."  "I loved your bread, my Bosch 'sister'!"  "Marilyn, I don't know how to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to see God's children being kind to wayward travelers."  Oh, but that was MY pleasure, Bud.  I have addresses for a few of those bikers from Corvallis, OR.  We're going to Oregon this summer.  What if...?

One of my favorite entries was made in August of 1997 by one Jerry Hadd: "Sure beats Wyoming and Western Nebraska.  Great dinner and marvelous company.  It gets better every day!"

At the moment we're freefalling with no replacement guestbook to break our fall.  I'm tempted to lock all the doors and turn out all the lights until I can once again offer a guest a place to record a date, a signature, and a comment.  Paco always tells people that if you don't sign the book we won't let you come back.  I always deny that. Have I chased people down the sidewalk to their car waving the guestbook?  Well...maybe once or twice.  What good hostess wouldn't?