This is My Life

I was born with two names.  Denise and Cooper.  This would set me up for a life of longing for a middle name.  I was born in December, two weeks early right after my parents had a heated argument and my mother had went for a long walk to cool off.  The fight was over the annual Christmas Tree outing which ALWAYS resulted in an argument between my parents.  Which tree to choose?  A Spruce?  A Pine?  A skinny one?  A full one?  These are the questions that my mother would agonize over while my father huffed and puffed from one roadside Christmas tree lot to another.  Eventually, the volcano would blow it's top, as it ALWAYS did. 

 Here I am, already flashing gang signs, foreshadowing my gangsta future. 

I am the fourth of five siblings.  All of our names begin with the letter D, as does my parents.  Isn't that cute?  From left to right: Danny (although he goes by Dan now, he'll always be Danny to me), Darcie (The blond one), Darren (The sporty one), and me (The crazy one). 

My little sister came along five years later.  Dawn.  We were very close growing up.  She was my little friend and I was so glad not to be the last child. 

Me with Tiger, my first kitty.  I loved animals but I loved cats the best.  Tiger was the most even-tempered cat I would ever have.  He would let me dress him up in doll clothes and haul him around like my baby. 

Kindergarten.  I was extremely shy.  The only person I played with that year was my cousin Taylor, who was a bit of a troublemaker.  This would get my nose sent straight to the power wall for guilt by association.  My first crush was Aaron Chambers. 

Second grade.  I don't know what happened to my first grade picture.  Still shy, but I found I could run faster than a lot of people my age and this gave me some confidence, though at that age I marked it down to my magic running shoes.  I also loved playing kickball and jump rope. 

Third grade.  My favorite teacher of grade school was Mrs. Bair, or was it Bear?  I can't recall.  She was especially attentive to me.  I started ballet lessons that year.  I loved to dance.  I remember one time when I was dancing down the empty hall after a bathroom break.  Mrs. Bair came toward me and said, "You are just as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside."  It's funny the things that people say that stick with you.  It was the first time I ever thought of myself as beautiful. 

Fourth grade.  I had a teacher named Mr. Ashcroft who gave me ulcers.  I was a good student and stayed on task but he would get mad at our class quite often and I always thought I was doing something wrong, or worried I was going to do something wrong.  This is the year my mom told me about girls getting periods.  It freaked me out. 

Fifth grade.  Do you like my office casual?  I refused to go to the maturation program because I was too embarrassed to talk about those sorts of things.  My best friend this year was Sonja Ayala.  She moved to Cornish from California.  We just clicked.  She made me laugh and made me feel less awkward as she was a bit more developed like me.  She was so confident and didn't let anyone push her around.  I really looked up to her. 

Sixth grade.  Disaster struck.  I "became a woman" as my dad so embarrassingly said as he congratulated me the summer before school started.  I was still taller than a lot of my peers and this bothered me a great deal.  My best friends this year were Jill Godfrey and Summer Thornley.  I fell hard for a boy named Dylan.  Dylan and his multi-colored plethora of Girbauds.  I was lucky because I got hand me downs from my rich cousins who lived in Park City.  Otherwise I wouldn't have had a pair of Girbauds to my name.  I had two pair.  One black and one forest green.  Vests were in, as well as Rasta Man necklaces, apparently. 

Seventh grade.  I finally discovered hair gel.  I got braces on.  My best friend this year was Maegan Hansen.  I loved that girl.  She was funny and cute and popular.  If I'm not mistaken I'm wearing the same cool vest in this picture as the year before.  I must have really loved that thing.  This was the first year I was allowed to go to a boy-girl party.  I remember having a crush on Maegan's older brother, Dustin.  One night we played spin the bottle in the back yard and he kissed me on the forehead.  Very brotherly of him.  

 

Eighth grade.  My rebel year.  I decided to wear baggy t-shirts and pants.   My best friend this year was Melissa Barson.  We both developed crushes on some "stoner" boys and were in collusion together as to how best get into the inner circle of this group of people.  Our plan worked.  Jeremiah Esplin never did look my way, but at least I got a front row seat to that long silky Jared Leto-esque hair.  I had my first real kiss with a boy named Michael Garza.  He wasn't too bright, but he was good lookin'. 

Ninth Grade - once again, no picture.  This is the year I became real close with the girls from my hometown.  Most of their last names were Godfrey with a couple of Goodeys and a Barson thrown in for good measure.  We'd have "wear sweats to school" days.  Or "wear black lipstick to school" days.  Or "wear your huge Adidas jacket to school" days.  I had always been friends with them, but this was the year that we hung out together at school as well as in town. 

Tenth grade.  My first year at Sky View.  This year I learned how to drive.  I was out of my comfort zone this year.  I clung to my hometown friends.  We spent a lot of time driving out on the back roads, tanning in the middle of now where on the top of my friend, Jasmine's long yellow car that we called the yellow banana.  She had a habit of getting it stuck in the mud on our outings.  Those were some of my favorite times.  Pushing that car out of a rut.  Rinsing it off at another friend's house so Jazz's dad wouldn't find out we'd been off roading.

 

Pictured above is me and my first date ever.  I had just turned sixteen.  We went to the Christmas Dance.  His name was John and I'm pretty sure I suspected then that he liked boys even then.  But he took me out to eat and when I tried to order the cheapest thing on the menu because prices were like...twelve bucks a plate...gasp! he made me order something better and more expensive, which was really sweet.  We didn't spend much time at the dance and then afterwards drove up to Preston to see the Christmas lights.  No spit was swapped that night or any night after that with him. 

Eleventh grade.  We fell into hanging out with a group of boys from Newton.  No-good boys.  I dated one for three months at which point he stopped calling me and I never heard from him again.  Feeling deeply rejected I started exercising twice a day and really limiting my caloric intake.  By the spring of this year I'd have lost thirty pounds.  That'll show that guy I didn't really care about!  As always my friends were there to see me through it all.  We slept out on Janette's tramp in the summers and giggled our way through the night, falling asleep at dawn and waking mid morning sweating from the sun beating down on the black trampoline. 

My sister, Dawn, continued to be one of my closest friends.  We shared a room.  On Sundays we'd curl up together in the patch of sunlight falling through the window onto the carpet in the living room.  We were great ones for naps.  I'd tell her about boys I liked.  I'd tease her about her boyfriends.  I never worried about being my true self around her.  A friend might not forgive you when you're crabby, but your sister always will. 

Girls camp.  It was always a fest of too much junk food, gossip, wrestling matches and bizarre camp songs around the fire.  This was one of my favorite years.  We laughed so much my abs hurt for days afterwards.  Pictured left top: Jackie Nelson, Amber Pugmire, Me, Jill Godfrey, Melissa Barson and Nettie Godfrey. 

Twelfth grade.  The best year of my life thus far.  There were some boys from Hyde Park that we started to socialize with the summer before our Senior year.  I became enamored of one very outgoing boy.  He made me feel beautiful.  He made me laugh. 

 Melissa Barson, Jill Godfrey and me.  1999. 

My first love was a boy named Jeff.  He listened to my silly dreams and told me he wanted to make them come true.  We had a stormy relationship.  We were either laughing, crying, or fighting.  It was young love.  None of our friends were too keen on us.  We spent more time with each other than them and so we were no fun.  I don't blame them. 

I danced with the Marionettes, a small dance group out of Newton for three years.  I loved dancing and have never felt so exhilarated as when we'd take our places in our formations out on the dance floor to perform our routines in front of an audience. 

 Jill Godfrey, Janette Godfrey, Jasmine Godfrey and me.  Senior Dance 2000. 

 

I've been one of those lucky girls who finds a best friend in their mother.  After high school we'd cook dinner together, watch t.v. together, dance to The Beatles together, and hike over to the Clarkston Market after a blizzard to buy the necessities, like Red Vines and Coke.  I've always loved making my mom laugh.  If I can make her laugh, then it's been a good day. 

Me and my last love.  I met Brigham in the spring of 2002.  He was tall, handsome, and quiet.  There was a calm about him that really attracted me to him.  Like an inner strength I felt I needed.  I was trying to wait for my high school boyfriend who was serving a mission in the Philippines.  Brigham had just got back from his mission to Venezuela.  We had two classes together, one after the other.  He walked me to our second class, and then to the bus afterwards.  This was not a happy time in my life.  Most of my friends had gotten married within a year of graduating from high school.  I couldn't settle on a major and I was deeply lonely.  College was not the liberating experience that it is for some.  I missed the intimacy of high school and the group of kids I had learned with for twelve years.  Brigham asked me out three times before I said yes.  He dated a different girl each weekend and so I felt sure he wouldn't call me again after our first date, but he did and that was that. 

October 4th, 2002.  It rained that morning.  I love the rain and took this as a good sign of things to come.  It cleared up in the afternoon and we were able to get some pretty pictures around the temple.  I remember later that evening as we walked down the hall to our room at the Marriott in Salt Lake City thinking how bizarre it was that I hardly knew this guy who was now my husband.  For the next three months I'd wake up with the same sense of surrealism. 

Me and my dad.  I used to bemoan how strict he was.  Always making us tell them where we were going and who was going to be there and what time we were planning on being back home.  I missed more than a few sleepovers and parties because of this guy.  And only later did I realize how grateful I was for the way they protected and cared about me.  I used to think I was strictly my mother when it came to personality but I've realized as I get older that I get a lot of things from him.  His good memory.  His sense of humor.  His fiery temper.  I love him. 

I've always said I'd rather die than share this picture.  I despised it so much that I made sure that Brig didn't take one of me with Brielle.  But I don't mind it so much now.  It was true to the moment.  If I look tired it's because I had been in labor for thirty hours.  If I look puffy it's because I had was so swollen and well...pregnant.  I can tell you what I was thinking in this picture taken at 12:40 a.m. on November 23, 2005...GET ME A SANDWICH!  I was starving and almost as soon as the cord had been cut I ask for some refreshment of some sort.  The kitchen was closed so they brought me a sandwich.  Best tasting sandwich of my life.  I made sure to give my daughter a middle name, as I had longed for my own middle moniker the entirety of my twenty-four years.  So she became Ava Kathryn. 

One of the most tender moments of my life.  Watching my mother hold my daughter.  Even now I can't fully explain the new feelings of appreciation and love and devotion that filled me up as my darling mother cradled my new baby.  All I can say is that the best I can ever do in this life is to emulate my mother.  She may not think so, but she came as near perfect as any mother can to fully loving unconditionally her children.

 

A bunch of crappy stuff took place between these two pictures.  Good memories, as well as bad were made.  In the end I decided to love my husband for who he was and what we could become together.  I accepted that he loved me, no matter how undeserving I felt of that love.  Steady.  Unwavering.  That inner strength shone through when I needed it.  We had another daughter together - my Brielle.   She too received a middle name.  Caroline.  

Two sisters, born five years apart.  I can only hope they love each other as well as Dawn and I did.  

 

I've found contentment with where I am in life.  I have none of the grand things I dreamed about growing up.  I have something better.  I have people in my life who love me and want the best for me.  I have two girls who challenge me, love me, and teach me every day of my life.  I have love to give to others.   I have a husband who plainly loves me in his own quiet, solid way.  I'm so very, very lucky.