I met Mark in mid-February of 1998, at the close of my year as an Au Pair. Those intense, early days of our dating took place in a heavenly, northern California landscape, 70 degrees with white blossoms on every tree. I honestly did not think I would ever see him again when we parted. Our lives were headed completely different directions. In March of that year I left to go back to Sweden for 5 months, after which I had my sights on BYU - to which I had just been accepted. Mark was due to begin his great, brand new job for
Pella Windows in San Francisco a few days after I left. With the globe trotter life style that I led back then, it was not the first time I had met an incredible person only to part ways forever. Or so I thought.
Mark was a bit different, though. And perhaps
I was different this time. I had joined the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints some 7 months before we met, and Mark too had been baptized even more recently, and we were fiercely converted (still are), uncompromising in our new life style. It really was a miracle that we did meet, an incredible answer to Mark's prayer (not mine, for I had something different in mind, back then). But that is not my story to tell. You will have to pressure Mark for those details, and they are rich enough to make one heck of a movie.
We met at church in the family ward I attended. He delayed calling until Tuesday morning (smooth). He was new in town, I offered to show him around (he seemed a bit lost). I wore my lime green striped pants. After that night we spent almost
all our time together. I nannied full-time and the parents of the girls I watched immediately adored Mark and didn't mind him hanging out at the house, and his job was not due to begin for another few weeks. Not only did Mark and I share similar conversion experiences - it was easy to bond over the fact that Mark had a love for Swedish people, culture and language.
He called almost weekly after I returned to Sweden, and in the fall when I went to BYU (aka Mormon Meat Market), Mark quit his job in San Francisco and moved to Orem, Utah so he could use his Master's Degree to pound nails for $10 an hour in an economy where it's hard to get a decent job quickly unless you are related to someone. He was frighteningly blunt as to the reason for this crazy move. "I knew if I wanted to have any kind of chance at marrying you, I had to move quickly." Well, it worked. Just not immediately. It sort of backfired at first, as I felt
slightly stalked, and I needed to explore the vast dating opportunities at BYU first. But we were married June 19, 1999 after I spent a term at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.
These ten years have left us lots of stories to tell. I think I will do a few blog posts in their honor in the coming month. About how Mark painted houses in San Francisco bay, how we moved from California to Oklahoma, packing all our belongings in a Toyota pick-up truck and a 1971 VW van, and about the many remodels and construction projects gone wrong before they went right... Many of these stories are humbling, funny in retrospect, because much of our marriage has been spent to some degree of 'poverty' and crisis management. But as this year has unraveled, revealing the amount of debt many Americans are in, I realize that it was our die-hard pay-cash attitude led us (me) to wonder how the rest of the world could afford such fancy cars, expensive houses etc, while we were living hand to mouth? Now I know many of them could not afford it. Ten years later and all we have is a small mortgage on a large house, one that is less than what some people owe on their cars.
I realize that much of life is hard and finding and choosing who to spend it with is the most crucial decision of a lifetime. Because relationships that last will be tested in the most turbulent waters. I knew this, having watched my parents who have a fantastic marriage. But they struggled through hard economic times, less than sunny times, building a house together while raising a family. I know that the example of my mother helped me get through the re-plumbing of Mark's and my house, for example, when we had no running water for a week. We carried water from the neighbor to flush the toilet. It did not really ruffle my feathers, even though I had a toddler and was pregnant at the time. I had watched my mother pulling all our household water from the neighbor's barn on a child's snow sled, daily, while we added on to our house and our well water was unusable until we drilled a new one. Let me add, for the benefit of the American reader, that this is
NOT typical Scandinavian behavior in this day and age. I am thankful for the perspective of delayed gratification and patience with situations in general, and one another in particular, that Mark and I share.
Though I sometimes mourn the decision to live so far from my family, I have never regretted marrying Mark - a feeling validated by something our dear friend Rolf in Sweden said. "But surely there are guys like Mark in Sweden, at least in the church," I tried one time during a visit to their house when Mark was not present (considering the awesome husbands and fathers that are found in the Church generally). But to this I got an emphatic, "No! The guy you caught is one in a million." And Rolf is right, of course.
I will end for now with a short list of certain statistics:
- 10 years- 4 kids (ages 7, 5, 2 and 0)
- 1 dog
- 5 residences
- 2 college degrees
- 2 complete house remodels
- 1 house addition (5 rooms)
- 2 bouts of unemployment
- 0 car payments
- Sweden trips: 10 Victoria, 4 Mark, 5 Isak, 4 Elina, 2 Anja
Elina helps
Taken today with the phone because the camera was not within reach. Julia is a month now, and looks a lot like Elina at this age - skinny and bald (exact same hair color too - what little there is). She's adding some height as well. Our new laundry room has this awesome, wide slop sink that we have used SO much this summer in giving Anja quick baths and cleaning wounded knees, dirty feet etc, besides spot treating clothes (ser du galltvålen i hörnet, mamma, i den blåa tvålasken?). Turns out it holds the infant tub remarkably well, too.
