Posted by:
scmd
(
)
Date: February 08, 2015 11:52PM
My TBM mom comes from pioneer stock and from a semi-prominent LDS family. She was ill-equipped to deal with a passel of small children, and we all would have been in a world of trouble had she not beem given a sizable trust fund that allowed for the hiring of house and childcare help. As the children got older, she was better able to cope with us. (It would have been nice for her if all of us could have been born at about the age of ten.) Because she had the practical assistance she needed and could get away when absolutely necessary, she stayed sane as far as we could tell. she never quite fit in with the other faculty wives either at bYU or at bYU-Hawaii. Now she's a wonderful grandmother on her own terms and a good mother to her adult children. She's technically TBM, I suppose, but she thinks for herself and doesn't always keep her mouth shut. Because she stays out of the media and doesn't host any controversial websites, the powers that be ignore her, thinking she'll die soon enough. What they don't seem to be considering is that longevity and mental clarity to a very old age run in her family.
My dad is the more TBM of the two, though he's not without his own mind, either. He, too, is from pioneer stock, but his ancestors were worker bees rather than head honchos. Marrying my mom, with some family connections, might have helped him a bit in his employment, but for the most part he worked for everything he ever got. He had to toe the party line for quite awhile, as he worked for BYU and in various capacities for the CES. He's been a stake president and a mission president. He seems tired of high-profile callings, and he's seventy-two now, so the church is not making too many demands, although they've asked my parents to serve a senior mission, which my parents turned down. My parents are getting out of much church responsibility by dividing their time between homes in CA and Utah. They're blaming my mom's seasonal affective disorder, but I think they like the freedom of each ward assuming that they're at the other ward on a given Sunday when they're not in church. My father was the more hands-on little kid person when we were growing up, which made up a bit for my mom's lack of engagement in the very early years.
Both parents were disappointed when I came home from my mission and immediately inactivated myself to the degree that I could while remaining at BYU. I had enough credits that I didn't want to switch universities and lose any. When I proposed to my non-member wife in public, which my mother knew in advance was happening, my mom cried hysterically until two of my sisters told her to shut the hell up and pull herself together or she'd have a daughter-in-law who would hate her forever. My mom now adores my wife.