My mom is a woman with many stories, however she is not one to give them up easily. Throughout my life, she has dropped tidbits of information that revealed pieces of her life, however I had never truly been able to collect the whole picture. Preparing for this interview, my goal was to pry deeper into her life and put together the entire story, focusing on her childhood and her young adulthood. This was my opportunity to sit down with her and finally be able to understand the events in her life that have shaped her into the person she is today.

It was late at night when I sat down on the couch with my Mom for this interview, and we were both nervous. Before we started our conversation, I hovered over her, worrying about how this would go. However, my panic quickly faded away once we began to talk. We ended up getting lost in our chatting, and we were able to flow back and forth in an easy going manner. She opened up about some of her favorite memories from childhood, and talked about the experience of growing up in a small, predominantly Mormon town. I learned about her early friendships, some of which have continued on to this day, and about her transition into adulthood. After this interview, I can confidently say that I am much closer to piecing together her whole story, and have learned a great deal about her.

Q – Where and when were you born?

A – Provo Utah, August 13th, 1973.

Q – Who were your best friends and what were they like?

A – One of my best friends was Willow Mahana Nelson. And we, she was a lot of fun. She had a little farm by her house and we learned to ride horses together. She was probably my first friend.

Q – When did you meet her?

A – We can’t decide if we were 3 or 4 years old. I think we were either, probably 4.

Q – Did your parents know each other?

A – Yeah our parents knew each other, and we both remembered that I had to go to kindergarten before she got to, even though we were only 6 months apart. So we were sad that I had to go to school. So she was a year behind me, but we were still pretty much the same age.

Q – Do you have any favorite childhood memories of you and Willow?

A – Probably just her mom teaching us to ride horses. She got a veil of hay out and sat it down and had rope licorice, like reins. And then showed us how to use the reins with the rope licorice. She showed us kinda how to ride her pony, Chief. And then just let us loose to ride horses. Bareback, in their pastures. We used to gallop Chief, and he would stop abruptly and put his head down and we would roll off.  We didn’t get hurt that badly, but we thought it was funny.

Q – What were your parents like?

A – Uhm, my dad worked a lot so he wasn’t around. My mom was a stay at home mom. And she was really sweet, and kind, and wonderful.

Q – What’s your favorite memory with your mom, from when you were a kid?

A – I just remember driving around with her a lot in the car. And uhm, I’d go to the grocery store with her. And just kind of tagged along with her, just like being around her.

A – One memory I have is she’d take us to bear lake. Every summer she’d take us to bear lake and we would go up there and we would stay in camp and that was always a lot of fun.

Q – What was your relationship with your siblings like?

A – I’m the youngest of five, and I had a sister pass away before I was born, my sister Christine. Died when she was a year old. And, so I, there was four years between me and my brother. And so my oldest sister Cathy, there was about ten or eleven years between us, so I don’t really know her that well. And Colleen… Cathy and Colleen moved out when I was about the ages of 8 and 10.  So I don’t really know them a whole lot, I don’t remember them that well. But they were, we were pretty rebellious because we were raised Mormon. My brother Phillip and I were really close, we used to go do stuff together, we used to tag along with him and his friends, just follow him around. Play flag football, and we’d kick the can with all the neighbors and we’d play hide and go seek. He was a lot of fun when he was young.

Q – Do you have any favorite memories from school?

A – I remember we had a tunnel going under the busy street. I went to Timpanogas elementary. There was a tunnel that went underneath it and we thought that was the coolest thing ever. It had an entrance and then it tunneled under the road and then came back up. And I kissed the first boy under there, named Nathan Stevans. That was pretty funny. I remember going to the swimming pool during the summer time. We’d have to walk there. And it was an outdoor pool. It was a lot of fun. We had to walk everywhere. High school? I was friends with everybody. I remember, I had, I was friends with Aaron MIldenstein, he was in my math class. And some of the guys would be mean to him so he would walk with me to math class and then he would help me. So it was an advanced math class and he was really good at it.

Q – Do you have any favorite teachers from school?

A – Oh gosh. I don’t remember any of the teachers. There was one that helped us do ski club. My friend Trisha Jensen and I started Ski club cause they didn’t have it in high school but they had it in junior high. So we started it in high school. Trisha was the president and I was the Vice President. We’d go straight after school, we’d bring our stuff to school. Then get on the bus and go up there. I think in high school it might’ve been on Friday nights. And we go up and jump off the chairlifts, into the powder. We were pretty wild. It was fun. I had a favorite teacher but I can’t remember his name. He helped us get that going so we could have ski club every week. And miss school. Trisha and I got to miss school to create the club, and then do to banners, and we’d get out sometimes early. Some of the classes, we’d say “Oh we have to go do this for ski club!”

Q – What was life like after graduation?

A –  Well I took a gap year and worked in a fish canary in Alaska.

Q – How long did you do that for, a full year?

A – A full year.

Q – What did you do?

A – Oh it was horrible.

(Laughter)

A – It was fun, I worked, so I started out in the canary. Like guts, and fish, and stinky. And then there was the, a different section that was run by the Japanese. That was all the row, like the expensive caviar and row. And they went around and picked certain, maybe cute girls, to work in the fish house. The row house. And I got picked to do that with my friend Heidi Lindgrin. And so that was a much better job, cause it was less hours, wasn’t as stinky, and it wasn’t as hard. So we did that for the summer. That was fun.

A – And then the sun never went down. So it was weird, you’d get off work at like 8 o clock at night but it still felt like it was 4 o clock in the afternoon.

Q – Yeah, so how was living in Alaska?

A –  It was cool, it was really pretty. It was cool during the day, you know during the summer but when the winter came, and it was dark all day long,

Q – Did you not like it then?

A – You know,  I was so young, I was seventeen-eighteen, it kind of didn’t affect me. I just went and hung out with my friends, we just went and did whatever. But we worked long, long hours too.

Q – Did you all work together then? Were you friends with people who all worked there?

A – So I went up with my brother and his friends, and then some of my other friends, Michelle Johnson and Heidi Lindgreen were up there, unbeknownst to me when I got up there. And we ran into each other, we hung out, then I stayed for the winter and everyone else left. So then I made new friends, I just went to a different canary. The first canary I went to was in Alaska, the second canary on the illusion islands, on king cove island, and we did crab there. Crab season. And that was, I worked in the shipping department. So they’d, crab boats would come in and they’d unload the crab and they’d, uhm, cook them, flash cook them, and then they’d put them in their big containers and we’d stock them.

Q – Where did you go after the canary?

A – When I was there I realized that manual labor sucks, and is really hard, and I didn’t want to do that. I was like I need to go home and get an education. So then I took the money I earned, went back and started school. And started accounting.  First I went to Utah Valley State college. That’s where I have my associates degree from. And then I started to work, and I thought, oh I need a bachelors degree. So that’s when I went, that’s when I transferred up to the University of Utah and took my associates degree, and then I went to the University of Utah and got my bachelors degree. But I worked, full time and went to school. So I did school part time.

Q –  Where did you work while going through school?

A – Many places. The one that I hated the worst was a sewing factory. Cause it was just hard labor. It was kinda just when I got back and I was trying to figure out what to do. And I got that, and it sucked, because I didn’t have any experience doing anything. And then I got a job at sears catalog, answering phones. I actually liked that one a lot. I was there a couple years. Then I transferred to their insurance department, and I gotta work in the back and listen to phone calls, and record them.

Q- What do you think about my brother going to the same college?

A- Freaking amazing

A– I really like it. I didn’t, I didn’t really care. But it’s really fun, now to like go back and visit him and see the campus. It’s gotten bigger, but there’s still a lot that’s similar. Like going to the library, it’s in the same place, the student area, they’ve expanded it. Like to buy books and stuff. Uhm, a lot of it’s similar. But just then expanded. A lot of the main buildings are the same.