Utah Valley Culture Shock

My family lives fro about ten years in a suburb of Washington, DC. When we first moved back here, my five-year-old daughter wanted to know a couple of things: First, she wanted to know why the mountains were following us. In Maryland, landmarks were landmarks, and they stayed put; here, wherever you went, there was that big old Y, staring at you again. Then, when we went to the University Mall, she clung to me rather tightly and asked--demanded--to know where all the people were. "All over?" I said. "No," she said anxiously, "where are all the people?" I didn't get it. The place was as crowded as usual. "What are you talking about, Honey?" I asked. "Everybody in here is white," she said. This from a kid who is not only white but dang near albino. Her point was well taken, though; she'd never seen this many exclusively pale palefaces in one place at one time--it was the first time that if she'd gotten lost, I might not have been able to spot her in less than one second.

My kids have that white-blond hair that is so common tothe big happy gene pool that is Utah Mormondom. Scandinavian-descended, boasting ancestors that crossed the North Sea in open longships in winter, you'd think they'd be tough as Vikings, or at least could handle the cold, but it turns out that the blondness (camouflage for snowy landscapes?) is the only trait that survived of the Norse heritage. Well, that and a fondness for sacking, pillaging, and eating band food.

You have to understand, though, that we are not a culturally homogenized family. In factm we have a mixed marriage: Danish and Swedish. My Swedish grandmother, whose maiden name was Peterson, was thrilled when she heard I was engaged to a fellow patronymic, and said, when she met him for the first time, not "How are you?" or "Hello," but, "You DO spell it with an 'o,' don't you?" He reluctantly confessed that no, his ancestry was Danish, and he spelled it with an 'e.' After that, Grandma could never remember who this strange person was.

The first time we attended church after living in the east,  my husband sat n a priesthood meeting where the lesson was on diversity. No really. Having come from a congregation where prayers were regularly said in languages spoken only by the person praying, he looked around for evidence of diversity. At first all he saw were standard-issue balding white guys with suits and ties. As the lesson continued, though, talking about looking for commonalities with those who are different, talking about finding the good in the unique, and celebrating differences, he began to get into the spirit of the thing, and sure enough: diversity, right there! Some of their ties were blue, and some of them were yellow.