The Clarks

Nature's first green is gold, 


Her hardest hue to hold. 


Her early leaf's a flower; 


But only so an hour. 


Then leaf subsides to leaf. 


So Eden sank to grief, 


So dawn goes down to day. 


Nothing gold can stay.

            Robert Frost

Katie and I met in The Garrens, a comedy troupe that performed sketches and improvisations weekly on BYU campus. We had been friends for just over a year, when in the fall of 1994 we started dating. By complete serendipity, we had two classes together, and though we didn’t know it at the time, one of the classes included two individuals that would become two of our favorite people ever. Chris Clark and Lisa Valentine. Now affectionately referred to as…The Clarks.

College is this huge-normous social experience, with perpetual conversations and story telling and dialogue and interchanges and meeting new people and having shared experiences… It’s this continually open channel of communication. It is its own world, sincerely. And in that inimitable little world, the four of us quickly became good, good friends.

From the fall of 1994 to the summer of 1995 the four of us seemed to be walking very similar paths. Katie and I started dating about the same time as Chris and Lisa. Things started to get more serious about the same time. All of us had similar emotions, similar interests, similar points of reference. But it was more than that. There was something very effortless about our friendships. And born out of all this was this level of trust and safety and acceptance. And genuine happiness for each other. And the hilarity. My gosh, the hilarity. So entertaining and amusing were our conversations (to us), that it became burdensome to find a break in the banter and return to our regularly scheduled reality. It usually came to an end when somebody would say something like, “Well, I’m already late for class, I better go” or “I’ve got to get up in three hours to take a test” or “I’m going to the bathroom, please don’t follow me.” And even the occasional, “You guys, seriously, shut up, ER is starting.”

We ate countless meals together, acted in several plays together, watched thousands of movies together, and created many inside jokes together. And then we all got married. (Not all four of us to each other.) Chris and Lisa were married in June of 1995, and Katie and I in August of the same summer.

And when the Craigs returned from their honeymoon just in time to start fall semester at BYU, who were the first people to see them? Yes, the Clarks. And the bonding continued.

The next two years meant more inside jokes, more eating out, more dialogues, and more similar reference points, as we started talking about having babies and having lives after college. Lisa performed in The Garrens with us. We’d all go to Chris’ plays. Sundays always seemed to be our days to either go for walks around Provo, or to eat dinner, take communal naps on the Clarks Futon, and wake up in time to watch The Simpsons.

In the summer of 1997 we all four simultaneously finished BYU. (Please note I did not say all of us graduated at this time. But we were done with school in that we would no longer be attending classes, this we were sure of.)  The Clarks weren’t sure what exactly they were going to do, but they were going to do it in Provo. And the Craigs were equally unsure about what they were going to do…but they had the impression it was going to be outside of Utah.

It was while sitting in the Clarks living room one night, discussing these very issues, that I noticed a wooden dish rack, painted green, that Lisa had made and hung over their kitchen sink. On it, she had written out the words to the Robert Frost poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay. I had read the poem a number of times before, but it became very personal and bittersweet to me in that moment.

In the eternal sense of things, of course, those things that are the most golden do stay. Our marriages, our families, eternal truths, testimonies, our relationships with others.  But in this mortal life, there are these golden moments, these golden periods of time. And they don’t stay.  

Your kids won’t always be able to crawl up on your lap and pull your arms around them. Your parents won’t always be able to jump in a car and drive to your house when you have something exciting happening. You won’t always have a newborn to walk to sleep. You won’t always be on a small Hawaiian island as a newlywed. And you won’t always be able to live next door to some of your most cherished friends.

When the Clarks visited us this weekend, all those feelings came back. How heartbreaking it is to know that we can’t walk over to the Clarks to borrow a cup of “Please tell me you TiVo-ed The Office last night because we totally missed it.” And how comforting it is to know that while it is no longer the mid-90s, our friendship is just as gold as it was, and shows no signs of ever fading. 

*Editor's Note:

I had written this tribute to our friends, the Clarks, some months back. I didn’t intend to post it as a blog, but rather, keep it as a personal note. But the timing is such that I wanted to pay tribute to them.

Chris’ sister, Stephanie, and her husband, Christian were in a plane crash on Saturday, August 16^th. You may have heard this story, as it has been widely told in the blogworld, and the focus of some attention in the news as well.

Stephanie and Christian are alive, and at this point, have shown enough improvement that they are not even considered trauma patients anymore. However, they have extensive burns and will remain in induced comas for months, while they heal.

If you are interested in reading the story you can follow it on the blog of Chris and Stephanie’s sister, Courtney. She keeps it up to date. She is also, in my opinion, a wonderful writer.

So are Chris and Lisa, if you would like to read their blogs. I find them some of the funniest people I know, and regarding this specific experience; I believe they are approaching it with an incredible balance of love, patience, and faith.

If you read their blogs, you will find links to ways you can help – donations, auctions, prayers, fasting. It is overwhelming the support this family is receiving. 

Skydiving: The Only Way to Die

Having recently reminisced about the 20-year anniversary of moving to Hawaii, I have recalled yet another memory of that same era. The memory of the day my father tried to kill me.

It was on the plane ride from Los Angeles to Honolulu when Dad announced that when we landed in Hawaii, he had arranged for some of us to go skydiving.

sky·div·ing [skahy-dahy-ving] – noun – an ancient Hawaiian word, which, when properly translated, means “fine, go ahead and kill yourself.”

Dad had been trained in Vietnam to skydive, but was never given the opportunity to perform. Skydiving probably being the only joy that Vietnam offered my dad, and then having that opportunity taken from him, I think the idea had been festering in his heart and soul for far too many years, and now he had definitely gone bananas. (Or coconuts—pick your poison.) I wasn't too excited about dad killing himself, but to involve me seemed completely unnecessary.

It soon become painfully obvious, however, that this was not my decision to be made. On our third day on Oahu Dad informed me that we were heading for our death sentence. Dad felt we had no time for silly “lessons” or “instructions” or “legal steps” that are required before skydiving, so he had made a Plan B. How he researched this place is a mystery to me, but he found his Plan B.

On the north side of Oahu, in a spacious, grassy field, stands a tiny hut, where Bubba and Buddy hang out all day, drinking beer and admiring the makeshift airplane they must have stolen from some unsuspecting cropduster. And they sit there waiting with a small hope that fools like us will pull up and give them enough money for more beer.

So, we fools pull up, throw some money at them, and they take us inside their tiny hut and explain that we’ll be jumping “tandem” – meaning that one of them will be attached to me by a thin cord that is tied to our waists. Apparently this is the loophole by which they can legally send us up without any instruction. As if any of this sounds legal.

Dad went up and jumped first, while we all stayed on good ole’ terra firma and watched. As Dad floated gently to the ground, I was ecstatic that I would not be left to provide for my family at the tender age of seventeen. It was my turn to go, so I made the announcement that I was going to now board the plane, unless someone wanted to just put a bullet in my head now and save some cash. No takers. I climbed aboard the plane, looked at the man whose hands I was putting my life in, and choked back a tear. There was one seat on the plane, and thankfully, it belonged to the pilot. I took a seat on the wood floor, sat up against the side of the plane, and wondered if any of my friends in California would come all the way to Hawaii for my funeral, and what my mom would serve them. I hoped she would serve her delicious homemade bread. I should have said something before getting on the plane. But it was too late now.

The plane itself didn't seem all that sturdy, and as a paying customer, I was of the opinion that I should be the one wearing the parachute, instead of the “professional” jumping with me. I looked at the other men on the plane and noticed I was the youngest person jumping. I wondered why the rest of them had decided to do this. Surely their dads were not forcing them into it.

We reached the two-mile point, and the instructor slid open the door to reveal nothing but blue. I couldn't see the ground, the ocean – nothing. And I was seated, most unfortunately, right by the door. The two other individuals on the plane decided not to jump. I now had the power of the crowd on my side. I could have easily been turned, were it not for the words of the instructor “Whether you jump or not, you still pay.” The fear of confronting my father and telling him, “Hey, thanks for the $100 plane ride, Pop, but I much, much prefer it here on the ground” overpowered my fear of jumping, and I made the suddenly easy decision to jump.

“Climb out the door and hang onto the wing,” the guide instructed me.

“Pass,” I commented.

“Climb out, and I’ll climb out after you.”

I got down on my hands and knees and inched my way out the door, holding on to the wing. I clung to that wing so tightly; I think a few of my fingernails are still attached. At this point, I decided that wearing a mere tank top and 1988-length shorts was not the smartest wardrobe selection for leaving the earth’s atmosphere. I was freezing. The instructor came out, straddled over me and snapped the belt to attach us at the waist.

“Let go of the wing, you’ll swing between my legs.”

“What are my other options?”

I let go and swung between his legs, looking again at the big blue space beneath me. I sat there swinging, not knowing when he was going to jump, when I was going to fall, or when I was going to wet my pants. Actually, I had a pretty good idea of when I was going to wet my pants.

Suddenly, I was falling. I felt my stomach fall all the way back to the earth and wait for me there, under a palm tree. Somewhere around the falling rate of 90 mph my adrenaline kicked in, and I started getting really excited. I felt immortal, like I had somehow, in this single act, conquered life. Life, I was fairly sure, would never mess with me again.

After several moments of falling at over 100 mph, the parachute opened and the overpowering noise from the wind disappeared. I was floating, peacefully, and I was in no hurry to land. All my senses were alive and they were having a “come as you are” party. I was the host. They loved me.

We got closer to the ground and I heard the instructor yell “Uh-oh.” This is never a welcomed announcement, but even less so when you are in such a vulnerable position.

“Uh-oh…start running – there’s no wind.”

“Huh?”

“There’s no wind to slow us down – we need wind to slow us down – we’re going to have to hit the ground running.”

Apparently there needs to be a strong wind to slow down the chute and land you gently on the ground. And we had no such wind. I hadn't taken physics, but I didn't see how “pre-running” was going to somehow store up a reserve of “running power” so that when you hit the ground you were actually ahead of the game because, hey, you were already running. But who was I to argue with Mr. Professional Skydiving Dude Man? I started Fred Flinstone-ing in the air. It made no difference. I hit the ground, landed on my face, and slid fifteen feet or so, with an instructor on my back.

We got up off the ground, shook off the dirt and the willies that come with sliding 15 feet with a grown man on top of you, and … hugged. It’s what dudes do, don’t you know. I then declared that I needed a drink, and the instructor informed me there was a hose behind the shed. I walked behind the shed to also find something the instructor failed to mention – a large crop of your average, garden-variety marijuana, flourishing in the tropical Hawaiian weather. That was very reassuring, I can tell you. My instructor may or may not have been stoned, whilst I put my young life in his dude-ish hands.

So, nice try, Dad. But I’m still here.

Molokai Style

One night after dinner, circa 1986, my dad sat us all down and, unassisted by alcohol or peyote, told us that we were going to sell our house, buy a boat, and sail around the world. He had seven children, a flourishing CPA business, and apparently, a low tolerance for living out his days in Middle America. I was 15 and not impressed with this plan. If I could go back in time, I would smack my 15-year old self, because of course it would be incredible to live a life of globetrotting; but at the time, I was not thrilled with the dangers of the high seas. Sharks, pirates, and a lack of church dances left a bad taste in my mouth.

Fortunately, I had a plan. I suggested that before we do anything irrational we should probably rent the Harrison Ford movie, Mosquito Coast, wherein an eccentric and dogmatic inventor sells his house and takes his family to Central America – by boat – to build an ice factory in the middle of the jungle. He goes completely crazy. At least…I think he does. The movie was kind of slow, so most of us kids left my parents watching it while we went into the other room and watched a rerun episode of Who’s the Boss?, starring a pre-skanky Alyssa Milano and small screen sensation Tony Danza. Riveting.

The plan must have worked, and Dad must have recognized the dangers of going crazy at sea (as well as the dangers of assuming that all Harrison Ford movies are sensational—K-19, I’m looking in your direction), because he never brought up the plan again and simultaneously stopped insisting we answered him with an “Ai, ai, Captain” whenever he asked us to do something. Who’s the boss now?

But he was still restless.

Fast-forward to 1988. 

We had another Family Meeting. This time, Dad explained that we would be selling our home and leaving all things glorious in Southern California for the opportunity to move to a tiny Hawaiian island by the name of Molokai. While there were decidedly fewer opportunities to be attacked by sharks or pirates while on land (equal opportunities for church dances), I wasn't convinced this was a great alternative. However there were zero movies starring Harrison Ford about a man going crazy in Hawaii. Unless you count the original screenplay for Temple of Doom, which was supposed to take place in Hawaii instead of India. Which also, I just made that up.

I had no way to thwart my father’s plan.

Dad had some friends who were trying to set up a golf resort of sorts on Molokai, but none of them lived there. They collectively decided somebody involved should be there to have a “presence” on Molokai while the project was in production. Dad was involved in an accounting sort of a way (but really more of an emotional “take this midlife crisis and cram it” kind of a way), and he quickly volunteered to buy a hammock and check out of the Rat Race. So in August of 1988, we moved from Westlake, California to Kualapu’u, (pronounced, no joke, koala-poo-oo), Molokai, Hawaii. An island only six miles wide and thirty miles long.

When you tell people you lived on Molokai, you get one of two responses. “Never heard of it” or “ Isn't that where the lepers are?” You are correct on both accounts. For the most part, even people who live on another Hawaiian island raise their eyebrows and are most surprised to hear that there are people alive and well on Molokai. In short, you will not find Molokai in your Fabulous Hawaiian Vacation brochure. Unless you were hoping to see the lepers; but even then, there isn't much left of them. (Rim shot.)

August 1988 was the month before I started my senior year in high school. Do you know how hard it is to move out of the state just before your senior year in high school? Not nearly as difficult as it is to find people who will join your Pity Party, since you are moving to Hawaii and they are not.

I spent my last summer in California soaking in all that was available. The usual stuff (you can find my tribute to my California upbringing by clicking here), plus a concerted effort to date more, as my mom warned me that one really didn’t “date” on Molokai. No movie theaters, no restaurant chains, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe. As primitive as can be.

To get us acclimated to Island Life, Dad planned for us to spend the first couple of weeks island-hopping. First, a tour of Oahu, then over to Molokai for a brief introduction to our new home, then over to Maui for a few days, then back to Molokai to officially begin our slower-paced lifestyle.

To pass the time on our flight from L.A. to Honolulu, I did a great deal of blubbering. I blubbered over the girl I was leaving in California; I blubbered over missing the suburb where I grew up; I blubbered over being an entire ocean away from In-N-Out; I blubbered over the in-flight movie (Three Men & a Baby, an emotional rollercoaster of love, laughter, and life lessons); and I blubbered over the hits-of-the-day tunes on my Walkman, including Cheap Trick’s The Flame, Guns n’ Roses Sweet Child of Mine, and Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy. (I've never wanted to crotch-kick somebody more. Honestly, Bobby. You should worry; because if we ever meet, I am going to slap the “happy” right out of you.)

We spent a few days on Oahu doing all the touristy stuff we could manage to cram into our mini-stop – including the Polynesian Cultural Center, cliff jumping at Waimea Bay, walking Waikiki, flying in a glider plane, and touring the Dole Pineapple Plantation. It sounds like we were sitting in the lap of luxury, yes? But you forget. My dad had just taken a leave of absence from employment, he had seven children, and all these fun activities cost a ridiculous amount of money. How do you fund such an outing? Well, you do away with hotels and three square meals a day. That’s how.

We spent those first four days on Oahu in a minivan, my friend. We subsisted on bread and fresh fruit, purchased each morning. We spent the bulk of each day swimming at the beach, then driving around in wet swim suits, with wet towels (because nothing ever completely dries in humid places such as the Islands). By day four, I can’t describe the odious funk that permeated that minivan. Mildew-saturated towels and clothing, combined with old fruit rinds, combined with teenage body odor.  (Man, I missed church dances.) 

The nights were the worst, really. Dad would drive around until it got late enough that the police stopped patrolling the beaches.  Then he’d pull over and some of us would throw our towels out onto the sand and sleep, and some of the more fortunate souls called dibs on the seats in the van. It was a catch-22. Van seats weren't comfortable, but you ran the risk of being eaten alive by mosquitoes outside. I was so impressed when Dad handed that minivan back into Alamo Rental with a straight face.

Eventually we flew over to Molokai. One of my dad’s friends, Jim, owned a home on the west end of the island. Thank goodness he did, because when we landed, we found out that the home my parents had arranged to rent was up and rented or sold to some locals who most likely knew the owner and tipped the scales in their favor with some fermented poi. So we did not have a home to move in to. We stayed at Jim’s for those few days, since he was almost never on the island, and nobody was renting his home from him at the moment.

After a couple of days of frequenting Molokai beaches and driving around the island, we left for Maui to kill some time, and because other people were renting Jim’s place for the week. On Maui we parasailed, whale watched, swam…and wondered where we were going to live once we went back to Molokai.

We got back to Molokai with about a week and half until school started. My parents were on the prowl for a home to rent while we set up a refugee camp at the home of the Relief Society President. We  quickly became too familiar with her, her quiet and balding, egg-shaped husband (who happened to be a cop), and their nine-year-old daughter. It smacked of Reality TV, but it hadn’t been invented yet.  My parents slept in the spare bedroom, and the rest of us slept on the floor, spread out around the house. We were grateful to have a roof over our heads, but I wasn’t so grateful to hear the horror stories from our host, the cop, about how my brother and I were going to get the living snot beat out of us by the locals because we were A) Haole (caucasion), and B) Not from Molokai.

Here I have listed a few of my first impressions about Molokai:

• It smells fantastic.
• The dirt is red.
• There are no stoplights.
• There are barely any stop signs.
• Nobody pays attention to the stop signs.
• Everyone leaves their keys in the car ignition, because everybody knows which car belongs to whom. (Population: 6,000 folks.) Cars are never stolen…where would you take them?
• Everyone picks up hitchhikers (same reason as above).
• The east end of the island is lush, with lagoons and an almost jungle-like feel; and the winding roads to get there make the trip longer than anywhere else you could go on the island. The west end is almost desert-like until you reach the coast, where the white-sand beaches are amazing. The north end holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest sea cliffs – and at the bottom is a peninsula, where the lepers live. The south end of the island has the wharf, groves of palm trees, and some restaurants and residential areas.

My first couple of weeks on the island were unusually eventful. Especially considering there was nothing to do. We were fortunate to be LDS, because we made friends at Church almost immediately, and this led to not being pulverized by anybody else for the rest of the time we lived there, since they were like my personal PR agents, assuring everybody else I meant no harm.

Of course I wasn't so sure about these guys at first. One of my first nights there, some of our new “friends” took my brother and I for a ride into town. They convinced us to participate in some kind of juvenile behavior in the local cemetery (a very superstitious place, Molokai), and then follow them down an abandoned alleyway. It was late, dark, and foreign to me. I thought this was it; I was about to lose the original bone structure of my face. One of the guys stepped up to a door and knocked. “This must be where they put dead Haole bodies,” I thought to myself. Then, some scrawny, high-pitched gentleman stepped out and…took our order for famous Molokai Hot Bread. Baked fresh nightly. It was delicious, and, like, a million times better than a punch to the face.

My parents finally found a “home” for us to rent during the 9 months it took to have a new 2-story house built. It was down on the wharf, no more than 1,000 square feet, with bare concrete floors, an occasional door (but not many), and, as an added bonus, on Friday and Saturday nights, we were bequeathed with the melodious tunes of a local, drunk Hawaiian band, playing at one of the restaurants just down the beach from us. To be fair, we did have our very own coconut tree in the backyard. We also had a menagerie of island creatures that were pleased to see we had a “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Worries, Bradda” policy in our home. Rats, centipedes…whatever felt like stopping by seemed to have unlimited access and felt quite comfortable in our living room and shower. It was one of the most surreal times in my young life.

Some things that made life easier:

• I got to visit another island almost once a month, for some school, church, or family-related activity.
• The local grocery store owner had Haagen-Dazs ice cream imported weekly just for our family.
• The first video store on the island opened the same week we moved there. Coincidence? Not hardly.
• I made friends that were more accepting than I had ever anticipated, and they kept me sane.
• The beach, the beach, the beach.

I knew I was becoming localized when:

• I no longer made fun of the high school mascot: The Farmers.
• I ate sticky rice, poi, Portuguese sausage, and raw squid at 6:00 a.m. at Seminary Breakfast Parties.
• I left my keys in my car ignition at all times.
• I didn't always wear shoes to school.
• Some of the local superstitions started giving me the heebie-jeebies.

I was only there the one year – my senior year of high school. After that I left for college and my parents later moved to Lake Tahoe while I was on my LDS mission. For the record, Dad never did go crazy. Also the golf resort was never built. But Molokai will always a hold a special place in my soul. And Harrison Ford will always have a string of blockbuster hits to distract us from Hollywood Homicide.