Fall Break

Last Friday we were up well before the crack of dawn—it felt, given the hour, like the crack of doom—and on our way to Hartford International Airport with the longsuffering Brady Pope who, allowing his status as our friend and former home teacher to be unblushingly exploited, dropped us off for our 6 a.m. flight to Las Vegas by way of Chicago.

For we were going home for the law school’s fall break—first to Lia’s, then to mine. We were in St. George from Friday (10/16) to Tuesday (10/20), and in Provo from Tuesday (10/20) to Saturday (10/24). This was our first trip back to Utah since Christmas 2007, and it was certainly our best since coming East—none of the snow and cold and illness, nor the frenzied burst of feasts and festivities, of a visit at Christmastime.

The unqualified nadir of the trip was the wild and merciless decision on the part of my sisters and (one of) Lia’s to undergo family pictures. The Suttner clan opted for an amateurish affair, with pictures snapped informally by the inestimable Jeff George; my sisters irrationally went professional, and we all suffered long and intensely as a result. For the Suttner pictures, see Caci and Trevor’s blog. Note that the unaccountable extra child in the back of the truck is the product of Caci’s photo-shop virtuosity, and not a ferocious alien clone of little Jace.

Pictures aside, the trip was wonderful. We went to the temple together in both St. George and Provo. Three times in St. George we drove up in the hills to watch the sun rise on the red cliffs. We went to Chari’s state quarterfinal soccer game. We met up with Beau at his school for lunch. We ran wild over the sand dunes of Snow Canyon (Eli’s cries of anguish—there was, after all, sand in her shoes—pierced the skies and made the canyon rumble). And we generally enjoyed being with family in the city where we wed. The girls, of course, ran riot with their aunts and uncles. Katharine charmed her Uncle Davy out of his reason in less than five minutes.

On the way from St. George to Provo we stopped in Cedar City to see Dan and Rosalyn in their new haunts and at their new pad. Dan and Rosalyn graciously fed us dinner, while Andrew (3) urbanely showed us about the house. "Our house is kind of funny," he archly explained. "We have one door in the front, one door in the back, and one in the kitchen!" When I asked where the basement was, he responded with a grand sweep of the hand, "It's right her under the floor!" Eli took a fancy to Andrew's "Little Einsteins" book and asked him to bring it up to Provo with him. Andrew thought hard for a minute. "Okay," he concluded, "I'll try to remember to do that." He did remember.

We surprised my mom in Provo. She didn’t know we were coming—an amazing fact: the proverbial cat somehow remained in its assigned bag, my father-in-law’s foreknowledge of the planned surprise notwithstanding. On Wednesday I represented Yale at the BYU prelaw fair (I made my hair look haggard, stood on the table, and, pounding a drum with a prodigious club, cried, “Stay away from law school while you still can!!!”).

On Wednesday evening my parents hosted Lia’s sisters, Caci, Jini, and Kinsi—the first with her husband, the last with her boyfriend, and the second with her nobody. After dinner we played games in the basement—we meaning Lia, myself, Caci, Trevor, Kinsi, Jeff, and Jini: the cumulative volume of four of David Suttner’s daughters under one roof proved too much for my dad, who fled to the garage and his beloved rocks, and for my mom, who retired to her room to compose her nerves against the dread hour of the BYU-TCU game (in the dire event her nerves would need such composition).

When it came time to play “Time’s Up,” Jini recruited a friend—really more of an acquaintance—from the swanky ranks of the Econ Club presidency. Caci and Trevor, mistaking this poor wretch for someone in whom Jini might have an interest, persecuted Jini and her partner mercilessly with jibe after jibe of playground raillery (Caci did stop short, but only just short, of chanting, “Dan and Jini Sitting in a Tree”).

Thursday morning we went to visit Madison Sowell, my mission president and Dante teacher who recently retired from BYU. The Sowell home is far too nice—by several orders of magnitude—for our children to frolic safely there. But we had a rich visit for forty-five minutes or so before Lia called that the girls were in “destruct-o mode” and we needed to depart post-haste. President Sowell gave me a signed and dedicated copy of Carl Friedrich’s Man and His Government. Friedrich was a Harvard political scientist and major figure in the drafting of the postwar West German constitution. As a graduate student, President Sowell lived in Friedrich’s building and kept on eye on the ailing philosopher, who knew him as “Adson” rather than “Madison.” I hold the book as the treasured legacy of a beloved teacher and spiritual mentor.

Thursday evening we met up with Jordan and Alison Johnsen and Stu and Suzy Matheson at a pizzeria in Salt Lake, followed by further revelry at Stu and Suzy’s posh basement apartment. This was a sweet reunion with dear, dear mission comrades and their wives.

Friday morning I met with my undergraduate mentor John Tanner, and we had lunch with our Joseph Smith Papers supervisors, Joe and Kay Darowski. Julia and Eli didn't quite remember the Darowskis, but the provision of a pair of hot dogs swiftly erased any initial diffidence. The girls left the lunch just as devotedly admiring the Darowskis as their parents. Long live the JSPP.

Friday evening we took family pictures with the Collings clan. It was all simply too wonderful for words.

Afterward we had dinner and, with pictures out of the way, got down to the serious business of having fun. My mom was especially thrilled, I think, to have her ten grandchildren under one roof. They streaked around the house like so many unstable electrons. When things quieted down we played games with my mom and my oldest sister—oldest by far—, Rosalyn.

Saturday morning we drove up to Taylorsville and spent the morning with my brother Jared, his wife Mitcee, their kids, and their kids’ many toys. It was a really nice end to our trip. Then, in that special irony of the Mormon Diaspora, we left home once again to return home once more. On both fronts, it is good to be home.