Twas Brillig

I, Brillig, was born in Utah to two brilliant and adventurous professors. I’m the youngest of six kids. We always had a home in Utah, but I spent most of my childhood traveling or living abroad. When I was a younger child, most of that traveling was in Europe and the UK. All together, I spent about three years in England. Eventually we bought a house there, in the Lake District. Ahhhhhh, gorgeous. Alas, my parents sold it a while back.

Both of my parents are linguists. My mother speaks Russian, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, German, and Spanish. My father speaks French, Spanish, and Italian. It was very important to them that we never come across as “Ugly Americans” when we traveled. We were always required to learn about the culture, etiquette, history, and language of the countries we were visiting. Languages came naturally to me and over the years I’ve studied about ten intensively, though I only claim to “speak” four—German, Italian, Spanish, and, of course, English. And of THOSE, I’m only really comfortable in English and Spanish these days.
Of us six kids, I was considered the smart one. My parents never said that, but my siblings always did. My parents put me into and pulled me out of all sorts of schools, private and public and even home school occasionally, trying to find the one that would enhance my inner brilliance. They bought me MENSA books and puzzles and watched me thrive with them. I still have some of those, and I still love them. My IQ tests always put me in genius level, which always made me feel weird or guilty or something because I felt that it didn’t really describe me. I was fun and funny and silly and being called “smart” always felt out of place.
In my “older childhood”, we’ll call it, my family went to the Middle East. We were there for a year all together, most of that time in Jerusalem, though, of course, we traveled all over the region (throughout Israel, Jordan, and Egypt). I’ve written about these adventures ad nauseam, from being stuck during the Gulf War to seeing the inner workings of the Hate Cycle to my sneaking across borders with an illegal passport. Or, oh yeah, that time my camel driver kidnapped me. Good times.

My junior year of high school, I met a group of girls who bugged me to death, one of whom was named Kate. They hated me, and I wasn’t exactly fond of them. A year later, they became my very best friends. 12 years later, Kate is still my BFF.

I was always very social. I love people, I love to make friends, I love to hang out. Most of my responsibilities as a kid and teen and even college student fizzled in the wake of my overactive social scene. (I’m still this way. I’d rather chat with blog friends and hang out with my kids than clean the house. And, therefore, my house is a perpetual disaster area.) My parents were NOT social people, and could never understand this side of me. At. All. In fact, I think they found it rather infuriating.
Another contributing factor to my being a great disappointment to my parents, was that I was very into the dramatic arts. I wanted to be an actress. They tried to be supportive but my mom, especially, was not all that pleased. She was always annoyed at how it took away from my other, more important scholastic responsibilities. My Senior year of high school, I was the lead in every play (except one, and yes, that’s a SOS waiting to be written—I think you’ll like it…) and the truth is… well… I wasn’t very good. In fact, you could probably say that I was downright BAD. Still, my drama teacher was desperate enough and I was what he had, so he continued to cast me.

My other passion in high school was music. I spent years in fancy schmancy vocal training. Lyrical voice. Basically, pre-opera. All of my friends were studying a more pop or broadway style, so I was always a bit different and often not invited to sing in their groups or duets or whatever because my voice didn’t fit in. And that was fine with me—I generally hated the music they chose anyway! But I was incredibly passionate about opera (still am) and I wanted to sing. This was something my parents both DID approve of, and so much money and time and effort was spent on this. I taught myself to play the piano (again, very badly) so that I could accompany myself or at least play through music that I wanted to sing. Music always has been and continues to be a huge part of who I am.

In April of my Senior year of high school, I dropped out. I can’t even begin to tell you the shockwaves that that decision caused. Many of you have asked for more information on this bizarre and seemingly out of place event in my life and I promise to write it sometime. I come out looking very bad in this one, though also a bit of a victim of some madness in my household. But I will write it, and explain it as best as I can. haha. Sometime.

Still, BYU (Brigham Young University) had already accepted me, and on full ride scholarship at that, and while I’d never really wanted to go there (it was in my backyard, after all, and both of my parents had been professors there) it was my only choice when I finally decided that I did indeed want to pursue an education.

I was only at BYU for three semesters before they threw me out.

Just months after being thrown out of BYU, I left on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was assigned to the Argentina Buenos Aires North mission (just a coincidence that my parents were in the same country—they were in a far-away province and we didn’t see each other), where I served faithfully and passionately for a year and a half. It was hard. Sometimes it was Mission Impossible. But I loved it, and I cried when my time was up. Those 18 months did so much to help me learn who I was, what I wanted out of life, and that one person can truly make a difference. I learned that people are basically good and that God is a Loving Father. He loves His children, both the “righteous” and the” sinners”. These are things that I thought I already knew, but my time in Argentina accentuated these and many other truths. I’ve witnessed miracles, I’ve seen the power of love, and I will probably never write about these things on my blog. They are too sacred to me to be shared on a forum like this.

After my mission, I spent a few months with my parents in their part of Argentina before we all went back “home” to Utah. I got my high school diploma by going in to an “adult high school” and telling them that I wanted either to take the GED or fulfill a couple of credits or whatever and get my diploma. The kind woman went through my records and took one look at my ACT scores and signed me off for the credits I was missing. Hahahaha. Five minutes later, I walked out—a high school graduate.

So, diploma in hand, I enrolled at Southern Utah University.

It only took them one semester to throw me out.

So, I came “home” and within a couple of weeks I was dating Hubby who was, at the time, my brother’s roommate. We were married that same year.

Our plan was to wait a couple of years and then have a couple of kids. That’s before we knew that I was Super Fertile Woman. Within two months of our wedding, I was pregnant. That baby was miscarried. Two weeks later I was pregnant again, and Princess Fluffy joined our little family. When she was 6 months old, we learned that I was pregnant again. And our little Bubba came roaring into the world nine months later. About a year later, there was another pregnancy and miscarriage. A year later, I was pregnant again, and this time we had our little Scooby. Six months later, I was pregnant with my darling Fuzzles. At that point, I began actively trying to sell my uterus on E-Bay. Seriously. I LOVE my children, and I’m grateful for each one of them. But, I felt so done. Apparently my efforts at not having any more pregnancies didn’t quite work, as we found out this past April that I was pregnant again, and I miscarried again.

So, if you’re keeping track, that’s SEVEN pregnancies in the last six years, and four children ages five and under.

There are all sorts of types of birth control that say that they are 99% effective. Yeah… apparently I’m that other 1%.

And that pretty much brings us up to date! Just a few more things, and then I’ll let you skip to another site. Wait. Hmmmm. Tap-tap-tap. Is anyone still here? Oh! You, in the back, waving and… twitching. Okay. Here’s a little list of things that didn’t fit into my little autobiography yet.

1. I can’t eat red meat. I’m therefore a vegetarian (who sometimes cheats and eats chicken and turkey)

2. I’m a vegetarian who wears leather.

3. I prefer homebirth, and have never had an epidural.

4. I’m a Mormon (you caught that, right?) and extremely devoted to my faith, but I don’t write about it here.

5. I’m also a democrat. This makes me an odd duck indeed in my community.

6. Even when I’m not wearing ANY eye makeup, I LOOK like I’m wearing too much. I have very dark eyebrows and eyelashes and very green eyes. People don’t believe my coloring, and chalk it up to too much makeup.

7. Sometimes I wear too much makeup.

8. I love my kids. They are just about the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
9. I love their dad. He IS the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

10. Brillig isn’t really my real name. My parents were crazy, but not that crazy…

And that, Gentle Readers, concludes our “all about Brillig” section.

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