Another Stereotype Bites the Dust

I've met a lot of people in my life and most of them are interesting. Recently I met a woman slightly younger than I am who studied classical Greek in university. She leads hikes and does gigs singing and playing her guitar. She has cut several CD's. She's a good storyteller and knows the history of the American South West.  She is also the widow of a polygamist.  Her husband was married to six other women at the time of his death.

We never talked about this aspect of her life.  She didn't advertise it nor did she go out of her way to disguise it.  I found out rather by accident when she mentioned a time-lapse video of a flower blooming  she had posted on YouTube.  I looked it up, watched it and discovered that she had made other videos so I started to look at those. One of them dealt with the life  of her family,  husband, sister-wives and children.

I was quite surprised.  I guess what I know about polygamy comes from news reports about Bountiful BC and from reading accounts of members of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints sect who have left the world once headed by Warren Jeffs. From those reports I got the idea that the women were  oppressed and poorly educated. Clearly this wasn't the case with the woman I met.  In fact, she and three of her sister-wives were all roommates in university.  One became a lawyer and another a real estate agent.  Their husband encouraged his wives to be independent. For a time, he was a member of the FLDS and then left with his wives and children to form his own settlement in Utah. This information gave me a different context in which to situate some of her comments and stories.

What surprised me most was that I met her at all.  I thought I had about as much chance of meeting the wife of a polygamist as I had of getting an audience with the Queen of England. Meeting her and hearing her stories gave me a window into a different kind of life, one I never really thought about.  Every person I meet has something to teach me if I take the time to listen.