Ohana Utah

The Fob family--not my wife and children but my parents and siblings--consists, more or less, of five girls and two boys, plus the parents, a stepmother, and several in-laws. Of that group, those of us who live in Utah are known as Ohana Utah (if you don't know what ohana means then you obviously haven't seen Lilo & Stitch).

Ohana Utah began for me back in 1997 when I came to Provo to attend BYU. At the time, Lika (#2 of 7) was living in Provo, having graduated from BYU a few years previous. I being #7 of 7 and there being 14 years between us, Lika and I had not actually grown up together much at all. Lika was very excited for me to live in Provo so that she could feed me and give me rides and buy me things, and, even though I could have done without the constant pressure to go Latin dancing with her, I'll admit that I was not unhappy with the arrangement. From the day I arrived, Lika took good care of me.

In the summer of '98, M (#3 of 7) moved to Provo with her husband, M. Though M is eight years older than me, I had always felt rather close to her just because she is the type of person who, if you know, you feel close to. There's something about her empathetic nature that encourages intimacy. When I decided that rather than go to school fall semester I'd work and leave on my mission as soon as possible (I turned 19 in November), M&M were gracious enough to let me stay with them. I was thinking it would be just a month or two--September and October--but as it turned out the church needed a little more time to ask my therapist if I was mission-ready, so I didn't go into the Missionary Training Center until mid-December. Thankfully for M&M's sake, I spent a month of that time working with my uncle somewhere along the border of Nevada and California.

On my mission, Lika and M competed to see who could send me the most letters and packages. Lika won by a long-shot, sending me letters often two or three times in a week, but M certainly didn't skimp. M&M served as my hub, scanning in my letters home and putting them on the internet for all the family to read (my first blog, I suppose).

When I returned to Utah in January of 2001, Lika and M picked me up from the airport and took me to lunch and M announced that she was pregnant. That summer, Ohana Utah added not only Baby M, but also my brother Svoid (#6 of 7), who moved to Spanish Fork from Wisconsin just so he could be close to us. Svoid is three years older than me, so we were pretty close when we were little--close in the way that brothers who constantly fight but still ride their bikes to the toy store together and have a secret G.I. Joe club are--and we had become friends again during my high school summers when I had gone to visit my dad and brother in Wisconsin. It's been great over the last five years for me to get to know Svoid again as and adult, and to see how much we are able to relate, despite the seemingly different worlds we occupy. Svoid has also joined the ranks of people who spoil me rotten--he is responsible for a good portion of the small appliances and electronic devices I own, including the computer I'm using to write this post, and has taken Foxy and me out for dinner more times than I could possibly count.

When I started dating and then married Foxy J, she was accepted into Ohana Utah without hesitation. She was the first sister-in-law to join the Fob family, and there is quite a gap in ages and interests between her and my sisters (I'm going to get in trouble for that "gap in ages" line, I know), but none of that stopped Lika and M from loving Foxy and treating her like the sixth Fob sister.

Ohana Utah has seen other additions over the years--Lika's husband and his son, and later Lika's son, Svoid's new girlfriend, and of course S-Boogie and Little Dude--and, sadly, we suffered a loss when M's husband was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2002, but through it all we've remained a pretty tight-knit group. We get together fairly frequently for Sunday dinners and holiday barbecues, and we do wacky things--usually spurred on by Lika's wackiness--like dress up to make Valentine's cards to send to the non-Utah ohana, and we trade babysitting (though if we were counting trades, Foxy and I would be in serious debt to all three of my siblings here).

In short, I have grown much closer to my brother and sisters in the last five years then I ever was growing up. Leaving them to move to Seattle pretty much sucks. I'm going to miss my Ohana Utah.

My only hope is that Foxy and I will lead a mass migration, and soon I'll be telling you about Ohana Seattle.