The Hallmark Dilemma

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Daughter #1 and I try to watch a couple of Hallmark movies a week. For her, the advantage is that she can answer the average 100 daily emails she receives and still keep track of the plot. Because it always ends happily, there’s not a lot of complicated story thread to distract her from replying to the thousands of questions she receives about special education, state-wide. For me, the draw is that I can work on a baby quilt or just sit for a couple of hours after a long day of retirement. We are the targets of a good deal of cheerful ridicule by the men in the family who think the Hallmark brand is far inferior to zombies and future apocalypse adventures. However, I am about to provide documented evidence that Hallmark plots aren’t as far-fetched as my men-folk like to think.

When I was a college student, I lived with a couple of dozen different roommates. One of my favorites was a New Mexico girl who taught skiing and rock climbing to supplement her school tuition. She was smart and funny and a dang independent thinker. For the first time in my experience, her comments made Relief Society a lively adventure.

She loved the school sponsored Friday night western dances, but a ticket sometimes stretched her budget, so one night when she was broke, she walked upstairs to the elevated jogging track above the old field house basketball court. She climbed down into the rigging for one of the basketball standards and dropped into the dance without anyone being the wiser. Another night, after a widely attended formal ball on campus, she relocated  a couple of nearby sets of highway flashing barriers so that every student heading home had to go through the circular driveway in front of the home of the university president. She was caught when she tried to return the barriers to their former location the next morning. That little stunt put her on academic probation, but she still graduated near the top of her class.

She wasn’t much for dating. Most men were too dull for her, but then she met Paul, a graduate student in agriculture, who was already making a name for himself in academic circles. By the end of the month and a half a dozen dates later, he had moved his renowned collection of Johnny Cash albums to our apartment—a sure sign of his serious interest. But she rebuffed him and went on a semester abroad instead.

Fast forward a couple of years. By then she had graduated and was gainfully employed teaching at a Montessori school located in northern Idaho.  One night we invited her former boyfriend to dinner at our tiny apartment in Provo along with my husband’s former roommate who was at the time the editor of the BYU’s newspaper, the Daily Universe. We were all teasing Paul, the Johnny Cash lover, that his affection for pigs and cows (he later became a nationally recognized expert of cattle production) was torpedoing his marriage opportunities.

“I can fix that,” said the newspaper editor. “We’ll advertise for a wife.” Paul raised an eyebrow, but I got a piece of paper and a pencil. An hour later we had a dozen criteria including, “Can you identify Tintoretto? Can you say ‘artificial insemination’ without blushing? Do you know what ‘greenware’ is? If so, meet me on the Provo Courthouse steps at noon on December something (I forgot the actual date!). We all had a good laugh at our list, but sure enough, the next day the appeal had a prominent position on the Universe’s ad page.

I couldn’t resist calling my friend Merry in Idaho and reading it to her. She laughed, too, and immediately took a three-day weekend in order to show up in Provo at the prescribed time. The courthouse steps were covered in snow. Merry was the lone respondent. ”You?” Paul said when she pulled back the hood of her jacket. But he was good-natured about our trick and took her to lunch.

Sometime the next semester, my husband and I, plus the newspaper editor who had posted the ad, and two other of our closest friends–married the week before my husband and I–invited Paul and Merry to lunch. “And by the way,” I mentioned, “It’s an engagement party.” Wink. Wink.

We all arrived early to get a window seat. Paul’s vehicle pulled into the parking lot. Like every good Hallmark Christmas movie, it was snowing again. Nobody exited the car. Time passed. The windows fogged up. In the restaurant we waited, and waited, and waited. Maybe ½ hour later, Paul and Merry walked through the front door. He had a trace of lipstick on his cheek, and she was sporting an engagement ring. Problem solved.

During their 40 year marriage, Paul managed two of the largest ranches in America. He and Merry raised cows, pigs, horses, chickens, and kids (nine of them). They loved each other until she unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack. So when my husband mocks my evening TV-watching choices, I take a certain amount of pleasure in reminding him that he’s never seen a Zombie movie come to life, but we both had live-action parts in a genuine Hallmark story. Now who’s entertainment choices are trivial?