Four years

Four years ago I returned from graduate school in Kentucky, happy to be back in the Big Sky state and certain of a bright future. It was a great, meandering trip back, with stops in Madison, Wisconsin and Bismark, North Dakota. Driving across the northern great plains in May is beautiful with green grass, blue skies and a lot of bugs.

I arrived home, car loaded down, to my aunt and uncle in town for my cousin's graduation from Montana State. Zack was the last of the three of us cousins, Blake, me and him, to attend MSU. Both Blake and Zack played football for dad; Blake as an All-American Tight End, and Zack as an outstanding center whose career was cut short by bizarre injuries and happenstances. 

The Tuesday after graduation I interviewed for my First Professional Job. On Friday afternoon I took a phone call while at the temporary job at my mom's medical office, in which I was offered my current position. Elated, I hung up the phone, finished my shift, walked down and told my mom the happy news, and went to Target to buy myself a celebration gift. I remember being on the phone with a friend, standing in the card aisle, and listening to a downpour of a spring thunderstorm. 

I couldn't get a hold of my dad all afternoon. My dad is not a phone guy, so I didn't really chalk it up to much. Target purchase in hand, I walked into the kitchen of my parent's home to find my dad leaning against the counter.

CK: "Have you talked to mom?"

Dad: "Yeah... (with a gentle resigned look on his face)"

CK: "I got that job with the City!"

Dad: "That's great kid; I just got fired."

And nothing has really been the same since. My mom came home, clutching the mail she'd picked up on the way in. A thick packet from their retirement investment advisor had arrived. Mom threw it on the table with a "well guess that's trash now."

My sister arrived home an hour behind my mom. In a fate which still makes my heart freeze up, she heard the news about dad being fired from a good friend of hers, whose dad had been MSU's basketball coach until he was fired the previous year. 

"Oh Gretchen, I'm so sorry," said Mikeala.

"For what?" Gretchen asked.

(and this is where I get really, really angry that an institution to which my family gave so much couldn't have the dignity and grace to at least give my dad 24 hours to notify his family before offering a fucking press release just in time for the 5pm news. You stay classy MSU.)

I made margaritas. No one drank them. 

We sat there and stared at each other. Shocked. Hurt. Angry. Upset. Livid. 

And though I try, and it gets a bit easier every year, I still have a hard time moving past those emotions.

Especially knowing that four years later, on May 17, 2011, my parents are still pretty unsettled. 

Knowing that this episode has taken years off of their lives. Added years to the length of time they'll work before being able to retire. Added lines and wrinkles and worry and stress and weight and hurt and scars on their hearts that will probably never really heal. 

I'm proud, or maybe more astonished, that my family has made it through the past four years. It has not been easy; it won't be easy moving forward. But life can't be easy, and if I was to learn that lesson, better at 22 years old than later, right?

Personally, the last four years have been pretty darn amazing for me. Successful job, relationship, marriage, dog, health, career, etc. And I'm grateful to have found a guy willing to take all of that on. It's a lot of baggage; this bitterness towards my alma mater (which happens to be my husband's too). I'm working to let go of it, but damn this bitterness is tough to rinse from my mouth. 

We are alive. We are resilient. We have bounced back. 

And damn if I'm not already looking forward to October 29: the date Idaho State University plays in Bozeman against Montana State. I'm challenging ISU to throw for 500+ yards of passing. 

My TV confessions....

So my dear husband pointed something out a few weeks ago. I'm a smart girl; considering pursuit of a PhD in the next few years. I love PBS, read biographies and history for fun, and watch more documentaries than first-run movies. I also watch shit TV. Real Housewives (I like 'em all, except the Atlanta version. Can't wait for DC); Teen Mom (makes me glad I wasn't cool enough/ attractive enough to have a boyfriend in high school!); and Keeping up with the Kardashians (these girls crack me up. So like my relationship with Gretchen). DJ makes fun of me, and wonders how such an intellectual woman can come home and turn on some show where women with too much time on their hands are bitching about each other.

Dude-- he watches Ice Road Truckers. We're totally even.

But, for funsies, let's cast The Real Housewives of Bozeman (RHoB)*.

First, there is RHoB 1: She's younger. Maybe just moved to Bozeangeles after finishing college. She's got a Subaru, which although it's only 2-3 years old, she never washes so that it looks like she's a major hiker/ biker/ boarder. She's working as a coffee barista while living downtown, charging her lifestyle to her credit card, and trying to catch the eye of the fly fishing guide who comes in every once in a while (and who she's heard is loaded). She's sweet and innocent and slightly overthe top with her efforts to make friends. She has a labrador retriever named Bridger after the Mountain Range she likes to hike in. She doesn't drink beer, but likes to get the girls together for adult beverages at the yuppie bar downtown where she hooks up with a sucession of rich dirtbags.

Then there is RHoB 2: She's younger as well, and actually is a somewhat local girl. She grew up on a 5,000 acre ranch in north-central Montana and knows how to rope, ride, shoot, drink and back up her pickup truck with a trailer attached. She worked her way through school at MSU where she majored in Ag Business and was on the Rodeo team, and has been banned from moving back to the ranch for at least 10 years after college by her parents. She's working for a farm insurance company in town, making a killing and hating every minute of it. She bought her west-Bozeman condo out of a foreclosure and has kept it pretty much undecorated. She's down to earth, gaurded but friendly, sarcastic, and funnier than hell. Her pet; a border collie from the farm who is too old to be a working dog, but is a great companion. Her drink: whiskey. Her love story; the dude she sort of dated in college, but was never serious about, is in town frequently.

RHoB 3: She and her (super hot) husband moved to Bozeman from Denver, in an effort to find a smaller town to raise their 2.5 kids in. She has a masters degree, but is staying home to be a Bozeman mommy instead of finding a job. In the first episode she's debating between upgrading her Subaru to a Toyota Higlander Hybrid or the standard Bozeman Yukon Hybrid. She's also making sure that her kids Johnny and Suzy Bozeman are in the right arts-centered school downtown, even though it means driving them everyday instead of having them walk to the school a few blocks away from their south Bozeman house. She meets RHoB1 at the Ridge Athletic Club, where they're both participating in the 9am (post-school starting) pilates class. She's bendy, she's an organic-food nut, and she and her husband are super athletic. She gets buzzed from two glasses of wine and has a hard time talking dirty to her husband.

RHoB 4: Like RHoB 2, this one has been in Bozeman for a long time. She's divorced, and remarried, and has kids attending Bozeman High. Her son is strugging to make the basketball team, and given her suddenly smaller salary as a real estate agent, she isn't sure that she can continue to afford the personal training sessions that it takes to make him a competitive athlete at BHS. RHoB 4 and her husband are both independently sucessful; he's in a tech industry and relocated to Bozeman from Seattle. They live up Triple Tree, both drive Audis, and go to Mexico for a second (or third? or fourth?) honeymoon in episode one, during which their kids throw a huge party.

RHoB 5: She's the recently divorced one; she and her (now ex) husband had a huge house up in Big Sky, where she returned from a shopping trip to Billings and caught him diddling the kid's nanny. She's out for blood with the divorce, and is hoping to upgrade the husband package with it. She loses her shit when her Caddilac Escalade is reposessed in front of Macy's at the mall (her kid needed socks, she usually doesn't shop there) and has to be rescued by RHoB4, whom she's known since they both moved to Bozeman from Chicago in the 1970's to be ski bunnies. To make ends meet until the alimony rolls in, she's gone back to running the environmental non-profit that she worked for prior to meeting the ex. Her story is all about how she's wheeling and dealing to raise money for the non-profit, as well as eyeing up new husband potentials.

* My casting call for the RHoB is totally fictional and not a representation of anyone I catually know. It's intended in lighthearted fun; mostly poking fun at my knowledge of Real Housewives casting "types".