The Polygamist's Daughter by Anna LeBaron & Anna LeBaron

Author:Anna LeBaron & Anna LeBaron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, RELIGION / Christian Life / Family
ISBN: 9781496417589
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2017-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

That first Christmas celebration was memorable for other reasons, too. We actually had money to buy real presents for each other; we had saved from the money we earned at the warehouse, helping the sister-wives, and outside babysitting jobs. All of us siblings planned and schemed, both together and separately, about all the things we wanted to buy each other. I specifically remember all of us girls pooling our money to buy Beverly’s son, Sean, a navy blue velour robe that we had seen in an ad from Palais Royal. I think it cost twenty-nine dollars on sale. With so many of us living under the same roof, the mound of presents under the tree grew higher and wider during the weeks before Christmas.

I also got to witness true love in action. My eighteen-year-old sister Kathleen was deeply in love with her boyfriend, Jim, who lived in Denver. He was not a member of our church, which made Mom and others in leadership determined to make Kathleen break it off. Despite everyone’s attempts to separate them, Kathleen had secretly kept in touch with him by paying her friends to let her use their family’s phone to call him. Ever since we’d moved to Houston, she and Jim had written faithfully to each other. If Kathleen knew she wouldn’t be home in time to pick up the mail before Mom, she asked me to check it, in case there was a letter from Jim. If there was, I picked it out of the pile and left the rest for Mom to retrieve. I obliged because I thought the idea of their love was so romantic.

I was impressed when Kathleen boldly invited Jim to join our family for Christmas. Even more unbelievable? Jim accepted the invitation. He arrived two days before Christmas to stay for a long weekend. Mom didn’t want him to come—at all. Mom and the other sister-wives were afraid of Kathleen and Jim being together. They didn’t want anyone from the outside to come in because they feared losing control of us kids and our closed family. She and Kathleen argued about it, but my sister stood her ground.

Seeing the two of them together impressed on me what young love looked like. Other than Rena’s recent marriage, the other marriages in our family had all been arranged. So getting to witness the affection and closeness of two young people truly in love broadened my outlook. Their relationship, along with Rena and John’s, gave me hope that one day I might have the same thing.

By Christmas Eve, all of the presents were wrapped and the pile took up more than half of the large room! We girls thoroughly enjoyed the look on Sean’s face when he opened his gift. He tried on the robe immediately and raved about how comfortable it was. In fact, he wore it all morning as he played carols on the piano, and for most of the rest of the day.

Amid the chaos of opening presents, I watched Jim quietly give Kathleen her Christmas gift, a silver necklace with an eagle pendant.

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