Do Not Remember Me as a Keeper of Secrets

For my last road trip of the season, I decided to take a slightly familiar road. I have long since run out of unique ways to reach the Mississippi River from my home. The default road has been and always will be familiar at this point. I can feel the complacency of Autumn slide up next to me and my yearning for difference starting to wane. I guess that is to be expected, but I still resent it.

I start my ride south and west along a now memorized road. I stop and take some photos of the remnants of the passage of a tornado earlier in the year; the restaurant that stood here now a memory. I curse my memory for not remembering to bring earplugs to quiet the roar of air in my ears. I stopped at a hardware store to pick up some.

Farther south I stop on the interstate bridge and take a picture of the canal underneath. That was the canal I biked earlier this year, putting an end to a 5-year desire to traverse its length. I go by the ditch I fell into the year previous on my trip along the length of the Illinois River, the source of a well read blog post of mine. I quickly turn onto a road that travels through Bradford. It holds some unique memories. On one of the family's trips to Nauvoo, we stopped to let Hayden play in a playground there. For some reason, it has burned itself into my memory and I feel compelled to visit it on occasion. This road is also unique in that it sports one of the few tree-covered stretches of road in Illinois. It also holds some unique abandoned buildings and some amusingly named rivers. I pass the church where the police have a speed trap and I continue my journey towards Nauvoo. I stop briefly at a road along the bluff where Hayden and I coasted down to the valley, hitting 70 mph from a stop at the top of the bluff.

I go to Nauvoo with some bittersweet memories. Tracy and I have tried to spend at least some time there every year of our time in Illinois. We had anniversaries and camping trips with the kids. I watched the Temple site go from a hole in the ground to a new temple. I spent a few weekends as a tour guide during the open house and Tracy and I had the opportunity to go through as Patrons once. That becomes hard to do once you have young children. Mostly we came to camp at the state park there once we became parents. When I arrived, I made my obligatory trip through the state park as it had changed slightly from earlier trips. I pulled the bike into the parking structure and changed into my street shoes. I took a trip around the temple, taking pictures along the way. I then headed up the street for my real goal, my present to myself, ice cream from Grandpa John's. I know I've eaten here before but I can't recall ever eating ice cream. I ordered a raspberry shake and vowed to send a photo to George in our continuing saga of shake pics. Don't ask. Another persistent memory I have of Nauvoo is when I traveled here once with my parents and my dad ordered a beer, Coors, from a restaurant that no longer is in town. He was told that he was on the wrong side of the river for that as Coors is only found on the West side of the Mississippi. Even in a town on the river, I felt the other side was still prohibitively far away. Funny how some things stick with you.

As I sit on a bench eating my shake, a treat that is getting rare in my post-diabetes life, I contemplate my last camping trip here. I was in the middle of one of the most challenging times of my life. My faith was slipping away because of the studies I made of church history. I had determined that it wasn't intellectually honest of me to avoid all the negative histories of my faith. These were histories written by faithful members but I discounted them because they didn't fit the way I wanted to view the church. I had known some of this for a very long time, but I never let the implications sink in. I didn't let the truth of it all to register because of what I used the church for. I had known that Joseph Smith was polygamous. I had known that he lied to Emma and the Church about it. I had read a decade earlier the text of The Nauvoo Expositor, the paper that Joseph destroyed and eventually led to his death, and found no untruth in it. Still, I didn't let it register. Only recently did I study about his coersion of families and women as young as 14 to marry him. If you were a female and served as a nanny or foster-daughter in his home, there was a good chance a sexual relationship would occur. I couldn't help but read Section 132 and its treatment of women as reward as something more and more foreign and unwilling to accept. I knew that if what was documented by faithful members at the time was happening to me, I would have Joseph arrested. It was an inescapable conclusion for me.

I had read about the origin of the temple and Joseph's connection to Masonry. I had read about the origin of the endowment and it's connection to Blue Lodge Masonry. Much I had already known but it didn't fit what I needed, what I had desired from the church, so it didn't register. Even now, the subtle untruths of the reconstructed city of Nauvoo grated on me. The avoidance of calling some of the buildings after their purpose irritated me. The Seventies Hall was a Masonic Temple. Joseph had tried unsuccessfully to get a master lodge in Nauvoo and so the endowment was established in the church's temple.

The unjust persecution of the church became something a bit more understandable. There was disenfrachisement of the native population and having a militia in Nauvoo as large as the standing army of the entire US was something that would worry me too. No, it wouldn't incite me to be a mob member but I also understand human nature a bit more than I used to.

I remember on that trip looking over to Tracy at some point and saying "Do you know all that went on here?" I don't recall a response, but it became so difficult for me to be there, I didn't forsee many trips to this place in the future.

So we weathered the storm that was our marriage for a year or so. We are now at a better place and I can believe in the person I've become. I'm sitting outside the temple completely comfortable with that arrangement. I'm saying goodbye. I don't know if I'll be by this way again. I don't need to be by here again. Aside from memories, this place has no hold on me any longer. I grieve a bit. This place loomed large in my life for some time. Now, it is a place on my travels through life.

After a short stop in Ft. Madison where I enjoy some quiet time by the river and watch trains crossing the bridge, I head home again. Life goes on, and so must I.

*Title of this post is taken from an adaptation from a line of the poem Movement Song by Audre Lorde, for no reason in particular.