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Award-Winning Essays

Aurelia

Honorable Mention, 2003 Affirmation Writing Contest

Oct. 2003
By Tom Clark

Her name was with me before she was even conceived -- a name that's been with me since I was a child growing up in Rome; a name that has its origins in the ancient Latin word Aura, which means both light and air.

Aurelia is also a name that found its way onto the throne of the Roman Empire by way of Marcus Aurelius, the beloved Philosopher Emperor. One of the five ancient roads leading out of Rome is named Via Aurelia, and it was here on this road that I attended the Notre Dame School for boys in the mid-sixties. The name Aurelia stuck with me -- it was poetic and musical and reminiscent of the happy, carefree days of my youth.

I married for love in the first few days of 1980, and a few weeks later, while my wife and I were sitting in a sacrament meeting in Salt Lake, the name Aurelia came to me in a waking dream as we sat scribbling potential baby names on the program. A year and a half later I brought our precious Aurelia into the world as our midwife, Anne Deneris, stood by my side in a birthing room at the University of Utah Medical Center. Twenty years later in the same hospital, Anne stood by my side again as I brought Aurelia's little son Tristan into the world.

When Aurelia was a year old, her mom and I sold our home in the Avenues and moved to Rome to live, study and work. I wanted my girls to know my other home; the country that had shaped so much of who I was and had given me this other beautiful tongue that had taken up such comfortable residence next to my native English.

Moving back to Rome as a young husband and father awakened a lot of feelings in me that I had been trying to ignore and perhaps even run away from -- not the least of which was my homosexuality. It was here in an isolated villa in the countryside between Rome and Florence that I first began to realize that I was no longer going to be able to continue with Mormonism. It wasn't so much a specific thought as it was a reemergence of happiness and an overwhelming awareness of just how big and beautiful and rich the world was outside of the narrow confines of the religion I'd grown up with.

Far away from Mormonism, I began to discover who I really was. Now more than ever I began to see myself as someone independent and apart from the things I'd been taught as a child. The burden of someone else's belief that I'd carried through my youth and on into a mission in Rome, began to be lifted as I tasted wine for the first time and enjoyed Sundays in the countryside with my girls -- far, far away from anything to do with meetings and rules and obligations. Along with all of this awakening came also the understanding that my homosexuality wasn't going away, no matter how much I might have wanted it to in the past. For the first time ever, I began to make peace with who I was.

Aurelia and her mom took to Italy like Michelangelo to stone. It was a fit that I had hoped for and was thrilled to see happening. While Aurelia was learning her first words in Italian, her mom would join me on occasion for some wine and allow herself to sleep next to me without her garments on once in awhile.

I wasn't pulling on her but rather just letting her see for herself what it felt like to step over to the edge of the cliff and look down. We stood there together in this idyllic setting, both of us free to choose. And while I jumped, she didn't, and the remainder of our years together found us heading in opposite directions where the church was concerned.

After nearly a year in Italy we returned to the States so that I could pursue my photography work in Los Angeles. The chasm that had opened up between us in Rome however, continued to grow wider. I knew that Mormonism wasn't for me, but Aurelia's mom continued to burrow in even deeper. The further I moved away from the church, the harder it was to watch Aurelia be taken in by it all, and I ached at times to be able to rescue her from that which I was now beginning to be so at odds with.

I knew, though, that going to battle with my wife over our daughter's religious upbringing would create nothing but sorrow for all of us. So I stood back and watched silently as the inevitable indoctrination took place. I had held Aurelia in my arms as a baby and given her a name and a blessing. I gave her the name that I'd known in my heart was hers to carry and I blessed her that she would bring light and happiness into the lives of all those she'd come into contact with. The name and the blessing stuck, and now I was beginning to be afraid that Mormonism would too.

When Aurelia was nine, her mom and I divorced, and though we shared joint custody, there was no question that Aurelia would be with her mom in church on Sundays. Little by little I began to hear the sounds of Mormonism coming from my daughter's lips, and I ached inside for what was happening. But I knew I couldn't pull on her, so I continued to mostly keep my silence. At some point in Aurelia's teenage years, I stood back a little and took a good look at this child that I had always been so close to and so in love with. As I did, I realized that standing there before me was an intelligent, compassionate and beautiful girl; one so full of awareness and sensitivity that it would be impossible for anything to ever overshadow her exquisiteness.

I knew that I had to trust that this child of mine would one day awaken as I had and realize what was right for her and what wasn't. I knew in my heart that the day would come when she would discover how big and beautiful and rich the world around her was and that she'd want to be a part of it rather than a spectator to it from within a dark cave. Her name was Aurelia, a name that has its origins in the word for light. I knew that she would one day see the light and that all I had to do was give her the freedom to find it.

When Aurelia was seventeen, I flew her over to spend a few months with me in Rome, where I was working, and it was there that she found what I'd always trusted she'd find when the time was right. Among other things, she found boys. Lots of them: Roman boys, American boys and Romanian boys. Wherever she turned there were suitors, awkwardly climbing one over the top of the other to get to her. I mostly stood on the sidelines watching with bemused delight as my little girl, now a voluptuous young woman, took it all in stride and reveled in this newfound sense of self.

There was no church, no mom and no peers to steer her away from what was happening. There was only dad, who knew that by letting his little girl grow up and find herself, he was giving her the biggest and the best gift he possibly could.

Late one night after dinner and a movie, Aurelia and I took a walk through the part of Rome known as Trastevere, the historic Jewish Ghetto where Romans love to go and stroll into the wee hours of the night. From time to time Aurelia would reach out and take my hand as we walked through the drizzling rain. She was all grown up and had found boys, but she hadn't lost dad in the process. We walked out onto an old bridge that had been straddling the Tiber River for centuries and stopped to look at the soft city lights that were being reflected back up to us from the waters below. Our arms were wrapped loosely around each other and our cheeks pushed softly together. It was without a doubt one of the happiest and most romantic nights of my life.

I don't remember what we talked about much, but I remember how I felt; I knew that Aurelia had found the same lust for life that had always burned so strongly in me. I could feel it in the way she held my hand and I could hear it in her voice as she said, "Oh papa, he kissed me in front of the Roman Forum." The days of worrying about my Aurelia were over. I knew that there would be no turning back for her now. Rome had given her what it had always given me; the sense that the world was so big and so beautiful and so rich that nothing could shroud its reality.

Aurelia returned to Salt Lake City where she was living with her mom and slowly but surely began to take her final steps away from Mormonism. At nineteen she moved in with her boyfriend and called me a few months later to say they were getting married. I never doubted for a second that it was the best thing on earth for her. I had always taught her to follow her heart and had learned to trust her choices when she did.

There will always be those who will question my choices as a father because of the freedom I've allowed Aurelia. There will be those who say that I pulled her away from the teachings of her mother and led her astray by introducing her to a lifestyle that so many condemn. And there will be those who will question the appropriateness of my saying that I'm in love with my daughter.

But none of it really matters to me anymore because I know what it is I share with this beautiful young woman. We share a lust for life that cannot be contained within the narrow confines of a religion. We share an understanding of love that cannot be defined by others. And we share an insatiable need to laugh and have fun and be happy -- all of which wasn't ours as long as we were trying to push our feet into shoes that didn't fit.

I didn't have to drag Aurelia away from Mormonism -- I simply showed her the light and something in her responded. The choice had always been hers to make, and the fact that her choice reflected my own is just one of those crazy, wonderful things that sometimes happens in life.

Aurelia, from the Latin word for light.