When I was very little, October was about cool nights, falling leaves, and the countdown to Halloween. The year I was eight, October exploded, and echoed for years to come.
On the morning of October 15 1985, a man named Steve Christensen picked up a package outside his office and a woman named Kathy Sheets picked one up outside her garage. Neither could have expected that they were holding pipe bombs which would kill them instantly.
At the time, my mom was a reporter for the Deseret News in Salt Lake. My dad, a historian, worked at Weber State University in Ogden. Neither knew Steve or Kathy, though they knew people who did. I'm driving myself crazy trying to piece together that day for them, but....I keep reminding myself not to, just to stay on my part of the story.
The only thing I remember clearly, was the warning--I think from my mom, calling from a loud and chaotic newsroom--that my siblings and I should not pick up or go near any boxes. We heard it again the next day, when another bomb exploded, seriously injuring Mark Hofmann, a dealer in Mormon historical documents.
My memory of the days and weeks later are a blur of news reports, phone calls, and conversations (which sometimes interested me and sometimes didn't) as apparently-normal Mark Hofmann turned out to be the bomber as well as a forger. An energy--an odd mixture of stress and adrenaline--settled in our house and changed things in big and little ways. My mom left her job at the Deseret News to co-author a book about the case and for years wherever she went it seemed someone wanted to ask her about it of tell her about their connection to it.
In little ways, long after the warning was lifted, I remained hesitant to pick up boxes. I also learned to hate the song "My Favorite Things." (While the bombs were not tied up in strings, they were most definitely brown paper packages.) In fact, I learned to hate--or at least dread--pretty much anything to do with the case. And for decades, I had nightmares about Mark Hofmann, even after I learned to decipher those dreams and saw they had nothing to do with him. He was just the face my unconscious slapped on anything stressful or frightening.
Some years as October 15th rolled around, I was aware of it, and some I wasn't. Sometimes, when a story or conference about the case was announced, I'd roll my eyes and wonder what was left to say. Any time, I heard about a new historical document being found, I'd wonder if it was a Hofmann. And I'd feel anxiety swell in my gut.
My therapist--come on, you had to know there was some therapy here--assured me I could desensitize myself to it. I sort of believed her, but put that off into the future and dealt with more practical things. And somehow doing that, I undid the dark energy I'd carried so long. I didn't even realize it until I found myself watching an episode of "Who The Bleep Did I Marry" (a most excellent show) featuring Hofmann's ex-wife. They went to file footage and there was Hofmann himself. I looked at the boogeyman of my childhood and felt nothing, except mild curiosity.
Nothing is a hundred percent, I guess, because a few days later, I walked down the driveway to get the mail. I stopped and glanced up at the sky and mountains and thought "What a gorgeous day." And as I bent to pick up the package under the mailbox, I shivered, wondering if that had been Steve's or Kathy's last thought.
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