The old man’s house was uncomfortably warm. I pushed up the sleeves of my sweater, attempting to cool my flush. Sweat pooled in my armpits, staining the soft grey. I clamped my arms to my side, attempting to hide the stains. My brother, Kirk, sat beside me in his new missionary suit. The wood stove was so hot that I could smell the heat in the cast iron.
The old man finally hobbled into the room, a wooden cane leading the way. Kirk and I stood up and shook his hand. Kirk first. Patriarch Clark’s knuckles were gnarled as his cane topper, but they were large and firm and dry. His rheumy eyes met mine, and he smiled; his dentures were straight and white. He looked just as I’d expected a patriarch to look. He looked like every old man I’d ever met in my ward.
You have a sweet smile, a pleasing personality, and a winning way.
When he put his large, gnarled hands on my head, the weight was comfortably heavy. My blessing seemed to go on for hours, and everything he said I believed came straight from God – the lineage, the last days, and the missionary service, motherhood, and the promised prosperity were an affirmation of my own specialness. It affirmed all the things I’d believed about myself, and that had been told to me about my generation – the last and greatest generation, the one that would usher in the Savior.
My mother recalled the same words being said to her about her generation, but they don’t say those things in my daughter’s young-woman class; that kind of cognitive dissonance has dissolved in the age of the internet. Less Kolob and last days; more missionary service and Jesus. But that is too heretical for fifteen-year-old me; those kinds of thoughts didn’t come for another decade. I left the overly warm house, bursting with pleasure at my blessing. It was special, and I was special.
You will be present on the morning of the last resurrection, clothed in the robes of the Priesthood with your eternal companion.
And yet, when I received a copy in the mail, it was one and a quarter pages, typed single-spaced, and it looked short. As I read it, I recalled how similar Kirk’s blessing sounded – the words shuffled, but the cadence, rhythm, and promises were the same; the language and roles were appropriately gendered. It was my first moment of doubt – a niggling disappointment quelled with a large swallow.
The patriarch – that old man; my patriarchal blessing – the one-and-a-quarter-page typed blessing. That was the only context I had at fifteen for the word. If I had been asked to describe patriarchy then, I would have led with a description that would have sounded like fortune-telling. Patriarchy was the structure of my religion, my home, and my life, and I had no idea what it meant, only that it was. It was the beginning and the end of everything – the alpha and the omega of Mormonism – the very structure upon which the church builds its great and spacious buildings.
You will enjoy learning and receive a good education that will prepare you for your role as a wife and mother.
Patriarchy was why my father’s approval meant more to me than my mother’s. It was why I silently congratulated myself when a brother, not a sister, was assigned to teach my Sunday school class. It was why I told my government teacher that I would not vote for Hilary Clinton. It was why I never questioned a woman not praying at General Conference. It was why, as a college freshman, I dated a priesthood holder eight years older than me. It was why, once married, I not only didn’t ask him to wait while I attended graduate school, but I gave up the desire entirely. It was why I preferred male professors. It was why I had a child at 21.
It is why, even now, after I have unpacked my baggage and checked my ego, I still seek male approval. It is why I try to stand out from the other women in the room. It is why I must consciously work not to see other women as competition. The cultural conditioning of patriarchy is not easily shed. Patriarchy was why my parents sent me to Brother Clark, whom I did not know, to sit in his overly warm home and let him speak words over me in the name of God – words I was taught to receive as revelation.
The mantle of responsibility will lie on your husband.
Patriarchy is why I believed this man, called by another man to be my patriarch, had insight into my life. It was why I later believed in the unfailing virtue and rightness of marrying at the age of eighteen to a man assigned to be my new patriarch. The father of my home and my children, and in the context of our ascribed religion, me. And what should I not have believed? Adults told me this was the natural rite of passage for a girl as precocious and pretty as me.
I was a girl, sweating in a grey sweater, waiting for the patriarch, who had an entire life ahead of her. A life that would go on to be shaped by the patriarchy and by the blessing. Her life was outlined in one and a quarter pages. I waited unknowingly with my brother to receive my patriarchal blessing-in-disguise. It turned out to be in the disguise of something far more prescriptive than I understood at the time.
It didn’t tell me what I might do, but what I was expected to become.
Erica Louder lives and works in rural Idaho, supporting U.S. companies exporting dairy products around the world. She has three children and dreams of becoming a globe-trotter and a novelist.