A city girl would never…

Posted on by
Reply

“There’s always a price,” my little sister chirped from the passenger seat of my SUV. Sweat was dripping down her face and soaking her body, which was covered in sand in every conceivable and inconceivable area. She looked at me laughing the sort of laugh you laugh when you want to cry and then laughed harder when she realized that however bad the sweaty, sandblasted look was on her, it was worse on me.

It was a Wednesday afternoon in late July, the temperature reading on the dash said 104 and the decision the two of us made to play hooky from the rest of our responsibilities backfired in the way that was funny and sort of harmless, but also has you questioning why you didn’t pick the suburbs.

“City girls would never!” our friend said as she was lugging a cooler, swim bag, a floatie we couldn’t deflate, a heavy denim blanket and two lawn chairs (one she couldn’t figure out how to collapse)  a quarter of a mile through rocks and sand, a trail of reeds and black biting flies in the middle of a wind storm that was blasting our bodies with sand in 100 + temps  with 1000% humidity, because a storm was coming, of course, but not the kind that comes with rain to cool you off.

The thing is, once we get to the end of July everyone in the upper Midwest starts panicking a bit about summer being over, visualizing the seventeen months of winter that are ahead of us. And because we were in the middle of a relentless heat wave I suggested that instead of shirking our responsibilities to hit the public pool, we should try for the beach on Lake Sakakawea thirty miles north of town because we hadn’t been to the big lake yet this year and you have to go to the big lake at least once or it’s not a summer. So, I packed a swim bag and a big cooler full of drinks, some snacks and sandwiches, towels, beach chairs, floaties, a worthless air pump and our puppy and swung by to grab my sister and her daughters, who all packed the same things (minus the puppy). And along the way a friend called to see if we wanted to join her at the pool and somehow we convinced her that lugging all of the stuff I just mentioned, plus five girls, a half mile from the car to the beach in 104 degrees was a better idea. She said she’d meet us there in a jiff.

Now in case you’re reading this and you’re picturing a lake situation where you drive right into a nice paved parking lot facing a groomed public beach with those little barricade buoys marking out a safe swim zone complete with restrooms, garbage cans and a shower, this is not the case here. This beach, in our childhood, used to be a two track trail off a gravel road with a flat spot on the prairie for parking and a skinny, sandy walking trail through the weeds that leads down to the water, which, depending on how high the lake is that summer, can be quite a hike. These days they’ve made it a little more accessible, with a nice road and a groomed parking area, but it’s still pretty rustic and that’s why we love it.  In my memory though, the hike wasn’t so cumbersome, but that’s probably because I’m reaching back from when I was a teenager, ripping off my clothes and running for the shore after my shift at the clothing store in town. Now, we are moms with four young girls between us, two who had to poop immediately upon arrival in that little makeshift parking lot. “No worries,” I said, “I forgot ice. We will just head to the marina store and take care of it.” So back we went, about three miles, to the marina store only to find that the marina store is closed on Wednesdays and so are the bathrooms. Knowing we could live without ice, I remembered the vault toilets that existed in the campground and headed there for what was the world’s stinky-est sauna experience.  With that task done, we were on our way to cool off, no thanks to the luke-warm beverages in the cooler I discovered was way too heavy to drag to the beach anyway. And also no thanks to the crappy portable air compressor that we packed that couldn’t inflate a balloon in forty minutes, let alone four big floaties. I grabbed the puppy, a pool ring and the inflatable banana the girls couldn’t live without, along with all the other essentials, but not the cooler, and we finally headed toward the beach to plop our lawn chairs in the water and watch the girls swim while we sipped on the cold beverages our friend brought in her reasonably-sized cooler which she remembered to stock with ice. And it was fun. The water was cool. The views were pretty. The puppy dug a hole under our umbrella and sat in the shade. The girls ran up and down the beach collecting rocks and sticks to float. I spent twenty minutes blowing up the pool ring and my sister spent fifteen blowing up the banana. I spit sunflower seeds into the sand between dips in the water and we gabbed, enjoying being girls on the beach for a good hour and a half, until…

The wind started to pick up, blowing the little umbrella where the puppy sat across the shore. I got up to chase it (and the puppy), looked down the beach and saw a wall of sand heading right for us. Oh. No. I turned to watch the girls chasing the run-away banana floatie deeper into the lake. “Leave it!!!!” I yelled as I grabbed the pup. “Come back to shore!” My little sister went in after them, carrying the half-inflated pool ring like her life depended on it. Our friend started frantically gathering all the things we lugged down to the shore while the sand whipped at our squinty eyes and stung our sweaty skin. Our daughters tried to help, following behind us dragging whatever item their little bodies could carry, trying not to blow away while shlepping through the sand and swatting the black flies, all of us puffing and sweating and whining up the hill and to the car. My sister, still clinging to that pool ring (trying to compensate for the lost banana I guess,) arrived at the car behind me and declared that while I survived two bouts of cancer, if she died carrying a cooler, chair, kid and pool ring through that sand storm in 104 degrees it would have been an embarrassing obituary. She was close. And then we proceeded to frantically throw every single thing, plus the soggy, itchy kids, puppy, and the forty-five pounds of sand that came with it in the back of my SUV and peeled out of the there so fast that I didn’t realize the back hatch was wide open until a mile or two down the gravel road.

“Next time we’ll just go to the pool,” we all laughed, only half meaning it, because a country girl would never… 

The best meal I ever ate

Posted on by
1

The best meal I ever ate was after I jumped out of a plane over South Padre Island right behind my friend and right before my husband. I screamed a scream that came from the carnal parts of my body as we did a free fall toward the ocean. I was barefooted and strapped to a young man with wild hair and a bandana and when the chute finally opened and we floated down to the shore, he told me to take in the tranquility and beauty of it all while I fought the urge to revisit my morning breakfast. When my bare feet hit the sand, the nausea subsided and the relief kicked in—I survived a jump out of a questionable airplane, look at me, I’m young and wild and free…and starving!  When my husband made it down to earth, looking about as calm as he does when he wakes up in the morning, we all grabbed a margarita and a fish taco at a little shoreside shack and no fish taco or margarita will ever compare, because I was ALIVE!

Except once I had a margarita on a camping trip with friends and one of them brought dozens and dozens of limes and loads of ice and good tequila and he didn’t hold back on those and the salty rim served in a red solo cup while we all sat in camp chairs and watched the people with money drive jet skis back and forth across the big lake with nothing at all to do but sit together.

The best meal I ever ate was my grandma’s cold tuna noodle salad that she would make my grandpa and me the summer I lived with them at their lake in Minnesota. I was there to work for a theater program, a year out of college and two months away from my wedding, I watched my grandparents move in and out of their days together after over fifty years of marriage. I would put the coffee on for them in the morning before I left for work, a little convenience I could offer that they praised overtly. My grandma was known for her brownies and fun-loving nature, but she wasn’t known for her cooking. She made this noodle salad one pretty evening and we ate it on the porch beside the lake with short glasses of vodka tonics with a maraschino cherry and both grandpa and I agreed we loved it, and so we told her, and for the rest of the summer, that salad was always in the fridge.

The best meal I ever ate featured a big, ripe tomato and a perfect cucumber from my garden, and my little sister’s homemade bread and a recipe from Val for the dressing and I ate it at the messy counter in our home with the windows open to catch a cool, late summer breeze. I made one for myself and then another when my husband came in from work and we said, “There’s nothing better, nothing better,” while the juice of that tomato dripped out from between the bread and onto our plates.

The best meal I ever ate was wild elk from his grill after a long bow hunting season. The best meal I ever ate was his mom’s fried porkchops with a side of mashed potatoes and creamed peas when I was sixteen and over for supper for the first time. I didn’t know about creamed peas and without them, what is life?

The best meal I ever at is at my mom’s every Christmas.

The best meal I ever ate was the hot dog I roasted on a stick over the impromptu backyard campfire last night with my husband and the cousins and my parents and my kids and too many dogs running around barking at the coyotes howling as the red moon came up. And it was 10 pm and too late for supper but it was his idea because the kids asked and so we stirred up a side of mac and cheese and corn on the cob and s’mores for dessert, but it was that hotdog that was my meal after a long day where maybe I didn’t feel like a campfire but was so glad there was one waiting for me because it was a little burnt and the bun was too small but look at us out here, we’ve survived another day and we’re young enough and wild and free and hungry and we have people we love and we’re ALIVE, eating hotdogs together.  

It will be hot in the summer

Posted on by
Reply

It will be hot in the summer. It will be the end of July heading into the dog days and the air conditioning on your main floor might not keep up. And the day before you were working outside and it was 95 degrees and the sweat dripped off your forehead and into your eyes. And it slithered down your back too, soaked through your shirt, but you found a bit of shade for a break and a drink of water, and you caught a little breeze and you said out loud, “Breeze feels good,” and he said, “Yeah, sure does,” and only a hot summer day makes you love a tiny bit of wind that way.

It will be hot in the summer and the air conditioning on your main floor might not keep up, but maybe there’s a basement and maybe it’s Sunday and maybe it’s so cold down there you need a blanket to cover the two of you on the old couch while you watch a movie you picked and he hates. And maybe you fall asleep anyway and maybe he doesn’t move because he likes the way your head feels heavy against his chest that way, the way it used to, I guess the way it always has, when you fall asleep on him. It’s been a long time, and it was a hot day and maybe you’ll think there’s nothing better in the world than that nap.

It will be hot in the summer, and it will be the end of July heading into August and maybe your cousin will call to tell you to put on your swimming suit and get on your bike because the sprinkler’s on under the trampoline and maybe you’ll jump and slide and giggle for hours, grass clipping stuck to your little bare feet, the sun and the water helping you grow like a flower.

It will be hot in the summer, and it will be the end of July and maybe you had no plans for a Saturday and maybe you were feeling bad about that because it seems like everyone you know is at a lake or in a pool somewhere. So then maybe you just decide to throw your camp chair in the back of the car and head there yourself because who says you can’t just go jump in that big lake on your own? It doesn’t have to cost a thing to sit on the shore, maybe just the $3.99 bag of sunflower seeds and the two Coors Lights you keep in the back of the fridge. And the bug spray because the black flies bite out here in the heat, but it’s hot in the summer and that shore is yours too and so you take it and you wade in slowly, up to your waist before you let the cold water finally rush over your head—you pop back up to face the sun smiling.

It will be hot in the summer, and it will be August and in four days your job will end, and school will start and you will be seventeen. Maybe it’s a Friday night and maybe you call your friend who has one of those big round pools that sits above the ground in her backyard and you have floated back there with her almost every hot afternoon of your childhood, and so this day will be no different except that in four days you will be in your school clothes again, no watermelon pool ring in sight, and it makes you feel nostalgic for the moment you’re still in, but missing already somehow, and that’s the first time you’ve felt something like that. It’s summer and it’s hot and your legs are tan and your best friend’s face is freckled, and you don’t say much then, you just sing along to the songs you know on her mix and float and float and float.

It will be hot in the summer and it will be the end of July heading into the dog days and the cows will need to be moved so you will wake up early to help your dad to beat the heat and the flies, even though maybe you didn’t get in last night until 1 am. And maybe you’ll be glad you did because it will be so foggy and so cool in those early hours that you will forget that in just a few hours that fog will be chased away by the scorching sun. But it won’t matter then, you’re awake now, up with the early risers for the best part of the summer day, because it will be hot, and the sweat will drip off your forehead and into your eyes, it will be hot in the summer, but maybe there will be a breeze. It will be hot in the summer, but maybe there will be a cool basement or a big lake. It will be hot in the summer, but maybe there will be a backyard hose, or a little pool or a foggy morning and most certainly it will be hot in the summer but most certainly it won’t be for long…

The Best Summer Ever

Posted on by
Reply

“These kids are having the best summer ever,” I said to my friend as I waded in to meet her and my sister standing waist-deep in the public swimming pool. It was a scorching 95 degree day and I just picked up my oldest daughter and her best friend from a morning softball camp, fed them a sandwich from Subway and met the rest of the crew to beat the heat with an afternoon swim.

“When I was their age just going to a restaurant was a big deal, now it’s just part of their day,” I said. “And if I got to go to the pool I town once or twice a summer, I was living the life.”

“When I was their age, I used to ride my bike five miles one way into town to get to the public pool,” my friend laughed. “I must have been a ripped little kid.”

And from there, for the next half-hour or so, three moms reminisced about summertime in the 90s, while fending off splashes and football throws to the head, keeping one eye on our kids, fixing goggles, watching three hundred and fifty-two handstands, forty-two underwater summersaults and one-thousand jump spins off the edge.

“My best friend lived a mile up the hill, we used to ride our bikes all day right down the middle of the highway,” I recalled. “I guess I probably could have had the ten-year-olds walk a quarter of a mile to the pool after practice.”

The 90s summer nostalgia is a trending topic for the millennials who are now raising their own kids in the golden age of childhood. The memories of drinking out of the hose and orange pushups, ham and plastic cheese on Wonder Bread, running through sprinklers and neighborhood yards until the porch lights came on are core memories that pop to the surface when we smell a fresh cut lawn. I think we wonder if there will ever be a time we’ll feel as carefree …and then we wonder if our children could possibly feel the same way.

Of course, a 90s summer in a small town looked a bit different than a 90s summer thirty miles from the nearest ball field. My summers as a kid were spent with that best friend up the hill, sometimes dragging our little sisters along to jump on the hay bales or head to the creek to catch more ticks than frogs, and sometimes trying to ditch them. I mowed the lawn and painted the barn and worked on 4-H projects and rode and fell off horses that dad was breaking and sat out on the deck in my swimming suit with my big sister to get a tan. I was bored in a way that had me laying on the floor of my bedroom listening to the same Brooks and Dunn tape over and over again.  I was bored in a way that had me picking the guitar for hours. Bored in a way that had me sitting cross-legged on the floor to latch-hook a giant sunflower. Bored in a way that had my friends and I confiscating my parents’ camcorder to make elaborate music videos to Reba McEntire songs and unsupervised enough to hold one scene on the roof of a house.

Bored in a way I doubt I will ever be again.

Last week I enrolled my daughters in a little summer theater program where they put on a full-scale musical in just five days. My oldest played a corn cob, my youngest a pixie. They worked on learning their lines in the evening and practiced their songs for the weekend talent show. The week before they were jumping in a Minnesota lake. The week before that they were spinning on rides at the county fair before heading to bible camp. And in between they’ve been wearing out the path between our house and their cousins’ to jump on the trampoline with the sprinkler running. As I type this, my youngest and her friend haven’t quite awoken from their sleepover last night. When they do, they will resume pushing their babies in strollers across the cow pasture and re-organizing my husband’s office to play school.  

“Isn’t having a daughter so fun,” one of my friends said as we passed one another in town. “It’s like you get to re-live your girlhood and I love it.”

Her comment came a few days after what I said in the pool about our kids living their best lives. I admit, mine was a bit snarky—maybe because I just got done holding a towel above my head to serve as the girls’ changing room before squeezing into my swimming suit in a 100-degree locker room—but I think she’s right. We were at the pool that day after softball camp because the 10-year-old girl in me also wanted to meet my friends there and go swimming. And she wants to do the talent show and the play and the rides and the trampoline and the sleepover.

I looked up from the splashing to see my little sister in a lawn chair. She went to the concessions and got a giant blue popsicle, the kind that comes in the plastic tube and is about three feet long. When she had enough, she passed it over to me and I sat next to her and finished it off with my feet in the cool water and there we were again, just two girls raising girls and having the best summer ever.  

Fine and Grateful

Posted on by
3

“How are you feeling?”

That’s been the question of the summer for me after spending the spring in Rochester at the Mayo Clinic for radiation and chemo treatment on two tumors that reappeared outside my esophagus after a good six-year cancer hiatus.

“Fine. I’m really feeling fine,” has been my reply to those in my community who have pulled me aside for a hug, or stopped to visit in the grocery store, or sent me a text or passed by me while leading goats and kids through the fairgrounds.

“Really?” Is a reply.

“Oh good!” Is another.

“Are you sure?” Is one too.

“Good to see you’re back at it.” Is also one.

“Thank you, thank you so much for asking,” is what I say. And it’s what I genuinely mean. Even I’m surprised that this gets to be my answer.

Because it turns out that the question is a strange one to navigate. Do I feel fine? Yes, really. The little ailments that plagued me during and shortly after treatment have wound down now—the mild heartburn and nausea, the weird bone pain—but it’s hard to describe. My confidence is shaken and I don’t really feel like myself in my own body. The thought of even being in public is a little unnerving, not because I don’t want to be around people, but because I don’t feel like me in the room.

Which brings me to the, “How are you feeling?” question again. I’m finding it’s also a strange question to navigate for the people who love and care about you. Because everyone who asks wants to hear the truth of it, and I certainly want to give it, that’s sort of my thing, for better or for worse. But there is a bit of an expectation (is that the right word?) of what a cancer patient looks like. When I say I’m fine, sometimes I get the sense that they don’t believe me. When I say I’m fine, sometimes I wonder myself.

Prior to my experience, I had the notion that the results of chemo and radiation and treatment in every patient meant they were to become frail and bald. Now I understand that every treatment is different and every dose, every plan, every zap and poke and pill is concocted a thousand different ways for the thousands of different phases, stages, places and varieties a tumor presents itself and spreads. (Isn’t that a fun little sentence to write? Ugh.) My cancer didn’t make me sick this time, and neither did the treatment really and for that I am as grateful as they come. Maybe that should be my new answer to the question. “Fine and grateful.”

Because cancer recovery on me looks like a woman who used to have long, dark, thick hair who cut it off and let the grays come in because it was coming out in handfuls. And as much as I thought I would be the type of woman who wouldn’t care about my hair, the kind of woman who would just be grateful to be alive, it turns out I am not that woman. I am mad and annoyed about my hair, despite knowing better and still hanging on to enough to pull off a fluffy bob. And I overexplain it to everyone for some reason, even though I should probably just shut up and say, “Fine and grateful.”  I become annoying to myself in those moments.

Cancer recovery on me also looks a little puffy and a little more sweaty (if that’s possible) and doing what I can fit into my jeans for an upcoming concert I have on the schedule next week. Should that be important to me? Probably not. Is it? Yes. Because I would like to be in control of my body again, thankyouverymuch.

Cancer recovery on me also looks like continuing to work and show up for my kids and take long walks and get on a horse and host family suppers because slowing all the way down doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me feel less like myself.

And maybe that’s it. That I don’t want cancer to define me the same way I didn’t want infertility to define me. Maybe that’s where the confidence thing comes in. I’ve been shifting the focus away from the treatments and back into my regular life now for a bit over a month, but the reality of my situation still lingers in the shower drain, in the supplements I’m buying that probably won’t help a thing, in the closet full of clothes that don’t fit, in the little moments of overwhelm and worry when I wake up at 3 am and in the question: “How are you feeling?”

And I thank you all, truly, for asking. I’ll happily answer the question a thousand times.

Not so special hill

Posted on by
2

Let me tell you about a hillside on the ranch that never used to be special.

It was just a mildly steep slope along the edge of the fields, covered in creeping juniper growing in rocky and clay soil. We ride to the top occasionally to check the landscape for cows or move past it pushing them home. The hill pops up on the other side of the fence from what used to be fields. And so, I suppose my grandpa and dad used to drive past it in the tractor, digging up soil, and then planting seeds, and then turning alfalfa into bales before that field was turned into what we called “The CRP” for most of my childhood

The soil on that hillside is no good for grazing or planting, but from up there you can see for miles in every direction, although it’s not a hill located in a spot convenient for lingering and looking. There is no real trail that connects you to it. If you’re walking, it’s a good mile and a half cross country and three fences to crawl from the main county road. If you’re driving a pickup or an ATV, I hope it has good shocks because those old fields are bumpy. I once drove out there when I was nine months pregnant with Rosie hoping I’d bounce her out.  Riding horseback is the best way to get there if you need to go there and that’s how my dad and my little sister discovered, one late June morning, that the hill wasn’t just a hill, but one covered from top to bottom in bright orange wildflowers we call the tiger lily.

Now, timing is everything on this discovery. These wildflowers have always been coveted on our place in the same way as the juneberries and wild raspberries are in the poky and buzzing brush patches of the low spots in the summer pastures. If you’re from anywhere in the rural north, you understand the weight and urgency of fleeting summer moments. And these moments hang heavy in the sweet juice of wild berries, waiting impatiently for you to find them and pluck them for your pockets and pies before the birds fill their bellies. And you have a window of only a few days to get there, which turns the hunt and gather into a sort of ritual that makes the find taste sweeter, the sky a little bluer, the breeze much more appreciated.

The wild tiger lily acts the same, not because the birds are after them, but because time and the heat of the sun are. If my sister and my dad would have timed their ride a week before or a week later, they would have missed the magic that lay dormant under those creeping juniper each winter, waiting for the right mix of heat and rain to reach toward the sky and bloom. Who knows how long those tiger lilies were growing and spreading across that hillside before a human eye detected them and made a fuss. And a fuss we make, because usually you only find these flowers growing in pairs or fours dotted sporadically deep in the back pastures. But this find, that day, about five or so years ago, it was a harvest. My sister couldn’t wait to come home and take me back there to see for myself, to fill my hands in a wide grip with their stems and put them in that special old green mason jar on my kitchen table.

And so we’ve done it every year since. The end of June rolls around and we say to one another “We should go check on the tiger lilies,” and so we round up our daughters and cram them, and sometimes their baby dolls, and all the time the dogs too, and we bring a little basket and some scissors so as not to pull up the roots and we make the drive up off the mailbox, along the field trail then off into the bumps through the gate and down the hill so we can walk up and collect along the way.  With each visit that hilltop gets a bit more special to us as we remember our daughters and how small they used to be, their dirty blonde hair tinting gold with the sun, blowing back as they stand on a big rock with their arms out and sing into the sky, a small collection of mis-matched wildflowers tight in their fists.

This year our cousins and aunts and uncles from our dad’s side were here to visit the ranch that is so special to all of us. When planning things to eat and places to take them, my little sister and I looked at each other and remembered that it was tiger lily season. And so, after lunch on a sunny Friday afternoon every all-terrain vehicle we possessed between the four places was loaded up with relatives driving in a slow-moving wagon train inching across this sacred landscape on our way to show them how an ordinary hill can be magic. And all of us up there, big cousins, little cousins, great aunts and uncles, grampas and moms and dads and kids and spouses, connected by a bloodline and the land under our feet, wandered out, climbed up, said things like ‘oh, look at that!’ and ‘so beautiful’ and ‘look at the view’ and ‘look at the sky’ and ‘look, two blossoms on one stem’ and, if they were like Rosie, sneezed at least three-thousand times while collecting and taking photos and, because you can’t really help it, fist full of flowers, climbed to the very top, opened our arms and lifted our faces to the blue sky, all together on this once not so special hill.

A gecko at the county fair

Posted on by
3

So, Edie showed her lizard at the county fair. 

I think this might be something worth telling you all about because a county fair of our modest size doesn’t get many leopard gecko entries. Rabbits, chickens and an occasional duck or turkey usually round out the small animal category, but we’re in the business of pushing it a bit, and so there we were at 7 am loading the trailer with a goat named Beef and another named Noodles and a visibly annoyed Tango the lizard and his cozy terrarium in the back of my SUV to get to town for the show. 

When we made this sort of reptile commitment, it was a month or so before the big event and we thought it would be fun to bring Edie’s pet into town and show it off as an exhibit. Not having a history of showing small animals at the fair, I thought that the judging process would look like a visit to the cage to interview about the proper care and feeding of a lizard, and maybe a chance to take him out quickly to show him off, and that would be it. 

I was wrong, as you can imagine. Turns out, I am wrong plenty when it comes to 4-H. 

Because showing a lizard at the fair also means filling out paperwork that includes a pet portrait, pet raising highs and lows, a feeding schedule, a cost analysis and future goals for you and your pet lizard. (Turns out it costs $8 a month to keep a lizard alive.) 

Question: What do you hope to gain from this project? 
Can keeping him alive be an answer? 

No. When Edie was interviewed about her record book that morning after she’d discussed her Lego set, ceramic and the jeans she painted for her birthday, she said she hoped to learn all she could learn about leopard geckos. Which was a cute and responsible answer, one that helped her win a blue ribbon for her bookkeeping and reptile knowledge. So that was cute and, most importantly, done.

We set the glass terrarium up on a back table in the barn next to a beam where we could hang Tango’s heat lamp. That little scaly lizard looked a bit out of place among the big, beautiful bunnies munching hay in their cages. I told Edie to throw him some worms while we figured out what was next for the guy. And let me tell you when I realized that what came next was her holding that little lizard in her hands in line between a bunny and a little chicken in the show ring, I about had a heart attack. 

“You mean she actually SHOWS it?” I panicked to my husband. “Like, set it on the little carpet in front of the judge SHOWS it?” 

“Appears so,” he replied after asking around to the fellow 4-H moms, one who had a similar experience with her son and a bearded dragon a few years back. 

“I don’t know if I want to do this,” Edie whispered to her dad while I was off somewhere declaring my own discomfort to anyone who would listen. “Nobody shows lizards here.” 

And with that my husband pulled out all the ways in which being the girl with a lizard at the fair is going to give her street cred and her attitude shifted as she pulled her pet from his cage and cupped it in her hands.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring him out to the ring in his cage?” I asked, envisioning a scenario in which the lizard leaps from the carpet and off the table and into a ring covered in wood chips never to be seen again.

“No, I got it mom,” my daughter replied confidently. 

“Ok, I could get a little box,” I tried again, wondering if domestic chickens have a taste for gecko.

“Mommmmaaa, I. Got. It.” 

And with that my daughter was off in her little green 4-H shirt and ponytail, placing her pet reptile on the carpet, keeping him safe, and telling the judge all about it with a big smile. 

In fact, everyone watching that judge try to figure out how to place three bunnies, a chicken and a lizard in the pet showmanship category was grinning as big as Edie that afternoon. What a funny little display and such a testament to what it means to be at a small-town county fair. 

“It was a tough job,” the judge declared on the microphone. “A rabbit, a chicken and a gecko don’t have much in common, but it came down to how confident and knowledgeable each kid was about their animal today. I give this boy with the rabbit on the end here a grand and the lizard comes in with reserved.” 

Well, that make me unclench my jaw a bit to grab my own smile as I watched Edie shake the judge’s hand and walk out of the arena with that lizard unscathed and her head held high. It clenched right up again at the gate when she and that lizard were swarmed by every little 4-Her that could get close. 

“Is that a lizard?”  “You’re the lizard girl!” “Can I hold him?” “What’s his name?” “Will he bite me?” “How old is he?” and on and on it went, the girl and her gecko like rock stars all the way back to the cage, where Tango got an extra worm and a chance to hide. Turns out the only spotlight he likes is a heat light. But in that moment, Tango made Edie a brave, 4-H star. I couldn’t have been more proud. 

And that is what you get when you take a lizard to the county fair. 

County Fair Ice Breaker

Posted on by
1

Well, the county fair is wrapped up. I wrote the following column in the early morning before day one, knowing the week would be filled with early mornings, late nights and zero vegetable consumption. Since then they wrapped up the static exhibit, two goat shows, a sale, showing the lizard and surviving an afternoon of carnival rides. The girls had a fun fair, did their best and learned some good lessons along the way. So did Chad and I.

I suppose I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s column, but these were my thoughts in the calm before the whirlwind.

County Fair Ice Breaker

“I told the judge a joke,” Rosie said between dance moves at the ice cream shop in town. We were there with my parents and cousins, recapping how the interview process went for their 4-H projects that afternoon. On the way to town, to prepare, we went over what the judges might ask, and I reminded them to sit up, speak up, use eye contact and to be proud of their projects. Then we talked logistics, like remember what goat feed you use and the camera model for their photography project, but telling the judge a joke as an icebreaker never came up. That was all Rosie.

Rosie, who picked out new pink cowboy boots specifically for this reason, and for the dance in the dirt when the fair is over, the ribbons are distributed and the goats are sold. Rosie who has had about enough of Cloverbud rainbow ribbons for her lifetime and is ready for a purple rosette and belt buckle already. Rosie, who admitted she was a little nervous standing on that piece of tape waiting for her turn to sit down and talk about her ceramic garden paver, watercolor bird blobs and the picture she took of her new puppy in a box.

“How do you know that a goose can’t hear?”

“How?”

“Because everything time you talk to it, it says, “Huh?”

Rainbow ribbons for all!

So that’s how we kicked off 4-H week here at the ranch. I’m writing this in the wee-hours of the morning, twenty minutes before I need to wake the kids up to start getting their goats ready to bring to town in the rain. And the lizard, we’re bringing that too, because filling out a 4-H record book for a leopard gecko where you have to calculate the cost per pound of meal worms was a challenge only we would be silly enough to accept.  

Walking through that exhibit hall every year filled with kids from our community buttoned up in green and white, some polished and proud of their welding or painting projects, some sort of melting because their Lego set fell apart on the way to town, their parents waiting along the sides of the room dragging wagons or holding boxes asking “How did it go?” and taking pictures and patting backs or giving words of encouragement on the first day of the county fair is about as Americana as it gets. It’s all so wholesome if you forget about the kitchen table negotiations and barnyard arguments that got us all to that point that morning. That’s what the parents are talking about behind those big boxes filled with baked goods and potted plants while they wait for their kids to show off their woodworking project with community members like my dad, Papa Gene, who was there that day as a judge.

“He asked some really good questions!” our neighbor girl declared after she got done with what I’m sure was a lengthy visit about her planter. “I would have never thought he’d ask about the glue!”

But he would. He would ask about the glue, and the inspiration, and if she’s having fun and who helped her build it and if she would do the project again and then he would say ‘good job, really great job, keep it up, keep it up.’  Papa Gene has never met a kid or a horse he didn’t think had the most potential in the world. Blue ribbons for all!

“I think I did a good job,” my oldest daughter declared after she finished chatting about her painted jeans, prairie rose photo, ceramic, Lego and painting projects that afternoon. Her smile was big and genuine and from my post on the sidelines with the other moms, I could see her smiling and chatting away. The way she has matured from previous years of this 4-H experience was more evident on her this year than ever.

“Are you proud of yourself?” I asked?

“Yes!”

And, well, that’s the point of it all isn’t it?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need go wake up the girls and the goats and try to get to town on time today. See you at the county fair!

*This column is dedicated to Marcia Hellandsaas, our 4-H matriarch and true example of someone dedicated to the role of what it means to be a kind, honest and hardworking leader. We all loved you and you will be missed dearly.

Ways to say “I Love You” in the summer

Posted on by
1

Bring the noodle salad to the Tuesday T-ball picnic. And if you forgot the key ingredient at the grocery store and realized it too late so that you couldn’t make the noodle salad after all, cut up the half watermelon in the fridge and add grapes and bring that instead. And when the mom arrives with the cut-up watermelon with grapes to sit alongside the four other bowls and plates of cut up watermelon, say, “That’s ok! Kids love fruit, it will all get eaten.”

Send your ten-year-old over to hold the toddler’s hand and walk her around at the 4th of July Rodeo.

Stand behind the horse trailer or boat trailer and help line it up.

Have popsicles ready in the freezer in case the neighbor kids show up.

Go to the branding and do the ear tags or take the pictures or watch the babies or run for supplies.

Gas up the lawnmower, fill up the tires, change the oil but leave the mowing to her.

Bring the extra cucumbers to the nursing home and the extra eggs to your sister and leave the extra zucchini in the front seat of any unlocked car.  

Make a rhubarb cake for church breakfast.

Leave room for a your friend’s lawn chair next to yours at the ballgame and tell her you like her new haircut, then when she tells you the kids are going to bed too late and her house is a mess  and they’re behind on their 4-H projects, nod your head and say “same, same, same,” and then tell her the story about your daughters’ goat who keeps getting out and eating your petunias.

Take the kids to clean the ditches.

Make him an egg salad sandwich with a little baggie of chips and a full-sized Snickers bar and an orange already peeled with a jug of ice water and bring it to the field. Pack yourself the same lunch and eat with him in the shade.

Sit in your lawn chair in the garage with the door open at the end of the day and watch the cars drive slowly home and the kids play in the lawn and offer a beer or a pop to the neighbor who says hello. Have an extra chair there in case.

Take them out for ice cream and say yes to an extra scoop.

Ask, “Did you put on sunscreen?”  “Do you need a Band-Aid?” Bring the bug spray.  

Help them move the old fridge out to the garage and the new fridge into the kitchen. Stay for pizza after.

Clip his long hair short at 10 pm in the kitchen. Make sure the peach bath towel stays draped around his shoulders. Tell him he’s handsome.

Run her a cool bath.

Buy Dr. Pepper for the fridge and orange pushup pops for eating on the front stoop.

Take a 4 pm nap with the fan blowing.

Ride along for a parts-run to town, bring sunflower seeds and roll the windows down.

Help them make a lemonade stand and drive them to the highway to set it up and when they run out, drive home to make more.

Leave the shades to your bedroom open and the let the sunrise wake you up.
Bring them to the pool and go all the way in, over your head even. Fix their goggles a thousand times.

Be the parade-float supervisor.
Plan vacation bible school for your little church and invite the new family in town.

Water your neighbor’s tomato plants and geraniums while they take the kids on a waterpark vacation. Feed her cat too. Say “I’d love to,” when she calls because you mean it. You’d love to. Have fun, it’s summer. I love you.

The house he built

Posted on by
1


I went to bed last night with the windows open in a bedroom in a house my husband has spent years building and perfecting. Last spring he finished a new master bedroom and bathroom off an expanded living room, growing our home as our family grew with the idea that we are a house for hosting and living-room cartwheels.

I snuggled down next to my husband and listened to the sound of him breathing while he slept in the bedroom he designed, equal parts grateful and in awe of his capabilities, always. His attitude has always been something along the lines of “I didn’t know how to do it until I tried to do it.” This place he’s built is a result of that quiet try, that confidence and the tenacity to just do it himself.

Building the loft thirteen years ago

The next morning, I woke up to him sneaking out to work on other people’s houses, a business he created after years worn down in the oilfield. I rolled over to catch a few more blinks, noticing how the sky was beginning to turn pink with the touch of the first moments of sun. I thought I should get up, rise with it, drink my coffee and start on a writing project, but I slipped back to sleep for a moment while the world lit up.

And I woke again to the sound of squirrel chatter, his obnoxious, angry squawk rising above the hundreds of bird species singing their morning song, the breeze rustling the full-grown leaves and a truck kicking up dust on the pink road.

And although I couldn’t hear it, I thought about the swish of the horses’ tails in the pasture, the buzz the flies make around their ears and the soft nicker in their throats when I approach with a grain bucket.

I thought about the cattle pulling dew covered green grass from the ground, munching and chewing and bellowing low for their calves.

I thought about the croak of the frogs in the dam, the familiar sound I fall asleep to each night we let the windows open and the air in.

I thought about the plop of the turtle leaving his rock for a swim in the dam. I thought about the howl of the coyote and the sound of the dogs crying back.

I thought about my fingers squeaking across the strings of my guitar, sitting out on the chair under the small oaks, working to make a melody.

I thought about the sound of my husband’s breathing and the words he says out loud at night when the world is sleeping, and so is he. I thought about what he dreams about.

And then I thought about the silence in this house as I lie listening to the world I was letting in through open windows, silence between walls that have absorbed the noise of saw blades spinning, voices discussing dinner, crying over tiling projects and laughing at the memory of the stupid kids we used to be. Soon it will be buzzing with the chatter of our own kids, waking up and pouring cereal and humming to themselves and arguing and painting and playing. It’s summer, so it won’t be quiet or clean in this house for months, or, more realistically, years. Squeals and laughter and music and questions and silliness, God willing, bouncing off the walls. In the evening, little by little my extended family will pop over to check in, my little sister and her daughters coming to play, my dad on his way from checking cows, my mom coming home from town, and they will stay long enough for supper and it will be loud in this house with stories and “watch this,” and “sit on your butt and eat,” and the scrape of forks on plates and “this is good Jess, thanks for having us over” and a little light arguing over the card game the girls picked for us all to play and that is what he built this place for. All of this.

The girls helping supervise the deck build

When everyone heads home the sun will be sinking below the horizon, but I will pop out anyway for a quiet walk in the hills before dark. When I get home, I will find my husband sleeping on the couch while our daughters lay in the crook of his arm and draped across his legs, the television reflecting the light of other peoples’ stories off his scruffy face.

I will switch it off and gather our daughters for their own beds before opening the windows in our new bedroom to let the stars in. I’ll fall asleep to the sound of the frogs, thinking about all the mornings to come in this house, the sounds of Christmases and birthday parties, failed dinners and dancing in the living room, conversations with friends, fights about bills and schedules and time, sobs about missing someone and laughter about having just what we need in a house he built with the windows open…