Monthly Archives: September 2023

The memory keeper

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The Memory Keeper
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Recently, on my regular trip bringing the girls to town for school, we spotted a rainbow against dark blue rain clouds, stretching its arch over ash trees glowing in the warm wash of light from the sunrise.

“Look at the rainbow girls!” I declared as we pulled out of my little sister’s driveway and up on the gravel county road. I stopped the car so they could get a good look and then we followed it the next 15 miles to town. As the colors grew darker and more vibrant, the girls looked out the windows to name the colors they were spotting. Light pink melting into red into orange, “I see yellow and turquoise and purple!” yelled Rosie. “And blue!” my niece Ada piped in from the way back. They’ve learned the colors of the rainbow, but, according to Edie, the oldest, the real thing seemed different. There were colors that were hard to name, not properly identified in the textbooks and worksheets she’s familiar with and it sort of bothered her.

I thought about this as I watched the arch of those colors sweep vibrant across the sky and then slowly fade away as rainbows do. These things in life that can’t be replicated or adequately described, the sights and moments the camera fails to fully capture, that are too fleeting or deep feeling that all our efforts sort of fall flat, how can we make ourselves know it when we’re in it? How can we make our hearts and bodies remember once it’s passed?

And then I thought maybe I was living in one right then and there in that car looking at the rainbow on our way to school. Even the arguing I was witnessing about who knows most about rainbows and Rosie describing (in detail) what she thinks all of her friends are going to be wearing to Kindergarten’s “Hat Day” in her small but loud matter of fact voice, my niece Ada pulling her cowboy hat off and on and backwards and forwards, Edie making sure they both know the rules for recess—this version of them—these girls—will not be my passengers tomorrow.

Tomorrow they will be one day older and maybe then they will know more about rainbows, or how to subtract seven from ten, or what it feels like to be left out or to perfect her cartwheels or make a brand-new best friend…

And I won’t be the same either. We never are, are we? It’s just that the slow change in us is much more gradual than the light fading from the sky, the colors changing on the leaves, the air getting cooler. We marvel at those leaves, that sunrise, that rainbow, but how often do we stop to marvel at ourselves and the life we’ve built over this passing of time, time that feels too slow before it feels too fast…

Oh, this time of year makes a nostalgic woman like me worse for it. I notice a good portion of ankle sticking out from under the hem of my oldest daughter’s jeans and wonder how I missed her growth spurt. I mean, how do they do their growing without us noticing every new centimeter stretching toward the sky?

Last weekend we took the girls our riding their horses on a beautiful fall day. We took them out to notice those leaves changing and to learn about paying attention on the backs of their animals. Edie asked me then if I knew the Tall Tale of Paul Bunyan. I told her it had been a while. And so, she told it, word for word, inflection by inflection as we rode through the tall grass, past the stock dam and across the creek bottom and up toward the barnyard again. And now that I’m thinking about it, there’s still not much of the Paul Bunyan story I retained from her retelling, but oh, the way my daughter’s voice rose with excitement getting to the punch line, the way it filled the quiet hills with a chatter, the way she remembered so well and the way we all were together under the warm fall sun, on the backs of horses, together? I will reach for that moment when I’m lonesome or scared or ailing or worried. I won’t remember the length of my daughter’s hair or the color of her shirt or maybe even how old we all were, what year, maybe she was 7 or 8, Rosie 5 or 6. And I won’t be able to describe it and it won’t matter to anyone else really anyway, that day we all rode together slow and easy and Rosie was nervous and so the story helped her and I declared, like I do, “Well, that was fun,” when we arrived home to cook supper again, get ready for bed and up and at ‘em for another morning of growing up and growing old…

In time Edie will forget the details of the Paul Bunyon story, she’ll need to make room for fractions and grocery lists and tall tales will likely be pushed from the priority. But I will remember her here, the way she was that autumn day. I was made to remind her when she needs reminding…because I am her mother, the memory keeper.

Hold the reins and hand me my purse…

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Us as babies in a bar…
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts

Once upon a time, when my husband I were young, like 24 and 25, and just married, we were
out with friends in the big town of Fargo, ND. That was back in the old days when bar hopping
in below zero temperatures still sounded fun because it didn’t take us three to four business
days to recover. Anyway, we were about ready to wrap up the evening of yell talking,
questionable drink choices and dancing to bar bands when, while heading out the door, I
realized I should probably pee first. (Never pass up a perfectly good restroom is a lesson I
learned early). And so I asked my husband, who was the only man wearing a cowboy hat within
a 300 mile radius, to please hold my purse. And so he did, standing patiently by the door with it
swung over his shoulder like it was his own accessory. Now my mid-twenties are way in the
rearview mirror, and I’m pretty sure I was drinking whiskey sours, so the details on this next
part are fuzzy, but essentially a group of college-aged guys approached my husband leaning up
against the wall all nonchalant for a guy in a cowboy hat holding a purse and indicated that they
didn’t approve by puffing up and saying “Nice purse.”

To which my husband smiled and replied “Thanks!” and then gave that purse a proud little pat
and continued on with being indifferent about the entire situation. And off we all went into the
frozen Fargo night with not a punch thrown.
This week I released a song I wrote with this image in my head, attempting to define a man like
Chad who can “hold the reins and still hand me my purse.” I had to get that line in there
because it’s the crux of the song titled “If You Were a Cowboy,” which essentially, for the
purpose of the song, means “If you were a decent human in this relationship you would respect
me.”



There are plenty of ways to interpret all the cowboy references I sprinkled in to a punchy little
tune about love and commitment and all the spoken and unspoken expectations that come
with it, but “knowing when to shut up and when to pick up the phone,” also seems to cover it.
Anyway, last week my husband drove us and a borrowed bumper-pull camper across Montana
and into Cody, Wyoming to help and hang out with me while I participated in the Yellowstone
Songwriter Festival. He rarely gets to tag along on my singing gigs because when I’m gone he
needs to stay back with the kids, but we made arrangements for them this time so we could call
it a vacation. And it really was, because for us you can’t beat a road trip, sleeping under the
mountains and listening to good music all weekend. The fact that I was scheduled to share the
stage with other songwriters from across the country for a few hours a day was the icing on the
cake.


And here’s where I’ll tell you that if one of my daughters comes to me when she is 22 years old
and says she’s marrying her high school boyfriend I think my gut reaction will be worry. I’m not
sure if that was the case for my parents, but as a woman who married her one and only real
boyfriend, I’m not necessarily a proponent of it. I wasn’t even entirely convinced we should do
it when he asked me. I mean, my heart was saying “yes!” but my mouth said, “I guess so,”
tentative only because I knew we were young and I’ve always been fixated on the idea of
“doing the right thing.” I mean, don’t well-adjusted adults get married much later in life? My romantic and practical sides are at constant battle, but thinking about it all now it seems I
fulfilled both in my marriage to Chad.


Because never once in my long and unconventional creative career has the man become
jealous of the time I put into it. I could drive across the country for weeks at a time and he will
only ever ask how it went and “where are you again?” I know that’s the trust we’ve built, but
still, I appreciate the faith he has in me. And in us.

And while both of us are far from perfect, it’s the letting one another be exactly who we are
that has kept us together since we were just kids. And if you ask Chad why any relationship
works, he would simply say just be friends and take care of each other, the way he did without
apology all those years ago in that bar. My husband has always known who he is and who he
loves and I suppose he’d get in a fist fight over it if he really had to, but why fight about any of
it? “Fighting hurts.” (Now I’m quoting him directly.)
If you ask me? Well, I’ll just write a song about it.



Go have a listen to “If You Were a Cowboy” wherever you get your music or on
www.jessieveedermusic.com! Now go take of one another.

A Cowboy Song and a Cowboy Town

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This week’s podcast is from the camper in Wyoming where we attended the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival.

Today’s the Day! It’s all about the new single “If You were a Cowboy!” Listen to it wherever you get your music and hear Chad and I discuss our recent trip to Cody, WY for the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival and how how he held my purse in a bar in Fargo, ND inspired this song.

Listen today wherever you get your music!

Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Music

If You Were a Cowboy

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Greetings from the passenger side of the pickup! Chad and I are driving home from the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival in Cody, WY where we spent four days soaking in the mountains, listening to amazing artists, performing and eating in all the places we could fit in!

I’m not sure I’ll have service much longer as we approach the badlands of home, but wanted to share the video Chad took of me performing my new single, “If You Were a Cowboy.” I was honored to share the stage that afternoon with Montana musician Ashly Holland and Carin Mari, Colorado songstress and lead guitar player for Michael Martin Murphy.

It truly was a magical weekend with the best audience and event staff and volunteers and I feel lucky to have been a part of it.

“If You Were a Cowboy” will be released tomorrow everywhere you get your music. Pre-save it on Spotify here: https://show.co/F7fIri3 to get it first! Or be sure to find it wherever you listen to music tomorrow!

Thanks for the support! See ya soon!

Making Music. Making Pies.

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The kids are back to school, the mornings are cool, the tomatoes are ripening in the garden and so are the wild plums in the sharp and poky brushes of the ranch. Just yesterday my nieces came in with handfuls they had collected with their mom and grandpa and informed me that they are ready by dropping them on my kitchen counter and inviting us all to indulge.

Ripe wild plums are one of the signs that we’re transitioning into fall and so I wanted to share with you a memory from the archives from when I found myself with a bag full of homegrown apples and the urge to do something beautiful with them. And so my mom, little sister and I  (none of us seasoned bakers) decided to take on my grandma Edie’s pie recipe, crust and all.

It’s a sweet memory sprinkled with nostalgia from when my oldest daughter (who just started second grade) was just a baby.  She was fresh and new to this world, named after the grandma’s whose recipe we had in hand, and I was fresh and new to motherhood and feeling domestic and content in the kitchen surrounded by the comfort of generations and the promise of a cool down.

Enjoy this season. Enjoy the fruits of your labor and lock your doors because it’s also the time of year that zucchini starts hitchhiking…

Making Memories. Making Pies.
September, 2016

My mom keeps a small wooden box in her kitchen, tucked up in the cupboard next to her collection of cookbooks. On the front it reads “RECIPES” in the shaky, wood-burning technique of a young boy trying his hand at carpentry.

And inside is an assortment of recipe cards, of course, notes from a kitchen and a cook who left us all too soon, taking with her that famous homemade plum sauce.

And the from-scratch buns she served with supper.

And the familiar casseroles that you could smell cooking as you walked up toward the tiny brown house from the barnyard after a ride on a cool fall evening.

Every once in awhile my mom will open that box on a search for a memory tied to our taste buds. She’ll sort through the small file of faded handwriting and index cards until she finds it, setting it on the counter while she gathers ingredients, measures stirs and puts the dish together the best way she remembers.

I’m thinking about it now because it’s sitting on my kitchen table, the one that used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen all those years ago acting as a surface to roll out dough and pie crusts or a place to serve countless birthday cakes or her famous April Fool’s day coffee filter pancakes.

And so they’ve met again, that table and that box, which is currently sitting next to a pie pan covered in tinfoil.

Because last week we pulled the box out on a mission for guidance on what to do with the 50,000 pounds of apples my little sister inherited from the tree in the backyard of the house she bought a few years back.

“Maybe we should make applesauce or apple crisp,” we said as Little Sister plopped the fourth bag full of fruit on my kitchen counter, my mom sipping coffee and my big sister entertaining my nephew beside her.

I reached up in the cupboards to dust off a couple recipe books because we all agreed then that apples this nice deserve to be in a pie, and Googling “pie making” seemed too impersonal for such an heirloom-type task.

Then Mom remembered the recipe box.

And that Gramma Edie used to make the best apple pies.

It was a memory that was intimately hers and vaguely her daughters’. We were too young to remember the cinnamon spice or the sweetness of the apples or the way she would make extra crust to bake into pieces and sprinkle with sugar when the pies were done, but our mother did.

And most certainly so did our dad.

So we dove into the recipe with the unreasonable confidence of amateurs and spent the afternoon in my kitchen, peeling apples, bouncing the baby and rolling and re-rolling out gramma’s paradoxically named “No Fail Pie Crust,” laughing and cheering a victory cheer as we finally successfully transferred it to the top of the pie using four hands and three spatulas, certain this wasn’t our grandmother’s technique.

Wondering how she might have done it.

Little Sister carved a heart in the top to make it look more presentable. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.

We fed the baby and gave her a bath. We watched my nephew demonstrate his ninja moves. We talked and poured a drink. We cleared the counter for supper. We put the baby to bed.

And then we pulled the pie from the oven. We marveled at our work. We decided it looked beautiful, that we might declare it a huge success, but first we should see what Dad thinks.

So we dished him up a piece. It crumbled into a pile on his plate, not pie shaped at all. But he closed his eyes and took a bite and declared it just the right amount of cinnamon, the apples not too hard, the crust like he remembered, not pretty but good.

We served ourselves and ate up around that old table. We thought of our grandma, wondered if she might have given us a little help and put the recipe back in the box right next to her memory and the new one we made.

And we closed the lid.

This story, Grandma’s recipe and more can be found in my book “Coming Home” available for purchase here.

Music News

My new single, “If You Were A Cowboy” will be released on September 12 on all platforms! Pre-save it on Spotify here to help it gain some momentum and to get it delivered directly to your inbox on release day!

Enjoy a sneak peek into the making of the music video, which we wrapped up this week in a cool old barn near Bismarck with some great North Dakota based musicians and videographers.