Category Archives: Family

Stories about the characters in my life

The big chair and the tree

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Have you ever experienced a moment in your life where, in the middle of it, you’ve heard the voice in your head say, this is it, this is a memory now? 

I have several I go back to now and again, but the recent quietly falling snow has reminded me of this one—my husband and I sitting together, squished side by side in the big leather chair with the big leather ottoman that we had purchased second hand from our landlord the year before. We had only been married a couple years, and we moved that big piece of furniture into our very first house with the level of optimism and delusion you only really get when you’re in your early twenties. And we had it big enough to think that buying a repossessed house that needed to be completely gutted to be livable was a choice that was going to get us closer to the big dream. Little did we know that gutting a house, while trying and failing to start a family, would threaten to gut us too, like the big dream getting the best of us before we even really got started. 

But at night, after coming home from full-time, adult jobs to a house full of ripped up carpet, tools on the countertops and unusable spaces, we would tinker a bit on a project, maybe I would go for a walk with the dogs, we would feed ourselves and then we would sit on that big chair together under a blanket and it would all feel manageable somehow. 

It was in this timeframe in our lives I had my first and only Christmas tree meltdown. The winters we lived in that big, broken house were relentless. The snow never stopped falling and it would drift so high up against the south side of the house that our dog would climb the bank to sit on the roof of our garage and keep watch on the neighborhood. Over those two years, we lost six pregnancies while we worked to renovate about the same number of rooms on that godforsaken house. All this is to say, those rooms and the rooms in my mind didn’t seem well-kept enough to deserve a tree, and so I procrastinated the whole thing, though my husband insisted. We needed a tree. And so he took me down to the grocery store parking lot where they bring trees in from places that can grow trees and we picked one that was perfect and alive and full and we put it in the back of my husband’s pickup and we brought it to the not-done-yet house and we moved our big chair over a bit and we put that tree by the big picture window that faced the street and I put on the bulbs and lights I bought new from Walmart. And they were pretty enough. It was all pretty enough, and sweet and what you do on Christmas. 

And I hated it anyway. Like, I had a total disdain for this tree. I remember it clearly, the sight of it made me angry. It made me cry and it made me frustrated and I tried to blame it on the ornaments with no sentimental value or the fact that it was leaning a bit even though it wasn’t leaning at all. And I remember my husband being so patient with me, but I was not patient at all. I was irrational and at the time I didn’t know why. I just thought I was going crazy in this house with endless wallpaper to peel and sawdust to sweep and this tree, with it’s stupid glass bulbs and not one single baby-hand-print-ornament hanging on it, was just standing there in this mess, mocking me. 

But that night, despite my unreasonable attitude, my husband and I sat in that big chair, his right arm under my back, my head on his shoulder, and we watched the twinkle of the tree against the window while outside the big flakes were falling under the warmth of the street lights. Everything was quiet then, even the thoughts in my head. They stopped too to tell me, this is it. This is what matters, right here squished in this chair. Girl, this is what peace is. Remember it. 

Last weekend I watched our daughters pile out of my dad’s big tractor and plop their little snow-suited bodies in the piles of big snow that had fallen on the ranch the past few days. They rode along with him as he cleared a path for our pickup to drive out in the West pasture to find a Christmas tree to cut and decorate. The sun had just come out and the sky was as blue as it can look, making that fresh snow sparkle and our daughters just ran like wild animals across that pasture while we examined the spindly wild cedars in the hills.

The sight of them, with my dad and my husband and the laughing was closer to heaven than it was to that grocery store parking lot I stood in all those years ago.

The tree we picked? Way less beautiful by magazine standards. And it’s filled with candy canes now, and homemade ornaments and it will probably fall over at some point because these trees usually do. And the years will pass and I know I won’t remember that tree, but that day? It will be with me forever.

And, well, I guess I just wanted to tell you that. I wanted to tell you that in case you needed to hear it.

Remain Calm, it’s the County Fair

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We made it to the other side of County Fair Week, but this column was written on my living room chair while we were gathering all the projects and doing the last minute packing and paperwork.

I didn’t know what to expect our first year in the livestock show ring and Edie’s first year as a regular 4Her, but had a great fair, full of lessons and fun.

I’ll tell you more about it next week, but for now here’s this week’s column!

County Fair Week

It’s County Fair week and I’m writing this at 6 am between my first two sips of coffee and before I wake the girls up to get dressed and gather their supplies and their two goats to head to town for four days of trying to convince the judges that we’ve actually practiced leading these animals around every night despite the doe’s tendency to brace up, stick her tongue out and scream. And I know that was a long sentence to start us off here, but this is the vibe right now. Screaming goat. 

After spending two hours filling out the animal record books with only ten minutes to spare yesterday, I asked my daughters if they could just erase those past few hours from their memories because, turns out record books make us all want to scream like that goat. It’s our county fair spirit animal. 

On Tuesday we brought my daughters’ projects to town. My nine-year-old, Edie, is big enough to be a real 4-Her this year, which means it’s no more rainbow participation ribbons for her, but the chance to earn a blue, or, if the buttercream frosting lands right, a pink or purple. We spent the day before decorating cupcakes and making fudge and putting tags on jewelry and drawing and pottery and photography projects. I helped Rosie put together a cute little fairy garden complete with a duck pond, a bridge and as many tiny animals as she could fit and still include a geranium and then we left it under the eaves of the house that night during a thunderstorm that drowned those little ducks and whipped the pedals right off that geranium. And so, we did that project twice. (Cue goat-like sigh). Rosie made sure to tell the judge, all about it. 

And that judge (who’s our neighbor down the road) told Rosie that her fudge was better than Gramma’s and that might have made my daughter’s life, and she’ll certainly never let my mom forget it. “Gramma, maybe you should stick to Rice Crispy Bars from now on,” she joked to her over the phone. 

It’s County Fair Week and I think our community has more kids participating than ever. More goats, more pigs, more steers and more horses in the show since I was entered in the olden days, hoping that after her only shampooing of the year, my horse wouldn’t roll in the dirt before the halter showmanship . Which she did. Every time. And yet, that event remained my favorite. The girls are going to try their hand at showing these ranch horses for the first time this year. We’ve been practicing and brushing and loving on the animals in preparation, which is the most fun part. Taking them to town is the most nerve wracking. Because there’s nothing that tests your patience more than an uncooperative animal, because sometimes, even with all the practice you could fit in, things just don’t go right. But sometimes they do, and there’s nothing better. 

Yes, sometimes your caramel rolls win grand champion, but then sometimes they land face down in the parking lot on your way to the interview. Sometimes your steer is so tame he just lays down in the ring and you’re too little to get him up. Sometimes the chicken escapes your grip, and you have to scramble to catch it, but then you’re standing next to your best friend and the two of you get a kick out of telling the story for the rest of the week, and maybe years to come. 

Photo by Judy Jacobson

And  sometimes the two hours you spent in the kitchen with your mom trying to pipe perfect rosettes on your cupcakes creates such a sweet memory for both of you that your daughter says even if she gets a red she’s proud of herself and that makes you tear up a little for some reason, probably because it’s county fair week and the kids are growing up and now it’s 7 am and I have only had four sips of coffee and we are officially running late, per usual. 

Good luck to all the 4Hers this summer! May your bread rise perfectly, and your goats (and your mothers) remain calm. 

I used to take photographs

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I used to take photographs. Not just with my phone, but with a big camera I would tote around almost nightly on my walks through the hills or on rides through the pastures. I would sling it across my body as a constant reminder to stay on the lookout for the way the evening sunset makes the tops of the trees glow or creates a halo around the wild sunflowers if you get down low enough in the grass. There was something about having that camera in my hand that automatically transformed me back into the little girl I used to be out here. To have the task on hand to capture it  reminded me to look out for the wonder. 

I’m not sure exactly when I put my camera back in the bag and then up on a shelf to collect dust, but I’m pretty sure it was around the time the babies came. I documented my first-born’s every move with that big camera up until her ninth month or so. I know because I have a hundred-page hardcover book to prove it. But then technology turned my phone into a more convenient and quality option and then Rosie arrived and then the wandering changed to carrying one baby in a pack and pulling the other in a wagon down the gravel road. 

How fast this sight has changed

Lately I’ve been feeling farther and farther away from myself. Usually, this sort of ache is reserved for long winter nights, but for some reason, it’s creeping up on me in the change into summer, which has been notorious for snapping me back to myself. I haven’t planted a single tomato plant. The garden isn’t tilled. The horses need about a hundred more rides. My calendar is dinging with deadlines that feel impossible to meet and I find I’m feeling a bit frantic about making sure this summer teaches my daughters some things about responsibility with as much room for play as possible. 

Responsibility and play. I think that might be the never-ending battle we’re all up against. Can they possibly exist together in balance? If you have any sort of roots in ranching or agriculture, I can see you nodding your head along when I say there is never a time where you can relax without thinking you should be doing something more productive. 

Because there is always something to be done here. The barn needs to be torn down and rebuilt this summer and so does the shed. The siding needs to be put on the house and the deck needs to be rebuilt. The old equipment needs to be moved off the hill and we need to resurface the road to the barnyard. We need to rebuild the corrals and spray the burdock plants and ride fences and move cows, and also, we have that day job and softball practice for the kids and the county fair next week. We’re getting none of it done in the process of trying to do all of it. The feeling of being fragmented and frazzled and underprepared for everything is one I can’t shake. A walk to the hilltop to document the wildflowers is the least productive thing on the list. But maybe the thing we need most. 

Last week in our efforts to get the kids ready for the county fair, I took that old camera off the shelf and out of its bag. My sister and I signed our oldest daughters up to enter a photography project and it was time we got it done. We walked out into the yard and bent over the little patch of prairie roses in the front yard. I did a little speech about focus and timing and patience and light and looking around for things worth photographing. My niece pointed out how it would be best to crop out the cowpie under the wildflower photo and I said she was right. There is beauty growing right alongside the poop. We just try to focus on the beauty when we’re behind the camera. 

After the wildflower lesson we set our new kittens up in a little basket out on the lawn for a little photoshoot. Those four little fuzz balls were the star of the show for a good fifteen minutes while we worked on catching their best angles and fawned over how sweet they were.

The lawn was long and needed to be mowed. The tomato patch needed to be tilled. My office work was waiting, but I was too busy saying “oh how cute!” and “get a little lower, focus on their eyes,” and “oh my goodness the sweetness,” to think about anything else. I liked the way the world felt to me in the yard that day. 

I think I’ll leave that camera out and within reach this summer…

Mud puddles

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Have you ever had to pressure-wash the gumbo mud off the clothes and boots your children were wearing when they decided to go splash and roll in the giant mud puddle that had formed from a week of rain behind the dumpster in your yard? 

As long as I’m living and they’re not dressed for town, I will never deny my daughters full access to a mud puddle. I stood under the awning of our entryway to protect myself from the rain and in a matter of three minutes those girls had ditched their muck boots and socks on the wet gravel and had covered themselves from head to toe in gray mud and rain water. I felt an urge in myself bubble up to go join them, remembering for a moment what it was like to be that carefree, but remembered the laundry and the supper on the stove and turned back to the house. When does it happen? When do we wake up and become the person who denies themselves a mud puddle?

As I write this my daughters are sleeping under a giant pillow and blanket fort in the living room of their cousin’s house over the hill. Summer break has come to find them at nine and seven years old, right in the very fleeting sweetspot of girlhood where you have as much freedom as your bike and feet will give you. Or, in Rosie’s case, her little dirt bike which she used to recently to retrieve a doll at her cousin’s house so they could keep the game of school going. The rest of the girls suggested that they time her on the task, so it was imperative that she use her motorcycle. And let me tell you, the sight of her in her pink helmet with the American Girl Doll poking her head out of Rosie’s backpack, her hair blowing in wind on the way down the hill was an image of my growing daughter I hope I never forget. If I let her, Rosie would take that little dirt bike all over the countryside. As soon as she’s strong enough to pull that starting cord to start the motor herself, she’ll no doubt be off. Whether I’m ready or not, Rosie always has been.

Last week my husband and I taught our daughters the Jitterbug moves we learned in gym class when we were their age. In the kitchen after chicken dinner, we danced and twirled and never successfully got the spider down. When the weekend came, we brought them to the rodeo in town. We ate popcorn and laughed at the rodeo clown and cheered on the barrel racers and bronc riders and when it was over we headed inside to listen to the band.

My daughters and their cousins have always been the first to hit the dance floor, moving their bodies with the kind of abandon they use when approaching a mud puddle, jumping and spinning and laughing and singing. I stood next to my husband, and we watched as our oldest daughter, at the brave age of nine, take the hands of a boy from her class and show him what she learned in the kitchen a few days before.  

I looked over at my husband and wondered if I was ever that confident. So many times, in the raising of them, my daughters have made me wish that I could be more like them. I didn’t know that was going to happen. 

I grabbed my husband’s hand and I pulled him out on that dance floor. I got a minute or so into the song before he was stolen by a niece or a daughter for a spin or a flip and I happily gave him up to them.

They will never be this young again, but then again, neither will I. But who makes the rules on mud puddles and dancing anyway? We stayed way past their bedtimes to dance a few more dances because the next day they had nowhere or nothing they needed to be but seven and nine under the summer sun that is all too quickly drying up those mud puddles.

Rain Goats

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“What are you doing?” I asked my husband in the dark of our bedroom. He had his face nearly pressed up against the screen of the open window at the head of our bed. That day in May had reached record-breaking temperatures of over 90-degrees and we soon found out that our air conditioning was on the fritz. We had just switched off the heat a few days earlier, but there we were, laying on top of the covers under the ceiling fan before spring had even officially arrived. 

“I’m counting the seconds between thunder and lightning,” he said as another loud clap shook the house, bringing only noise and not a drop of rain.

As a volunteer fireman for a rural department, he’s found himself dropping everything and rushing to the pickup to answer a neighborhood call more than ever these days. With the high winds and dry conditions and the things he’s seen go up in flames, he understands that it could be us at any time. 

Down the road my dad still doesn’t have a rain gauge. He spends his mornings checking the calving pasture and worrying about the status of our springs and the levels of our dams and grass. You can have everything out here, but you have nothing if you don’t have the rain. And if dad ever buys himself a rain gauge, he’s certain it will never rain again. I feel the same way about umbrellas.

And it turns out, maybe there is some validity to those silly superstitions. Because what came next has been over a week of soaking rain that has left us with muddy roads, rushing creeks, full dams, green grass and nearly five inches of moisture and counting. And, when I needed to run with my daughter a quarter mile through a busy parking lot in a sideways downpour to get to my niece’s graduation ceremony, of course, I didn’t have an umbrella. 

Dad, who usually relies on us for the rain report was likely a bit smug to find that the bottom fell out of our gauge this winter. Maybe that’s all it took to open the skies, the absence of rain gauges and umbrellas on the Veeder Ranch. Could we be that powerful? 

“A God send,” Dad sent me a text along with photos of water rushing through the culverts in the Pederson pasture and the creek swollen to the size of the Little Missouri River. My daughter and I sat happily soaked in our seats, our hairdos wrecked, a little shivery but smiling as we waited to watch my niece officially become a teacher that morning.  

I texted our neighbor to see how much rain they had down the road, officially turning into my father right then and there. 

A few weeks ago we brought home two little goats to feed up and get ready for the fair. On the warm days we brushed them and shined them up. On the hot day we hosed them and shampooed them.

Yesterday, after looking at the extended forecast and their soggy little bodies, we decided their shelter wasn’t going to cut it anymore as the rain and chill continues. And so my husband and I arranged a goat transfer to the big barn that sounds simple enough in theory but looks like an hour of locating and moving hog panels, an unsuccessful crash course in halter breaking, two crying goats, one who just three minutes ago, successfully outran and outwitted a mom, a dad and a kid in the pen but is now suddenly unwilling to take another step, one kid standing on the road in the rain crying, one mom yelling “It’s ok! The goats are ok!” one dad yelling “Hurry up. Come here and help us!” to the other girl who, while splashing nonchalantly in a mud puddle got her boot so completely stuck that she had to take her foot out and use both hands to pry it free, which resulted in the sort of timber into the soggy ground that you can imagine before she gathered herself to sit with those two muddy, stinky goats in the side-by-side for their mile-long trip down the road to their new digs where we set up new troughs, a water bucket and a heat lamp that, oops, broke along the way, have to go get a new one, be right back…

And while I’d prefer that this debacle doesn’t make the 4H record-keeping books, I will tell you, even in the muddiest and soggiest of the situation, we never once cursed the rain. And the goats? Well, they perked up right away in that warm and cozy barn and I stand by my assertion that I’ll happily trade fire danger for goat transfer any day. 

If you need us, we’ll be standing next to the window saying things like “I wonder how much we’ve got?” and “We needed this,” like the middle-aged, superstitious cattle (and goat?) ranchers we are…

And I never wanted to leave again

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My husband and I spent a brief time living in western Montana when we were first married almost twenty years ago now. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I reach back for a memory there of us and our big brown lab who was just turning from puppy to real dog, maybe sort of like our marriage. 

We chose the mountains as a challenge to pick a spot to live and that sounded adventurous before we completely settled down at the ranch. We had been married the year before and my husband needed to finish his college degree after spending as much time as a man needed as a roughneck in the oil fields. I had been touring up and down the Midwest, particularly the interstates and state highways of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. I would take my husband with me when his four days off aligned with my time on the road. Our honeymoon, for example, was spent in Redfield South Dakota, a tiny town of 2,000 just south of Aberdeen. I had been hired to perform at a company picnic and so off we went for four hundred miles, nearly running out of gas when we miscalculated the distance between towns. 

We could have been in Jamaica like normal newlyweds, but on our way home, we stayed at the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo to be fancy and bought a new refrigerator and microwave at with our wedding money only to discover they were much too big to fit in the tiny ranch house where were living. So, we sold them to his parents. 

Living together as husband and wife in my grandma’s tiny house next to the red barn on the ranch where I was raised when we were so young made us feel uneasy, I think, only because we wondered if it might be too good to be true. We couldn’t possibly be here already; with jobs and bills and the brown lab puppy I bought for him for his birthday. If we stayed here for the rest of our lives, would we grow to resent it? Would we blame every mistake and wrong turn and unsettled argument on the fact that we never spread our wings too far together? What if we became unhappy? Would there be a way we dared blame it on the ranch and the small town that raised us and pulled us back? 

And so, we narrowed it down to two choices. Wynona, Minnesota because once I sang there and brought my husband along and we visited a cute coffeeshop and walked along the river and climbed to the top of a bluff and we liked how it looked like a movie scene from far away, even in the ugly and brown part of March. And then we went to Wabasha and watched the bald eagles and toured the famous restaurant and places that inspired the 90s movie Grumpy Old Men. We got a kick out of all of it. And Wynona had a college with the right program.

And so did Missoula. We hadn’t been there before, but as prairie kids we romanticized the mountains and so that’s what won. Seems like the mountains always win. Who could argue with a college credit in snowboarding and professors who wore Birkenstocks before every teenage girl in the country wore Birkenstocks. We brought our dog, and I brought my guitar and I doubt we had too much else. Maybe a bed and my mom’s old leather couch. We found a cheap place to live, and I found a job and he went to school and we looked for places to find ourselves in the mountains every night and every weekend and we wanted to love it. And maybe we did a bit. But looking back on it now it seems like we spent most of our time trying to climb out so we could see the horizon and the weather coming. So we could get away from the endless swarm of people looking to be found too. 

My favorite hiking spot was the bald face of a mountain outside of town where nothing but prairie grass grew and the trail was cut like a switchback the way the cows and deer and elk would do it at home. There were no surprises there. I could see the sky. 

I lost my first pregnancy in that little condo in Missoula. My husband had already moved back to North Dakota to take a job offer and I stayed behind with the dog and nothing but an air mattress and a suitcase left in the space. It wasn’t time for us to be parents. We were not ready. But it didn’t feel that way when I was alone and wailing. My dad came to get me, my husband couldn’t leave. I protested. I’m like that lab, when I’m hurt I want to hide out under the deck and be alone. 

And that was that. We gave it a year for the mountains to enchant us. But nothing compared to the place that loved us first. After the long trip home, I climbed to the top of my own hill. It wasn’t a mountain, but the view was better. I cried the cry of someone who had lost something. I cried the cry of relief. I cried the cry of uncertainty. I cried the cry of being loved. I cried the cry of being home. 

And I’ve cried that cry a thousand times since, but I’ve never wanted to leave again…

 

Here to have tea

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I am behind on my column posts and the only excuse I have is that I dropped my computer in Arizona and that created a certain chain of events that have made things like posting here annoying but mostly work has been relentlessly busy in the way that has been good but also all-consuming to the point where I’m starting to miss the part where I actually climb a hilltop and find perspective every once in a while.

Good thing coaching a 4-year-old soccer team also gives me some of that.❤️🥰

And also, opportunities like the one I wrote about a few weeks ago in this column.

HERE TO HAVE TEA

Recently I spoke and sang at a local women’s event in my hometown. It was a tea party and the room was full of ladies dressed in their best seated around sweetly decorated table settings. I stood on the stage in front of them and imagined how much needed to be arranged and rearranged on their schedules to get them in these seats on a Saturday morning. The sitters or the kid’s sports runners. The newborn baby holders so she could get a shower in. The grammas leaving early for the grandkid’s birthday party they wouldn’t miss for the world. And so I said it out loud into the microphone. I said that I understand how much is going on in their lives and the schedules each one of those women had going on in the back of their minds.

 

I had just dropped my oldest daughter off at soccer camp on the way to the event and we almost didn’t make it to town because I forgot to fill up with gas on my way home from a late event the night before. Miraculously Jesus took the actual wheel and I made it the thirty miles without the assistance of a gas can. And while I sat and enjoyed my tiny sandwiches and tarts and coffee I was checking the clock to make sure I could get out of there in time to get back home and change clothes, grab a bite to eat and bring the girls back to town for a rodeo I was working.

 

My low-on-gas Chevy might have been a metaphor for my life at the moment. Also, the pile of laundry I was trying to tackle in between, and the fact that I realized for the past two-weeks I have been using dishwashing tablets instead of proper detergent in the washing machine. I suppose that’s what I get for buying the fancy, no plastic, good for the environment product with the tiny label that keeps popping up in my feed, beckoning me to be a better person the same way all the creams and exercise programs are trying to convince me my skin’s not smooth enough and I’m not lifting weights enough for my age because I’m not lifting any weights because I can’t even remember to get gas for crying out loud. 

Needless to say, I think I needed this little two-hour women’s tea as much as anyone in the room.  And, as the hired-speaker, if they were looking to me for inspiration on how to balance it all, how to make it all work together and not wake up at 2 am worrying, that’s not what I brought with me. It’s never what I bring with me. 

A bag of lettuce from my little sister’s and the bag with my daughter’s peep she’s supposed to be treating like a baby but keeps leaving in her aunt’s minivan? That I’ll bring with me…


I did, however, bring with me reminders of why living with gratitude tucked quietly in our pockets can help when we feel like we’re drowning. And probably that explains the tears that kept welling up in my eyes as I looked out at that community of women, some my dear friends, some my relatives and some I had yet to meet. I needed to hear own my words the same way I was asking them to hear the story about my dad and how he used to take us along to work cattle when we were kids, and no matter the rush we were in, he always stopped and got off his horse to pick up a fallen feather to put in our hats. With us along, he never passed up an opportunity to pick a ripe raspberry or point out a deer or pick the first crocus of spring. I know now, as an adult raising young kids in the middle of my life in the middle of a family ranch, how busy he was.  I didn’t realize then how easy it would have been for him to rush past all of the special things on the way to get work done. 

But instead, he picked up the feather. 

A picture of the first crocus my dad sent me last week, still doing the noticing for me into my adulthood
And a picture of our first calf he sent the day before

Scheduling time on a Saturday to have tea and tiny sandwiches was that feather for so many of these women in that room. Turns out, they were way ahead of me.

And I might forget the gas, and I might not take the time to read the labels, and I might have found Rosie’s lost earring by stepping on it, post up, with my bare foot last night, but I’m trying hard not to miss the tiny things that make all of this worth it. Because we are not here getting older and more wrinkly in the name of the freshest laundry. We’re here to notice that bald eagle sitting in the dead old tree every morning on our way to school. We’re here to hear the song our seven-year-old is writing in her new notebook.  We’re here to sit in a room together and talk and listen. We’re here to cry a little bit because it’s hard and we all know it but also because it’s beautiful too. 

We’re here to have tea.

Mom and Daughter in the Middle

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Today, my oldest turned 9. Here she is, wearing and holding all her bday presents. Her earbuds and baby doll perfectly depict the sentiment of a girl her age ❤️

“Mom, I’m disappointed about something,” my almost-9-year-old daughter said as we were walking out the door together after school art class.

“Oh no, what is it? What happened?” I asked, knowing it could be anything from spilled milk on her favorite crispito lunch (recent occurrence), friend trouble at school, or a bad grade on a test. When you’re almost 9, the possibilities of disappointments are endless.

“It was picture retake day and …”

“Oh no,” I replied before she could even finish her sentence, suddenly remembering something that I forgot about entirely “And …”

“And Daddy did hair!”

We said it at the same time, locking eyes, her looking at me for my reaction and me looking at her in her favorite stained pink Nike sweatshirt and long, slicked-back hair. 

Was this going to be a crying situation? I wondered in the 2 milliseconds before we both busted out laughing.

“I am so sorry!” I declared between howls. “I totally forgot!”

“Well,” she replied, running both hands through her mane to mimic the slicked-back hairstyle she left the house with. “But these aren’t going on anyone’s fridge.”

“Why did it have to be the day Daddy did hair?!” I wondered out loud to the gods of parenting. “And why didn’t you tell him you don’t like your hair that way?”

“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” she replied, melting my forgetful heart before her younger sister, decked out in a purple athletic tank top, grubby sweatpants and her sister’s hand-me-down cardigan, chimed in. “I’m pretty sure I blinked.”

I laughed and apologized all the way to the car knowing how much it must have killed my type-A oldest daughter to be surprised by the news without the picture day ritual of the special hair-do and special outfit we’ve done every picture day before, and no time to remedy her slicked-back hair in the mirror before the big “Say cheese!” I would have felt really bad about it all if we both didn’t think it was so funny.

Because this week that type-A daughter turns 9. We’ve been planning her sleepover birthday for weeks now, the cake and the food and the sleeping bag arrangement. She asked for teenager clothes. And also, maybe for the last time, a new baby doll.

Recently, during a late-night scroll session, I ran across the term “middle mom.” 

It’s a new-age term that describes the time in motherhood when a parent no longer has a baby on her hip, but she’s not planning a graduation.

She’s in between raising the “littles” and the “bigs,” with random sippy cups still shoved in the forgotten corners of her cupboard and neglected baby toys lying low in the depths of the toy boxes. I welled up by the light of my phone screen and switched to an online search for that baby doll.

Because as much as I’m a “middle mom,” my daughter is finding herself in a similar in-between phase of her girlhood, playing with her dollhouse and requesting that her hair be done like the varsity volleyball players we watched last week. 

She’s pulled to play pretend in the woods behind our house after spending the school day navigating the cliques and nuances of friend dynamics, wondering through tears why some kids can be so mean. 

She’s the teacher in the pretend classroom game with her younger sister and cousins and she’s upset when they switch mid-game to pretend they’re mermaids.

She believes in Santa Claus, but if she thinks about it too much, she knows that it’s just because she’s holding on.

Because it’s fleeting.

Reading stories to her youngest cousin

Fashion show for a friend’s children’s boutique

Darling girl, I know it, too. Some days I wish you could stay that chubby-faced, frog-catching, blue-dress-only-wearing baby girl.

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But then you look at me and laugh the laugh of a young lady who knows what’s important and what to let go. You laugh the laugh of a girl who understands how lucky she is to have a dad who does her hair and a crazy mom who forgets things and then, well, I’m so happy to be in the middle with you.

And happy to have a perfectly imperfect photo to look back on and remind me.

50,000 people singing….

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I turned forty-one walking along the streets of Minneapolis. It was midnight and we were laughing, all five of us women, about something I can’t remember, something that probably wouldn’t have hit us this hard if we hadn’t just left a stadium where we sat shoulder to shoulder with 50,000 people singing along, at the top of our lungs, to our favorite songs. 

50,000 people in one place who knew all the words to the same songs.

Five women who made space in lives that overwhelm us with ways in which we might be doing it all wrong. And, if we don’t pay attention the proper amount, take or don’t take the vitamins, wear or don’t wear the thing, vote or don’t vote this way, drink or don’t drink the milk, eat or don’t eat the meal, we risk screwing it all up. The parenting. The marriage. The job. The country. The earth. It’s a heavy weight to carry and it’s hard not to sprinkle it with a little dose of guilt when you decide to spend too much money on concert tickets, leave the kids at home, throw your cutest outfit in your suitcase, take the car seats out of the minivan and drive away for a weekend spent with four women who have done their version of the same to put some space between themselves and the notion that we might not all be ok.

It’s a heavy time in the news cycle, which just happens to coincide with the time in our lives where we’ve charged ourselves with raising the future. In the early mornings when I drive that future to school, I ask each daughter and niece to pick a song. This week “Jeramiah Was a Bullfrog” has been on heavy rotation. “Joy to the world, all the boys and girls…” we sing along as we drive, 65 MPH to 45 MPH to 25 MPH on roads they keep constructing. I park in front of the door to school and tell them I love them and tell them to be kind. They run into another day of childhood in middle America where we feel pretty lucky and pretty worried (I pause to wonder here if there are better words I could choose to describe it…)

Back at the stadium a young man behind me stands during the opening act, lifts his drink up in the air with one hand and puts his other arm around the girl he came with. Throughout the entire night, he sings almost every lyric with the vulnerability of a young child. But he’s not a young child, he is a man in middle America singing the lyrics of songs that describe what it feels like to lose someone, songs about addiction and fear, uncertainty and family and hope, tender things wrapped up safely in the sound of the fiddle and guitar and drums keeping time, coming from a man who looks like the guys in his hometown who maybe don’t talk about those things.

And maybe tomorrow, back at home, back at work, he won’t again. But he is here. Here he is, exposed, singing along.

I suppose if we admit that moments like this could save us, we must also admit that it could also be dangerous—50,000 people singing the same words…

I walked out of that stadium holding hands with the women I came with into a night bright with city lights. I turned 41 while the crowd of teenagers and twenty-somethings, mothers and dads with their daughters and sons, filtered out into that same night, sort of sweaty and tired and drunk with beer or feelings. 

Back home my daughters stayed up too late in the big bed together while my husband fell asleep. The next day I drove that minivan back west to pick corn with the neighbors, eat pot-luck after a rodeo, sit in bleachers to cheer on the volleyball team, take an art class, sing with my dad on the deck, make a fish supper for my family, take a ride with my husband to check on a bull, brush my daughters’ hair, pack backpacks and give rides…

“Joy to the fishies in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me…” my daughters stop singing to open the car door and run to school…

Ranching and Romance

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Want to know what romance is when you’ve been married almost eighteen years and you’re raising kids and calves on a generational ranch? 

Your husband taking time out of his summer checklist of fixing fence and rebuilding corrals to help you construct a new garden plot in the yard. Especially when that man says, and I quote, “Landscaping is just work to make more work.” 

And he’s not wrong. Out here when we look across our spread of endless big jobs, like barn building and pen building and water tank maintenance and figuring out why the bulls keep getting into the hay yard, lawn mowing and weed eating and tomato planting and pressure washing the driveway aren’t on the top of my husband’s June “to-do” list. 

But they are close to the top on mine, and I appreciated the help when I looked at the calendar and then the radar that indicated I might want to get the peas planted before the predicted torrential downpour and, also, before August. 

Summer is frantic around here. So frantic that major yardwork on a Sunday seems slow. 

Crocs: function and fashion collide

But I got those peas in thanks to him. At 10 pm before the sun set and right in time for the rain to pour later that evening. 

My husband’s love language is definitely “acts of service.” I’ve seen it in him since he was a much younger man. To be of use, to be helpful, to know how to do the thing that needs to be done is a quality that has saved us money and meltdowns plenty more than it has cost us both. (Because, let’s be honest, DIY isn’t a Zen experience). 

There was a time when I was younger and in love with him where I would imagine my future out here on the ranch with more walks hand in hand and picnics under the big oak tree where we got married. How dreamy. 

Our wedding tree

News flash. That’s never happened. Not even once.  

Romance looks more like getting off his horse to get the gate. And then I reciprocate by getting the next one.  

Tick checks, that’s also romance out here. And it’s tick season so, yeah, we’ve been getting romantic a lot lately. 

All joking aside though, I’m thinking about this today because the amount of love I felt for my husband watching him till that garden spot on Sunday knowing how much he was setting aside to do something for me was palpable. It sort-of caught me off guard the way a lump catches in your throat when a sentimental commercial breaks through your sitcom zone-out. My husband, he lives with a good-sized handful of intention when it comes to his close relationships. He’s a guy who’s never really rushing. He’s a guy who will have a long look at it. He’s a guy who takes his time, whether or not it might drive you and your tight schedule crazy. 

And he makes me wonder if I’m too caught in my own drive, letting worries and checkboxes sometimes consume me like the good student I keep striving to be. But no one’s keeping grades here. This is our life and I wanted to plant peas and so he helped me plant peas.  And I guess I just want to say, that’s a really sweet way to love someone.