Category Archives: Motherhood

Why do we live here?

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Winter field.jpg
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts

Well, winter arrived here in full force, and I got to be one of the first to welcome it as I packed the kids into the SUV to drive 40 mph for 30 miles through sideways-falling snowflakes and atop icy, snow-covered roads while cussing under my breath. It’s not like I was surprised, I expected it. It comes every year.

And it turns out the first blizzard of the season fell on “Hawaii” day at school. And if stuffing the tropical dresses and plastic leis under winter coats and snowpants that are too small because you’ve been in winter denial and haven’t gone snowpants shopping doesn’t scream North Dakota kids, then come and see how we dress for Halloween. When it’s cold enough I don’t have to convince my daughters that cheerleaders and fairy princesses wear snowsuits, too.

It’s days like these, I understand why there are towns and why so many people live in them. 

My 7-year-old daughter and I have been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” before bed every night, and you know what? Even that beloved homesteading family moved to town in October. They figured it might be the right thing to do when Pa and Laura had to free cattle with their noses frozen to the ground after a fall blizzard. Figuring they could be next, they packed up for their version of civilization.

Why do we live up here? If you asked me last week while I was riding horseback with my family through trees lit by the golden autumn sun, I would have answered with a love song. Ask me today, and it’s a threatening breakup song.

But it’s only a threat. We’re stuck here come hell or high snowbank.

Anyway, this morning while I was plowing through the dark space-scape of blinding snow trying to stay between the invisible lines on my way to get the kids to school before the last bell, I was reminded of an epic winter school bus ride I had when I was in third or fourth grade. It was over 30 years ago now, so I figure the statute of limitations is up. And plus, it was the ’90s.

Once upon a time, I was an elementary school kid who went to a country school only 15 miles from the ranch. Every morning, I rode the school bus with about 10 of the neighbor kids, our house being the first to pick up and the last to drop off, which is the same as our parents saying, “I walked to school five miles uphill both ways,” but I digress. 

This particular morning was especially brutal. I think it was early spring or late fall, one of those times when the winter weather still surprises you. Our bus driver, as seasoned as he was, was struggling to navigate his route on roads completely slick with ice. But he diligently made his rounds, nice and steady and slow, to finally arrive at the last house at the bottom of the final long stretch of hill with only a half-mile to the school to go, only to find that he couldn’t get the bus to move another inch.

After several failed attempts at backing the bus up and taking a run at that big, icy hill with all 10 kids breathing down his neck and sending prayers up to the almighty for miraculous traction, something inside him shifted and he made a decision that, if it worked out, would be regarded as a ranch-y type of heroic that would be recorded in infamy in the Bus Driver Hall of Fame.

Turns out the move did become infamous, but only because no other bus driver in the entire history of the universe would have decided to take his attempt to cross the ditch and then rev the bus into the stubble field where he figured he could get more of that almighty traction. And so off he went, us 10 praying kids now wide-eyed and bouncing around and up and off our seats while our gallant driver slammed the pedal to the metal to keep the vehicle in motion past one tree row and on to the other before Little Yellow School Bus #25 finally sunk into the snow up to its floorboards a quarter of a mile off the highway.

It was silent then as we all took inventory of our new situation. Our bus driver reached for his CB. “Breaker, breaker, ‘Operation Go, Go Gadget snow tracks’ failed us.”

That SOS call would result in my very first ride in a four-wheel-drive SUV when an area superhero mom came down that icy hill to the rescue. I can only imagine what she was thinking as she spotted that bus, bright and yellow and stuck out of place in a white and gold sea of winter stubble field, all 10 of us kids trudging, with backpacks, snowsuits and confused looks through the snow to pile in the back hatch of that 1993 Chevy suburban, a shiny new beacon of hope that we’d make it to school at last.

Making it home would be another story, which is what I’m thinking now, a mom with my own four-wheel-drive SUV, watching the snow drift another inch outside the door.

If you need me, I’ll be checking the radar and ordering the girls snowpants that fit. Because winter’s here, just like it comes every year.

Rescue Mission

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Listen to the poddcast here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

My three-year niece, Emma has a bird book. She stands on the couch in the living room and looks out the window with that book in her chubby little hands and marks the ones she sees. It’s adorable, and that kid doesn’t miss a beat. She’s looking up at the sky whenever she can.

The other day I was walking with all the girls, my two daughters, who are five and seven, and Emma and her sister Ada, who is also five and probably loves animals the most of any kid I’ve ever met. Like, she has a gift with them, truly. Now bear with me here, this all matters because as we approached my house I noticed Emma stop dead in her tracks to stare intently at something way up in a tall tree by the road. When I caught up to her I looked up too and realized that what had her attention was a bird, about twenty feet up in an ash tree, flapping and panicked, trying to escape the small piece of twine that had somehow wrapped around its leg and attached him to a small branch. I later learned it was a cedar waxwing, which explained why other cedar waxwings would occasionally fly in to check on it, wondering why it couldn’t join the flock.

It was heartbreaking to watch, and even more heartbreaking to watch these four little girls discover the bird’s misery. Edie, my oldest, looked at me with urgency and, of course said, “We have to help it! Hurry!” Which is exactly what would have been going through my mind as a 7 year old, and, actually, it was going through my mind as a mom then too, but with a little more apprehension because I was home by myself and I’m afraid of heights and, frankly, a little unnerved by flapping birds. Also, so many things could go wrong in this situation if I actually figured out a way to get up there. Like I wouldn’t make it in time for one, or if I did, the bird might be gravely injured. Or, maybe of more concern, I could be gravely injured, I mean, I don’t have a great track record with ladders.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been in an urgent situation where four innocent and sweet little animal-loving girls are looking to you to SAVE A LITERAL LIFE, you can’t blame me for trying to do something. So they told me they’d keep watch while I ran to the house and got the ladder…and the pickup… because my plan was to, you guessed it, back the pickup up to the tree, put the ladder in the box, climb up there with my scissors and bibbidi bobbidi boo, release the wax wing like a Disney Princess Superhero.

But first I needed to call my sister to hold the ladder, grab me those gloves, and, in case it all went south, divert the attention and call the ambulance. Only a sister would come tearing in the yard in minutes flat after only being told, “there is a bird situation here.”

Turns out, once I got the ladder in the back of the pickup and got to the third rung, I also needed her to give me a pep talk. “If you’re going to do this, you just gotta commit” she said handing me the scissors and then wrapping a tight grip on my leg because even though we both knew that wasn’t going to keep me from falling to a bloody death in the name of a tiny bird, it made us both feel better. Oh, and also she needed to call off the dogs that suddenly came to investigate, both of us imaging that unfortunate scenario.

Anyway, if these girls ever say I never did anything for them, I’m documenting it now in this publication that me,  their mother, who is indeed truly afraid of heights, backed our pickup up to that tall tree, placed the ladder in the bed, climbed it, pulled the branch attached to the bird down to my level and detached it, untangled the tiny little bird leg from the twine and didn’t scream once (or at least not too loud) in front of my audience of little girls. In fact, I held that bird long enough for all of them to get a quick, closer look and then let it go, off safe and sound into the trees.

And then I sopped the sweat from my face and calmed my shaky legs and we all went on with our weird, wonderful little lives feeling good about the one we all saved. And Emma marked Cedar Waxwing in her bird book.

Colors of the season

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On the podcast this week I visit with both my daughters on what it means to be a cowgirl and how it went at their first rodeo. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

This morning the new calves were frolicking, bucking and kicking up their wobbly legs outside my window as the sun began to rise magenta pink on the cusp of the hill. The grass is neon green and I thought then that those colors of the morning sky and that green and the shine of the black on the backs of those calves were all my favorite colors.

This week Rosie, my youngest, graduates from preschool. They give her a little graduation cap and everything. She’ll wear her new dress and sing songs she’s been practicing for a month alongside her cousin. A few days ago my sister and I took our five-year-olds to kindergarten orientation. As the our daughters held hands and skipped around the school behind the teachers at the front of the line, brave and excited together, my sister, who is five years younger than me, whispered, “Did you ever think we would have kids going to school at the same time?”

“No,” I replied. “I guess this is how it was always supposed to be.”

This season change from white to brown to bright is following this little season change in my life. We will play through the summer and then both of my daughters will be in school—a kindergartener and a second grader. If my husband and I would have come into parenthood without ten years of heartbreak and loss, we would be long past this elementary school part, with a teenager practicing to take the drivers test. Our kids would be babysitting my little sister’s kids if we had control of the timing of any of it. If we wouldn’t have suffered loss after loss…

And you couldn’t have convinced me at the time that it would all work out the way it has. The heartbreak of infertility and miscarriage is a weight that sometimes pulls the heaviest when you’re trying your best to stay positive. There were years I gave up on the idea of parenthood entirely. There were years the pain made me avoid the subject.

Yesterday my sister, husband and I took all the girls (aged three, five, five and seven just so you can get the complete picture here) to practice riding horses and to get ready for their first little rodeo in town at the end of the week. The older girls were working on navigating their horses around the barrel pattern. With old horses fresh off of a lazy winter that know the grain bucket’s at the barn, it takes a bit of coaxing and skill to get them to take these little bodies on their backs seriously. It can be frustrating for a perfectionist like my seven-year-old and she wasn’t handling it well. And I haven’t read a parenting book that addresses the specific issue of teaching your kids to be calm and patient on the back of an old, stubborn horse, and so I wasn’t handling it well either.

An animal will test all the things that need testing in you, and so after we put horses away and loaded up to go home, I turned to my daughter and reminded her that she’s a cowgirl. And then out of my mouth came a list for her, a little guideline that I thought my rule-follower could appreciate:

A cowgirl is kind. A cowgirl encourages others. A cowgirl stays calm in tough situations. A cowgirl doesn’t give up. A cowgirl tries her best.

We both repeated it. And then so did Rosie.

And I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say here except I wanted to acknowledge that there are many ways a life can turn out, even if it isn’t the way you planned it. And I can’t say it would be better or it would be worse because the ‘what ifs’ don’t have answers. But I do know that all the mistakes and lessons and heartbreaks and little victories live inside you. And they’re there for you to tap into when you need them. And maybe that’s how you show gratitude for the things you thought might break you, or maybe that’s simply the definition of gratitude itself.

And maybe my favorite color is the color of every sunrise, in every season, reminding us of another chance at a new day.

When I grow up

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Today I want to share a piece that closes out my book “Coming Home.” I wrote it when I was still in my twenties in our first year back at the ranch. I was seeing this place through new eyes, realizing what time can do to us, clinging tight to the things that made me as I was discovering them again.

Those gray hairs I talk about are pushing through strong and I realize in the re-reading, I didn’t define what “grown up” actually means. Is it now? Is it ever?

I grab my flannel and go look for crocuses.

This week on the podcast I sit down with my oldest daughter, Edie, to talk about what it means to be an adult. And why kids like the mud. And yetis. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.

When I grow up

When I grow up I want to be the kind of woman who lets her hair grow long and wild and silver. When I’m grown I hope I remember to keep my flannel shirts draped over chairs, hanging in the entryway and sitting on the seat of the pickup where they are ready and waiting for me to pull them on and take off somewhere, the scent of horsehair on the well-worn sleeve.

When I grow up I want to remember every spring with the smell of the first buds blooming on the wild plum trees what this season means to me. When I grow up I pray I don’t forget to follow that smell down into the draws where the air falls cooler the closer you get to the creek and the wind is calm.

When I grow up I hope I don’t find I have become offended by a bit of mud tracked from boots onto the kitchen floor. I hope I keep the windows open on the best summer evenings with no regard for the air conditioning or the dust, because a woman can only be so concerned with messes that can be cleaned another day, especially when she needs to get the crocuses in some water.

When I’m older and my memory is full, I hope that the smell of damp hay will still remind me of feeding cows with my dad on the first warm day of spring when the sun warmed the snow enough to make small rivers to run on our once frozen trail. I hope it reminds me how alive I felt wading in that stream while he rolled out the bale and I tested the limits of the rubber on my boots.

And when my hair turns silver I hope I remember that my favorite colors are the colors of the seasons changing from brown to white to green to gold and back again. I pray I never curse the rain and that I don’t forget that next to the rosy flush in my baby’s cheeks, rain is my favorite color of them all.

Yes, when I’m old and my knees don’t bend the way they need to bend to get me on the back of a horse, I hope I’m still able to bury my face in her mane, to run my hands across her back and lean on her body while I remember the way my spirits lifted as she carried me to the hilltops.

I hope I recall how the first ride of spring made my legs stiff, my back creak and my backside sore, even as a young woman with muscles and tall boots.

Yes, boots! When I am old I hope I will wear my red wedding boots every once in a while and remember how I stood alone in them out in the cow pasture as a young woman waiting for the horses and wagon to come over the hill and take me to the oak tree where my friends and family gathered and the man I loved was waiting to marry me.

My red boots will remind me, so in all the shuffle and lost things that become our lives, I hope I remember to save them.

And as I watch the lines form on my husband’s face, little wrinkles around his eyes from work and worry, I hope I remember to say something funny, to tease him a bit, so I might be reminded again how he got the most important ones, the ones that run the deepest.

Yes, when I’m old and my hair is silver and long and wild, I hope those things that made me—the dirt turned to mud, a good man’s laughter, the soft breath of my child asleep on my chest, the strong back of a horse, the rain that falls on the north buttes and the scent of summer rolled up in a hay bale at the end of a long winter—will be there to see me out, happy and softened and weathered, just like the flannel I’ll remember to leave draped over the chair…

The Girls of Spring

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This week on the podcast we catch up on getting back on the horses in the spring, my dad’s horse-whispering skills and some of our epic horse wrecks. Which brings us to wishing we didn’t know how it feels to hit the ground when we watch our girls ride the big horses by themselves. We also catch up on my Nashville plans and how Chad had to rescue me once again from the side of the road. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Today it’s raining. Not a winter rain, but a true spring rain, one that smells like dirt turning to mud, one that lingers to soak the ground, not a lick of wind, it feels warm even though it’s barely above freezing.

Last Sunday I took my daughters out to the hilltops to look for crocuses. I knew it was probably a bit too soon, but when the first calves of the season are born and the snow disappears from the high spots, it’s time to check. And we did find some, though they were still sucked up tight into their buds, not quite ready to open up to the sun. But that was good enough for us. We’ve waited all this time, we could wait one more day. These are the rituals that come with the seasons, and they take patience.

Our hike around the hilltops on that 60-degree day found us next in the barnyard to greet the horses. After winter months out to pasture and bribing them in for scratches with oats and sweet feed, it was time to put on their halters and brush off their thick coats and get reacquainted.

In these moments, it seems like last fall was a lifetime ago, back when their coats were sleek and shiny and us humans were confident on top of them. It’s been months since we last saddled up the girls’ old geldings. Seven months now that I’m counting.

Seven months is a long time in the life of these little girls. Since then, both have turned another year older, they’ve stretched out inches, they’ve built new muscles and found the answers to new questions. They were ready to see what they could do with these horses now that they were all grown up.

Seven months in old-sorrel-horse-years has made them better, more understanding, a little more gray around their muzzles, and just fine with the task of trotting and turning around the still-sorta-muddy-but-dry-enough arena.

My husband and I stood shoulder to shoulder in that dirt watching our daughters get tested for stubbornness and will by their animals. I think we both held our breath, equally excited for the months ahead and lonesome for those springs that have passed, replacing our tiny, chubby, giggling daughters being lead around the pony pens with these creatures, lanky and independent and capable enough to do it themselves.

Oh, I know from experience, there’s nothing like being a young girl out here on this ranch in the spring! Nothing. The possibilities stretch out before you like that creek full of spring runoff, winding and glimmering and equal parts rushing and patient. Everything around you is waking up, and you can go out in it because you’re a part of it, reaching your bare arms up to the sun, unfolding out of your winter bud like that crocus today.

This spring, my daughters will take to the trees behind the house without having their mother as their guide. They will find a favorite, secret spot, they will wear down their own trails. They will take their baby dolls along and pretend they are mothers out in the wilderness. They will build forts and bring picnics and pick ticks off their jeans and drag mud into the house, and the world outside these doors will turn green as their skin turns brown and their hair turns gold.

They’ll scrape their knees running too fast on the scoria road, they will slap at mosquitoes, they will fight about silly things that are their most important things, and they will come in crying.

And they will have each other and their horses and the hilltops and the budding wildflowers blooming along with them. That’s all I ever wanted.

That’s all I ever wanted to give them.

Rosie’s Spring Song

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On this week’s podcast episode I have a short visit with Rosie before preschool about her new song and why spring is her favorite season. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Rosie wrote a song about spring to sing at open mic at my mom’s coffee shop in town last week. Her first experience a few months ago singing her own song in front of a crowd gave her the confidence she needed to do it again. She’s only five, let me remind you, but no “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for her. She insisted I get out my pen and my guitar and help set her idea to music. “Spring is the best time of the year. It’s so happy and full of cheer.”

Yes girl, yes it is. The snow banks are melting and the creek is rising and the mud on our boots is sticky and tracking into the house and everything is dirty and a combination of brown and blue and gold. And so these suddenly become our favorite colors when white has been our existence for all of these long cold months.

“Easter comes by and it’s so fun. Because there are Easter egg hunts,” she sang, her little legs dangling off the chair, the microphone in both hands held up close to her mouth so we could all hear her words.

Rosie’s my hero. It’s possible I’ve said this before, but in case I haven’t, I am saying it again. She has been since I met her. Her very existence was improbable given the fact that I struggled for so long to keep a pregnancy. We had our first daughter and thought that might be it for us, but we tried again anyway thinking it could possibly take another ten years. But Rosie was ready to be born and so she didn’t make us wait. She came to us quick and easy at the height of one of the most difficult times my family has endured, my dad clinging to life in a hospital bed in Minnesota and his future so unsure. We gave his name to her, Rosalee Gene, because the belief that he would ever meet her was nothing but a faint light. She was a sweet distraction, a quiet force for hope that can come even in the most desperate and dark moments. She made no fuss about it. She just breathed and sucked and pooped and lived and as she grew my dad grew stronger and here we are with both of them at the ranch waiting for the snow to melt off and the baby calves to be born. Spring is hope and renewal and so it reminds me of my second daughter, singing so confidently this song about her favorite season.

“Outside the window spring is here. Bunnies and chicks and baby deer.”

The elk take a stroll through our horse pasture

Lately there has been so much tragedy exploding from the news feed, and our small communities here in western North Dakota have not been immune to it. Renewal and hope aren’t easy words to sit with when loss and uncertainty sit heavy in your guts. But time continues to change the season. Time continues to move, eventually bringing with it a thaw. The water breaks free under the ice and rushes the draws.

In a week or so we will have baby calves on the ground, still wet out of the womb. In a few more the bravest flowers and buds will start to emerge at the coaxing of a warm sun. The pair of geese will return to the stock dam outside our house. The wild plum blossoms will dot the brush with vivid green and we will climb to the top of a hill to find a dry spot and lay down in it, knowing well that it could storm again the next day, burying the ground and the new buds and babies in the chill of a white blanket. But it will be hard to imagine it then with the warm spring sun on our bare arms. If you’ve forgotten what hope is, nature can remind you.

“A big blue sky and bumblebees. Tweet-ely birds and green green trees,” Rosie sings into the microphone to a small crowd of community members gathering for coffee. They tap their feet and hum the tune on their drive home…

Darling we haven’t gone dancing…

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Listen to the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your content!

Last weekend, the girls decided that my husband and I needed a makeover. This happens occasionally. They take it upon themselves to fix our hair, put makeup on me, paint my nails, and dig in our closet to pick out our clothes.

I always like to see the outfits they come up with. Usually it’s a combination of whatever animal print I have within arm’s reach, a flowy skirt that twirls, a jacket, and some high heels. Nothing ever matches. Their dad doesn’t have many fancy options to choose from because once I thought it was a good idea to throw all of his neckties in the washing machine and, as you can imagine, none of them survived, so I always come out as the most overdressed of the two of us.

Anyway, once they get us all dolled up, the next step is, naturally, to clear out a spot in the living room so we can dance while they watch. They give us orders on how we should hold one another and how he should dip me, and this all lasts about three minutes before they run to their rooms and pull out their most frilly dresses and sparkly shoes so they can join the show.

So, once again, this was our Sunday morning routine, the same as it has gone multiple times before. We two-stepped across the crooked rug in my snakeskin booties and twirly skirt with my arm around the guy I’ve been dancing with since seventh-grade jitterbug lessons in gym class.

As we worked the rust off our best spider move, my oldest daughter came rushing up between us, hugging our legs, a smile from ear to ear, overcome with emotion. She was having the most wholesome, adorable, whole-hearted reaction to this moment she helped curate, and it caught me off guard in the most lovely way. To see her parents dancing, holding on to one another, laughing at our clumsy attempt at a dip, letting go a bit in the routine of dishes and schedules and work made her whole little being light up.

There’s an old Ian Tyson song that my dad sings with the band called “Own Hearts Delight.” The lyrics are full of nostalgia the way some of the best songs are.

The chorus goes: “Darling, we haven’t gone dancing, for such a long time now. It’s been so long since we’ve twirled around the dance floor, I’ve almost forgotten how. So gas up the pickup and I’ll get the babies, they can stay with the neighbors tonight. And if the band at the bar’s playing waltzes and shuffles, I’m gonna dance ‘til my own heart’s delight.”

Long before I was married, I used to listen to him sing this song. Even as a kid, I understood the ache that sat within its lines.

I was raised by two people who worked two or three jobs each while raising kids and cattle. My dad was always the singer in the band, so I rarely caught them dancing, and never in the living room. But those quiet evenings at home in the winter while I sat on the floor doing my 4-H latch-hooking project, or at the kitchen table working on a math problem, I would see my mom swing her legs over my dad’s lap as they sat on the couch together, him reading the paper or a book and her surfing the channels, and I would feel safe.

Before our daughters were born, my husband and I used to spend our evenings both tucked together under a blanket in our oversized chair. Then my belly started to grow bigger, and then there were three of us, and then there were four of us, and our arms became busy, our nights occupied by crying babies, then kids with the sniffles and teeth brushing and “Just one more book before bed, please.” I’ve only just recently remembered that ritual of ours. We’ve long gotten rid of that big old armchair.

Lately, my daughters have become increasingly interested in marriage and coupling up. It’s a natural curiosity, I suppose, to try to understand what love is, what it might look like, what it might feel like, and if it might be something for them someday. There was a time when my oldest was around 2 or 3 when she thought dancing meant marriage. Marriage was dancing together. I didn’t hurry to correct her.

“Darling, we haven’t gone dancing, for such a long time now …” The words couldn’t echo more true for us these days. I guess we have our daughters to thank for the reminder.

Little moments to be brave

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Hear Rosie’s perspective on this week’s podcast where I interview her and she sings her song. Listen here or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

For as long as my youngest, Rosie, could talk, she’s been asking me when she can have her own band and perform on the stage. My answer at first was to offer to accompany her, but Rosie wants her own band. And she wants to play her own guitar. And she wants to write her own music. And just this morning she informed me she wants to play drums too. So now I tell her she has to practice.

I’ve been working on writing some new songs these past few months as I prepare for a new album I’ll record this spring. This means the girls have been wandering in and out of my practice and writing sessions quite a bit lately. A few weeks ago I heard their four little feet march up the stairs and fling the door open and suddenly my lonesome little love song turned into a collaborative writing session with Rosie, who was determined to live out the promise I made to let her sing at open mic night at Gramma’s coffee shop in a few weeks.

She recently (as in, right that second) decided her song needed to be an original. Now I could skip over this part, but I don’t want you to get the impression that this was any kind of made-for-Hallmark movie-moment. Rosie’s first attempt at writing a song ended with six harmonica solo breaks, a speech about how this song is not just about her being a cowgirl, but about families working together and a stomp-off because, when her big sister wanted to try her own song, she was stealing all Rosie’s words. My husband called it their first “intellectual property dispute.” I call it the first of many dramas in the family band.

That’s where we left it, a little song unfinished on a scrap piece of paper and we all went outside to play (drama comes and goes quickly around here). Fast forward to my arrival home from my week away in Elko after taking the 17 hour drive in one shot, where I was greeted by hugs and a reminder about open mic.

Tomorrow.

She had been telling everyone at preschool, including her teachers. And they were coming to cheer her on. This was serious. I can sleep when I’m dead.

So the next morning, we finished her song and practiced it all day (I mean, are you really a rock star if you don’t cut it close?) and headed to the coffee shop to make her debut. But as the big moment grew closer, Rosie started to experience nerves, something her little five-year-old body wasn’t expecting. Her eyes were watering as she thought about not getting it right in front of a crowd. In the car, her big sister tried encouraging her and I followed with some pep talk, so completely aware of exactly how her little heart was beating. We walked in the back and practiced the song again before it was her turn. They called her name and I knelt down beside her with my guitar in the front of that tiny coffee shop filled with our smiling friends and family. It was her turn. Rosie buried her face in my arm as her cousins and big sister came up to offer hand-holding, sing-alongs, hugs, cookies or whatever it was going to take to make her brave. I whispered in her ear “come on now, you can do it!”

But little Rosie couldn’t do it. Not right then. It was all too overwhelming I think, the idea that in her head, she was a professional singer, but in real life she was still only five and she’d never done this before. Oh, I could relate. Just a few days before, getting ready to walk out to a theater full of hundreds of people so far away from home, I wondered if I truly belonged. If I was good enough. If I could pull it off. My stomach was in my throat, the same way my daughter’s was in our hometown that night. I so badly wanted her to do the thing she wanted to do, but I didn’t read the chapter in the parenting book on this.

So I told her we’d try again.

We went to the back and gathered ourselves. I wiped her little tears and told her she was brave. We practiced the song again, three or four more times. She said she wanted to try again in a little bit. So out we went to listen to the other performers and get a hug from her teachers, who promised her a pizza party if she gave it another go. Bless those two lovely women because that did it, the promise of pizza. I think that would probably do it for me too.

Her cousins and big sister at her side again, Rosie looked down, got a little teary, got it together, took a deep breath and sang.

“Daddy feeds the horses, sister cuts the twine, me and mom chase cattle, the dogs come for a ride…”

The small coffee shop crowd cheered and Rosie was so proud. She even got a tip, which she can’t get over. She didn’t know she was that good! But to everyone in that room that night, it was less about being good and so much more about being brave. That’s where it starts, at little open mics, little rodeos, little gymnastics meets, little dance recitals, little talent shows, little opportunities that we create in our little communities to help each other grow wings. I’m so thankful for the efforts of those who make things like this happen.

Anyway, if you’re wondering, Rosie’s big sister got wind of the tip and is working out her own song for next month as I type. So if you like drama, stay tuned for the saga of the sister band.

Dear New Year

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Listen to the podcast where Chad and Jessie sit down to talk about highlights of the year at the ranch and why margaritas and cookies should be included in more New Year’s resolutions. Listen here or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Yesterday I watched my young daughters and their cousins fly down a slippery hill on a little orange sled, negotiating time after time who rides with whom next. Who sits in the back to hold on and who gets the front to take in the view and the likelihood of snow on their cheeks. We were experiencing a regular heat wave here. Thirty-seven above zero was a 50-some degree temperature shift toward a warmer winter day, and even though we could only find one sled buried under the giant drifts, we took it and we went to play.

Because the weather had been so cold, so well below zero for weeks, the snow piled so high that we haven’t been able to play in it. And around here, besides filling the creeks in the spring, that’s the best thing about snow.

We got a blizzard for Christmas, and a broken tractor, and a couple chances to get stuck in our yards and dig each other out. But the New Year forecast doesn’t look as brutal and so that’s the weather report in the quiet of the morning, from a mom sitting under the glow of our Christmas tree lights in that timeless, wonky, magic space between Christmas and the New Year, the dishwasher humming before sleepy kids wake up, reminding me that it’s all a little bit of a mess around here, there’s always something to be done. And we’re lucky for it. And also we’re tired. And overwhelmed sometimes. And grateful. And worried and wondering if we’re doing any of it right while simultaneously holding our ground on what we fiercely believe.

At the turn of the New Year I always feel compelled to reflect, as it seems we all do, on time and how it’s changed us, our family, and the promises I intend to make from here on out. But the further I get into this life the more I realize there are things that are so fundamentally out of our control, that maybe the ultimate gift we can promise to give to ourselves and those around us is a bit of grace.

Dear New Year,

I promise to do the best that I can most days, and other days, when I am not at my best, I promise to sleep on it and try again and be OK with that.

New Year, I won’t ever stop declaring it. If it’s wonderful, I’m saying it out loud so that I hear it, and you hear it and they hear it. We need more talk about the good things. But if it’s bad, if it’s bad in the ways that truly matter, I’m declaring it, too. I’m going to be better about that one, because I’ve learned this year that’s just as important. Because in the saying it out loud we give ourselves a chance to grieve, or to hope, or to find solutions, or to be there for one another.

New Year, I am going to continue eat the cookies. And order the steak. And pour the margarita when the occasion calls for it. Life’s too short. But I’m also going to continue to walk to the top of the hills to take in the view, and I’m taking the kids with me.

Because as I watch them dig tunnels through snow banks, declare themselves queens of the snow drift mountains, as they negotiate flying down the hills holding on to one another, I promise, New Year, if there’s fun to be found, if there’s beauty, I’m gonna be out there looking for it. That’s the most important one to me, it always has been, but more so now that these kids are watching.

Dear New Year, I look forward to the memories.

Snowed in

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Happy winter! It’s official now, on December 22nd. I’m writing this in the middle of another no-school, all the roads are closed, the wind is whipping 40 MPH snow day.

And I wrote the column during the last snow day. December has had it’s way with us. So Chad and I had plenty of time between tractor thawing and snow blowing to sit down and visit a bit about windchill and frozen equipment, digging out and and staying home, Christmas traditions and finding gratitude where you can. Even Edie pops in for a snow day report. Then stick around to hear both she and little sister Rosie sing their favorite Christmas song this year. 

Merry Christmas. Thank you for following along this year and sharing your stories with us. Sending you love, gratitude for the year behind us and hope for the year ahead.

Listen to the podcast here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

The magic season

Oh wow it’s magical around here. Two young kids waking up each morning smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season to see what shenanigans the little felt elf got into this time will make it that way. So will 4 to 8 inches of heavy snow and a promise of at least 40 mph gusts to make it nice and blinding, just like the North Pole.

Yes, we’re smack dab in the middle of the Christmas countdown. As I write this almost every road in the state is closed and so we’re in a good ‘ol fashioned snow day, except with laptops and virtual learning. And depending on your experience with Google classroom, the whole magic of the snow day experience can go either way.

And so can waking up at 3 am realizing that you forgot to move that enchanting felt elf. In which case you can either embrace that you are the magic or you can use your favorite cuss words as you squinty slipper shuffle down the steps to move the elf from the bathroom perch to the fridge between the ketchup and the soy sauce, wrapped up in an old dish towel for dramatic effect.

I’d say the magic is in remembering to move it at all. Bonus for a clever idea.

It’s worth it in the morning though. My kids are in that special spot of childhood where they still believe, and finding their elf in a toilet paper hammock is about as thrilling as it gets. Although the concept of Jesus and Santa both watching you gets a bit confusing for the five-year-old, especially when the felt elf becomes a part of the felt nativity scene. (Hey, I’m running out of ideas here.)

But it’s not just the Christmas season and the elf-drawing-faces-on-our-bananas- with-a-Sharpie that’s bringing this magic, it’s the kids themselves. They just have it beaming out of their curious eyes, skipping with them to meet their friends at school and almost knocking the Christmas tree over with each of the thousands of cartwheels they’re throwing in the living room.

The lineup of performances and celebration helps too. Last week my girls ran a regular rock star schedule and I happily (and with a supply of Motrin and coffee) played the role of their tour bus driver, stylist, caterer, and personal assistant. We had a first grade Christmas program on Tuesday, a pre-school Christmas Caroling experience on Friday morning and a dress rehearsal for a cheer performance on Friday afternoon. They gave it their all in their cheer recital Saturday afternoon and then we hosted Rosie’s five-year-old swimming birthday party on Saturday night. Then we wrapped it all up with my personal favorite, the Church nativity play on Sunday morning. The girls dressed as angels and they both had lines that we’ve been practicing all month. And we got to dress in our best and watch as Edie the Angel inched all the wise men and poor little Joseph out of the way so she could do the actions to the song front and center like she was born to do.

Man, wasn’t it just yesterday that she was baby Jesus who had a blowout mid-manger scene?

Maybe we all secretly wished for this snow day to slow it down for a minute so that we might sit on our cozy chair, our kids still in their jammies and watch a Christmas movie while procrastinating trying to figure out how to log-in to their Chrome books.

I’m rambling a little I know. I sat down this morning with the idea that I would write down a few lessons I’ve learned from this season of the year and of this middle-aged-mid-parenting life. But all I want to do is write down these little things I don’t want to fade from my memory: my daughters’ red tights and sparkly holiday shoes. Their morning bed head and crumpled Christmas PJs. The mess of graham cracker gingerbread houses and h alf-drunk holiday cups of hot chocolate taking over my kitchen table and singing Edie’s favorite Christmas song at the top of our lungs on the car ride to school. And even that silly elf that wakes me up and reminds me that these are the days. These are the exhausting, adorable, hilarious, snuggle-clad, sugar cookie filled days, frosted in sketchy weather with holiday sprinkles on top.

In case you forgot to remember. In case you’ve never forgotten.

Anyway, I got a little off task here, but here’s one lesson I really wanted to pass along: Tie the tree to the wall. Fishing string works great. Do it even if no one’s doing cartwheels in your living room. Trust me.

And whatever phase you’re in this Christmas, may you do your best to find peace where you are, even if it’s 3 am and you’re barely awake dressing a felt elf in Barbie clothes…