A good day to be the pug.

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Ahhh, Monday.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little scared of the days of the week that are to follow. The hustle and bustle that comes with the short North Dakota summers is now officially in full swing. Yeah, we’ve gotta cram it all in before the snow flies again.

And all I want to do is lay next to this guy in the sunshine and soak it all in.

Monday. I have been dreading you and all of your promises about grocery shopping, finishing the laundry, meeting deadlines, cleaning up those dishes that have been sitting over the weekend, returning phone calls, sorting through emails, attending meetings, planning events and being forty-seven places at once with a homemade dessert.

Monday, I’m not ready for you yet.

It’s cloudy, the blue birds are chirping outside my window and my bed and the coffee are still warm.

Sigh.

Days like these remind me of when I was a teenager moping around with that little gray cloud of dread over my head about a chore I didn’t want to do or a class I didn’t want to attend. I remember looking at my cat stretched out on the couch in a spot of sun and wishing I was her…with no responsibilities, no chores, no dishwasher to unload, bed to make or homework to fuss over…nothing to concern herself with but sleeping and eating and pooping and lounging.

At these moments in my life I experienced the same jealousy toward anything with fur and four feet. The dogs and the simple lives they lead. No deadlines or term-papers.

The cows grazing on the hilltop, blissfully unaware of the life and death situations humans had to deal with regarding what to wear to prom or failing your drivers license test.

I wondered if horses felt humiliation. I figured they didn’t.

And I figured the grass and grain would suit me just fine if it meant I didn’t have to worry about being the only teenager in the world to never gain the legal qualifications to drive a car.

I wanted to lounge.

I wanted to graze.

I wanted to stand on a hilltop and let the breeze blow through my mane, my only concern to be switching my tail to keep the flies off of my back.

And it seems today I am regressing. Yes, facing this over-scheduled week I am once again experiencing those pangs of jealousy toward my furry companions who’s only chore is to walk past the food dish a few times to check to see if it’s full.

I want to snore away the morning like the lab at my feet.

I don’t want to make dessert.

I don’t want to do the dishes.

I don’t want to worry about supper or the business of picking out pants…or shoes.

Dogs don’t wear shoes.

And Pugs don’t have to make Jello Salad. Pugs hate Jello Salad.

And meetings.

And showers.
Today would be good day to be the pug…

When it pours…

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We got drenched here yesterday. The morning brought us thunder against the glow of a sunrise trying to peek through the clouds and, well, it just escalated from there.

Around here we don’t get too many downpours like this. Typically we get our moisture in the spring and then watch the sky for a chance of showers to help soften the hard clay throughout the summer, so this day of gully-washing rain was a welcomed site for us.

And when I say gully-washing, I mean it. The coulees were flowing with raging river rapids, the corrals below the house turned into swimming pools, a new ravine was cut along the edge of my driveway and, well, I got myself a free pug wash. It’s days like these that make me feel like I’m in a different world altogether. The ten-year-old in me itches to run around in it, to let the rainwater soak in my hair and squish between the mud in my toes. But the logical grown-up in me decides it’s best not to get pneumonia, even though I’m fully convinced the pneumonia scare was a ploy by mothers and grandmothers everywhere in an effort to avoid soggy kids running into the house with a pile full of muddy laundry waiting to be stripped from their pruny bodies. But whether it was the threat of a sniffle or the scarier threat of more laundry that willed me to stay inside until the monsoon-like rains subsided, it doesn’t really matter. I was out in it at the first sign of let-up.
Because I love the way rain makes my world look. I love how it changes things, how it drenches the wildflowers causing their petals to recoil.

I love the sparkle of the rain drops waiting to be evaporated back into the sky on the soft surface of the leaves.

I want to lick the drips from the un-ripened berries.

I like to visit the horses, to see how they fared as they stood still against the opened sky, their butts turned against the wind, soaking the heavens into their skin. It always seems a storm makes them ravenous, starving for the lush green grass that seems to turn neon at the first drop of moisture.

But after the storm they won’t have me poking my nose in their business. They are not about to come in.
They braved the storm, now they’re going to feast.

I always walk to a hilltop then. I scrape and scramble my way up the face of the clay buttes, my boots, suffering from a severe case of mud-pack, weighing an extra 10-20 pounds. I scour the bushes for flowers, check out the sky for more rain, listen for the birds coming back to life and breathe in the fresh, new air.

Funny how a good rain can cleanse us, even when we watch it from the other side of the windows or come to know it after the calm has set in.

I love this land.

I love what exists here.

The changing and unexpected beauty cannot be recreated, not matter the repetition of the seasons.

I find I’m manic about being a witness to its changes, running out to be a part of it…

to be a part of the down pour…

Because when it rains I feel there’s something up there responsible for this…

When it rains, when it pours…I believe.

Lessons in life and death from a ranch kid…

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

If you were to sit me down for coffee, serve me up a piece of pie and ask me what it is that appeals to me about ranch living I would tilt my head to the side, look up at your ceiling and come up with a few things.

The first would be the quiet and the beautiful secluded spaces I can visit at will.

The second would be the animals.

I would probably go back and forth then, trying to really distinguish which aspect is truly my favorite before coming to the conclusion they go hand in hand really. I mean, you need the wide open space to keep animals healthy and fit and roaming. The rolling hills full of grasses and trees and the winding creek bed are perfect for cattle and horses (and goats and sheep and llamas, you know, if you were into that sort of thing). And I truly believe if a dog were allowed the choice of prime real-estate to make his home he would pick your farm or ranch over the city sidewalks. Yes, even that little fluff ball you keep in your purse would agree. I mean, given the choice wouldn’t you prefer to poop in private?

But for all that ranch living is to the animals: an endless adventure for their noses, a smorgasbord of the best grazing, a giant park with countless trees to pee on, a dynamic hunting grounds, it’s also something entirely different…

Dangerous.

Dangerous and full of lessons about life and death.

And as a young ranch kid growing up out here I like to think that we learned about the circle of life a bit earlier than most. Ranching mom and dads, in my experience, don’t tend to sugarcoat things like this for their young ones. Our lessons about where babies come from were caught while helping Pops check cows and being brave enough to ask what the deal was with the cow, ummm, well, giving that bull a piggyback ride…

We learned about birth by sitting on a hill-top in the early spring to watch a cow deliver a calf in the warmest, most protected place she could find. We absorbed what instinct meant as we witnessed her lick her baby clean as it awkwardly struggled to get to its feet, wobbling on knocked knees for a few hours until it got the hang of his hooves standing on the surface of the big, wide world.

That calf needed to stand to live. It needed to move with his momma as she ate, so he could eat. He needed to tap into what it meant to be a calf and who he needed to stick by in order to survive out here where there are spring ice storms, slick mud, unexpected temperature drops and coyotes.

And so yes, I learned about death out there in the pastures as well. I learned that it isn’t always fair, that sometimes the weak don’t have the luxury of protection, sometimes mommas don’t possess that instinct, and sometimes nature is more powerful than the will to stay alive.

Oh, I learned these lessons and I accepted them, but my heart broke just the same each time the tough ones made their way into my life. I remember saying silent little prayers to myself when Pops would have to bring a calf in from the cold, feed it and warm it in the basement only to delay the inevitable. And I remember my heart breaking when my favorite horse grew so old and weak that one day I woke up to find she didn’t make the trek to the barnyard.

I remember the untimely death of the puppy I rescued and the countless barn cats that didn’t have the chance to make it to old age.

As a little girl I wondered if these things got easier as you got older. I wondered if your heart got harder or you got braver as you grew taller.

Then I would watch my Pops work into the night to help a young cow deliver her first baby safely. I was a mouse in the corner as he tube-fed a calf clinging to life. I was a witness to the despair when he found his best horse bleeding and broken out in the pasture. I saw how his eyes dropped, how he shook his head and paused for a moment before sucking in breath, exhaling and moving on.

And I understood.

I understood that life is beautiful. That it’s a series of heartbeats and breaths, pumping blood, willpower and spirit.

I understood that all of those things will eventually quiet. That all of us will return to the earth, circumstance or time helping push us there.

And it doesn’t get easier to let go of those creatures under your care, no matter how small.

And no matter how tall you get.

Rest in Peace Mister the Cat. You were one of the good ones.

I am certain there will be a red barn and plenty of mice in heaven…

Oh, and dragonflies…

Work and fishing

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I woke up this morning with a little krink in my neck, my back stiff and sore, my arms reminding me of muscles that hadn’t been used in a while. The sun was shining through my bedroom window, backlighting the lush green leaves that have come to our world to stay for a while. The cool breeze through the screen prompted me to pull the sheets up to my neck and scootch in closer to Husband.

It’s Monday morning and it seems like the workweek has come in with sparkle and style. I appreciate it.

But the weekend? Well, judging by the dirt hanging out under my fingernails and the size of the laundry pile it seems it was one of the good ones.

No, we didn’t have anything extravagant on our schedules, no vacation on the beach, no road trip to the mountains, no concert or festival, just a couple days spent inside a simple life that we’re working to create here. I wouldn’t even have much to mention about it really, except for somewhere between chasing the cows that got out into the fields with husband, planting Pops’ tomatoes, catfishing on the river with Little Sister and sitting on the porch with a vodka tonic and my mother as the sun began to set at the end of Sunday, I found myself wishing there was more time in my life for chores…and I think I might have realized why ranchers don’t take many vacations….

Because when the sun is shining on my back and the cool breeze moves through the sweaty tendrils of hair that have escaped from my ponytail, it’s hard to be too upset that the cows got out. In fact, sitting on top of a good horse watching so the cows and their babies don’t miss the gate as Husband moves back and forth behind them, gently pushing the pairs along, I find I’m glad for the work.

And glad that I got to push my horse to a full-out run as I raced to stop the lead cow from finding her way to the brush. Grateful I had that chance to cowgirl up, feel that wind in my hair and power of the horse beneath me.

Proud the two of us turned the herd around on our own and happy to be working alongside a man who loves this work as much as I do.

Summer weekends like this remind me of what it was like to grow up out here, a ranch kid with three months off and no driver’s license. Sure, I had the occasional coveted trip to town to swim in the public pool, but for the most part we were out here riding in the fencing pickup with Pops, chasing cows on sunny mornings trying to beat the mid-day scorching heat, mowing the lawn and eating summer sausage sandwiches for lunch. The work with Pops was never stressful or hurried, just constant and quiet and he was glad for the company…it didn’t matter if the ten-year-old and fifteen-year-old in the seat next to him were too uncoordinated to run the wire stretcher.

I remember the heat, the sweat, the horseflies and wood ticks we would find as we rode through the thorny brush on our way to find a stray cow. I remember the country station coming through the static and speakers of the old fencing pickup as Pops climbed out to fix a wire and I leaned my head on the sill of the window and watched the grasshoppers fling themselves to the sky. I remember taking my little sister to climb up the clay buttes while we waited for Pops to emerge from the mud underneath the stock-tank he was fixing.

I remember taking a break from the sun under the shade of the tree line and the way the cool grass felt under the pockets of my jeans.

I remember the smell of the wet dirt as Little Sister and I dug in the ground below our house on the hunt for worms…because the work was going to have to wait…Pops was going to take us catfishing.

When I think of early summer I think of these things. And this weekend it seemed I had an instinct to recreate and live life the way summers here were meant to be lived. So after the cows were rounded up on Saturday, the flowers were in their pots and Husband had enough tinkering with the plumbing on the new house, I called up my Little Sister who has just moved back to town and told her to bring her cooler.

We were going catfishing at the river.

The process is always the same: pack a bag full of sunflower seeds, bug spray, long sleeve shirts and something chocolate. Fill a cooler full of beer. Hunt unsuccessfully for all remaining pieces of the fishing supplies you haven’t seen together in one place for months. Patch together a mis-mash of fishing line, hooks, reels and poles and say it’s good enough. Search high and low for the missing camp chairs. Put on your short shorts and get in the pickup, roll down the windows and head south toward the Little Missouri where the water runs low and slow through the slick clay banks of the badlands.

Each year we debate about the location of our favorite fishing spot, wonder if we’ve missed the turn and discuss how the moisture from the previous winter has changed the trail. And we are reminded once we arrive of why we come here, the seclusion and quiet of the untouched banks makes us feel free and wild and capable of catching our own supper.

We kick off our shoes as they grow heavy with the mud of the banks. Little Sister and I cast lines that have been prepared for us.

We talk.

And then we’re quiet, our attention turned toward the calm flow of the river and the beaver who is working on tearing branches from a willow branch on the other side.

Then my line tips. We hold our breath. Someone says ‘reel’ and everyone stands up as husband runs toward the banks to ensure a safe arrival of this strange looking fish emerging from the muddy water of the river.

We laugh and celebrate. We brag. We take a picture and re-worm our hooks.

And wait.

Open another beer.

Change locations.

Sit on a rock.

Watch the clouds roll in.

Spit seeds on the banks.

Declare 8:00 pm to be the witching hour.

Wait for another tip to bend.

Leap up when Husband starts reeling. I jump and holler in excitement but do nothing to help ensure the fish makes it safely to shore. Husband moves toward the deep mud at the bank as the fish flops and struggles and the fisherman leaps to grab it…

But it’s too late…it’s escaped to the mucky water, a worm in its belly leaving two fishermen stranded in mud up past their knees.

I say I can’t believe it got away.

Little Sister laughs hysterically as she watches me snap photos of my dearly beloved sinking deeper and deeper by the second into the slick mud of the riverbank while he tries to hand me his pole so he can escape.

The sun sinks toward the horizon and the thunderheads move in, reflecting blue and gray on the surface of the murky river water. We declare it time to reel up.

We let my catfish go, deciding it’s not enough fish worth the work of cleaning it. And besides, I have steaks waiting for us at home.

Muddy and tired and full of mosquito bites and bug spray, we head for the trail that leads us to the highway and then the pink gravel road that meets up with the ranch house. Husband fires up the grill. I pour something over ice.

We open the windows and we are us. Dirty and hungry and smelling of horse hair and sweat and fish.

It’s summer at the ranch and the tomatoes need to be planted. There is a house to finish, plumbing and wiring to be done, and corrals to be patched. The cows found an open spot in the fence and are heading down the road. We will know this tomorrow and we will saddle up to bring them home after coffee and bacon in the morning.

The sun will be shining, the breeze will be cool, the cows will be willing to move…

…and we won’t mind the work.

His favorite season

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Today is Pops’ birthday.

May 31st.

It seems like the perfect day for a man like this to be born, his arrival into the world coinciding with the arrival of the most beautiful things on the ranch: green grass and blue sky. Maybe that’s why he’s been in love with it all of his life, holding on tight to the memory of what blossoms and mud and wet prairie grass smells like through the rough winters and draughts. That promise that things will always get better. That summer will come again.

My Pops has always been an eternal optimist. Maybe I’ve figured out where that comes from.

Yes, Pops is turning 50-somethingorother today. If you ask him how old he is he will tilt his head up a little and think about it, as if he can’t remember. Sometimes he can’t. Because he’s not really concerned about the business of age. It’s a cowboy thing I think. As long as his legs are moving and his arms are strong enough to finish the job, as long as he can show the young guys how it’s done, teach them a thing or two about what it means to really work, then he’s just the right age.

Old enough to have learned his lessons.

Young enough to remember them.

I joke with Pops about how his hair is turning white, a hereditary trait, like his nose, that he passed along to me. I look in the mirror and little pieces of him are reflected in my face: skin that turns brown in the sunshine, dark eyes and the laugh lines around them, unruly hair, that prominent nose.

That damn nose.

Yes, these are qualities I will keep with me my entire life, a reminder of the man who raised me. A man I’ve always been certain will never grow old. I can’t imagine it. I don’t think any son or daughter can.It’s like coming to terms with the fact my little sister is no longer 12 years-old and I am no longer 17…like time was supposed to stop ticking when I left home. Like things were supposed to stay the same and wait for me to return.

I’m back now and I see that it isn’t true. I have eyes that are opened a bit wider by life and the realization of what it takes to make something of yourself beyond the approach that leads into my parents’ driveway. I am back and I am living down the road from the people who loved me and raised me and gave me wings to get on out of here…and left me to make my own decisions about coming home.

I didn’t see myself at 28-years-old having my parents for neighbors. And if I did I couldn’t have guessed what it would be like for them to turn from caretakers and decision makers in my life to friends. I wouldn’t have known when I left at 17 that ten years later the best part of a trip to town would be visiting my momma at her new store and seeing her eyes light up with excitement about a new chapter in her life.

I wouldn’t have guessed that the best thing for my soul would be taking a ride on a good horse alongside my father in his favorite season.

I have tried to put my finger on what it means to be living as an adult so close to my parents. In Hollywood Land you have one scenario and it looks a lot like “Everybody Loves Raymond.” But that’s not it for us. My parent’s have too many things going on in their lives to be walking into our house unannounced and making comments on my cooking.

In fact, I can barely catch them on a weeknight between their high-demand jobs, meetings, friends and Pops’ daily visits with his grandson. But when we do all get around the dinner table, there’s as sense of familiarity that goes along with it…and I find that ten-year-old version of me and work to make them laugh before spilling about the things that happened that week that might make them proud.

Then we clear up the dishes together, an adult woman finally realizing why helping with the dishes was so important all of those years I fought my mother on it.

My parents’ passion for life is inspiring and I am thankful I am their neighbor so I can witness it. I am afraid if I would have stayed away I wouldn’t have had the chance to understand my mother’s creative spirit and learned that you don’t stop taking risks just because you’re getting older.

If I wouldn’t have unpacked my bags in the house where my father grew up I may not have been capable of grasping the magnitude of his ties to this place and the pain that he must still feel every day from losing his parents at such a young age…only a few years older than I am today.

I think about this place without my father and it’s like taking out its heartbeat. Because you don’t outgrow your parents. And thinking about it today I imagine how much he misses his every day he’s here fixing the fences his father wired, driving that old tractor they bought together, drinking coffee in his mother’s kitchen.

Especially on his birthday.

Yes, my father was born on this day fifty-some years ago, a child of the buttes and grasses under a blue sky that promises rain in the spring. He dug his hands in this dirt, planted the tree outside my window and knows every creek bend in the coulees and granite rock on the hilltop.

If you ask him what he wants to do today he would tell you he just wants his family around, his grandson especially.

I will buy him a bottle of whiskey. One of us will get him a bag of M&Ms. Mom will have a gift wrapped. We will write our names on cards and thank him for being the “best dad in the whole entire world.” And then he will sneak off into the pasture to catch a horse and take a ride.I will listen for the back door to creak and hope to catch him walking up the road to the barn.

Because it’s shaping up to be a beautiful day today, the kind that my Pops waits for all year, and I want to be out in it with him.

Happy Fiftysomethingorother Birthday Pops!

This page cannot be displayed

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Ahhh, country living.
The peace and quiet.

The gravel roads and sweet song birds.

The barbed-wire fences and big blue skies.

The green grass and horse poop in the yard…

The lack of a liquor store within an acceptable distance when you desperately need to find out who starred in that 1998 movie with Nicholas Cage, go to your computer in anticipation of the answer only to find that “Google” cannot be displayed….and probably won’t be for a good two to three weeks…because…well…you live in the middle of nowhere

That sinking feeling when you come to realize that you are not smart, you don’t have a good memory, you don’t know how many ounces there are in a gallon, how to actually make a hamburger casserole, what “decoupage” means, or the remedy you should use to treat that weird growth on the old horse’s ass…

you just know how to use the internet.

And now you don’t have it.

And you are in the middle of nowhere.

And you can’t Google anything.

So you go to town.

Get five bottles of wine.

Find a computer in civilization and Google “how to survive in the middle of nowhere without access to Google.”

And then laugh, because you just “Googled” “Google.”

But just a little, because, well, there are some things “Google” can’t help you with…

Especially when you don’t have internet.

Ahhh, country living…

If you need a moment…

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

If you need a moment take it.

Make a promise and don’t break it.

Have an itch? Scratch it.

Want the setting sun? Go catch it.

I’ve seen that smile so bring it.

You know the song. Sing it!

You have dreams, go chase them.

Problems? You can face them.

Seeking beauty? The earth grows it.

And when you love somebody…

show it.

If I could be a season…

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We’ve had a couple beautiful days at the ranch lately. Things are starting to blossom up around here, making way for the butterflies and bees and bugs. The birds have found their way home and so have the pair of geese that live in the dam outside our new house. I’ve been spending my evenings strolling through the coulees to see if I can break the record I set of 25 wood ticks crawling on my body at once.

It seems I’ve always known just where to find them.

But the wood ticks are pretty much the only black blotch on what is my favorite season. Wood ticks and the burdock weed, but I figure I can take a few heebie jeebies and invasive plants in exchange for wild purple violets,

horses with slick spring coats,

rhubarb and blue skies.

The thing about spring around here is that it moves fairly quickly, so you’ve got to catch it before the bluebells wither up in the heat of the day and those familiar birds fly south.

Against the backdrop of late spring everything seems to come alive, and with the windows open in the house I am invigorated and inspired. Because we wait for this warm sunshine all year and northern prairie people everywhere don’t take one “Goldie Locks” day for granted. No, we busy ourselves with lists of things to do before winter rolls around.

And in the summer around here that can mean chores and projects of course, but more than anything it means living out in it.

Because man could not build a better space for us to exist in. No roof can compare to the comfort and drama of the rolling clouds that threaten a few warm rain showers and promise a blue sky that always comes back to us. Families seem at ease here in the hills alive and buzzing with the sounds of life and change and growing things.

The wildflowers are a welcome home present that appear overnight, the grass our living, breathing carpet.

In the creek the minnows appear like magic and along the banks sprout blossoms promising fruit.

A prairie spring is a world that cannot be replicated. It is a world that is so far from the drastic howling winds of winter and the brown and sleeping earth, that you would swear you were living on a different planet just two months ago.

In those months I felt like a down coat and wool socks, steaming hot chocolate and melty white marshmallows.

A dumpling in warm soup.

Heavy blankets.

But today I feel like a garden. Like a picnic, a cold drink, a bratwurst on a lawn chair.

A warm breeze.

Bare feet.

The sun soaked queen of the barnyard.

I want to stand on the hills with the horses, facing the wind to keep the flies away, the only concern for the day.

I want to run close to the ground with the pug, smelling the things he smells, allowing my heart to pump hard, my tongue to hang out, my delusions of grace and agility to run rampant.

I want to jump in the dam with the lab when the heat gets too warm on my skin.

I want to taste what the bees taste.

I want to sit in the clouds and cast cool shadows all of it.

I don’t want to live in this season.

I want to be it.

Love letters from me

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Last week in the middle of a life that sent me down to the scary basement of this old house to search for things to throw away, I found something I didn’t know I had.

And that something might have turned into one of the most important pieces of my life.

See, among our snowshoes, highschool yearbooks, that old radio noone can throw away, games of Cranium and Catch Phrase, college text books and papers, canning jars and countless pairs of boots was a box I didn’t recognize.

And in this box filled with odds and ends that echoed the man who was outside trying to start our lawnmower– an old rope, a tarnished belt-buckle, a necklace made from deer antlers, a tupperwear dish full of shot-gun shells and two-dollar bills– were little pieces of paper, neatly folded and tucked away in a shiny cardboard package…

My 16-year-old handwriting telling our love story.

I would have missed it, the memories of a love that blossomed when we were much too young for things like love, if one of those neatly folded letters didn’t find its way out of the box and onto the dusty floor as I moved that box into the hallway in an effort to consolidate the neglected pieces of our lives. I tossed the box aside to retrieve the piece of paper that looked so familiarly intriguing. I squatted down on the floor and unfolded the page.

I recognized that handwriting.

I recognized the feelings.

But I didn’t recognize the words.

Up and down notebook pages, on typing paper and inside homemade cards were professions of my adoration toward a boy who used to meet me at my locker and walk with me to class. A boy who played football and had a yellow dog, whose hair was never right and neither were his parents. A boy who gave me my first kiss and drove a Thunderbird too fast on the highway to my house every Sunday to ride horses and teach my little sister to play chess…

A boy who received those notes, folded them back up, put them in his pocket only to tuck them away in a box to be saved and moved from place to place as he went off to college with the girl, drove her to Yellowstone National Park in the middle of July with no air conditioning, proposed to her under her favorite oak tree, married her there and proceeded to work on the happily ever after.

I didn’t know the boy kept the notes.

I didn’t know the man still had them.

I didn’t remember the girl who wrote them.

A quirky girl who made up stories about turtles stuck on fence posts in an attempt to make the boy laugh. A girl who unabashedly poured her feelings out on pages she hand delivered to the boy who would write her notes back with no notion that any other eyes would ever see…

I took those notes out one by one and on the floor of the grimy basement I was reminded of that girl with frizzy hair and a Ford LTD that guzzled oil and needed a jump start after school.

I was reminded of the boy who always had jumper cables waiting when the bell rang.

And as each page unfolded so did the memories of what it was like to be 16 and so in love.

We were all there once weren’t we? You can remember it can’t you? Your first car ride together. Your first kiss. Fight. Breakup.

Most people have gone through the process and then started it all over again with another first kiss, another first car ride, another first fight…a series of excitement and emotions that cycle through in different ways with different people until you find the one you choose to hang on tight to. And you may or may not have written love letters. And they may or may not be in someone’s basement, someone who is a stranger now, someone who remembers you with a scent of perfume or an old favorite song on the radio as they are driving down familiar roads.

If there is one thing in my life that makes me wonder about fate and choices and understanding the human connection, it is this relationship I have had with this boy who is now my husband. The familiar road? I never strayed. That favorite song? It has not stopped playing.

That first car ride together? We’re still driving.

And sometimes I’ll admit that I wonder if I knew anything back then. That hair? Are you kidding? Those high-water pants? Kill me. The decision to buy two baby turtles and raise them under a heat lamp in an aquarium in my dorm room? Not the most logical.

I admit there have been times I have wondered if I missed out on something, if I shouldn’t have gotten so comfortable, if I should have had my heart broken a few more times…kissed more boys…

But I read those letters last week, the ones I scrawled during study hall and math class when I should have been paying attention. My words were never chosen carefully and mostly I said nothing at all except something about a test that and a note to him about luck at a football game or singing on the weekend.

Then I came across a note with a drawing of a house with a chimney in the crook of a hill. Beside it I drew a barn and below it a creek that wound through a fenced in pasture. In the pasture I drew two horses, one for him and one for me. I also drew a pig and a goat, a cow and boat in the dam I built with the creek on the edge of the paper. There were two vehicles in the driveway: A pickup for him. A car for me.

Now, I had been looking for love stories lately, hunting them down and reading them, watching them on television, asking people how they met, opening my eyes to see one walking down the street, at a table next to me in a restaurant or in the line at the grocery store.

Lately I’d been feeling like maybe our story wasn’t enough.

Then I opened another letter and read: “If we can say we loved each other for a lifetime I will have lived my dreams.”

Now I didn’t know anything then about life and how hard it can be to live out dreams and make things like this work.

I still don’t.

But I have to give that 16 year old credit. She may not have known what she wanted to be, how far she wanted to travel or how to properly boil an egg.

But she knew what she was doing.

She knew what love was.