Another podcast up and at ’em for you. This week we sit down to reflect on our role in other people’s memories, especially our children’s. Speaking of children, ours are really loud in this episode, so fair warning if you’re not as good at ignoring them as we are. Also, I brings up the time I overbid on my husband dressed as the world’s ugliest woman in a local fundraiser. This has nothing to do with anything, but you get to hear it anyway. And as a special treat, Edie tells the story of Paul Bunyan and it’s adorable. Listen at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts.
Recently, on my regular trip bringing the girls to town for school, we spotted a rainbow against dark blue rain clouds, stretching its arch over ash trees glowing in the warm wash of light from the sunrise.
“Look at the rainbow girls!” I declared as we pulled out of my little sister’s driveway and up on the gravel county road. I stopped the car so they could get a good look and then we followed it the next 15 miles to town. As the colors grew darker and more vibrant, the girls looked out the windows to name the colors they were spotting. Light pink melting into red into orange, “I see yellow and turquoise and purple!” yelled Rosie. “And blue!” my niece Ada piped in from the way back. They’ve learned the colors of the rainbow, but, according to Edie, the oldest, the real thing seemed different. There were colors that were hard to name, not properly identified in the textbooks and worksheets she’s familiar with and it sort of bothered her.
I thought about this as I watched the arch of those colors sweep vibrant across the sky and then slowly fade away as rainbows do. These things in life that can’t be replicated or adequately described, the sights and moments the camera fails to fully capture, that are too fleeting or deep feeling that all our efforts sort of fall flat, how can we make ourselves know it when we’re in it? How can we make our hearts and bodies remember once it’s passed?
And then I thought maybe I was living in one right then and there in that car looking at the rainbow on our way to school. Even the arguing I was witnessing about who knows most about rainbows and Rosie describing (in detail) what she thinks all of her friends are going to be wearing to Kindergarten’s “Hat Day” in her small but loud matter of fact voice, my niece Ada pulling her cowboy hat off and on and backwards and forwards, Edie making sure they both know the rules for recess—this version of them—these girls—will not be my passengers tomorrow.
Tomorrow they will be one day older and maybe then they will know more about rainbows, or how to subtract seven from ten, or what it feels like to be left out or to perfect her cartwheels or make a brand-new best friend…
And I won’t be the same either. We never are, are we? It’s just that the slow change in us is much more gradual than the light fading from the sky, the colors changing on the leaves, the air getting cooler. We marvel at those leaves, that sunrise, that rainbow, but how often do we stop to marvel at ourselves and the life we’ve built over this passing of time, time that feels too slow before it feels too fast…
Oh, this time of year makes a nostalgic woman like me worse for it. I notice a good portion of ankle sticking out from under the hem of my oldest daughter’s jeans and wonder how I missed her growth spurt. I mean, how do they do their growing without us noticing every new centimeter stretching toward the sky?
Last weekend we took the girls our riding their horses on a beautiful fall day. We took them out to notice those leaves changing and to learn about paying attention on the backs of their animals. Edie asked me then if I knew the Tall Tale of Paul Bunyan. I told her it had been a while. And so, she told it, word for word, inflection by inflection as we rode through the tall grass, past the stock dam and across the creek bottom and up toward the barnyard again. And now that I’m thinking about it, there’s still not much of the Paul Bunyan story I retained from her retelling, but oh, the way my daughter’s voice rose with excitement getting to the punch line, the way it filled the quiet hills with a chatter, the way she remembered so well and the way we all were together under the warm fall sun, on the backs of horses, together? I will reach for that moment when I’m lonesome or scared or ailing or worried. I won’t remember the length of my daughter’s hair or the color of her shirt or maybe even how old we all were, what year, maybe she was 7 or 8, Rosie 5 or 6. And I won’t be able to describe it and it won’t matter to anyone else really anyway, that day we all rode together slow and easy and Rosie was nervous and so the story helped her and I declared, like I do, “Well, that was fun,” when we arrived home to cook supper again, get ready for bed and up and at ‘em for another morning of growing up and growing old…
In time Edie will forget the details of the Paul Bunyon story, she’ll need to make room for fractions and grocery lists and tall tales will likely be pushed from the priority. But I will remember her here, the way she was that autumn day. I was made to remind her when she needs reminding…because I am her mother, the memory keeper.
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts
Once upon a time, when my husband I were young, like 24 and 25, and just married, we were out with friends in the big town of Fargo, ND. That was back in the old days when bar hopping in below zero temperatures still sounded fun because it didn’t take us three to four business days to recover. Anyway, we were about ready to wrap up the evening of yell talking, questionable drink choices and dancing to bar bands when, while heading out the door, I realized I should probably pee first. (Never pass up a perfectly good restroom is a lesson I learned early). And so I asked my husband, who was the only man wearing a cowboy hat within a 300 mile radius, to please hold my purse. And so he did, standing patiently by the door with it swung over his shoulder like it was his own accessory. Now my mid-twenties are way in the rearview mirror, and I’m pretty sure I was drinking whiskey sours, so the details on this next part are fuzzy, but essentially a group of college-aged guys approached my husband leaning up against the wall all nonchalant for a guy in a cowboy hat holding a purse and indicated that they didn’t approve by puffing up and saying “Nice purse.”
To which my husband smiled and replied “Thanks!” and then gave that purse a proud little pat and continued on with being indifferent about the entire situation. And off we all went into the frozen Fargo night with not a punch thrown. This week I released a song I wrote with this image in my head, attempting to define a man like Chad who can “hold the reins and still hand me my purse.” I had to get that line in there because it’s the crux of the song titled “If You Were a Cowboy,” which essentially, for the purpose of the song, means “If you were a decent human in this relationship you would respect me.”
There are plenty of ways to interpret all the cowboy references I sprinkled in to a punchy little tune about love and commitment and all the spoken and unspoken expectations that come with it, but “knowing when to shut up and when to pick up the phone,” also seems to cover it. Anyway, last week my husband drove us and a borrowed bumper-pull camper across Montana and into Cody, Wyoming to help and hang out with me while I participated in the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival. He rarely gets to tag along on my singing gigs because when I’m gone he needs to stay back with the kids, but we made arrangements for them this time so we could call it a vacation. And it really was, because for us you can’t beat a road trip, sleeping under the mountains and listening to good music all weekend. The fact that I was scheduled to share the stage with other songwriters from across the country for a few hours a day was the icing on the cake.
And here’s where I’ll tell you that if one of my daughters comes to me when she is 22 years old and says she’s marrying her high school boyfriend I think my gut reaction will be worry. I’m not sure if that was the case for my parents, but as a woman who married her one and only real boyfriend, I’m not necessarily a proponent of it. I wasn’t even entirely convinced we should do it when he asked me. I mean, my heart was saying “yes!” but my mouth said, “I guess so,” tentative only because I knew we were young and I’ve always been fixated on the idea of “doing the right thing.” I mean, don’t well-adjusted adults get married much later in life? My romantic and practical sides are at constant battle, but thinking about it all now it seems I fulfilled both in my marriage to Chad.
Because never once in my long and unconventional creative career has the man become jealous of the time I put into it. I could drive across the country for weeks at a time and he will only ever ask how it went and “where are you again?” I know that’s the trust we’ve built, but still, I appreciate the faith he has in me. And in us.
And while both of us are far from perfect, it’s the letting one another be exactly who we are that has kept us together since we were just kids. And if you ask Chad why any relationship works, he would simply say just be friends and take care of each other, the way he did without apology all those years ago in that bar. My husband has always known who he is and who he loves and I suppose he’d get in a fist fight over it if he really had to, but why fight about any of it? “Fighting hurts.” (Now I’m quoting him directly.) If you ask me? Well, I’ll just write a song about it.
Go have a listen to “If You Were a Cowboy” wherever you get your music or on www.jessieveedermusic.com! Now go take of one another.
This week’s podcast is from the camper in Wyoming where we attended the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival.
Today’s the Day! It’s all about the new single “If You were a Cowboy!” Listen to it wherever you get your music and hear Chad and I discuss our recent trip to Cody, WY for the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival and how how he held my purse in a bar in Fargo, ND inspired this song.
Greetings from the passenger side of the pickup! Chad and I are driving home from the Yellowstone Songwriter Festival in Cody, WY where we spent four days soaking in the mountains, listening to amazing artists, performing and eating in all the places we could fit in!
I’m not sure I’ll have service much longer as we approach the badlands of home, but wanted to share the video Chad took of me performing my new single, “If You Were a Cowboy.” I was honored to share the stage that afternoon with Montana musician Ashly Holland and Carin Mari, Colorado songstress and lead guitar player for Michael Martin Murphy.
It truly was a magical weekend with the best audience and event staff and volunteers and I feel lucky to have been a part of it.
“If You Were a Cowboy” will be released tomorrow everywhere you get your music. Pre-save it on Spotify here: https://show.co/F7fIri3 to get it first! Or be sure to find it wherever you listen to music tomorrow!
The kids are back to school, the mornings are cool, the tomatoes are ripening in the garden and so are the wild plums in the sharp and poky brushes of the ranch. Just yesterday my nieces came in with handfuls they had collected with their mom and grandpa and informed me that they are ready by dropping them on my kitchen counter and inviting us all to indulge.
Ripe wild plums are one of the signs that we’re transitioning into fall and so I wanted to share with you a memory from the archives from when I found myself with a bag full of homegrown apples and the urge to do something beautiful with them. And so my mom, little sister and I (none of us seasoned bakers) decided to take on my grandma Edie’s pie recipe, crust and all.
It’s a sweet memory sprinkled with nostalgia from when my oldest daughter (who just started second grade) was just a baby. She was fresh and new to this world, named after the grandma’s whose recipe we had in hand, and I was fresh and new to motherhood and feeling domestic and content in the kitchen surrounded by the comfort of generations and the promise of a cool down.
Enjoy this season. Enjoy the fruits of your labor and lock your doors because it’s also the time of year that zucchini starts hitchhiking…
Making Memories. Making Pies. September, 2016
My mom keeps a small wooden box in her kitchen, tucked up in the cupboard next to her collection of cookbooks. On the front it reads “RECIPES” in the shaky, wood-burning technique of a young boy trying his hand at carpentry.
And inside is an assortment of recipe cards, of course, notes from a kitchen and a cook who left us all too soon, taking with her that famous homemade plum sauce.
And the from-scratch buns she served with supper.
And the familiar casseroles that you could smell cooking as you walked up toward the tiny brown house from the barnyard after a ride on a cool fall evening.
Every once in awhile my mom will open that box on a search for a memory tied to our taste buds. She’ll sort through the small file of faded handwriting and index cards until she finds it, setting it on the counter while she gathers ingredients, measures stirs and puts the dish together the best way she remembers.
I’m thinking about it now because it’s sitting on my kitchen table, the one that used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen all those years ago acting as a surface to roll out dough and pie crusts or a place to serve countless birthday cakes or her famous April Fool’s day coffee filter pancakes.
And so they’ve met again, that table and that box, which is currently sitting next to a pie pan covered in tinfoil.
Because last week we pulled the box out on a mission for guidance on what to do with the 50,000 pounds of apples my little sister inherited from the tree in the backyard of the house she bought a few years back.
“Maybe we should make applesauce or apple crisp,” we said as Little Sister plopped the fourth bag full of fruit on my kitchen counter, my mom sipping coffee and my big sister entertaining my nephew beside her.
I reached up in the cupboards to dust off a couple recipe books because we all agreed then that apples this nice deserve to be in a pie, and Googling “pie making” seemed too impersonal for such an heirloom-type task.
Then Mom remembered the recipe box.
And that Gramma Edie used to make the best apple pies.
It was a memory that was intimately hers and vaguely her daughters’. We were too young to remember the cinnamon spice or the sweetness of the apples or the way she would make extra crust to bake into pieces and sprinkle with sugar when the pies were done, but our mother did.
And most certainly so did our dad.
So we dove into the recipe with the unreasonable confidence of amateurs and spent the afternoon in my kitchen, peeling apples, bouncing the baby and rolling and re-rolling out gramma’s paradoxically named “No Fail Pie Crust,” laughing and cheering a victory cheer as we finally successfully transferred it to the top of the pie using four hands and three spatulas, certain this wasn’t our grandmother’s technique.
Wondering how she might have done it.
Little Sister carved a heart in the top to make it look more presentable. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.
We fed the baby and gave her a bath. We watched my nephew demonstrate his ninja moves. We talked and poured a drink. We cleared the counter for supper. We put the baby to bed.
And then we pulled the pie from the oven. We marveled at our work. We decided it looked beautiful, that we might declare it a huge success, but first we should see what Dad thinks.
So we dished him up a piece. It crumbled into a pile on his plate, not pie shaped at all. But he closed his eyes and took a bite and declared it just the right amount of cinnamon, the apples not too hard, the crust like he remembered, not pretty but good.
We served ourselves and ate up around that old table. We thought of our grandma, wondered if she might have given us a little help and put the recipe back in the box right next to her memory and the new one we made.
And we closed the lid.
This story, Grandma’s recipe and more can be found in my book “Coming Home” available for purchase here.
Music News
My new single, “If You Were A Cowboy” will be released on September 12 on all platforms! Pre-save it on Spotify here to help it gain some momentum and to get it delivered directly to your inbox on release day!
Enjoy a sneak peek into the making of the music video, which we wrapped up this week in a cool old barn near Bismarck with some great North Dakota based musicians and videographers.
Rosie, my five-year-old, fell off her horse for the first time a few weeks ago. I made plans to drive my oldest and her best friend to bible camp for the day and so my husband took Rosie on a ride to the east pasture on our trusty old gelding named Cuss. They were going to check some fences, water and the cow situation and I was going to send Edie off to pray and play along the little lake by Epping, ND. These were just our morning plans.
And because there’s never a dull moment around here, on my way home to the ranch I met my husband driving the horse trailer back to the barn, with little Rosie tucked up next to his arm. We stopped in the middle of the road the way we do on the place, rolling down windows and checking what’s new and before I could utter a “How’d it go?” Rosie, with a fresh, small scratch on her chin, leaned over her dad and proudly announced, “I got bucked off!!!”
My husband just sorta calmly looked at me then from under his palm leaf cowboy hat and dark glasses, his lips closed tight and slightly pulled back toward his ears, his tanned arm resting casually out the open pickup window. Unlike his wife, who’s jaw was on the floor of my SUV while my eyebrows reached up to the ceiling, he doesn’t have many big expressions that indicate what’s going on in his head. But I knew this one. This one meant that it was true…
Well, at least partially true, because everyone knows that old horse can’t and won’t buck. But he did make a bit of a dramatic effort when climbing a hill and that’s what put poor Rosie on the ground.
And I wasn’t going to tell this story because in this day in age there are plenty ways you can be shamed as a parent, especially when you dare to be honest about anything that doesn’t resemble picture-perfect moments topped off with themes, balloon arches and gift bags for everyone. But I decided to share it today in case it helps someone. Because Rosie was just fine. Chad calmly tended to her, helped her up and made her feel taken care of in that moment. When he assessed that her tears were more out of fear than pain and realized that it was a fair hike back to the house, he asked her if she was comfortable getting back on her horse or if she would like to ride with him on his. She wanted to get back on and so she did, but Chad took her reigns and led Rosie and her old horse home safe and sound.
In the hours and days that followed my husband and I assessed and re-assessed the incident in our heads and in conversation with one another. And even though she was alright, we felt terrible about it. We wondered what we could have done differently, if she was too young to be out there, if we are bad parents, if she’s going to be afraid now. Did we push it too far? But what’s the cost of being overly cautious with them? And, the most important question, should we get our kids bubble-wrap suits?
When parents like us (I think we’re called geriatric millennials now, which I don’t appreciate, but I digress) talk about parenting-musts like car seats and helmets, unsupervised play in the neighborhood until dark and not putting our kids in the gooseneck of the horse trailer for a ride to the next town, we tend to respond with phrases like “Ah, we all lived through it,” which, when you think about it, is the privilege given only to those who lived through it.
There are reasons for rules.
But there are no official rules when it comes to parenting, especially parenting your kids on a working ranch. And so it’s hard to know sometimes—especially when you screw up—if you’re even close to the right track or if you’re bouncing up over that far hill with Cuss.
And I wish I could tell you that my husband and I came to an enlightening agreement, making our own ranch kid parenting playbook that I could lay out for you here, but we didn’t. And even if we did, I wouldn’t share it, because, put simply, it would be ours and ours alone. You don’t need to hear from us all the ways you could improve or change the way you love and care for your kids. If you’re a good parent, then you’re assessing that for your family daily. I know we are. Oh, and one more thing I want to make sure I add –our kids are living, breathing, heart-beating, mac-and-cheese snarfing humans who are begging us every day to help them grow their wings stronger so they can fly. I’m sure I’ve said it before here, but this summer alone my kids have outdone my expectations of them. Not necessarily in the room cleaning, Barbie pick-up categories, but in the ways they ask us to trust their capabilities. At the beginning of the summer, just a few short months ago, I planned to lead Rosie on Cuss through the barrel pattern at our hometown kids rodeo and she absolutely wouldn’t have it. She knew she could do it on her own, and she did. Who are we to let our own fear hold them back? Holding too tightly to the reins has consequences of its own.
But man it’s hard isn’t it? To watch them grow up and stretch farther into this world that’s so beautiful and unpredictable. But who would they become if we could guarantee their safekeeping? They would live through it but what kind of life would they live?
Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be searching Amazon for that protective bubble suit, for my kids and for my heart, just in case.
Listen to the podcast here or on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
Three summers ago, when my daughters were four and two, we brought them to the shores of Lake Sakakawea to take a boat ride and get an ice cream cone at the marina. I was only a couple months or so post-surgery to remove the tumor that had been blocking a large part of my airway, the one that sliced me right down the middle and left me with three scars where the tubes went and one big one that, for a while, and at that time when it was fresh, resembled a zipper, nice and straight starting at my clavicle and running all the way down my sternum.
I like to think now, from far away, it makes me look like I have the cleavage God never gifted me, but I digress…
Anyway, at that time I wanted to do anything and everything that got me out of the house and distracted from the pain of healing up and the worry and fear that would cling to the back of my throat if I laid too still or it got too quiet. Not that it was ever quiet those days with two daughters young and healthy and growing in the summer sun, a blessing that would keep me out of my head and into their latest art project or wild thing they were attempting to catch. So that hot day we all put on our swimming suits under our shorts and summer dresses and headed out to do what normal families do when they don’t have a mom recovering from major surgery and are spared, at least for now, the black cloud of cancer or loss, as if any breathing adult is walking around completely free from burdens. As if being a human isn’t knowing what could happen, what inevitably is going to happen, and mowing the lawn or ordering the cocktail or training for the race despite it or because of it, depending on the day. Depending on the outlook.
The girls swam and made sandcastles and swatted away the horseflies and we probably ate the sandwiches my husband made or maybe we made the decision to just grab a cheeseburger at the marina restaurant, what we all wanted to do in the first place. Truth is, I don’t remember the exact details of the day. I don’t remember what my daughters’ swimsuits looked like or even the little nuances we swore we’d never forget, like all the words two-year-old Rosie mis-pronounced or the soft pudge of their toddler cheeks under my smooches, but I do remember I couldn’t lift them then, so they would hold my hand and ask me when. And I do remember they would want to see that scar, to face it, to know about it, even when it was fresh and scabbed and weird and new. And they were young, and I was their mom and while I only had a few years of this parenting thing under my hat, I understood quickly that if I wasn’t scared, then they weren’t scared and so I wore that swimming suit and put on the sunscreen and lived in the world with my big new scar and that was it. This was a part of us now.
I have a point to make here and I get to it more quickly when I tell this story on stagewhen it’s my mission to argue that our failures and imperfections, our bumps and bruises and struggles aren’t for hiding, but for acknowledging, and here’s why. From across the yard of that marina, while I was standing up by the picnic tables to help situate my daughters, a man waved at me and yelled “Hey!” I looked up thinking that I knew him, but I didn’t know him, and so I just yelled “hey” back because we’re friendly here. And then he pointed to his chest and loudly asked (because he was across the yard) “Heart surgery!?”
“No!” I replied, understanding in a few beats, what he was asking. “Tumor!” I yelled back, suddenly and weirdly feeling a little proud that a stranger noticed and acknowledged the very thing that had been running and disrupting my life for months and months.
“Oh, heart surgery here!” he yelled back, pointing again to his chest before giving me a wave and getting back to living a life he was given thanks to that scar under his shirt.
Once, right after my surgery and before this stranger and I nonchalantly hollered at each other about the most terrifying time in our lives, I had a woman ask me why I didn’t hide my scar. She said her husband had one too, but she buttons his shirts up to the top for him if he forgets. She’s embarrassed? Maybe. Or maybe it just reminds her how scared she can be.
I told her I wear it for all the people who would have given anything to wear this scar if it meant they had one more day here with their kids, or in their garden or on their boat fishing the rocky shores and stopping in the marina to grab a bucket of minnows and a candy bar. It never occurred to me to hide it, but her question made me wonder why, really. The exchange with the stranger on the edge of that lake that had me proudly declaring the imperfection to him and my daughters and anyone withing yelling range, solidified the reason—if you allow yourself to be truly seen, scars and all, others see themselves in you. I argue the act brings with it more hope and acceptance and love than anything else we can do for one another, and that can make all the difference in the healing part.
And also, sometimes, those imperfections can make you look like you have cleavage, at least maybe, from far away…if you squint…
Happy mid August! We’re late with the podcast this week because I was traveling and helping host our big Ribfest event in town on Friday. Saturday we celebrated our 17th Anniversary by recovering from slinging beers at the concert until well past mid night. Both my husband and I have the same syndrome, we would much rather be hauling chairs, punching tickets or working the bar at these things, we think it’s more fun? Is that weird? It is fun though, to be a part of making the wheels of these community events turn ’round, even if it meant our idea of an anniversary activity was a nap.
(Cue pictures of the legendary BlackHawk and regional favorite tribute band Hairball…and all the thousands of People!!!)
Anyway, so I’m behind, like I’ve been all summer, but honestly, who isn’t? It’s a gift to not have enough time for all the things you want to do isn’t it? So enjoy last week’s column and if you didn’t yet, check out last week’s podcast (where we cover the snake situation). If you like to hear us chat in the kitchen while we intermittently get interrupted by kids and cats and company, tell your friends to like and subscribe to Meanwhile, back at the ranch… on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
My daughters brought a tiny green grass snake into the house recently. I was working in the kitchen and they excitedly called up from the basement with big news, but before I could turn around, there they were, standing behind me excitedly introducing me to “Greenie.”
Rosie, my five-year-old, fell in love with that little grass snake. She made a habitat for him in a cardboard box with rocks and grass, shade and a little dish of water. It would wrap around her hand and wrist and everyone who stopped by that day got an introduction. She was proud to have had a hand in discovering this little wonder, curious about its tiny tongue and what it eats and where it sleeps and, of course, how to tell if it’s a girl or a boy, which in case you’re wondering, is impossible, even if you Google it.
If she had a say in it, that little grass snake would have stayed with us here, in the house, in that box by her bed. But the rule about wild animals is that they just get to visit. No sleepovers. Rosie cried when her sister helped her release it that afternoon. Then, when I wasn’t looking, she caught it again. And so another round of tears fell when I helped her release it that evening. She held it close to her little chest before setting it free in the weeds and I lingered to be sure the snake didn’t make it in our family Christmas card photos. I didn’t point out the other tiny green grass snake I noticed had met its end on the road a few dozen feet from us.
The next evening the humidity brewed up a dramatic summer storm and as it moved across the countryside it left behind a rainbow that refused to give up. I drove toward it the entire 30 miles from town to the ranch and still it held onto its colors so I could see what it looked like against the backdrop of the old red barn. We need to tear that barn down, but it seems that everyone around here is waiting for the other to make the first move. It’s hard to let go, even to things made of wood and stone. In that moment though, I was glad it was there, quietly hanging on to the landscape, slowly and silently fading like old red barns and rainbows do.
A couple years ago, when Rosie was three or so, we were at the start of a long road trip and I asked her if she wanted to color or watch a show. “No,” she replied, “I’m just going to look out the window in case there’s a rainbow.”
I fixed my eyes on the road and the colors stretching over it. I just heard the news that someone I thought would live forever had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. And this sounds silly, but the news was the reason I stopped on my way home to get my favorite flavor of ice cream cone for the road. It’s the reason I drove a bit slower, a bit more carefully thinking about Rosie and the rainbow and the little green garden snake and the man I knew that was on this earth yesterday and somewhere else today, maybe somewhere rainbows go when they disappear if you want to get poetic about it.
And I did want to get poetic about it I think. I took a walk that evening as the sun was setting and the wind calmed down. I thought I would make it quick and beat the dark and the rain, but as I turned to head the half mile back to the house the sun sunk below the horizon and the sky began to spit rain. I lifted my face up and closed my eyes, trying to feel each drop hit my forehead and then my cheeks, my lips and my hairline and my nose and my eyelids.
In a few weeks I will turn 40 and I will wonder how it happened and I will wonder what I’ve learned in all these years and I will wonder where the time has gone.
But in that moment, on the dark road with my face to the sky, I was alive and breathing with my feet on the earth.
Look up. Look down. Look out. Look around. In case there’s a rainbow. In case there’s a beautiful little green snake.
Listen to the podcast here or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
I could give you one hundred reasons that we will never be invited to lounge with rich people on a yacht, but probably the main one is that we are the kind of people who put up a hand-me-down, above ground, sixteen-foot swimming pool directly behind our house in July. And in order to enjoy it we first must chase the horses out of the yard because they keep pooping on our lawn and trying to drink out of it. And then we have to spend at least fifteen to twenty minutes fishing the horseflies and waterbugs out of the water with a net. And then we have to dig around the house for the right pairs of goggles so that our daughters can pretend they are mermaids in a fish tank, landlocked on the prairie with nothing but big, blue sky, nosy horses and a mom hollering “Yes, I saw that!” and “Be careful!” while I weed the tomato patch.
Oh, and also, we have to watch the leak. Because, of course, there is a leak. It’s as slow one, but we need to make sure we top it off every few days. But don’t worry, we ordered a $30 pool cover off Amazon that’ll help with the bugs and the horses. Should be here by October…
It’s times like these we wonder why we’re not lake people. One of the answers is currently drinking out our redneck pool, but at one point, a few years back my mom thought we all might slow down a bit on the ranch and become a family that takes a pontoon out every once in a while. I mean, it wasn’t an unreasonable dream considering Lake Sakakawea is basically our backyard, but she forgot that three out of the four people running the ranch are also running businesses of our own. So the pontoon has spent most of its life waiting in “storage” (aka the driveway on the side of our garage) for a day like Sunday when it promised 97 degrees and the air conditioning went out in our house.
So we made a plan to take the pontoon and the kids and the cousins out to the lake, finally, at the end of July. All we needed to do was remove the ripped cover, scrub the seats and hose off the floor, find out the trolling motor isn’t working and neither is the gas gage, find out the battery isn’t charged and then charge it and find out it won’t keep a charge and then pack up the cooler and the swim bag and the snack bag while my husband takes a quick 60 mile roundtrip run to town to get a new battery and fuel and ice. Then get the kids in their suits, feed them the lunch I packed because everything’s taking too long, pack another lunch and fill the tires and fill the gas and transfer the booster seats from one car to the pickup and get the kids from the house to the pickup without any grasshoppers or toads in tow and buckle them in and then we would be on our way.
And when we got to the lake, all we had to do was unload the kids and the swim bag and the snack bag and ask if anyone has to go potty and then take kids potty and then back the pickup and boat down the boat ramp when it’s our turn and then check to make sure the boat actually started and then lather the kids in sunscreen and wiggle them into their lifejackets while my husband held the boat at the dock and I parked the pickup and trailer and returned and then wait for my husband to go get the phone he forgot in the pickup and then we were on our way! We were on the lake!
All we had to do then is take a boat ride across the bay and back to get the old gas through the motor and then pick a sandy spot to park and play but first someone had to pee so we stopped right here and we all jumped out for a swim a bit because it’s hot.
And after a few failed attempts, we finally did find the perfect spot to beach the boat and play for a bit. The sun was shining and the breeze kept the horseflies away. The kids were swimming and making castles, my husband was launching them into the water the way dad’s do and my sister and I were sitting in camp chairs chewing seeds and drinking red beers, living a midwestern mother’s dream ten minutes at a time because someone’s hungry, thirsty, hot, or really has to show us this big rock over here.
It was all glorious, until I went back up on the boat for snacks and heard a weird chirping sound coming from the canopy we decided not to open on the open water because we needed vitamin D. Which turned out to be the best decision of the day because when my husband opened it up, out flew (you’re never going to guess it) a swarm of wasps AND four baby birds!!!!
Apparently, our pontoon has been so idle it has become a habitat. And so I’ll leave the chaos that ensued on the wild shores of Lake Sakakawea to your imagination because whatever you’re imagining is probably right.
And I totally get it if you never invite us on your yacht. But we’ll have you in our hand-me-down pool anytime, just give me a minute to chase the horses and scoop the horseflies out…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 