Hamster drama

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Ok, I’m just going to cut to the chase. I was not prepared for the amount of drama owning a hamster would bring upon our house. You’d think as a ranch kid raising my own ranch kids, I have seen it all when it comes to ways things can go sideways between animals and humans, but sometimes no matter how tight you string that barbed wire, the bull still finds a way to the neighbors’. And although I’ve never intentionally invited a rodent into my home, I figured we could handle Popcorn, a couple ounces of fluffy house pet with one eye.

I was wrong. 

And because I know some of you were making guesses as to how long it was going to take before that hamster went missing, I will tell you now that the dust has settled a bit—it took five days.

Five. Days.

And the way in which we discovered Popcorn had vanished just had to be when Rosie’s friend came over specifically to meet the pet they’ve been talking about all week only to be greeted with a completely empty cage.

There were tears. There was panic. There was confusion. How in the world did she escape a cage that looked completely buttoned up? It was a mystery. I turned the house inside out, flashing a light in every nook and cranny, frantically decluttering every closet, looking under every bed, behind any appliance or piece of furniture I could move, and with each passing moment sinking into a deeper depression about the cleanliness and tidiness of my home. A real adult would never leave these corners unvacuumed! A real adult would have brought this pile of clothing to the thrift store last month! A real adult WOULD HAVE NEVER AGREED TO THE HAMSTER IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

And when the searching and staying up late to listen for hamster noises in the dark didn’t yield any results, I went to Tractor Supply to purchase a couple live traps for my pantry and hoped for the best.

And you would think this would be my lowest hamster moment, baiting a loose house pet with peanut butter and nightly prayers. But it wasn’t.

Because, as of now, I must be honest here, we have not found Popcorn. I’ve concluded she’s either living her best life in my walls, or outside, uh, hibernating. And I hate it.  My mom felt so bad about this, likely from the pet Lizard Incident of 1995, that she purchased a new hamster, Rocket, for Rosie, on her way home from Minnesota a couple weeks ago. And besides the fact that Rocket nearly bit Rosie’s fingertip off in the first two days of life with us, he also posed a significant risk to our house hamster population given his presumed gender. If he escapes too, the results could be dire.

But that wasn’t going to happen. We buttoned the cage up tight. We took every precaution to check and double check when Rosie interacted with him. We put his cage in another cage at night and closed the door just to be sure. Things were going great. Rocket stopped biting and settled in to the bonding part of the relationship. Popcorn was a fluke, surely.

Until I woke up last Thursday, ready to take a trip with the girls to Minnesota, and, you guessed it, the cage was buttoned up, yet empty. Again.

S.O.S.

The panic search commenced once more and so did the guilt and the shame. This poor hamster. Our poor daughter. She did everything right as a pet owner, and yet, we’ve been duped again.  I’ve never seen my husband so defeated.

“We’re idiots,” he whispered. “We got outsmarted by not one, but two rodents.”

I packed the kids and my mother in the SUV and wished him luck.

“I guess we’re just not hamster people,” Rosie sighed as we headed east and left my husband with the search. “Maybe we should just stick with dogs and cats and goats.”

“And lizards!” Edie chimed in. “My lizard is chill.”

Now, I wasn’t going to tell this story if it didn’t have an ending we could all feel ok about. And so here it is. Two days into our trip I got a text from my husband. “I found Rocket. But I can’t catch him.” We were rolling down the road from Bismarck to Fargo. My heart skipped a beat, so I called to put him on speaker because the man wasn’t going to get away with so few words on this topic.

“Did the hamster have one eye or two?” Rosie chimed in from the back seat.

“One,” my husband replied.

“Did he look suspicious? Like he found a girlfriend?” Rosie asked.

My husband did not reply.

Turns out while we were gone, Chad slept on the couch to listen for hamster sounds, which this time he heard coming from the deepest, darkest, messiest closet in the house. And so at 2 am he wandered toward the noises and proceeded to empty our entryway closet of all of my sound equipment and supplies, merch and CDs and microphone stands plus piles upon piles of hunting gear and old shoes and boots and coats we don’t wear but can’t get rid of and then when the whole closet was empty and the entire entryway was full he Still. Couldn’t. Find. The. Hamster!

“I thought I made a big mistake,” he explained. “I thought I let him out with all the stuff.”

And so, he carefully went through all of the closet wares one more time with no hamster appearance.

It was now 4:30 in the morning. 

Figuring the little fluff ball had to still be in the closet, he put his cage back in there, full of food and water, and hoped for the best.

“Who’s the man?!” my husband texted me with the news that afternoon.

Turns out Rocket realized the err of his ways and had happily returned to the scene of the crime, all full of food and snuggled up in his bedding like a fluffy little angel that didn’t just give us all heart palpitations and sleep deprivation.

On our way home the next day we stopped to purchase a new and larger and more secure cage, bringing our hamster bill to around six million dollars to date. Girl’s gonna have to put up a few more lemonade stands.

Anyway, maybe there’s still hope for Popcorn, Lord knows we have enough crumbs in the house to sustain her for a while.

In the meantime, we’ll be watching Rocket like prison wardens and, well, hoping for the best, as you do when it comes to hamsters.

Bullseye Season

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It’s bullseye season here at the ranch. The leaves start changing, the air cools down, the black flies find their way into my kitchen to make me crazy and my husband and daughters take out their targets and bows and get to practicing shooting arrows.

My husband has been into archery since he was a young kid. His most shared stories of his childhood are of him sitting alone in a hunting blind for hours without anything but those swarming flies to entertain him. The flies and the snacks and lunch he always finished eating well before noon. When the girls dare say they’re bored around here, the hunting blind stories are the stories he pulls out.

Yes, archery is a sport of patience and calm and, most of all passion. It takes a special kind of mindset to stay completely still and quiet for hours on end, often in the freezing cold or wild wind, or, my nightmare, way up high in a tree stand.

I’ve accompanied my husband on bow hunting excursions around the ranch in the past, before the kids arrived. It was one of my favorite things to do with my him because I could get out in the hills, photograph some wildlife, get some air in my lungs and get in quality time while he scoped the draws and skyline for bucks.

 And if you’re planning on doing the same with your husband, may I suggest not wearing swishy pants and only humming the song that’s in your head in your head. Turns out unwrapping a candy bar while he’s glassing the horizon isn’t good protocol either. 

But, what do you call a man who isn’t a comedian, but doesn’t take anything too seriously?  Like, oh well, you swish-swish-swished your way across two miles of pasture and scared everything wild and living away within earshot, but I’m glad you’re here and glad you wore enough warm layers and glad you brought snacks. That’s the guy I married. Turns out being married to me was just preparing him for a lifetime of raising daughters.

He’s unflappable, that man. And our daughters adore him. And I love to see it because when they’re out there shooting bows at that target with him or leading the way on a dirt-bike excursion to the alfalfa fields, it reminds me so much of the reasons I adored my dad as a little girl. The way he continued to enjoy life and pursue his passions even in the thick of the responsibilities of middle age and ranching and professional obligations somehow wasn’t lost on me, even as a kid. He liked deer hunting? I was going along, rain or shine. Playing guitar? I’m sitting at his feet watching his fingers. Training horses? Put me on the next one.  The same didn’t apply to him teaching me to drive a stick shift, but I would like to continue to repress that memory.

From the archives

We’re in the season of parenting where our kids are getting older and beginning the phases of coming into their own. When they were babies, it was fun to dream about the interests they may have or the talents they would develop, and now, here we are, watching who they are becoming right before our eyes. There have been many times in the past year or so that I have second-guessed if we are doing enough to help them cultivate their passions. We’re in the generation of parenting where there is a lot of pressure to sign kids up for extracurriculars at a younger and younger age to help them hone skills as early as possible. But if I’m being honest, my instinct has always been to try to give my kids more free time, not less. Now, all the sudden I’m feeling like maybe my almost eight-year-old and almost ten-year-old should be mastering more skills and honing in closer on their passions. Is it this age where they start becoming a little obsessed with things they love? Would they ever be obsessed enough to sit in a hunting blind for eight hours with nothing but the flies and the bag of snacks to entertain them?

I don’t know. And, honestly, I don’t know if obsession/extreme passion for rodeo or goats or basketball or archery or hockey is always the ultimate goal for every kid. Maybe for some it’s just about doing it and having fun and learning something, although I have tried to sell that concept to my youngest and most competitive daughter and it didn’t land well.

In the meantime, it’s bullseye season at our house and a reminder that the best thing we can do for our kids is to show them what it looks like to enjoy something and to work at it and how to learn and improve.

And then, when it comes time for them to accompany their dad on a hunt, I will remind them to skip the swishy pants, although I doubt he would mind, as long as they’re coming along.

And to me, well, that’s what I call a parenting bullseye.

No lizards on my table

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Have you ever stood in the kitchen and worked to untangle a lizard from your nine-year-old’s long hair while trying to remain calm in the face of company?

“It’s fine mom, he likes to hide up in there,” my daughter reassured me as I smiled nervously at my brother-in-law who had stopped in for a visit and consequently was thrust into meeting our daughters’ new pets.

“Uh, ok, but, well, he’s really tangled, I don’t want him to get hurt,” I replied as I tried gently to unwind his little scaly legs from her blonde strands without freaking us both out, the lizard and me, that is.

The rest of the people in the house? Completely unphased, especially my brother-in-law, who, along with my husband, has probably had every creature imaginable live in their childhood home at some point, including a baby skunk, a racoon, a potty-trained rabbit, snakes, birds, rats and a hand-me-down hamster named Boomer.  

Memories of Boomer have come up a lot lately as my youngest, Rosie, made plans to buy a hamster of her own with that $77.50 she earned at her lemonade stand last month. If you thought, like I hoped, that she would move on from that wish, we were all mistaken. If my youngest is anything, it’s relentless and I’m not exaggerating when I say that she has asked me about hamster shopping every day since I put that $77.50 in an envelope. And so, three thousand and forty-six inquiries later, none of us could take it anymore—Rosie was getting her hamster, which meant Edie was getting her lizard which means, along with the cats and the goats and the dogs and the frogs and the horses and the cows and the chickens over the hill, we have also become the caretakers of a rodent and a reptile and the 500 live mealworms living in the fridge.

And, in order to become those caretakers, we had to take a round-trip journey of nearly 400 miles, half of those miles spent anxiously awaiting and the other half spent anxiously hoping that I won’t have to extract an on-the-loose lizard or hamster from the bowels of my SUV. (Although, according to Rosie, a hamster could probably live a pretty good life in our car, you know, with the bounty of crumbs and all.)

“We’re suckers,” my husband whispered to me as he looked over the pet store receipt and I pushed the cart full of bedding and food and enclosure essentials across the parking lot. He had just spent the past twenty minutes interrogating the poor pet shop employee about habitat requirements, temperature regulations and, ‘per ounce to weight of the hamster’ food ratios. To which the employee replied, “we give them a scoop.”

Ok then. A scoop for Popcorn the one-eyed hamster and a pinch of mealworms for the gecko who, upon further research, looks like he will live until Edie’s grandkids have grandkids and then she can experience for herself what it’s like to say, “get the lizard off the kitchen table!”

But I’m not sure she’d mind at this rate. I walked into her room yesterday and the lizard was with her in her bed, just hanging out on her arm as she hunkered down and read a book.

Meanwhile, in Rosie’s room, she’s got Popcorn walking right into her hands when she opens the door of her cage. I’ve never seen a faster bond form between an animal and a human. She feeds that hamster right out her little fingers, piece by piece. I must admit, it’s adorable.

And we are suckers.

But no hamsters in the bed, ok?

Or on the table.

And no more lizards tangled in hair.

Who we were, who we are

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I took my husband with me on a long road trip to western Montana recently. I had a songwriter’s festival on a Friday, but booked another singing engagement the night before in Bismarck, so I needed a little help to make the mileage and the math work so I could show up on time.

My husband has been working long hours this summer as he expands his construction business and I haven’t seen much of him for the past four months. The timing to have him come along to help with the drive was terrible, as in, he didn’t really have the time. And also, we would be arriving home the day before school started and so we would be pushing it. But once we lived in Western Montana and it was the weekend of our 19th wedding anniversary and I thought maybe we could combine the work with a weekend spent actually away, just the two of us, with no real agenda after the singing was over. 

This is how you do vacations when you’re married to a traveling musician. It’s been happening since before we were married. Want to go to Northern Minnesota? Cool, I have a gig there, we’ll stay an extra night. Ever curious about Redfield, South Dakota population 2,214? Well, we’re going there for our honeymoon. We can stop in Fargo on the way home and get a fridge that’s way to big for the tiny farmhouse kitchen. 

Funny how nearly twenty years can go by and so many things just have not changed about who we are together and separate. At the little steak dinner we had with the kids on our anniversary, my husband asked me what I liked most about being married to him. I answered quickly. I’ve always felt safe with him. And he never makes me feel guilty for my weird schedule and the sort of unpredictable paths I’ve taken as a writer and musician. I’ve always just felt so certain that he can handle anything. 

“What do you like about being married to me?” I asked in return before our daughters chimed in, dying to know all our favorite things about them, naturally. 

“It’s that you haven’t really changed,” he said. 

And I didn’t know how to take that initially. Certainly, in so many ways I hope I have changed for the better. Age and tough life lessons and motherhood and marriage and illnesses have gotten me there. But what he meant was more like this: “Things that made you happy when I knew you as a kid, still make you happy. You laugh at the same things,” he began. And, probably because we just got back from a family ride on our dirt bikes up to the fields where I chose not to wear long pants and regretted every poky slap of the pig weeds and clover against my ankles, but persisted never-the-less, only to tip my dirt bike over on the bumpy trail on the way home, he continued. “You are up for things the same way you used to be.” 

And I’m not sure that statement is as true as it could be, but I like that his impression of this woman he’s known his whole life is that all those things that could have changed how I laugh and how I show up with joy, well, they haven’t. It felt nice to be seen that way.

So, I took the compliment. And then I took my guitar and my husband to the mountains, stopping at 2 am to take a sleep at a Super 8 Hotel just like our South Dakota trip all those years ago. And while we were there, we tried to remember what it was like for us when, briefly, we were mountain people.  But, for people with so much history together, the two of us have never been good at looking back. Maybe that’s why we like a road trip so much. 

And so, we spent the weekend wandering and eating, listening to music and obsessing over a 1980s fat-tire dirt bike my husband found at a garage sale in Phillpsburg 600 miles from home. Even though school was going to start. Even though his work kept calling. Even though I had deadlines and another gig to get back to. 

And it wasn’t overly romantic. There were no grand gestures of reconnecting. It was slow and it was only two days and it was just the two of us and we did what we wanted, which, turns out was getting cash out of the ATM so we could pick up that old dirt bike on the way home. Because yeah, if I haven’t changed, well, neither has he. 

The bull curse

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This spring toward the end of calving season I remarked about how well things seemed to be going after my father himself remarked how well things seemed to be going. And then, even though I knew better, I dared to add, “No bottle calves yet,” and he told me, quite seriously and repeatedly that I had cursed the entire ranch.  

My dad, in case you missed it, is one of those superstitious ranchers.

What was I thinking?

Fast forward a few months and we had a nice young Angus bull go missing, as bulls tend to do. Dad finally caught up with him in our neighbor’s pasture hanging out with his pretty black cows and enlisted the help of my sister to go round him up. Now, if you have any experience in the art of chasing cattle, you know that trying to break one lone male bovine away from a herd of females is not a task for the armature or the faint of heart. It usually never, ever goes well or smoothly or without cussing and sweat, prayers and thorns and then more cussing and in that order. But that evening, my dad and my little sister hit the trail horseback, miraculously found the stray bull and even more miraculously were able to walk the big guy back to the adjacent pasture so he could finish off breeding season with his betrothed cows. The plan in Dad’s head had come to fruition, things went smoothly and from what was reported there was no swearing and no praying and no thorns.

The other miracle? The fact that, after years of being traumatized in her childhood by helping Dad chase bulls, my little sister actually agreed to go along.

It was a brag-worthy experience and we all heard about it that evening. What a great bull. Can’t believe it. He worked so nicely. Went smooth. Easy as could be.

But the rancher’s dream was cut short when Dad went out the next morning to find the bull was gone again.

Vanished.

And so, this time Dad enlisted the help of my husband and me (because my sister had fled to Arizona, probably to avoid this very situation). Off we went with horses, back to the neighbor’s pasture to, sure enough, find that bull hanging out with his preferred herd of ladies. As we approached him, Dad talked through about ten difference scenarios and tactics we could employ to get this bull back into his rightful spot. Again. We could take him with a small group of cows to the pen by the road and then load him into the trailer. We could take him with the herd toward the gate and then break him off. We could go take what we could get with him to the northeast gate or we could just… ope…there he went, walking right at that bull and breaking him from the cows who went running in all directions. And so that’s the plan we landed on, all three of us pushing that bull alone, up over the hill and through a school section alley, slow and steady and easy in one gate and then another and to our pasture, all the while Dad saying, “This is great! What a nice bull. This is how easy he went with Alex. I can’t believe it. Look at how nice he is.”

And me? Well, I didn’t say a dang word. Because I knew better, having cursed the entire ranch and all. And I know from experience that, with bulls, well, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

But that experience has shown us that once you get a bull in with all the cows it is over. That’s the task. Uniting/Reuniting is the goal. And so, once we successfully achieved that, we all sort of sat back and carried on with the next mission of pushing those cows and that bull into the next pasture.

But it turns out Dad’s out-loud-positive-affirmations was going to do a number on us as I suspected, because I looked over to right to notice that bull veering from the herd suspiciously. So, I followed him with the plan of turning him back, which should have been easy, but the veering continued. I sent the dog in, which made the veering continue faster toward the kind of thick and thorny brush patch on a cliff that bulls tend to love. Cue my husband and dad flying in from both sides hollering, “We have this Jess, go watch the cows.” And so, I did what I was told but found a perch nearby to see if I could watch how this was going to play out.

It was about fifteen minutes into peering from the hilltop down into the winding, deep creek that cuts through the big brush in the corner of that pasture, the absolute worst place to find an animal or yourself for that matter, when I finally got eyes on them. My husband, off his horse on the edge of a brush patch rubbing his hand and my dad standing next to the fence staring over at the bull on the other side who was standing up to his neck in the water, staring back.

“Well, it’s over now,” I thought to myself as the two men came riding back toward me and the cows.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” my dad exclaimed. “The thing jumped off a cliff and into the water and then swam under the fence!”

“I thought I heard a splash,” I said.

“He actually went under the water!” my Dad said as we retold the story to my mom and the girls over a 10 pm supper when we finally got home. “I can’t believe it!”

“I didn’t know bulls could hold their breath,” Rosie said.

“I wonder if it was my curse or yours that will keep that bull at the neighbor’s for all eternity?” I asked my dad between bites of casserole.

Anyway, if you need us, well, my husband will be digging the thorn from his hand, Dad will be looking for that bull and I’ll be keeping my mouth shut…

Frog Crop

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I know nobody’s wondering, but the frog crop at the ranch is hopping these days. A thunderstorm every day will do that to this landscape. From the window of our kitchen I can see the stock dam and when that window’s open in the evening the croaks those little frogs are croaking fill the air with the sound of sweet summer nostalgia.

Needless to say, the little girls on this place are thrilled about this development in the frog department, because finally there is something in that stock dam to catch (because, no matter how they tried to imagine and finagle it this spring, there are still no fish there).

There is a sort of art to catching frogs that I tried to master myself growing up out here next to the creek. You must be quiet and quick and confident, and none of these qualities ever came naturally to me. My oldest has always had a knack for it and a real admiration for slimy, scaley creatures. I caught her once at the playground in the yard when she was around four-years-old, dressed as Cinderella and planting a big of smooch on the nose of her tiny captive frog prince. “Don’t actually kiss frogs,” is not something I thought I would have to say in my life. Also, I didn’t predict how upsetting that rule would be.

But even that wasn’t as country as having to break up two little girls in fancy dresses fighting over who got to hold the garter snake. “Snake Tug-o-War” was also not on my parenting radar.

And so, I wasn’t surprised when I looked out the window a couple weeks ago to find my daughters and their two cousins at the stock dam with a couple feed buckets and giant fishing nets on a frog-finding-mission. Rosie had been at it in the yard for a few days, searching the tall grass and puddles with nothing but stories of near misses, escapes and the report about our border collie and a snake in the dam eating two of her potential catches right in front of her very eyes, which might have been pretty traumatic for normal kids, but mostly she was just mad they got there first. Again. Country.

And I would say she was unreasonably disappointed in her lack of success if I didn’t remember being the same level of obsessed with frog catching when I was her age. I think the first poem I ever wrote was a poem about frogs. I typed it up on the computer in my second-grade classroom and printed it off with a fancy border and everything. Catching frogs at the creek was my main reason for living for one entire summer of my young life, so I understood. But I had minimal success, so my expectations for my daughters weren’t particularly high.

But as it turns out, a little teamwork goes a long way. About an hour or so in to their mission at the dam, I caught them trekking back up the road to the house, two girls holding nets and the other two with both hands slogging a six-gallon bucket. Somewhere along the journey, Rosie lost her shoes, but who needs shoes when you’ve found yourself a bucket-full of frogs.

“Rosie caught ten frogs!!” my niece proclaimed. “And I helped!”

“We’re bringing them to the bathtub,” declared Rosie confidently. “That’s where we put the toad last week.”

And look, we’re country, but a woman must draw the line somewhere.

“How about the old mineral tub in the backyard instead?” I chimed in. And they agreed happily, making a habitat and obsessing the proper amount before digging a little hole and holding a long and dramatic funeral for the one frog with the missing leg who didn’t make it and then ceremoniously releasing the lot at dark so they could do it all again the next day.

So yeah, I know nobody was wondering, but the frog crop is good out here in the middle of nowhere. And the kids? Well, they’re growing up good too.

Lucky Unlucky Us

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I’m not sure if I’ve seen a July like this in Western North Dakota. It feels like we’re living in an entirely different climate, waking up every morning to new puddles on the gravel road and a bit of a mist in the air. Most days in July have been greeted with or ended with a thunderstorm or shower, it simply won’t stop raining.  And this is just fine news for us. The stock dams are full, the alfalfa is lush, and the grass is as green as can be. It makes timing getting the hay crops off the fields a little tricky, but I think any rancher up here will take the rain with the inconvenience.

The consistent threat of a storm has also made our North Dakota outdoor engagements a bit harrowing, although we persist of course because we only get like four full seconds of outdoor picnic weather up here. And so, we just swat the mosquitos and hold tight to our potato chips and paper plates so they don’t blow away and catch on the neighbor’s barbed wire fences. 

Last week, after a trip to the dentist to find out I might need a root canal, and a visit to the mechanics where I found out my car needs a few new $800 parts, I brought my dad and my daughters to play music on the shores of Lake Sakakawea at this cute little campground along a sandy beach called Little Egypt. Along the way I learned that Dad had also just found out about a few hefty bills for repair on misbehaving equipment that day and so we agreed that playing some music was going to soothe our broke and toothachey souls that night. 

It was a perfectly hot and muggy 80 degrees when we pulled in with our guitars, picnic supper and girls in the back seat of dad’s pickup. And while there were no chances of rain on our weather apps that day, the blackening sky told another story. “Looks like it’s going to head north,” we said to each other while we plugged into the system and sat down to perform to a crowd slowly gathering with lawn chairs and coolers in front of the stage. 

My daughters had taken off to check out the sand on the beach and we sang “Love at the Five and Dime” and a couple ranching songs and watched those clouds get darker and darker behind the growing gathering of people. I looked over at the beach to get an eye on my daughters and then back behind the crowd and clocked a flash of lightning. Still hoping for the “heading north of us” theory to materialize, I informed the crowd that we may have to take a break for the weather to pass and just as that statement left my lips, the stillness of the afternoon turned into a huge 60 MPH gust that swept across the campground and across our stage, blowing my set list, merch, hat and dust across that campground. “Ok then! That’s it!” I think I said into the mic, or maybe just in my head as I grabbed my guitar and headed to get my kids who suddenly found themselves in a furious sandstorm. I clocked the boom of a speaker blowing over, set my guitar in the backseat of the pickup and joined my dad and my soaking, sandy daughters in the front seat while dad moved the pickup away from the stage, you know, just in case it blew over. 

I had played an entire 20 minutes of my two-hour set. 

The sirens wailed. 

Rosie sniffled.  

The rain dumped harder and blew sideways. 

Then came the hail stones. 

“This should pass soon,” we said to one another as only true Midwesterners do. And it was logical, we could see the edge of the clouds opening to a clear sky, but we were still on the inside of it. And so, it hung on for another half-hour or so, just long enough to fill the guitar case I left under the stage with a half inch of water and soak the stage as well as anyone’s desire to carry on with the whole idea of outdoor entertainment that evening. We may be persistent, but our nerves can only handle so much. 

 When the storm finally dissipated, we helped clean up the stage and pick up the things that went flying. Luckily, I brought an extra set of clothes for the girls, and so they got dried off and as de-sanded as we could get them. 

“That was scary!” Rosie declared. “Yeah, we’ve sort of had a rough day,” I replied, “With the storm and the broken tooth and the broken cars and equipment. Glad it’s over!”

 “I shouldn’t have opened that umbrella in Alex’s house this morning,” Rosie chirped from the back seat.

“I guess superstition is hereditary,” my dad laughed as we headed toward home with my caseless guitar sitting on my lap in the front seat, chasing the rainstorm headed east to wreak a little more havoc on Friday night picnics and campfires, outdoor music and hay moving operations.

A rainbow appeared in front of us as the girls recounted their harrowing story so they could get it right for daddy when we got home. We stopped in New Town to gas up and take the girls for a bathroom break. As we were walking out the door, Dad stopped. “Ice Cream Drumstick?” he asked, a tradition we have kept on our way home from almost every outdoor summer concert we’ve done throughout my life. “Of course!” I replied. “Lucky us.”

The Lemonade Stand

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I came home from town yesterday to find that my daughters and their cousins had set up a lemonade stand on the ranch-approach facing the gravel county road. They had been there for an hour or so waving and yelling “Get your lemonade!” to the big blue sky and the wind and the cows munching on sweet clover in the pasture on the other side of the road.

They had big dreams of making enough money for each one of them to get a new pet. As if four dogs, eight cats, two goats and a pasture full of horses between the four of them isn’t enough, we need to add a hamster and a lizard to the mix. We’re dreaming big out here.  They even brought their plastic cash register.

Country kid lemonade stands are the epitome of patience and rural acceptance. There are just some things that aren’t as successful out where the cows outnumber the people by like 3,000 percent. Well-manicured lawns, rollerblading and getting away with sneaking out to a party are some other examples, among others.

Anyway, the lemonade stand, it was impromptu, as most kid-run businesses are. As a result, my sister didn’t have time to rally the neighbors to casually drive by and discover the oasis of slightly chilled refreshments, a variety box of single serve chips and four girls waving handmade signs and spouting unreasonable prices. This is when grandparents and dads on their way home from work come in handy. The girls made $15 off their family.

A text just chimed on my phone. “Ada made chocolate chips cookies. She wanted to make sure you don’t make the same thing.” It’s my little sister. Today the girls are going to head back out there, this time with better treats, bigger signs and a chance for us to call my brother-in-law who works on the oil sites out here, to bring cash and call his people.

On Sunday I took my daughters to the home pasture to check on the wild raspberry crop, a tradition that can’t be skipped this time of year. But, much like a lemonade stand on a rural road, planning and timing is everything when it comes to raspberry picking. Get there too early and they’re not ripe. Get there too late and the birds beat you to them. My summers of experience and all the rain that’s fallen this July gave me the hunch that we were going to have some success in finding raspberries (and horseflies) that day, and boy, was I right. And boy, there is nothing better than a ripe wild raspberry picked out under a big prairie sky. A tiny, delicious little treasure hunt. I looked over and my oldest was neck deep into the thick brush, putting three berries in her mouth for every one she put in her ball cap to “save for dad.” As you can imagine, that ball cap was empty by the time we moved to the next brush patch and the only one saving any for dad was me, his loving, selfless wife with willpower of steel, which is what you need in order to leave any wild raspberry uneaten.

We caught up with my husband moving dirt with the backhoe on our way back to the yard and surprised him with my cap full of berries. The way the grown man transformed into the ten-year-old version of himself, popping those treats in his mouth five at a time, well, it made my sacrifice worth it.

Anyway, the raspberry-picking was impromptu, like most of the best memories are, and, unlike the lemonade stand, it’s one activity that does work best out in the hills where the cows out number us. After their dad had his fill of raspberries, the girls climbed up in the buttes to sing and throw rocks. Then, coming from another butte about quarter mile away they heard tiny voices yelling, “Hello! Hello!.”  It was their cousins of course, news travels fast out here where the wind carries giggling and chattering voices.

“Hello!” they yelled back, waving their arms, thrilled to have been discovered. “We love you! Can we come oveerrr?!!!”

“YEESSS!!! Come ooovvveeerrrr!!!” replied the tiny voices far away.

And so they did.

This is summer on backroads and I just don’t think you can beat it.

UPDATE

Since this column published the girls did indeed have their lemonade stand, but this time next to the highway for better visibility. As planned, we called in my brother-in-law and he called his staff who work on the well sites near us on Wednesdays and they showed up for these girls in waves. And so did the rest of the community traveling that highway to get to work, or an appointment or to go visiting (and the neighbor girls, who made a special trip, bless them.) They would pass by from every direction, check the center counsel or the glovebox or a wallet or purse to see if they had cash and then hit the next approach to turn themselves around if necessary.

The girls quickly got into their respective roles and routine, one at the cash register, one pedaling free cookies, one scooping ice and one organizing and putting stickers on the cups. Between my sister and I we had to go back to the house twice to refill lemonade, ice and the cookie stash!

When I tell you there’s nothing more wholesome than a lemonade stand on a hot summer afternoon, well, this experience proved it.

“What are you raising money for?” one man asked the girls lined up by the window of his pickup.

“A hamster,” said Rosie

“A lizard,” said Edie

“A puppy,” said Ada

“A big Lego set,” said Emma.

“Here’s my wallet!,” replied the man, shifting his cookie to his lemonade-holding hand. “Take all the cash out of it. It’s yours!”

And that was the sentiment for a good three hours that afternoon, before it started to sprinkle and just as they ran out of cookies.

So anyway, if you need us, we’ll be shopping for tiny pets, which may or may not be the worst idea we’ve had yet.

Thank you brother-in-law and crew and to everyone who stopped for the girls that day. You truly made a sweet memory for all of us.

Sweet Clover Season

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I wish you could smell the sweet clover out here this time of year. I step outside and I’m flooded with a wave of memories of all that I used to be, summer after summer growing up out here. It smells like work and evenings spent sliding down hills on cardboard boxes with my cousins. It smells like ingredients for mud pie and playing house in the lilac bushes by the red barn. It smells like bringing lunch to dad in the field above our house, horseflies and heat biting our skin.

It smells like my first car and the windows rolled down, taking back roads with my best friends as passengers, kicking up dust as we tested the limits of teenage-dom.

It smells like my leaving, bittersweet. My last summer as a kid here before it was time to go and grow up already. Be on my own.

And it smells like coming home, take a right on the pink road, stop at the top of the hill and look at it all before heading down and turning into mom and dad’s for a glass of wine and a steak on the deck that looks out toward the garden and up the crick bed where I used to play everyday.

This summer my daughters and their cousins have lived on this landscape, on this ranch, the way kids should. Spinning on the tire swing, hiking up to the top of Pot and Pans, trying to catch fish in the fishless stock dam, zooming on dirt bikes, pushing baby doll strollers in the tall grass and skinning knees on the scoria roads. There was a time when it was quiet out on this homestead place, back when my sisters and I left for the big towns and didn’t dare turn to look back over our shoulders, leaving my parents here to wonder what happens next to the place that has raised us when there is no one left for it to raise.

Fast forward twenty years and the ranch, well, now it’s buzzing, laughing, full of life like I remembered it when I was growing up and our grandparents were alive and serving us push-up pops from the small front porch of their small brown house. Weren’t we all just five years old running through the clover, itching our mosquito bites, begging for popsicles and just one more hour to play outside?

Now we are the ones on the other side of the supper bell. As I type this my daughters are over the hill at their aunt and uncles’ lighting leftover 4th of July smoke bombs on the gravel because it rained. I needed a few minutes to collect my thoughts and it is mid-summer and the smell of that clover makes me lonesome somehow for a life that I am currently living. Do you understand what I mean? That feeling of knowing that it’s fleeting? The clover reminds us and so do the limbs of my daughters stretching up and reaching closer to the sky every minute now. The chubby gone from their rosy cheeks. How many more summers will that clover feel magic? 

All of the summers I hope.

Because I know being here like this, reflecting at my kitchen counter while our children stay up past any reasonable bedtime because it’s summer on the prairie and the light lingers, I know it didn’t come without a cost for our family, keeping it here for us…

I know that we did nothing but be born to people who know the value of the land, not in dollars, but in something that is hard for me to find words for right now.

Pride?

Work?

Home?

A place to belong?

My uncle Wade stops in on his way back to Texas and I live to hear the two brothers remember what it was like to be young out here. Young Wade always found hanging back on a roundup, eating on a Juneberry bush. Dad as a kid getting bucked off on the road when his little brother popped over the hill on his tricycle. Milking cows and riding broncs and chasing girls and growing up together out in these same hills…

How many gloves and hats and scarves have been left dangling in these trees, scooped off heads and hands of little cowboys and cowgirls rushing on the backs of horses running through the trees?

How many wild plum pits have been spit at one another?

How many mud pies have been made in this barnyard, topped off with little pieces of sweet clover.

I’ll take that clover. I’ll breathe it in, and I will remember when it itched our bare little legs in the summer while we searched for kittens in the nooks of the red barn. And I’ll be thankful it itches my legs still… because they’ll grow up too fast you know. Just like we did, out here among the clover.

Why we sing

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Rosie singing her solo at the Art in the Park Talent Contest

For the past few days, I’ve been helping my daughters practice songs for our local talent show. I’ve been sitting on the couch with my guitar while they face me, strumming through the chords while they work to hit the notes and the words in the right places. They’ve spent so much of their time singing along in the backseat of our car on our way to town and back and occasionally they have joined me on stage at local events to sing “You Are My Sunshine,” or chime in with me on a chorus. But they’re getting older now and they want to pick their songs and stand behind the mic on their own and I couldn’t be happier to be their accompanist. And the experience of playing their music with them is bringing me back to memories of where I started—beside the guitar in the basement singing Lyle Lovett songs with Dad.

My dad and me at the same Art in the Park a million years ago

As I get older and the responsibilities of life weigh a bit heavier, I wonder more often what I’m doing way out here in the middle of nowhere writing songs, papers spread across the floor, stealing away moments to follow a line or an idea between making supper or carting kids to theater camp. The older my daughters get, the more I feel I’m missing when I’m gone on a singing job. And I wonder if it’s worth it.  

Because being a small-town musician doesn’t make you a rich woman. Being a small-town musician sends you out the door in the evening to towns hours away and finds you behind headlights in the quietest hours of the early morning, the hours still considered part of the night. The hours that, even in oil country, find you to be the only headlights on the road.

I’ve known this about my career since I recorded my first album at age 16. You want to sing on stages? Then there will be many nights where you won’t be home for supper.

You want to pay back those album costs? Then your weekends are planned girl.

You want a husband? Then he has to be the kind of man who doesn’t need you to make him those suppers every night. He has to be the kind of man who’s ok with you leaving the house at 7 pm to practice with a room full of men behind instruments. He has to be ok with you coming home at 2 am on a Tuesday night.

You want to make some money? Then you better find another job flexible enough to get you through from gig to gig. You better get creative girl.

Because, like most jobs, it isn’t glamorous. But for me, if it was about the glamour, I would have stopped after my first nerve-filled meltdown on the bathroom floor as a young teenager. I would have stopped before I made the decision on my college circuit to leave after a show at 9 PM from Fargo and drive through the night to get to Chicago to play on a stage before noon.

I would have called it quits after the first time I had to get dressed in my car and do my “shower” in a public restroom.

I would have quit before I got lost in Green Bay and Minneapolis, slept on the side of the road in a blizzard, or in the cheapest, sketchiest motels I could afford. I would have quit before we got a flat tire on the most lonesome stretch of highway on my way across Montana.

And then I would have missed the best parts, the parts that keep me doing this, the characters in my songs and the characters who come when I call with their guitars and harmonies and ideas, putting life in the music. Making me forget that it’s midnight and I have a deadline in the morning.

That’s the thing about live music, whether in a big metropolitan stadium or on a flatbed trailer on Main Street America, if you keep singing it will keep giving new experiences, new people to love, new places to travel and new things to say you’ll never do again. At least that’s been my experience all these years spent behind the guitars and microphones.

It transforms us. The audience. The singers. The players. It cuts us loose. It turns ranchers into rock stars. Strangers into friends. It makes stoic cowboys tap their toes, maybe dance a little.

It makes my little sister cry.

And it makes kids hopeful and inspired and brave. I know because I was once one of them and I guess when it comes down to it, I still am.

I strum a G chord and nod to my youngest daughter, her sweet voice projecting back at me, singing out loud the answer.

This is why I still sing. This right here might have always been the reason.