Fifteen

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A photo of me at 15, which is now considered vintage 

And now, for this week’s column on a trip I took to teach a writing workshop to classes full of teenagers where I mentioned mixed tapes and records and a time before the Internet and felt old.

When I was fifteen
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“Oh, you’re going to feel so old,” my husband told me as I explained that my plan for the week was to drive across the state to conduct a few writing workshops for high schoolers. “Just remember, you were their age once…like twenty years ago.” And then he took a drink of his coffee, laughed and turned out of the room.

Funny. Real funny.

But twenty years ago? That can’t be right.

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Wasn’t I just fifteen last week when I was grocery shopping and gave in to the nagging instinct to buy the Double Stuffed Oreos?

And I was certainly fifteen the other day, walking down the hallway at work with my hair flat ironed, new boots, feeling pretty good. Until my coworker said she saw me coming and didn’t recognize me with my new “do.” “Who’s that lady?” She wondered to herself.

And I wondered when I became a lady.

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Me, on the right, about thirty birthdays ago…

Wasn’t I just fifteen, swearing I would never forget what it was like to be fifteen and then all of the sudden I woke up to find myself standing in front of a room full of teenagers talking about record players?!

“And yeah, I know, record players are vintage cool now, but this was before the Internet. And YouTube. And, have you ever heard of a mixed tape? Well…anyway…”

I spent an entire day in that high school, talking and guiding students through creative writing exercises, sharing my career path, drinking chocolate milk out of those little cartons and listening to snippets of their lives play out in the hallways: A paper is late and there’s an excuse. Her sister didn’t put her clothes in the dryer last night and she was so annoyed. Someone’s not pulling their weight in the group project. A sign needs to be painted before tonight’s game. Did you study for the test? What are you doing this weekend?

And suddenly I was transported back to a time when so many things were out of my control, my sensitivities were heightened, I simultaneously knew everything and nothing, and, what I probably remember most, was just being so completely unsure of myself.

I was reminded of that uncertainty because of the juxtaposition of the kids sitting before me that day. They did not appear unsure at all. I mean, yes, there was hesitancy in completing what I was asking them to do, which was to be vulnerable, to write down memories, to approach their identity, to open up their creative vaults, which was big. But these kids were open to it. They were given the task and they spoke up and shared things out loud, in the open, that I’m not certain I would have been brave enough to share when I was in their shoes. And now, I just wish I could really remember if that was true. I’d like to think I was more like them.

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I doubt any one of those teenagers would have been caught dead in this for $5.15 an hour. 

But what I do remember is that when I was fifteen I thought there was a magical time when you suddenly became an adult and that uncertainty made way for self-definiteness. Like, I am 35 and this is my house, this is the way I wear my hair. This is the cut of my jeans. This is my job. This is my plan.

But that’s not the way it goes is it? I know that now, because I’m not fifteen. I am thirty-five and I’ll tell you there are some things the years just don’t change. I just didn’t know until now that I would be glad for it.

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The way my grandpa sees the world

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Theodore Waddell, Gallatin Angus 2001

The way my grandpa sees the world Forum Communications

There’s a print of a painting hanging in a frame beside my bed that reminds me of my Grandpa Bill.

It’s a framed card actually, a watercolor of a rugged landscape, dark blue buttes forming a horizon against a gray and white sky. And below the buttes, in the foreground, the brush stroked green and beige, and then the artist, seemingly with the blunt end of his brush, came back to add a scattering of black dots.

The cattle.

I took the print off the wall tonight to take a closer look as I was crawling into bed and the back of the frame came off to reveal the reverse side of that card and my grandpa’s handwriting.

“This scene looks much like the blue mountains from the hills above your place. Happy Birthday.”

And he was right. If you sit on the top of a hill on our ranch, you will likely see the live version of this scene — a moody sky casting sporadic golden light in the pastures where our cattle graze. And off in distance, as far as you can see, those buttes that cradle our neighbors 10 miles to the north shine blue on us and frame every scene of our lives out here.

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My dad tells a story of when he was a little kid in elementary school. He was coloring a picture of Roy Rogers riding through the mountains on his horse, Trigger.

“Why are you coloring the mountains blue, Gene?” his teacher scolded. “Mountains aren’t blue.”

I always thought that was one of my dad’s sadder stories…

But I don’t think Grandpa Bill had this sort of teacher in his life. And if he did, he didn’t pay her any mind.

And I like this little card with black dot cows because I like to imagine it’s the way my Grandpa Bill sees the world, like a painting waiting to be made and admired. And I’m so glad to know that about him.

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When I was 11 or so, my dad’s mother, Gramma Edie, died on the ranch, leaving the little brown house in the farmyard down the road empty and lonesome. So in the fall and winter, my mom’s parents, during their early years of retirement, would move out here to breathe life into the place.

Grandpa traded his Minnesota dock shoes for boots and immersed himself in ranch life. He fixed fences, he rode along to move cattle, he updated that old farmhouse, hung his chaps and hat like a work of art on the entryway and took beautiful photographs, even trying his hand at painting the simple, old, everyday scenes of this place I might not have thought to find extraordinary if it wasn’t for him.

Eventually, my grandparents made the decision to settle into summers in Minnesota and winters in the Arizona sun. In fact, Grandpa Bill is likely reading this to Gramma as they have a cup of coffee and a doughnut hole on their deck.

And he’s probably noticing how the morning light creates a soft glow around his wife’s silver hair and thinking that it would make a lovely photograph or painting.

And every time I take the turn off the highway to head north, toward home, toward those blue buttes, I slow down a bit as I come up over the hill overlooking the gold pastures dotted with cattle and, because of Grandpa, I think the same thing.

Road Home

Jessie Veeder is a musician and writer living with her husband and daughters on a ranch near Watford City, N.D. She blogs at https://veederranch.com. Readers can reach her at jessieveeder@gmail.com.

January blues

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A lot can be said about winters up here in North Dakota, but for anyone who has lived through one (or one hundred), whether new to the area or born and raised, we all have January in common.

January is hard. It’s cold. It’s the longest month no matter how well things are going. And I’m guessing it’s the number one reason that half of our 65 and older population lives in Arizona during those thirty days. They’ve learned their lessons…

Being a mom to young kids in North Dakota in January is no joke.  All I have done today is wipe noses, mine included. And when you live 40 minutes from civilization, the isolation can weigh heavy on the days that feel hard.

I admit, I wondered if I should publish a piece in all of those newspapers about how I cried on my basement floor surrounded by all of my first world problems and so many of the things I’ve always wished for. But then I thought, well, there is likely another mom somewhere out there crying on her basement floor, and, well, I don’t want to feel alone either.

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January’s a little too good at loneliness

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I sat on the floor in the basement and cried.

I cried while my 3-year-old’s voice bubbled and babbled a narrative for her dolls as they navigated the new house her auntie snagged for them secondhand last week.

I cried while my 1-year-old wobbled over to hand me her little karaoke microphone because it was my 150th turn, so I smiled and gave her another little “la, la, la,” because that’s what mommas do, even when they’re crying.

Even when they have nothing to cry about really, except, sometimes, I’ve come to understand, that even the best of us have our moments, or days (or weeks or months), where it all feels a little heavy on us. Not just the hard stuff, but the good stuff, too. Because even the snuggly, sweet and syrupy things we’ve always wished for come with crumbs we have to sweep up sometimes.

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And so it was the smallest disagreement as my husband walked out the door after the waffles were half-eaten and the dishes were put in the sink that made me feel like maybe I will never have the crumbs under control.

And then, when the door clicked shut, it was a moment of loneliness tacked onto a selfish feeling of maybe not being OK missing the only thing I don’t have that I want, which is a moment to walk to the top of that hill out there and get away from the crumbs I used to pray so hard for when I was just me.

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So I cried. And I let myself because sometimes, it’s possible to be grateful and frustrated.

Sometimes, it’s possible to be lonesome for ourselves. Motherhood isn’t the only thing that taught me that.

January in North Dakota is good at loneliness. And so I cried for a bit. And then I stopped and carried on through the afternoon, trying to think of ways to tend to the ache.

I read an extra book or two to the toddler and laid down to close my eyes with the baby for a few moments. And when my daughters woke up, fresh and sweet, I turned on some music and watched them both twirl, so innocent and so unaware of the cold outside.

And when my husband walked through that door after a long day of working on the outdoor chores I desperately wished I could be helping with, it occurred to me that on the other side of these walls, he might have been wishing to be dancing while I was wishing for the bite of that wind.

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I looked at his face and the lump our morning exchange left in my chest dissolved, reminding me that this is life. And I’m OK.

So I cooked us supper, my husband, my daughters and me. And we all made crumbs we left for tomorrow so we could head down to the basement, sit on the floor together and laugh.

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What’s normal anyway?

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What’s normal anyway?
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On the evening of Christmas Day, after all the gifts were opened, the leftovers were boxed up and the goodbye hugs were given, we arrived home to our house in the middle of nowhere to discover an open front door, a bag of scattered garbage and every boot in the entryway missing.

In another setting, I imagine one’s mind might have automatically thought “burglar.” But in my life, my husband just mumbled, “Apparently the dog can get our new front door open” as he trudged with his arms full of bundled-up babies through that open door.

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As I wandered around my yard the next morning, shielding my eyes against the sun reflecting off acres and acres of fresh, sparkling snow under which any one of my boots could be lying (and hopefully not shredded), I couldn’t help but think that these are not the sort of problems normal people have.

Unless, of course, you live on a ranch in rural North Dakota. In that case, I’m guessing you’re with me here. You’re also with me on the thrill of the weekend morning drive to town without the kids so that you can stock up on a grocery supply that fills the deep freeze and hopefully lasts a few weeks.

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And if you’re from rural North Dakota, or maybe anywhere up here in the great white north, please tell me I’m not the only one who has found herself and that overfilled cart stuck wheels-deep in the snow-packed parking lot on the way to the car. Like, so stuck I needed assistance from the nice lady who just pulled into her spot to witness me spinning out and grunting profanities under my breath in failed shove after failed shove to free it.

“No, these are not the sort of problems normal people have,” I thought again as I unwrapped the celebratory doughnut I purchased to eat on the 30-mile drive home… and then the second one because I was alone in my car with no one there to judge me…

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And, when I arrived home, I muttered it yet again, because after all that effort I forgot the milk and had to call a neighbor on the hunt for an ingredient I needed for my New Year’s Eve party dip. Because I swore I bought it, but it could have flipped out of the cart in my efforts to free it from the grips of the winter parking lot, or maybe it is in my car, just living in the black hole of space where the sippy cups, Froot Loops and missing gloves go to die.

Next time I accidentally lock the barn cat in my car while unloading the kids, I’m sure she’ll find it and have a front-seat feast, just like she did with my missing package of cashews a few weeks back — which was a welcomed clue to her existence before I accidentally drove her to a meeting in town.

Which, judging from the cat in a sweater I saw being pushed around in a stroller at the airport last month, showing up to a meeting with a cat might actually be normal everywhere but here. I don’t know anymore.

Happy New Year, you weirdos!

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Jessie Veeder is a musician and writer living with her husband and daughters on a ranch near Watford City, N.D. She blogs at https://veederranch.com. Readers can reach her at jessieveeder@gmail.com.

My holiday wish for you

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A sight we didn’t know if we’d ever see coming into 2018. 

Happy New Year to you all my friends. I hope you found some peace this holiday season. I’m trying to recover it in day three of my attempt at taking down the Christmas decorations and day eleventy-billion of the flu and pink eye and runny noses and coughs

As we face down the new year, I am thankful for a 2018 that challenged our hearts and our relationships, but brought us here, together and laughing in the best possible outcome.

And if you’re carrying with you a heavy heart, this is my wish for you.

The Day After Christmas, and my wish for you

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It’s the day after Christmas. I can’t see my floor. Every dish in this place is either dirty or awaiting its fate in the sink or dishwasher.

Toys are making noises that I can’t figure out how to stop, and I’ve eaten nothing but sugar cookies in the last 12 hours. And it’s snowing. A little late for a white Christmas, but I’m fine with that.

What lies ahead of us is a few more long months of winter, saved by those noisy new toys and the sweet memories we made the past few days with family. And I am grateful for so many things this year, but on the top of that list is our health. We have it today.

And as I sat in the emergency room with my husband and 1-year-old when we were supposed to be eating prime rib dinner with his family last weekend, I couldn’t help think of all the holiday suppers spent in hospital rooms around the world. Oh, our daughter is fine. A dose of Motrin and a flu diagnosis and off we went to wipe her nose and snuggle her for the next several days.

And I left that hospital knowing full well that we have a sick baby at Christmas, and yes, that’s a bummer, but we are the lucky ones. We are the lucky ones who got to bring her home. We are the lucky ones who were granted our Christmas wishes last year to spend another holiday season with my dad, Papa Gene, and watch the kids dance as he played “Jingle Bells” on the guitar.

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At this time last year, we didn’t know if we would ever see him again as I served pancakes on Christmas Eve in an attempt to carry on the comfort of tradition as we held our breath with worry.

In my life, I haven’t been sheltered from the fact that the holidays are not magical and harmonious for everyone, regardless of the faith one might carry. In fact, in the presence of twinkling lights, Champagne toasts, carols, gifts and funny photos of children terrified of Santa, grief, loneliness, hopelessness and worry become magnified. And for some, if the suffering or the loss is fresh or in the present moments, the weight can be unbearable.

I’ve known that unbearable weight. I know the feeling of going through the motions. And now that we’re on the other side, in a place where we are opening gifts with the babies we never thought we’d have and wrapping up dad’s leftover prime rib bones for the dogs, I wanted to leave this here. I wanted to say it out loud, put it in print, to tell you if you’re living that suffering right now, I see you.

I know you’re out there staring down a new year and wondering if you’re all going to be OK, if you’re all going to get through. If you’ll survive it.

And while each circumstance, each ache and emotion radiates through every heart in a different way, as the winter settles in now, my wish for you is that you can let go of that breath, hold tight to the memories and reach out for the people that love you.

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Jessie Veeder is a musician and writer living with her husband and daughters on a ranch near Watford City, N.D. She blogs at https://veederranch.com. Readers can reach her at jessieveeder@gmail.com.

How NOT to make my mom’s holiday fudge

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Merry day after Christmas. It’s going to take me a good week or two to scrape the Christmas off my floors,

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but it was a truly special holiday for so many reasons, the main being that we are all here together, happy and healthy.

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And we all survived the fudge making debacle of 2018.

 

Coming Home: How not to make my mother’s mouthwatering holiday fudge

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Brought to you by Carnation evaporated milk, which is NOT Carnation sweetened condensed milk, even though they basically come in the exact same packaging.

First, go to Las Vegas for three or four days in the middle of December, just long enough to get good and sleep-deprived so that when you return home you are utterly exhausted and unprepared for Christmas, which you realize is in, like, 24 hours.

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Then, after falling asleep putting the kids to bed at 7 p.m., wake up the next morning determined to give everyone you’ve ever encountered in your life a container of homemade fudge, because that’s what your mom would do.

Now make a list:

  • 8 bags of chocolate chips
  • 1 (or probably 2) giant bags of sugar
  • Vanilla
  • 4 pounds of butter (you heard me)
  • 4 cans of evaporated milk

After waking up at 5:30 a.m. to get you and the kids out the door for the day, make sure you use your allotted lunch time to take your baby to a doctor’s appointment that lasts a good two hours and ends with a screaming child. Only then will you be in desperate need of a potty break and the perfect amount of discombobulated and starving to really tackle the grocery store and that list that didn’t include a giant Red Bull, a bag of M&M’s and Cool Ranch Doritos, but dang it, you have baking to do.

And bake you shall, but don’t start until around 9:30 p.m. when the baby is sleeping and the toddler will likely only emerge from her room three or four more times, the last just in time to witness you dumping an entire can of rotten evaporated milk across the kitchen and onto your Crocs as you attempt to check the expiration date. (And yes, wear Crocs because it’s what chefs wear and now you know why.)

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Because, to do this right, you should buy sweetened condensed milk and pour it in the bowl with four and a half cups of sugar before realizing that you bought four cans of the wrong kind of milk.

Then, you should try to use it anyway and burn the sugar to the bottom of the pan before abandoning that idea and digging through your kitchen cabinets for a can of the right kind of milk, which you will find and wonder about when it pours out in chunks into another four and a half cups of sugar.

Then, and only then, should you call your mother, who will have three extra cans. Send your husband over there. While he’s gone, break into the emergency basement wine and the bag of Doritos and call your sister.

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And when your husband returns, he should return with the milk, two new Christmas outfits for the grandkids, leftovers and a partridge in a pear tree. Kiss him and tell him he’s the best husband in the world, and then get into the longest story in the world while you gather your ingredients, measure, mix and pour, so that by 11 p.m. your fudge pans are cooling and he’s elbow-deep in a sink full of dishes and he doesn’t even know what hit him.

Make sure to save him a piece or two before delivering the fudge to co-workers, daycare providers and that lady who once told you about the toilet paper sticking out the back of your skirt.

And when they say, “You shouldn’t have,” make sure to reply, “Oh, it was nothing! Such a simple recipe.”

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Click here for the real, full fudge recipe. If you’re not me, it’s so easy and delicious.

 

How to take the perfect Christmas Card photo

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Hello friends. We’re in the final countdown to Christmas. We’re heading out the door tonight for the in-laws and I should be packing and wrapping and looking at my list and loading up the car, but I wanted to thank you all first for the beautiful Christmas cards. I know capturing that special photo wasn’t easy. So I wrote some tips for this month’s Prairie Parent.

How to take a Christmas card photo

14 easy steps

Read it here.

Courtney-Crane

Photo submitted by Courtney Crane

Merry Christmas! Love you all.

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Like a spider mother

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Rosie and Me

Coming Home: Not that different from a spider mom

On a long, late night drive last week, I stumbled upon a radio program that aims to explore the topic of love and how it unfolds, beats, bends and connects us.

It’s a big task, telling love’s story. I wasn’t convinced I was up for a bunch of sappy romances, if that’s how it was going to roll out, but I put in a lot of road time and good radio has the potential to save my sanity, so I gave it a try.

How did they kick it off? With a story about a common spider — the kind that is likely spinning a web in my basement right now — that spends the majority of her lifespan spinning an unexceptional but practical web in which to lay her sack of eggs that will hatch and feed on another set of eggs she’s laid specifically for that purpose. And when they’ve run out of other options for nourishment in the web, the mother taps on her silk, summoning her babies, and then, well, I didn’t really see this one coming… They eat her.

And in that moment, driving 65 mph down the highway after a late night of work and a long and challenging week with my children, I cried.

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Last night, I was leaving my mom and dad’s house when I remembered I needed to make a dish to bring to a party I had the next evening. I forgot about it, so I didn’t have any ingredients for the promised festive appetizer, and a trip to the grocery store with two kids is a good three-hour extravaganza that I didn’t have time for the next day.

I swore.

And my mom went to her freezer and gathered all the ingredients I needed for a dip and she sent me on my way, just another small act in a lifetime of having a mother who would just as easily give me her life as she does her frozen bread bowl.

It sounds silly saying it that way, too trite for the magnitude of the sum of all of motherhood’s parts, but in that moment, driving down the highway with the vision of that spider’s sacrifice, it felt like I was allowed to feel the true weight of my children on my body.

Your heart forever walking around in the world? Yes. We’ve all heard that one. But this spider’s story resonated more with me.

Piece by piece by piece, we give — our time, our milk, our lessons, our worry, our words, our sleep, our hopes, our songs, our bodies, our space, our home. Our freezer bread.

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And it may not be a big, grand finale gesture like our sister in the web weaves, but if she could see beyond where she sits in the corner with the dust and her life’s mission — if she could see you up there at 3 a.m. laying on the hardwood floor outside your toddler’s bedroom door, because it’s the only way she’ll quiet down now — she would nod her spider head and admit we’re not that different.

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Click here to listen to the spider episode, which is the introduction to the great podcast “This is Love.” I recommend it for heartwarming and unconventional stories about what it means to love. 

Do you have a favorite podcast? I want to hear it! Seriously,  a good podcast saves my sanity!

And the sparkle of childhood followed us home…

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The light of childhood reminds us to embrace life
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It’s no secret there are things in this life that are ruined by adulthood.

I remember thinking this as a kid when I was jumping into the cold water of Lake Sakakawea on a hot summer day. The water couldn’t be too cold. The sky too gray. The wind too wild. None of those elements existed to me at 7 or 8 because there was the water and I needed to swim. And so I did. And when I emerged and looked over at my parents visiting with friends on dry land, I wondered how anyone could be so close to a lake and keep their hair dry.

When does it shift in us? When does that water become too cold? The sky too gray? The wind too wild? When do we decide that in order to have fun, the sun must be shining in the most optimal way?

I wondered this again as I watched my 3-year-old daughter put her nose down to the freshly fallen snow, stick her tongue out and lick it up. I laughed as her little sister mimicked her, sitting up to look at me with pink cheeks and a kiss of frosting on her lips, and I remembered then how fresh snow tasted, although it hadn’t hit my lips for years.

And neither had an icicle, even though every time I see one hanging sharp and crystal clear off the eaves of a house, I think about pulling it down and having a taste. But I never do it.

At least I hadn’t for years, until I became a mother, and then slowly, the magic of the world that seemed to have faded out to dull tones of beiges and grays started to glimmer and pop and shine again in the little fluffs of light and sparkle that follow in my daughters’ wakes.

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Last weekend, I wrestled my girls into their snowsuits and loaded them up in the pickup for a drive out into the pastures of our place, determined to get our Christmas tree cut, in the house, thawed out and decorated before the weekend was over. I was on a deadline. My husband was on a deadline.

But that morning, we stepped out into the bright sunshine after days of fog to find our whole world sparkling. We couldn’t make out a cedar tree from an oak tree in the hills because of the glare, so we got out and walked into the hills to take a closer look, to lift Edie on her daddy’s shoulders, to let Rosie eat snow. To come up for air.

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And when we were trying to find a way to get us all back to the pickup with a tree just a little too big for the space, looking down at a steep icy slope of a hill, I think it was the 8-year-old version of me that whispered, “Let Edie ride on its branches, like a sled! Her daddy will pull her down!”

And so that’s what we did. We stepped off the shore and let the fluffy, glimmering light of childhood follow us home.

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If I’m Being Honest: A Christmas Letter

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Coming Home: An honest Christmas letter from my family to yours
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It’s Christmas card season. And while the World Wide Web might make the whole concept a little obsolete these days, I’m still camp Christmas card.

All my friends and family are getting the photo, because we can fake it in the photo.

Can we though?

A Christmas letter? Well, I’m afraid it would read something like this:

Warm winter greetings from the Scofields,

And when I say warm, I don’t mean like the stream of pee that baby Rosie just showered me in right before I plopped her in the tub next to the threenager who didn’t appreciate the “scatter-style poop” Rosie surprised us all with. Not familiar with the term? Come over tomorrow night at bath time because there’s a 90 percent chance it will happen again tomorrow, and so on and so forth, because this is our life now.

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But really, it’s been such a blessing watching our daughters reach and conquer new milestones this year. I think Rosie’s now surpassed some sort of child record of how much Play-Doh a small child can consume and how many stairs she can climb before her parents notice. Her sister Edie changes her outfit 37 to 50 times a day, and survives solely on buttered toast, so we’re thinking that has to be some sort of record, too. We’re so over-the-moon excited to be sharing a home with baby geniuses.

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In other news, one of our family members taught baby Rosie to wink at Thanksgiving, and it’s so cute it’s all my husband and I talk about over late night cereal supper after we get the 3,000 bath toys sanitized and the threenager negotiated out of wearing her mermaid costume to bed.

It’s romantic work, the business of raising small children. So romantic, the two of us are headed to Vegas together in a few weeks so that we might relearn how to talk about something other than bathtub poop. Don’t get too jealous: It’s also a work trip.

But all in all, friends, we have it together at the ranch, really. Just this morning, I walked down the stairs to find my 3-year-old sleeping facedown on the hardwood floor after sneaking out of her room last night, proving she’s stubborn enough to never give in to the fight, but smart enough to know to be quiet. So we’re doing something right.

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Wasn’t the first time…won’t be the last.

Anyway, thank you for your friendship and support this year, and we’re sorry we didn’t make it to more church services/social gatherings/fundraisers/concerts/birthday parties and the grocery store all those times we ran clean out of milk and toilet paper. Also, we’re sorry we’re always late now. Or, erhm, later than we were before kids.

Please don’t give up on us. We’d love to have you over for a visit. But unless you don’t mind a counter full of Goldfish crackers, crusty grapes and craft supplies, maybe call first? If you really don’t mind, then skip the knocking (because naps) and come right on in!

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Peace, Love and I’m eating Edie’s leftover Halloween candy as I write this,

The Scofield Family

Jessie (getting older), Chad (even older), Edie (3 going on 23) & Rosie (1 and holding forever because I’m not sure I’m ready for another baby just yet).

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