The little shops that make us a town

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My mom, who has owned a clothing store on our Main Street for over 12 years, is officially closing the doors on that chapter of her life this month. An end of an era, we’re calling it.

This store has been in the community for decades, under different management and ownership throughout the years, a staple in town for finding the perfect outfit for your wife or a holiday party.

One of my first memories of Meyer’s Department Store would have been when I was around 8 or 9 when our neighbor, Shirley, owned it. My best friend and I would try on the high-heeled shoes in the middle room and walk up and down the carpeted ramp to the green tile floor, pretending to be models.

I wouldn’t have imagined at that time that my own daughters would be doing the same thing all these years later, growing up between the pretty outfits hanging on the walls, pulling clothes from the racks and trying them on in the four-way mirror, picking candy from the dish and playing with the toys set up for the kids in various corners throughout the years.

Meyer’s Department Store is set to be a core memory for my oldest daughter. But don’t ask her to talk about it. She’s too heartbroken. Turns out her plans were to work there one day, when she became a teenager, which can’t happen soon enough in her opinion. What is she supposed to do now, she wonders out loud at the kitchen table through tears. How could Gramma possibly sell it?

She’s too young to understand what it means to be a 69-year-old small business owner so I just tell her she’ll have more time with Gramma now, which will probably mean more shopping with her, too.

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Mom purchased Meyer’s Department Store after a career as a social worker and at the height of the western North Dakota oil boom.

My little sister and I both worked at the store at different times in its life, before our mom took it over and during the economy that was small-town North Dakota in the 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, we were the only clothing store in town and the talk about rural North Dakota business was going the way of combating outmigration and aging communities.

I was 16, sitting behind the counter watching my friends drag Main Street, selling blouses and jeans that fit women so well they traveled miles from neighboring towns to try them on. I learned that customer service wasn’t always about the sale, but maybe more importantly about just being there, being open, being available and reliable, and remembering names.

Our mom bought Meyers when she was almost 60. It was at the height of the oil boom in our community, a big transition for our small town as well as for a woman who spent the majority of her career in social work. I remember admiring her ability to shift and visualize her life in a different way. She didn’t have a roadmap to retail management, but she did have a handful of people who helped her learn and get acquainted and comfortable enough so she could do things her way.

And great customers and employees she loved.

That was her favorite part, hands down: the people. We always joke with her that her generosity wasn’t helping her make a profit, but the social worker in her couldn’t be changed. So many of her employees, past and present, thank my mom for her kindness and the open-minded environment in which they were able to learn and thrive enough to move on to the next phase of their lives successfully.

With the end of this era, it has become even more clear to me just what places like Meyer’s, or your hometown pharmacy, grocery store, café or hardware store can mean to a community like Watford City, through all the phases of its life. These days, we are seeing transitions in leadership in many businesses in our community — some in generations taking over and some with closures and, of course and thankfully, new ideas and services popping up on the corners and in reconstructed buildings and storefronts.

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Mom holding baby Rosie with Edie nearby in the early days of owning the store. 

In the age of online shopping and virtual connection, I argue that storefront, although more challenging than ever, is more important, not less, for our community. Doors open for business and faces behind counters not only reflect the flavor of a community, but these are the places that support your basketball teams and 4-H livestock shows, special events and big ideas.

But most significantly — and I saw it so vividly with Mom’s store — these are the places where people remember your name and your size and your coffee order and your prescription. These are the grocery stores that will order the special cheese for you, that cater your weddings and baby showers and funerals. They employ your teenagers. These are the places where you meet your local friends to catch up and take your out-of-town friends and family to learn about you and where you come from. They are the places you go to be seen.

Singularly, you might not notice what it means to have these little shops there for you to feed you, clothe you and send you flowers, remember your name and your size and your coffee order. But put together, it’s everything that makes us a town and who we are in it.

And with that, I say congratulations to my mom on her retirement and this new phase in her life. Give her a minute for a celebratory glass of wine and she’ll make the move to envision her life in a new and wonderful way once again, which will probably find her spending more time in her coffee shop. She might even learn to make a latte. Stop in and say hi if you’re in town. Tell her what you’ve been up to, she’ll be so happy to host you.

Give it a few years and I’m sure you’ll find my daughter there, too, serving up coffee as the teenager behind the counter where she’s always wanted to be.

May you find what you need in this construction phase of life

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For the past six months, every time we visited our local Cenex store, my daughters would pick out a color swatch from the paint section and ask to re-paint and redecorate their rooms. I would tuck the swatches, bright purple and dusty pink, inside the folds of my purse and tell them, yes, we’ll put it on the schedule, and then dread the day they would ask again.

The task of a redo — a cleanout — always feels so daunting to me. When you live in a house long enough with children, things seem to pile up in the corners and crevices of every room, stacks of papers and tiny pieces of their imagination, creations and childhood spread all about waiting for you to come digging or looking for that lost piece of paper or the most important Lego part in the world. It takes diligence to contain it and to help teach them how to do the same. Truthfully, I’m not so good at it.

While my daughters have been on winter break, I’ve done my best to focus on them in a way I don’t do as much anymore now that they are 7 and 9 and much more independent. I used to sit with them and color. I used to coordinate art projects. I used to have to supervise every outdoor excursion, cut up every meal.

I woke up sometime this year and realized I sort of miss them in a way that feels sneaky, like it would be easy not to notice. I’m nostalgic for their baby faces and their baby voices that I’ll never hear again.

And that imaginary red thread that connects me to them, it used to be close and tight, but slowly, surely, inevitably, it’s unspooling, and I’m not sure what to do with all that slack.

I suppose these are the types of musings many of us are doing at the cusp of the new year between planning the dip for the party and undecorating the Christmas tree. I want to say something profound about how the past 365 days have taught me lessons and I’ve abided, but after I am done typing this, I’m taking my daughters to town and we’re picking up a few gallons of paint and I’m doing what I’ve done all year — the next thing there is to do.

Surprisingly, lately, I don’t feel much like pontificating.

Yesterday, in preparation for painting over nail holes, scuffs and the occasional crayon mark on their walls, my oldest daughter and I unloaded the clothes from her pink hand-me-down dresser drawers and repainted them a dusty blue to match the new bedding she picked out on a recent shopping trip. She helped me unscrew the glass knobs and sand and scuff the bright pink paint, sang along with every word of every Taylor Swift song on the speaker, and made the funniest little digs and jokes as she worked, and I thought, oh yes, this girl, like me, like her father, she likes a project.

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A project. I suppose that’s it right there, the word to sum up a year if it doesn’t sum up a life. What are we doing if it isn’t project after project?

Specifically, this year featured an album release, a music video, art classes and events, and a new retail store for our non-profit, taking care of cows and bottle calves, teaching the girls about horses, a new garden spot, fences and water system fixing, and wrapping up the loose ends of a five-year-long house renovation. I just bought the toilet paper roll holder for the new bathroom last weekend, finishing one thing so we can move on to getting that wall the right lavender color for Rosie’s room.

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Putting the floor in in our new addition

Anyway, I wanted to find a way to make this New Year’s note to you inspirational even though you are all probably running into as many encouraging quotes as you can handle this time of year.

Regardless, I think I’ve finally come to what I want to say since the winding journey from the Cenex’s paint section where we started. My husband and I, when we were young and first married and searching for where to land, or where to go next, made ourselves a life motto that has carried us through this year, and all the years since, for better or for worse: Our life is a series of choices, and you’re allowed to make a new one anytime you want. If you don’t have the tools, if you don’t have the muscle, someone you know does. Replace those old knobs. Build a new wall. Take one down. Ask for help to undo the hinges.

I’m realizing now, with my daughters growing up, that I don’t want to say “right before my eyes” at the end of it all, but more “right by my side.” That red thread, when you’re building something together, it seems to tighten up a bit. That’s always been the case for my husband and me, so of course, why wouldn’t it be for our relationship with our children?

Happy New Year to you and yours. May you find what you need in the construction phase.

May your kitchen always be too small for all the people you love

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Baby me in my grandpa’s arms with my cousins in my grandparent’s kitchen

There’s a joke I always make on stage during my performances. It involves holidays in my grandma’s tiny house on the ranch and how, looking back, we managed to pack three families with young kids in a 600-square-foot house for Easter dinner or Christmas mornings and sleepovers.

It seems magical that the house never felt small to us cousins, at least not until we grew up and realized that small space packed with six extra adults and eight kids under the age of 12 probably explained why Grandma always kept the kitchen window cracked even in the middle of winter and forgot the Jell-O salad in the fridge.

When we see holiday movies (and I’ve watched a lot of them this season), we see the giant houses with the big wreaths and the grand staircases, a table stretched out for miles with matching settings and a picture-perfect fireplace standing regal as the backdrop of every kind of predictable storyline that all works out in the end.

Cousins on a couch

But weren’t most of us more like a “kid’s card table in the living room and two or three attached to the end of the kitchen table” sort of family?

And maybe we took out the matching dinnerware if we had it handed down or saved from a wedding, but only once a year and only enough for six or eight of us.

And raise your hand if you spent the afternoon with your cousins making up an elaborate group dance or play in order to hold your family hostage for a performance at the end of the night, with aunts and uncles and grandparents piled on the living room couch, your grandpa’s easy chair and the floor.

And did the tree look a little chaotic, donning handmade paper and pipe cleaner ornaments among the antique bulbs and garland and the star that was always a little worse for the wear but it’s tradition?

Did everyone always linger in the kitchen by the olive and pickle tray even if the house was big enough to send everyone to the basement or living room and out of the way?

And wasn’t it always a little hot, a little sleepy in that house even though it was also a little loud?

The cutest picture of little Edie opening a hair brush at Christmas

Each Christmas, we spend a weekend at my in-laws’ beautiful home in a neighboring town. If there ever was a woman made to host a holiday, it’s my mother-in-law, and if ever there was a house built for three Christmas trees and an extended family weekend together, it’s theirs.

In fact, they built it just for moments like these, from the ground up actually, all on their own after their kids were grown and they moved on to the next chapter of their lives, with a pretty staircase that leads to two bedrooms on the upper level and then another on the main floor for guests, a pool table in the basement that also works for family pingpong tournaments, a hot tub room, a sewing room, a couple cozy living rooms.

A little montage from Christmas at the in-laws, including modeling our jammies from the PJ exchange.

Still, I walked up the stairs and — you guessed it — everyone, all 15 of us plus the dog, were huddled together in the kitchen.

Isn’t that beautiful?

I think about my grandma in that tiny house and I wonder, if she would have been given the years she needed to watch her grandkids grow, would she have planned a larger home with a more accommodating layout?

She was a woman born to an immigrant family, one of 12 kids raised on this prairie. I imagine she was used to close quarters, but I also imagine she had a dream home in mind, as we all do.

In fact, we just finished up an addition on our own home in the name of hosting Christmas Eve pancake suppers and Easter dinners and branding day lunches. We added a wide-open living room and a dining room with enough space to extend the table. This is the first Christmas we’re hosting with the new layout and more room, but we’ve been living with it long enough to realize what we already knew: they will gather in the kitchen.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and I hope you had to crack the kitchen window and I hope you forgot the Jell-O salad in the fridge and I hope you are lucky enough to have a kitchen too small for all the people you love.

How to survive the final push to Christmas: Fudge

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Greetings from the ranch, where I’m sitting next to the Christmas tree and am happy to report that it’s still standing despite blatant disregard for the no-cartwheels-in-the-living-room rule.

The elf is making a snow angel in a pile of flour on the kitchen table, and since you last heard from me, I’ve had to come clean about the whole situation, at least to my 9-year-old, who got pretty suspicious when the thing only moved once while we were in Vegas for four days and the grandparents were in charge.

Turns out I forgot to add “move elf for the love of Christmas” to the thanks-for-helping-us-out note.

We’re still standing, too, after those four days in Vegas, where I performed some music and we met up with my Texas family to watch my uncle rope in the World Team Roping Championship.

We were all there for the National Finals Rodeo takeover in Sin City, where thousands of ranch and rodeo families struggle to navigate taxi and Uber rides and try not to get lost or broke among the craps tables and slot machines. I lost $60, my sobriety and my dad at a bar in the Venetian all in a matter of 20 minutes.

In times like these, I would usually just look for the cowboy hat, but when the big rodeo comes to Vegas, everyone in the city is dressed like my dad. Turns out that tracking app we convinced him to put on his phone came in handy when he wandered off to put $20 in the slots only to lose all $20 and his bearings.

It only takes 20 minutes to be reminded that cowboys don’t do well in crowds.

But man, a sea of cowboy hats among the bright lights and sparkle of Vegas has always been the most fabulous juxtaposition to me, and where they house all those horses was a mystery unlocked when my husband and dad were invited to walk among the 2,000+ stalls filled with some of the country’s best equine professionals below the cling and clank of the casino, restaurants and hotel.

What a time to be alive! And what a far cry from the whipped frozen plains at the ranch, our horses haired up and tucked cozy among the oak groves.

We’re home among those frozen buttes now, and whatever time we borrowed from sleep in Vegas, we will be making up for in this final push to Christmas (she whispers as she frantically types to submit this before bedtime and on deadline). Just today, my husband and I made record time finishing the last of the Christmas shopping and errands in time to dress and fluff up Rosie for her Christmas program.

Now all I have left is another grocery store run because I forgot a few things, another shopping trip because I forgot a few gifts, all the wrapping, all the baking, a trip to the elementary school to sing carols with 500 kids, and a Christmas party or two to top it off before we can all kick back and enjoy the holiday.

But first, per tradition, the fudge!

Below I share the recipe, just like I do every year, a small gesture of thanks for following along and for sharing some stories of your own. I have so much gratitude for the opportunity to reflect with you here week after week.

May you find all the joy there is to find this holiday season standing tall and strong against all odds, like our Christmas tree and all the cowboys in Vegas.

Mom’s Famous Fudge

  • 1 12-oz package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 12-oz package milk chocolate chips
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla
  • 4 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 pound of butter
  • 1 12-oz can evaporated milk

OK, onward.

Butter an 8-by-12 baking dish.
Bring sugar and evaporated milk to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue to stir and boil for 7 minutes.
Remove pot from heat and stir chocolate chips, vanilla and butter.
Stir until smooth and pour into the buttered baking dish.
Refrigerate until set.

Muster up your incredible strength to cut the fudge into squares and serve it on cute little platters or in festive tins for your friends.

Become the favorite.

Toppled tree

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Last week, our Christmas tree fell over.

I’m writing about it not because I’m surprised, but rather, because I’m absolutely not surprised. And I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.

It started with our annual Christmas tree hunt with the family last Saturday. We had a window of about 45 minutes to complete our 2,000-acre hunt for the perfect holiday centerpiece between the time my husband got home and when the prairie would be pitch black, but I was determined. This was the only weekend I had open to make the house magical before the holiday and, because I was on a strict timeline, the side-by-side was dead and we had to wait another 15 minutes to jump it while our girls threw snowballs at each other’s faces.

Never fear though, I thought I saw a nice little cedar back in August just a quarter of a mile or so in the home pasture that would work nicely in the new addition in the house. And so, we followed the trail and our instincts to scope the northern slopes of the clay hills where the cedars seem to grow. After all these years of hunting for trees, I vowed to finally learn our lesson about scale — like, they always look smaller under a big prairie sky and about 10 times larger when you bring them inside to thaw out and take up the entire living room.

Turns out this year, once all was said and done, we overcompensated (undercompensated?).

Simply put, in our attempt to not overdo it, we picked a tree that looked sad and bare-boned and far from holiday material when we stood it up against the window and let the light reveal its flaws. Honestly, I didn’t care that much. It’s a wild tree after all, what can we really expect from it? I figured adding a few lights and ornaments would fill the gaps. I was prepared to call it good.

My husband was not on the same page, however. And while I made 10,000 trips to the basement to retrieve our ornaments and decorations, my husband again took to the frozen hills with his saw and returned with a plan to perform cosmetic surgery on our scraggly tree. And when I say this, I mean he whipped out his nail gun and hauled in an armful of cedar boughs and proceeded to nail them to the trunk of our little tree. Essentially, he did what he’s best at and remodeled the thing.

But because the tree was only 10 feet tall and not 25 feet tall like usual, he opted out of nailing the whole thing to the wall and we all got on with decorating what turned out, in the end, to be a pretty decent tree.

Now I’ve mentioned before that we found ourselves in an Elf on the Shelf predicament last month when my 7-year-old found the felt toy lying limp in my bedroom drawer stuffed among mismatched socks and extra phone chargers; understandably, she had some pretty serious questions that needed answers.

So this Christmas, like never before, it is imperative that I restore the magic that is hanging on by the tiny threads of that dang elf’s hat that I now cannot find anywhere. Anyway, I needed to tread carefully and creatively this holiday season, so I retrieved that hatless elf out of its new hiding place that evening and put it on one of the transplant limbs of the Christmas tree with a note wishing the girls a happy hello in handwriting I tried my best to not look like mine.

Now it’s here I must pause to ask, why do we do this to ourselves? It’s all fun and games when the kids are little and oblivious. But thanks to my recent magic misstep and a couple unfortunate situations with the tooth fairy earlier this year, this Christmas season has me under constant surveillance and major pressure to keep the magic alive and real because, well, skepticism has entered the house and she’s a lurker.

Anyway, all seemed to be going well in our freshly decorated Christmas house until the girls started flipping cartwheels on Monday evening, shaking the stability of that retrofitted tree and sending it toppling over right next to Rosie sitting pretty and shell-shocked on the rug, swearing up and down it wasn’t her foot that caught it in her most flip.

And then: “Oh no, Ella! Ella was on the tree! Is she dead?!” (Ella is the name of our elf, if I haven’t mentioned that yet.)

I ran to the living room and, after I made sure that both kids were cleared of the tree, called my husband from the garage to help pull that cedar up and assess the damage. And there was that elf, still smiling and hatless, surrounded by broken bulb glass and Chad’s now legless and one-armed He-Man ornament, his sword arm launched all the way across the room.

Yes, there were some casualties for sure — He-Man was one — but Skeletor was seemingly unscathed, and so was the elf. I suppose that’s why she’s made of felt. But now she was in the way, which was a problem because, well, you can’t touch the elf or she will lose her magic and THE LAST THING I NEED IS LESS MAGIC AROUND HERE, OK?

“Get the kitchen tongs!” I hollered to my oldest. “Grab her with those and put her somewhere safe. We’ve got to redecorate this thing. And no more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas!”

No more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas? What kind of sentence is that?

If you need me, I’ll be Googling Elf on the Shelf ideas, but not while my daughters are lurking, because they can read now. Learned that lesson the hard way …

The saga of the missing suitcase…

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Old Man Winter is showing…

My husband and I are at a weird stage in our lives. I think most refer to it as “middle age,” but, as most stages go, you don’t fully understand it until you reach it yourself.

I was talking to one of my friends recently who was lamenting this phase as well: “I have one kid planning for college and I’m packing ‘extra emergency accident clothes’ in another’s backpack. It’s wild.”

Which brings me to a little story I’ll call “The Saga of the Missing Suitcase,” which started in early October and ended last week with the serious revelation that I need to start taking those memory supplements my mother gave me for my 40th birthday.

Anyway, God bless all my friends, co-workers and family, who, for a solid two months, have had to hear about the absolute mystery of how I could have lost an entire suitcase that contained my expensive curling iron and hair dryer between town and home when I distinctly remember unpacking it on the floor of our bedroom.

What could have happened to it if it’s not in my car, the pickup, the garage or anywhere in my house whatsoever? My mom was looking. My husband was looking. Could it be in a ditch somewhere with my sanity? Did I hallucinate the fact that I brought it inside and unpacked it? Did someone come into the house and steal it? I was mixed up and totally frazzled, and so was my hair.

“Do you remember what that suitcase looks like?” my husband nudged. “No one is going to steal it. More likely it got thrown in the trash.”

After a month of searching with no success, I broke down and bought myself a new, too-expensive curling iron and dug out the old hair dryer we use to warm up cold, newborn calves in the spring. I decided only God truly knows the fate of my wares and wondered how early is too early to check myself into the nursing home …

Fast forward to last week when I was organizing my closet and preparing to pack for a trip. Because it’s barely been above zero for the past few weeks now, I decided it was time to store the last of my summer clothes in the big blue summer clothes bin. To get to that big blue summer clothes bin, I needed to climb the stairs, open the door of the closet, and remove the stack of old picture frames and purses I need to give away from the top of that bin to get to the lid.

What I’m saying here is that it took effort.

As in, I had to dig and un-pile piles. I had to get on my hands and knees and rearrange items. It was a whole thing. Which is relevant only because when I finally got to the part where I opened the lid expecting to toss the summer dresses into storage with my shorts, tank tops and sandals, I found instead … my suitcase.

Of course I did.

Because that seems like a logical place to store an only partially unpacked piece of luggage.

Why? I really couldn’t tell you. I have no real memory of the task. But at least I was right about my missing beauty appliances sitting inside as the only things I didn’t bother putting away. I apparently just needed to spend money on a replacement for the mystery to be solved.

Anyway, now that I’ve brought you through that wearisome journey, I bring you back to where we started, which is that weird stage we’re in where our pants are hooked on the barbed wire fence between youth and a front porch rocking chair. Because after I gave a little hoot at my discovery and promptly texted all my friends who have had to hear about this saga for weeks, I ran down the steps to tell my husband, who I found was in the middle of a shower. But the news couldn’t wait. I pulled open the door and chirped, “I have a very important announcement! Can you guess what it is?”

My husband stopped scrubbing the soap in his armpits and frantically searched the expression on my face through the steamy glass door. His heart sank to his stomach. He looked terrified. I paid it no mind. I was too happy.

“I found my suitcase!” I sang with delight and then went on to explain the whole ordeal you all just had to endure, totally oblivious to the fact that there could possibly be a more important, more heart-pounding declaration at this point in our very adult lives.

“Oh, Lord!” my husband replied with a big exhale. “I thought you were going to say you were pregnant!”

Increasingly forgetful with a small side of “I guess it’s still possible” … that’s where we’re at.

If you need me, I’m probably looking for my phone I put down around here somewhere.

Peace, love and Prevagen,
Jessie

Celebrating doing what we love at the sale barn

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Last week, on the tail end of the season’s first blizzard that shut down schools and created precarious road conditions, we bundled up in long johns and Carhartts to work our cattle and haul our calves to the sale barn 60 miles south of us.

There’s nothing as important, nostalgic or nerve-wracking as shipping day at the ranch. The culmination of a year’s worth of water tank checking, fence fixing, winter feeding, spring calving, bum calf saving, bottle feeding, branding, vaccinating, missing and injured bull drama, pen rearranging, haying, equipment breakdowns, and number crunching comes down to four minutes, three pens of calves and an auctioneer.

In the modern days of ranching, there are plenty of different ways to sell your calves and cattle, from online sales to direct to consumer. But for decades, we have sold our calves at Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange in Dickinson, with its wood-paneled walls, steep, concrete bleachers, and familiar faces sitting along linoleum countertops eating the best hot beef sandwich in town because you’ve been gathering and sorting all morning and drove a big trailer through the breaks and you need to thaw out, which you will, because it’s warm in there and this is what we do.

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And maybe every sale barn in America looks and sounds and smells like this, and maybe every rancher or rancher’s kid who walks through the doors of a place like Stockmen’s is immediately transported to his or her first sale, if only for the moment the sharp aroma hits their nostrils. And I say aroma because we wouldn’t dare say it stinks, the scent of grit and hard decisions and risk and long days in and out in the weather.

“When I was a kid, oh man, if I could be that guy, I thought that would be the best job in the world,” my dad said, nodding toward the young man pushing calves up through the alley and into the sale ring in front of the auctioneer crow’s nest.

I sat between him and my husband on those wide, concrete bleachers, listening to the men take guesses on cattle weights, Dad coming in a bit short and Chad even shorter nearly every guess. Per tradition, our daughters got to skip school to come with us to the sale, and even at the fresh ages of 9 and 7, nostalgia took the wheel immediately upon entering the doors.

“I remember this place, where the guy sounds like he’s yodeling,” my 7-year-old declared, her backpack stuffed with markers and papers to help fill the time spent waiting for our calves to take the ring. “Let’s sit in the top row like last time so we can spread out our coloring!”

And so, we spread out the way families do here, among the buyers and the spectators and the other ranching families. I spotted a little boy with toy tractors and plastic horses playing farm beside his mom, and I said what I’ve said for the last five years or so: “Girls, when you were little, we brought you here in your pink cowboy hats and you cried so loud when you realized our calves weren’t coming home with us that I had to take you out of the building.” They laughed because they like stories about themselves and spent the next half-hour asking if it was our turn yet.

And when it was, that familiar jump hit the bottom of my stomach and did some flips as the auctioneer said our names and graciously praised our calf crop.

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“It’s not lost on me the absolute privilege I have to sit next to my dad and my husband, with our daughters wiggling and scootching between our laps, at the pinnacle of what it means to carry on a family agricultural endeavor,” .

And in these particular moments, it’s not lost on me the absolute privilege I have to sit next to my dad and my husband, with our daughters wiggling and scootching between our laps, at the pinnacle of what it means to carry on a family agricultural endeavor. It is and always has rung profound to me in a way that makes the candy bars we got to buy at the Stockmen’s Café every year when we were kids some of the most precious treats of our little lives.

Because somehow, even at such tender ages without a prayer of deciphering the auctioneer’s yodeling, we knew the weight the day carried.

And if you’re lucky and the market is good, in those moments after the sale, the weight feels lighter and you take the family out for pizza and arcade games because it’s a tradition you’ve added to the long list of little ways to celebrate being able to do the thing we love for yet another year.

Mom and Daughter in the Middle

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Today, my oldest turned 9. Here she is, wearing and holding all her bday presents. Her earbuds and baby doll perfectly depict the sentiment of a girl her age ❤️

“Mom, I’m disappointed about something,” my almost-9-year-old daughter said as we were walking out the door together after school art class.

“Oh no, what is it? What happened?” I asked, knowing it could be anything from spilled milk on her favorite crispito lunch (recent occurrence), friend trouble at school, or a bad grade on a test. When you’re almost 9, the possibilities of disappointments are endless.

“It was picture retake day and …”

“Oh no,” I replied before she could even finish her sentence, suddenly remembering something that I forgot about entirely “And …”

“And Daddy did hair!”

We said it at the same time, locking eyes, her looking at me for my reaction and me looking at her in her favorite stained pink Nike sweatshirt and long, slicked-back hair. 

Was this going to be a crying situation? I wondered in the 2 milliseconds before we both busted out laughing.

“I am so sorry!” I declared between howls. “I totally forgot!”

“Well,” she replied, running both hands through her mane to mimic the slicked-back hairstyle she left the house with. “But these aren’t going on anyone’s fridge.”

“Why did it have to be the day Daddy did hair?!” I wondered out loud to the gods of parenting. “And why didn’t you tell him you don’t like your hair that way?”

“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” she replied, melting my forgetful heart before her younger sister, decked out in a purple athletic tank top, grubby sweatpants and her sister’s hand-me-down cardigan, chimed in. “I’m pretty sure I blinked.”

I laughed and apologized all the way to the car knowing how much it must have killed my type-A oldest daughter to be surprised by the news without the picture day ritual of the special hair-do and special outfit we’ve done every picture day before, and no time to remedy her slicked-back hair in the mirror before the big “Say cheese!” I would have felt really bad about it all if we both didn’t think it was so funny.

Because this week that type-A daughter turns 9. We’ve been planning her sleepover birthday for weeks now, the cake and the food and the sleeping bag arrangement. She asked for teenager clothes. And also, maybe for the last time, a new baby doll.

Recently, during a late-night scroll session, I ran across the term “middle mom.” 

It’s a new-age term that describes the time in motherhood when a parent no longer has a baby on her hip, but she’s not planning a graduation.

She’s in between raising the “littles” and the “bigs,” with random sippy cups still shoved in the forgotten corners of her cupboard and neglected baby toys lying low in the depths of the toy boxes. I welled up by the light of my phone screen and switched to an online search for that baby doll.

Because as much as I’m a “middle mom,” my daughter is finding herself in a similar in-between phase of her girlhood, playing with her dollhouse and requesting that her hair be done like the varsity volleyball players we watched last week. 

She’s pulled to play pretend in the woods behind our house after spending the school day navigating the cliques and nuances of friend dynamics, wondering through tears why some kids can be so mean. 

She’s the teacher in the pretend classroom game with her younger sister and cousins and she’s upset when they switch mid-game to pretend they’re mermaids.

She believes in Santa Claus, but if she thinks about it too much, she knows that it’s just because she’s holding on.

Because it’s fleeting.

Reading stories to her youngest cousin

Fashion show for a friend’s children’s boutique

Darling girl, I know it, too. Some days I wish you could stay that chubby-faced, frog-catching, blue-dress-only-wearing baby girl.

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But then you look at me and laugh the laugh of a young lady who knows what’s important and what to let go. You laugh the laugh of a girl who understands how lucky she is to have a dad who does her hair and a crazy mom who forgets things and then, well, I’m so happy to be in the middle with you.

And happy to have a perfectly imperfect photo to look back on and remind me.

First Concert: A Play-by-Play

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Picture this: Four little girls, ages eight, seven, six and almost five walking down a lighted sidewalk. The seven-year-old is in a long tulle baby blue gown and a plastic princess crown. The eight-year-old has chosen wide-leg teenager jeans and a cute top. The two youngest are in sequins and black leather jackets, except one jacket is fancier than the other because it has rainbow sparkle fringe and that makes the other one jealous, of course. But her birthday is coming up, so she puts in a request. The seven and eight-year-old are in sparkly boots, the almost-five-year-old is in sparkly Mary-Jane shoes that are two sizes too big. The seven-year-old princess is in pink combat boots…

“Ohh, myyy, gawwwd,” the women standing outside the door gush. “I love your boots! You girls are adorable!” 

All four girls smile shy-like and fluff up a little as their moms and gramma tell them to gather up now, let’s all get a picture. Smile! This is a big moment, your first concert!

This was our little parade, a spectacle I didn’t realize we’d create until I saw the fruits of our plan to attend the Carly Pearce concert at the 4-Bears Event Center last weekend with my daughters, two nieces, my sister and mom. We had been singing along to Carly’s music on the rides to and from school for at least a month solid and given the venue was only forty miles from the ranch I thought this was a perfect opportunity for a girl’s night! We could be there and home in bed by ten, especially since the concert started at 6 pm! 

Going to concerts with my family has given me some of my favorite memories, and so I pulled out all the stops for these girls to make it a true concert-going-experience. I transformed my living room and kitchen into a spa, complete with a charcuterie board and orange pop in fancy glasses. With my little sister on the curling iron, me at the nail station and my oldest charged with making sure the outfits were on point, we got to work on our looks. And because my husband knows the consequences of low blood sugar in the women of my family, he got to work rolling out pizza dough and making sure everyone ate at least one piece. Add a little pink sparkly lipstick and a swoop of mascara on each of us and we were off, all seven of us in my SUV, radio up, chattering and singing along. 

Now, a girl can learn a lot of life lessons from her first concert. Turns out, she can also learn some from her thirty-third. Like, read the ticket carefully so you’re not an hour and forty-five minutes early with four kids under the age of ten at a casino in the middle of rural western North Dakota. Turns out the doors opened at six and Carly Pearce wasn’t the first headliner in the history of the world to start her concert early. No wonder we got a good parking spot, albeit with one of my tires on the curb. After I shook off the panic, I figured everyone probably had to go potty and that would probably take four to five business days, which it did, and so did the concessions and finding our seats and waiting the half hour for our star to take the stage.

But when she did, oh my gosh, was it loud. Because in my attempt to make this the most magical experience as possible, I failed to remember how big and booming the speakers are when you’re sitting thirty feet from them and you’re a small human.

No worries! My sister brought earplugs for those who wanted them. It was time to sing along. Which I did enthusiastically while simultaneously staring at my daughters trying to take in all their excitement and cuteness, which embarrassed my oldest, of course, because she was sure everyone could hear me. I brushed off her shushing and reluctantly toned it down.

Three to five songs in and the almost-five-year-old realized sequins were itchy and that her mom didn’t pack her an alternate outfit in the tiny purse she was allowed to bring. To avoid a meltdown, it seemed like a good time for another potty break, quick, before they played our favorite song. Cue another sparkly parade to the bathroom and more “oh fer cutes,” along the way. And then cue the only track my youngest cared about muffling through the bathroom stalls. “Never take a pee break!” Rosie shouted as we all ran down the hallway to get back to the floor before she wrapped up the last chorus. But lucky for Rosie, I knew the next step, and it was staying down on that floor for a dance party. It was only during the last three songs that the almost-five-year-old learned her lesson about choosing the proper concert-going footwear, which, in her defense, I don’t think any woman has ever really abided by. Those two-sizes-too-big-Mary-Janes were over. Except she didn’t want to take them off. And she didn’t want to be held. And she didn’t want to be put down. But lucky for her, she had an older cousin who learned girlfriend-concert-code quickly and offered to trade shoes so they could keep dancing. 

My mom, who’s no dummy, went to the concessions for hot dogs.

Crisis averted. 

And, turns out, good things come to those who shake it and shake it off when a tour manager handed the girls four autographed photos. Elated, Edie held it to her chest, “We’re so lucky.” 

The last song played, and the girls learned about an encore as we clapped and shouted. The lights came up and we sang and skipped all the way to the car, our feet suddenly painless, our dresses less itchy.

We buckled up and gramma handed out hot dogs. I turned up the music and we learned the other best part about concert-going is the concert recap. My headlights bounced off the buttes of the badlands and one by one each little girl dropped off to sleep, leaning on one another in little heaps of glitter and tulle and lipstick. 

I pulled into the driveway and shut off the car and under the shine of the moon four little stars were carried inside dreaming, our little parade coming to an end back where it started…

 

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Taking care

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It snowed for the first time on our drive town this morning. It started with rain and then suddenly we have a new season on our hands. I was not prepared, of course. My oldest daughter doesn’t fit into her snow boots, snow pants or coat. Two of the three things are still coming in the mail. The third I forgot about until the drive to town.  I wonder how a weather change could have snuck up on me like this, as if I haven’t lived with the promise of snow any moment my entire life.

I wonder how I am surprised every time I realize my kids grow, as if I don’t watch it happening with every second helping of oatmeal and spaghetti.

Waiting around every corner is a way to fail at parenting. I spent the past three days away from my family, on the other side of the state performing and singing for my supper as I do. I never worry about leaving the kids back at the ranch with my husband on the scene because, honestly, he has about as much control as I do at any given minute, which means sometimes he doesn’t. We’re aligned in that way. Neither one of us is too uptight because we’re both bordering on being a little too laid back. And so I understand that a spic and span house is not in the cards for me when I arrive home from a long weekend away, because, frankly, it isn’t really in the cards for me when I stay home.

But when I’ve been driving for six hours and surviving on coffee and fast food and I arrive home past bedtime and find a bowl of crusty butter noodles and a bag of open and half-eaten sour cream and onion potato chips on my bedroom nightstand I couldn’t help but wonder—if the kids were going to eat every meal and snack of the day in my bed, they could have at least hidden the evidence.

Judging from the countertop relics, it looks like they had fun without me. They made brownies and quesadillas. Ate Halloween candy and made friendship bracelets. The entryway indicated they rode dirt bike and shot bows. A phone conversation said they had friends over and ate goat steaks and who knew, goat steaks are good!

I reported from the road that things were going fine. I was on my way home and I still had hours to go, so my husband stayed on the line to visit. We talked about the cows and the water tanks, holiday plans and shipping calves and the big drama that occurred when our youngest found the elf on the shelf hanging out in a drawer like a civilian stuffed animal.

It was almost a tragedy, but he saved it somehow and he thinks the magic can continue.

Like I said, a parenting fail just waiting around every corner…

On our way home from school on Election Day, my six-year-old asked me if I would be happy if she wanted to run for president. I said I would if that’s what she wanted. And then she said, “No, I don’t think I would like that. It would be like having 100 bazillion kids to take care of. That’s too much.”

The next morning, we woke up and the nation decided on a new president. Some were devastated. Some were elated. Some were just happy it was over.

And despite the six-year-old’s sentiment, or where you fall on the scale of scared and elated, I’m here to remind you, the taking care of one another has always been up to us.

Do your boots still fit? Do you have a warm coat?  Can you stay for supper?