The order of things

Posted on by
Reply

At night, in the summer, we sleep with the windows open and so the chirping of the birds wakes me up in the morning. It’s alarming how much they have to say, how loud they seem after so many months of quiet skies.

I’m listening to them right now as I type, the chirping of the birds and my cat on the deck making his presence known through the screen door. Last week he brought one of those birds to that door mat, reminding us of the order of things.

The order of things is ever present here at the ranch. A few days ago I took my daughters on a walk with me to the east pasture stock dam—out the front door and down through the swing gate, along the two track trail, past where we park the old cars and broken down equipment and through the tall brush that reaches their armpits before a quick stop to pick wild flowers to hand to me, to pick off a couple ticks and flick them to the dirt. I used to carry each one of my daughters on my chest in a pack when they were babies out here, just the two of us looking around, but only me, their momma, watching my step for the both of us.

And now look at them running! Look at their thin legs and stretched out bodies, listen to them jabber and make up stories. Listen to them laugh and ask questions about weather and the names of the grasses and the bugs, watch them throw dirt clumps into the dam and remember when we were back here on our horses, this place already drawn like a map on their beating hearts.

Recently my husband came down from the fields with news that he found a sick calf and he was headed to town for some medicine to try to save it. A few days before he had picked my dad up from that very same field after he came off a horse and needed to be treated for broken ribs at the local hospital. The calf didn’t live long enough for the hour it took my husband to get to town and back and dad was stuck in the house, slowed way down but able to give advice on how to help that momma cow who lost her calf become a mom to our bottle calf in the barn.

Things go wrong even when the sky is blue and the grass is green and there is no reason for it really except that things go wrong. I hopped in the passenger seat of the pickup next to my husband ready to be an extra set of hands to coax that calf the girls named “Little X” into the trailer and then to help introduce him, draped in the smell of the dead calf, to that momma cow. The clouds rolled in over the horizon and it started to pour on us, but that momma, she licked that little calf before he spooked and ran to the corner of the pen. And that little lick, it gave us enough hope that this new relationship might work with a some patience.

I think that’s all that ranching is really. Enough hope. Enough patience. Enough little triumphs to keep at it.

And so my husband worked multiple visits to that cow/calf pen into his daily schedule. Two times a day he loaded the cow into the chute and brought the calf to help him suck and each night when I came home from town I got the report. “He’s scared of the cow.” “He’s doing better.” “He’s getting the hang of it.”

Last night I came home late, frazzled from a long and stressful workday where I’ve been navigating my way through uncharted waters. I cried and complained and wondered if I was getting it right. Wondered if I have what it takes. My husband listened and then said, “Change clothes, we’re going to check that calf.” And I would have much rather put the covers over my head, but I went along to find Little X in the pen with his new mom, bucking and kicking and, look at that, sucking from that momma like the calf he was born to be.

And it might sound too simple, but I’m going to say it because it was true. In that moment I was just so proud and relieved about that little victory for those two animals and my husband that it made the impossible things that weighed on me that day seem a little more possible. The lump eased from my throat and I slept soundly that night until the birds woke me, singing because they’re in the business of being birds, not a question in their world if they’re doing it right.

Because that’s the order of things.

The work and all the things to love

Posted on by
1

Well, my giant branding-day roaster made it through another year, but how is it that I haven’t figured out the right proportion of roast-beef-to-person ratio after all these years of hosting branding day lunch?

Turns out five total beef roasts is too many to feed 23 adults and ten children. And one whole watermelon, two packs of strawberries and two packs of grapes is about five watermelons and five hundred strawberries and grapes short.

Also, I forgot four pounds of slush burger in the fridge, so apparently “Would hate to run out you know,” is the old Lutheran Church Lady proverb that I truly live by.

Yes, we spent Memorial weekend branding our calves and working our cattle with the help of our friends and family. And while a few key people couldn’t make it this year, it’s always so moving to me to be able to look around and realize that if I put my arms out, I might be able to touch everything in this world that’s important to me.

And some of those things are growing up too fast, running down the road to the pens in big girl jeans asking to wrestle a calf, asking for a job, asking to get on a horse, wanting to help however they can in between pop breaks. In a few short years we will be asking our daughters to call their friends to help with the physical work of wrestling and doctoring calves. But for now, my husband and I, we call our friends who, along with us, are getting grayer around the temples, the repercussions of this type of physical work not as quiet as it used to be in our bodies at the end of the day.

This year I realized that one of those friends has been helping us brand on this ranch for well over twenty years. And then it really hit me, like my aching muscles the next morning, how far we are from being the kids of this operation. As if it wasn’t evident earlier that morning when we were gathering the cattle and I happened to notice a handful of cow/calf pairs had found their way to the thickest brush in the corner of the pasture and there was no one within shouting distance to come to my rescue. Maybe that’s the definition of true adulthood…

Anyway, we got the cattle in, and we assigned everyone a different job to form the well-oiled machine of willing hands that always makes the work go smoothly. I hollered at everyone to “Please eat some cookies!” during our breaks and kept enough worry in my gut and eyes on potential safety hazards to delude myself into thinking I have much control over those sorts of things. And then I breathed a sigh of relief and gratitude when we wrapped up our work and everyone made it inside the garage to watch the sky open up and the rain fall, crack a drink and settle into the stories.



“In the nick of time” I said. And then, “There’s plenty to eat! Everyone don’t be shy, dish up!” the same way I’ve said it year after year, making the full and complete transformation into typical ranch wife at the end of the day, mumbling to myself as I assessed the leftover situation with no bachelor in site to force a to-go bag on.

Anyway, happy branding season everyone. May the grass stay stirrup high, may you always have plenty of roast beef and may the work bring together all the most important things to love…

My sister’s bluebird

Posted on by
Reply


Can you see the rainbow?” The text pinged my phone while I was on hour eight or twenty of laying in my bed with the flu. My husband and daughters had been gone all day for our niece’s graduation, but I had to skip it because, after months of dodging it, it was my turn to be sick.

But my little sister, Alex, who lives right over the hill on the other side of the barnyard, wasn’t going to let me miss an opportunity to see a rainbow, a good remedy for the pukes.

Earlier that day she snuck in to put cookies and fresh baked bread on my kitchen counter, trying to be sneaky, but forgetting that my phone dings every time she gets close to the house, a little hack in the form of an app that helps us with our morning kid pick-ups and evening kid drop-offs.

“Are you going for a walk?” she texted me the evening before, just as I was opening the gate and heading on my two-mile loop to the east pasture and back. “I’ll meet you!”

The ping on her phone told her I was leaving the house and she needed to escape too. Who knew that the tracking app would come in so handy for all sorts of non-emergencies?

But I was glad she caught up with me, a sentence I would have never uttered when I was twelve and she was seven and following me on my after-school walks up the creek. I used to turn around and yell at her to go home, now we coordinate our escapes together.

My little sister, she’s better at it than me. She’s always been the social one, the one to pick up the phone, the one to ask what we’re doing or how we’re doing and the one to make sure everyone knows what’s going through her mind at all times, an endearing feature of her personality that shines most in stressful or beautiful moments.

Which means we get the play-by-play of angst that occurs when she’s trying to get a fresh horse to cross a muddy creek, but then…“Oooo, look at those daisies!!” she squealed while riding through our calf crop with our uncle and dad against hurricane-force winds.

“I just love them, look at all of them,” she gushed as I continued to fight with my flighty pony and the wind, both seemingly out to kill me that day.

My uncle and I looked at each other and chuckled. What a very Alex thing to say. Then we looked over at my dad who sat horseback taking pictures of us because, “The sky is just so blue! It’s beautiful. I don’t want to forget it.”

What a very Dad thing to say.

Yes, it seemed both bluebirds on their respective shoulders were hanging on despite the wind, reminding me to invite mine back.

Reminding me to get up and look outside.

Reminding me that it can be better with company.

And fresh bread. When did she learn to make fresh bread?

Anyway, I’m feeling better now. If you need me, well, call Alex. She knows where I am.

When you look

Posted on by
1
From my music video for “Northern Lights” produced by Ken Howie

I remember the first time I witnessed the northern lights. As memories so often go, I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember stepping out of my parent’s car in the driveway at the ranch and my dad telling me to look up. I was 9 or 10 or 11 or 12, one of those ages that blend into one another in childhood, and it was spontaneous, the way things like the northern lights used to be before we could predict them in the way we do now, announcing their arrival on an app or a website or a social media post to help others experience it. Which is a lovely perk of the modern age…

But maybe not the same as stumbling upon them in the way that we did that night, a little piece of magic we witnessed as mere humans who just happened to look up at the right time.

I found them again years later in the dead cold of January when my dad was recovering from a very close brush with death in a hospital bed in the big town. I think my husband was driving me home from a visit with him and I caught a glimpse of them out the passenger window, green and white and gold light dancing on the dark horizon reminding me how small we are here in the scheme of things. Reminding me that even the coldest night can be beautiful if we look up.

Last weekend I walked to the top of a big hill overlooking the ranch with my mom and both of my sisters. It was Mother’s Day and it was just the four of us. We stopped along the way to pick handfuls of wild sweet peas to lay on the spot where we placed my grandmother’s ashes just about a year earlier. We caught our breath when we reached the top, laughing at my big sister who always wears the most impractical outfits and footwear for the ranch. We put our hands on our hips and quieted, looking out across the neon green landscape, catching the scent of the plum blossoms on one of the most perfectly beautiful spring days. It occurred to me then that the four of us—our mom, and the daughters she raised spread across the decades—have likely never been alone like this together, out in the wilds of the ranch. No dads, no kids, just the women here, looking out. Looking up. We placed those sweet peas on the little stacks of rocks and remembered my mother’s mother and noticed a little yellow butterfly make its way through our gathering before heading back down that hill to share a meal and watch the kids play in the lawn.

Recently, my dad brought home a little black-white-face calf to the barn. He had been out checking cows and noticed it wet and left behind, potentially a twin to another brand-new calf nearby who was up and sucking. He placed a little “x-marks-the-spot” on his head to distinguish it from the other calves so he could come back and check on him to be sure he wasn’t claimed before taking him back to the barn to try him on a bottle. We rounded up our daughters to give the calf a proper welcome, glad he was found, and a little worried if he would ever figure out the bottle.

That night my oldest daughter fell off a pony we’ve been working on. She was fine but my husband and I, we felt terrible. “If only if only if only,” are the things we say when little accidents and close calls happen. We always think we should know better. She got back on and shook the scared off before we returned home right before dark to eat a cereal supper.

I missed the northern lights that night despite all the places and ways it was forecast so we could make plans to witness it. We laid our kids down safe in their beds, I said a quiet prayer of gratitude and fell asleep as the last bit of light fell under the horizon. While we dreamed, the lights danced around us and our friends and neighbors took to porches and lawns and parking lots to stand in awe. Turns out, magic happens, even when you’re not looking…

Photo by We 3 Bs Photography

But oh, when you do! Oh, when you do!

My music video for “Northern Lights”

Life in my car

Posted on by
Reply

“The person who invented pants is really smart,” my oldest daughter’s voice chimed in from the way back seat of our Suburban.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I responded, not really that surprised that the comment came out of silence and, also, out of nowhere. She’s eight and that’s her resting state.

“Right because people used to just wear tiny chaps over their privates. And maybe not even over their butts!”

And that was her little sister’s contribution to the conversation as we rounded the corner to school drop off, just another Tuesday under a cloudy sky. Only this one was a little perilous because for some reason my phone had switched itself to Mountain time during the wee hours of the night, something that my husband didn’t bring to my attention until he noticed my level of calm strolling around the kitchen gathering breakfast and snacks and my thoughts for the day didn’t match the level of urgency 7:25 am warranted in our house.

Like we should be out the door in four minutes and all of us were still in our pajamas.

And so, of course I didn’t believe him or the kitchen clock that doesn’t ever change or the fact that it did, actually, look more like a 7:30 am sun situation than a 6:30 am situation, but honestly, I’m hanging by a thread here.

We shifted into warp speed then, but I didn’t have time to look in the mirror if we had a prayer of making it to school on time. And so I didn’t, knowing full well I have everything I need in my car to put myself together in a parking lot somewhere before heading into work. This is a special skill that rural women have. Well, maybe all women have it, but I can only speak from my own experience of living thirty miles from town for most of my life. Pair that with decades of working as a touring musician and I would guess the number of times I’ve applied my makeup in the visor mirror of my vehicle in a gas station parking lot might just outnumber the times I’ve used the one above the bathroom sink.

My husband pointed this out as he was putting the finishing touches on our new master bathroom. He has been making me a little vanity counter right in front of the window because natural light is the best light to illuminate all my flaws, something I’ve come to learn from that visor mirror. Indoor lighting can’t be trusted. I need nature to tell me the cold, hard truth.

He’s been working on a new closet for us as well, something much bigger and more convenient than the front seat of my car where I do quite a bit of my changing. I’ve been pushing my driver’s seat back to change in and out of tights and jeans and boots and dresses for so much of my life it’s a miracle that I haven’t created more embarrassing moments for myself and innocent pedestrians by now.

But then it’s hard to know how many people I actually traumatized in the McDonalds drive-through line as I removed my boots, belt and shapeware from under my dress while ordering a Big Mac for the hour drive back to the ranch.

If multitasking is the pillar from which I run my life, then my car is the sanctuary from which I carry out my last-minute tasks in the few quiet moments between drop off and workday, and workday and school pick-up line. Behind the dashboard is my desk, my phone booth, my five-minute nap space, my quick-bite kitchen table, my vanity, and, maybe most importantly, the place where I get to listen to my growing daughters ponder life as they count the power poles and trees zooming by their windows.

Anyway, if you happen to catch me deep in a rear-view-mirror-mascara situation, just kindly pass on by. The invisible-while-I’m-in-my-car façade is what I have to hold on to these days.

Peace, love and also, Big-Macs taste better when you remove your Spanx.  

The timing of spring

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome to the warm-up North Dakota. As I write this the rain is soaking the grass and I swear it’s turning a neon green right before my eyes. We had ten calves yesterday, and likely a half-dozen or so more will be born in the rain. But they won’t mind, they will be licked clean by their mommas and kept in the protection of the tall grass and they’ll wait for the sun so they can stand up and buck and kick and run, just like us people it seems. Waiting for the sun to launch us alive again.

When you’ve lived on a piece of land for most of your life, you become a part of the rhythm of things. You inherently know the timing of a change in seasons and when to expect longer light. And, like the wild things, no matter how domesticated we become, we change with those seasons too. Like, I know the first crocus is accompanied by my dad taking the first horse out for a spring ride. And then comes the first calves and no more dark morning drives to school, followed quickly by later bedtimes…

Last Saturday after spending as much time as I could outside finding things that needed to be done, I had to head in and figure out supper. Instead of frozen pizza, I picked a recipe I hadn’t made before and regretted every minute of cooking and shredding the chicken. The task and the warm, calm evening made it tempting to turn in my adult badge and join the kids outside.  They were playing with their cousins on the playground in the yard, bringing toys and dolls that had been cooped up in the house outside to get dirty and worn out in the spring sun, out in the sand and dirt. And I don’t mind about that sort of thing, because outside is where kids are supposed to be. Outside is where I wanted to be, and so I had the sliding door cracked so I could feel the fresh breeze and hear them laughing.

All I wanted to do was climb the hills and look for the sweet peas my dad said he spotted that day. Sometimes the business of my current, middle-aged life prevents me from getting there first, but I knew just where to find them: follow the two-track trail up to the field and take a detour before the gate to the hill on the edge of the tree line. You’ll find the yellow flowers poking out among the granite rocks. And just after the sweet peas come the blue bells and after the blue bells the earth comes alive with lady slippers and paintbrushes and prairie roses and wild daisies. Next come the cone flowers.  Then, in the heat, the tiger lilies follow and then the sunflowers come in with the grasshoppers and the ripening tomatoes in my garden.

And none of these names we have for the flowers are likely correct. You probably call them something different, but when it comes to wildflowers, names don’t matter.

We’ll start serving supper later and later and now, it will sneak up on us gradually until the thick of July when we come in at ten o’clock to eat hot dogs and beans. It had already begun last weekend when, at 8 pm, we took our first bites. But there was still time for me to escape to those granite rocks after helping clear the table. And so I raced the light a bit, the dogs running out ahead of me to sniff out any mice or gophers in their path while I was sniffing out sweet peas. It wasn’t a long hunt, because there they were, right where I’ve found them year after year after year. In a few more warm days, after this soaking rain, that yellow flower will fill the hillsides, too many to gather into a bouquet, but that evening I picked just a few for the mason jar on my table. I clenched the stems in my left hand and took a big whiff and headed back home to beat the dark, humming a little welcome song to the warm up and to more simple hot dog suppers…

Yellow Roses

Posted on by
1
Listen to the podcast where we discuss our connection to heritage and changing times.

In 1915 my great grandpa Eddie staked his claim on this ranch where we’re now living. He got married and headed off to war. When he arrived back in Bear Den Township he proved up his claim, planting some trees, flax and wheat, building a barn and putting up fences.

Cornelia and Eddie’s Children

Over the course of his lifetime he would watch his crops grow, his wife die too young and his children make their own mark on the land he laid claim to. He would meet a couple grandchildren and serve them his famous buns, tell them jokes and scruff their hair before leaving them all behind in death to do what they would with the place he worked so hard to keep. The red barn, his old threshing machine and dozens of other little relics of his existence are scattered sparsely about the place now to remind us that 110 years ago is not long enough to rust the old equipment to dust, but it might as well be forever.

Great Grandpa Eddie standing in the doorway of his homestead shack

I didn’t know my Great Grandpa Eddie, but I think of him often and wonder what parts of his blood flow through mine. I think it might be the holding on part, just like those yellow roses his wife planted in her garden all those years ago before she died suddenly and only 36 years old, leaving her children, her husband and those roses behind to bloom without her. 

One day I want to write his story with the parts I know and then the way I imagined it could have been. But today I thought I’d share his story in the lyrics of the song I wrote about him. I’m honed in that sort of storytelling, so I started there…

Hear it wherever you get your music or head to www.jessieveedermusic.com to order the album. 

Yellow Roses

14 and 80 acres
A couple horses and two hands
Grind the gears and swing the hammer
Turn a boy into a man
His daddy was near blind then
His brother just 13
His mom, she swept the floors though dirt like that just don’t come clean

Only North Dakota
Would make promises like this
Bring with you all your hope here
See what she can do with it

He built corrals and fences
And the family’s homestead up in time
Rode the river in the big draws
With the cowboys for a dime
But there’s something bout the work here
Made him want something of his own
Signed papers on a tar paper shack and called the land his home

Only North Dakota
Would make promises like this
Bring with you all your hope here
See what she can do with it

Only North Dakota
Where the ground turns white to green
The rain, the snow the storms they blow in
like you’ve never seen

Right there we could have left it
His dreams sprouting from the ground
But if man can make a fortress
Only man can knock it down

But when the war was over
He found himself a bride
Yellow roses in the garden
And their children were her pride
Lost money on the cattle
Lost some on the grains
Lost her when she went to sleep and did not wake again

Only North Dakota
Would make promises like this
Bring with you all your hope here
See what she can do with it

Only North Dakota
Where the ground turns white to green
The rain, the snow the storms they blow in
like you’ve never seen

Now a man cannot give up there
This man didn’t have the mind
He made biscuits in the morning
Taught all the babes to ride

When the neighbors fell on hard times
He lent a hand or bought them out
And watered yellow roses in the heat of summer droughts

Only North Dakota
Would make promises like this
Bring with you all your hope here
See what she can do with it

Only North Dakota
Where the ground turns white to green
The rain, the snow the storms they blow in
like you’ve never seen

Now I stand here with my children
One on my hip, one holds my hands
Another generation breathing life into this land
We count pennies and our blessings
And to the memories we cling
And down in the barnyard yellow roses bloom here every spring.

Dakota Cowboy Interview

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, on a rainy day in April, I had a chance to visit with Tisa Peek for the Dakota Cowboy show on Bek TV. We sat horseback in her arena and talked plans and inspiration, arts and music and community building. This show is dedicated to telling the story of rural North Dakota and the people who are doing good work here, was an honor to be included.

Give it a watch here or click the image below:

If you’re interested in where I’m playing this summer, or to get me on your event calendar, visit www.jessieveedermusic.com/shows

One of those days…

Posted on by
1

After a long hiatus, we’re back on the podcast now that we’ve cleared the power tools off the kitchen table. And so we pick right back up at the things that are most pressing–Chad’s latest weird injury, coaching 2nd grade soccer and Rosie’s Tooth Fairy Shenanigans. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Have you ever had one of those days where the sun is shining, there’s nothing pressing on your schedule, your family is safe and home and together and the possibilities on how to spend  your waking hours are endlessly sweet and yet you can’t shake a foul mood. Like, yes, the sun is shining, but it’s shining through your smudgy windows and illuminating the dusty construction footprints on the floor and you’re hungry but you don’t want eggs until your husband makes eggs and then you do want eggs but you told him you didn’t twenty minutes ago so he didn’t make you eggs and the thought of making your own eggs is entirely too overwhelming for some reason and so you walk upstairs to faceplant on your bed and notice and grunt at the laundry that needs to be put away and resent the chores because you feel guilty about tending to them because you’d rather be outside because it’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining?

Ever had one of those days?

Maybe it was just me last weekend. I think, when I break it down, it might just be the consequence of overwhelm, or burn out, as I have been, as so many of us do, juggling about ten different pressing issues at once for the past three months and all of them have been covered in sheet rock dust.

And even when you think you have it all under control, these moods, they can sneak up on you sometimes. I was in great spirits the evening before when my husband waited for me after a work event so that we could take the kids’ horses out on their first ride of the season to make sure there were no kinks under their rapidly shedding winter coats. I chose to ride Cheerio, our little short-tailed, spotted-butt pony and Chad rode my trusty palomino, Gizmo, who Edie loves and who’s only real issue has ever been indifference to the entire human race in general. And so the girls hung with their grandparents and we took our mounts out to check on the new calves and the grass situation. And while Gizmo plodded along the way Gizmo always does, Cheerio, he was in full pony form that evening, prancing a bit, looking around, feeling sort of agitated by all the sites and a little annoyed he couldn’t stop and eat or run back to the barn at will. I laughed about it that night and enjoyed the ride, then let my husband have a turn with him before we beat the sunset home to unsaddle and tuck in for the night.

But then the morning came and I woke up a little like that pony—agitated, huffy and sorta annoying to anyone who crossed my path. The only plan I was sure of that day was to take our daughters and their cousins for their first ride in the arena. But let me tell you, in case you haven’t had to get four horses, four saddles, four bridles and four girls under the age of eight dressed and gathered and matched up and mounted for a ride, it’s far from a Zen experience.

But it turns out it was exactly what I needed even though it looked like driving four girls to gramma’s house, picking up a saddle and driving that over to the barnyard, saddling up three horses and riding them a mile to the arena, unsaddling three horses and then resaddling two horses and catching and saddling two more horses and fitting stirrups and telling four little girls to try not to run and don’t squeal and yes you can ride Gizmo and yes you can ride Cuss and yes you get Harmony and no you can’t ride Papa’s horse and ok just get off to pee in the weeds and no you can’t run at full speed around the barrel pattern right away and oh good job, you’re doing great, and look how Cheerio’s calmed down, look at him lope these perfect circles, what a good boy and look at those smiles, look at my smile, I feel like my face is breaking, what a nice day for a ride, it’s so warm, the sun is shining just right off manes and tails and ponytail fly-aways, aren’t we lucky, aren’t we lucky, what a beautiful day…

“Don’t Duck” and other rules for sports

Posted on by
1

My 7th grade basketball photo. It only went south from there…

Listen. There is not an athletically gifted bone in my body. My entire childhood, my cousins called me “Tuck and Roll,” because I spent plenty of time falling off horses and breaking bones. I had to try hard to be considered for the C Squad when it came to my short-lived basketball career. My now-sister-in-law was my junior high volleyball coach and she likes to recall, at family dinners, how scared I was of the ball. Apparently ducking when someone hits a volleyball your way is not in the play-book. Also, having your boyfriend’s sister as your volleyball coach is not embarrassing at all, especially when you’re only there for the social scene…

Ask my husband the kind of team member I was during our one-season stint as a curling team and he will tell you I was more into visiting than sweeping…

Recently, when Edie wanted to play soccer through Parks and Recreation and they were looking for parents to help with all eight 2nd and 3rd grade teams, it was my husband I had in mind for the task. Even though he hadn’t played or watched a real soccer game a day in his life, unlike me, the man has excelled in sports in his lifetime.
And he’s coached.

Me? Once I volunteered to help with a 4-H STEAM program and accidentally swore in front of all the 4th graders. And when they called me out on it, I did the mature thing and denied it to all their innocent faces. They were confused, I was ill-equipped and so it’s my husband who signed up to coach Edie’s soccer team.

But, you know, I am who I am, so I said I would help. And by help, I meant I would do the communicating with parents and the remembering of names and the organizing of lines and treats and photo taking. Basically, I would do the admin. And so they put my name as coach under Chad’s on the roster and here I am. Coach Jessie. And let me put some generous quotations around the word “coach” for all the aforementioned reasons.

My dear husband knew about these generous quotations and yet, the first ten minutes of our first practice, he asked me to help him demonstrate a drill to the kids, by running and kicking the ball to him. Excuse me sir?  2nd and 3rd graders are not a forgiving audience. I am here for the paperwork and let me tell you, it showed.

Fast forward to the first game last week and more problems started to surface with this arrangement. Because I might not be a competitive player, but I am a competitive cheerer-on-er, much to the dismay of my daughter. Squealing “Ope, good try!” when they miss a goal is not necessarily helpful. Also, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but when we told the kids we were going to take the first game slow to help teach positions and the mechanics of the game, I tried to reassure our little team by telling them “It’s not about winning, it’s about learning!” which was met with blank stares and a correction from my husband. “Uh, we can try to win while we learn.”

Ok. Point taken. On to the reason I was there, to run the timer and sub kids in. Which I thought I could handle until chaos started to ensue on the field and my husband dared ask which kids belonged to which positions.

To which he was met with a blank stare of my own.

“I have no idea, but I finally got their names right! I just replaced Autumn with Calvin.”

And then, the ultimate question: “Coach Jessie, what’s the score?”

“I. Have. No. Idea. Aren’t we here to have fun?”

If you need me I’ll be watching soccer YouTube videos and wondering if I can change my entire personality at 40. Maybe, in the name of youth sports.

Peace, love and, in volleyball as in soccer, don’t duck.

Playing sports in 50MPH winds is the way we do it in ND