Tag Archives: childhood

Frog Crop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remain Calm, it’s the County Fair

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We made it to the other side of County Fair Week, but this column was written on my living room chair while we were gathering all the projects and doing the last minute packing and paperwork.

I didn’t know what to expect our first year in the livestock show ring and Edie’s first year as a regular 4Her, but had a great fair, full of lessons and fun.

I’ll tell you more about it next week, but for now here’s this week’s column!

County Fair Week

It’s County Fair week and I’m writing this at 6 am between my first two sips of coffee and before I wake the girls up to get dressed and gather their supplies and their two goats to head to town for four days of trying to convince the judges that we’ve actually practiced leading these animals around every night despite the doe’s tendency to brace up, stick her tongue out and scream. And I know that was a long sentence to start us off here, but this is the vibe right now. Screaming goat. 

After spending two hours filling out the animal record books with only ten minutes to spare yesterday, I asked my daughters if they could just erase those past few hours from their memories because, turns out record books make us all want to scream like that goat. It’s our county fair spirit animal. 

On Tuesday we brought my daughters’ projects to town. My nine-year-old, Edie, is big enough to be a real 4-Her this year, which means it’s no more rainbow participation ribbons for her, but the chance to earn a blue, or, if the buttercream frosting lands right, a pink or purple. We spent the day before decorating cupcakes and making fudge and putting tags on jewelry and drawing and pottery and photography projects. I helped Rosie put together a cute little fairy garden complete with a duck pond, a bridge and as many tiny animals as she could fit and still include a geranium and then we left it under the eaves of the house that night during a thunderstorm that drowned those little ducks and whipped the pedals right off that geranium. And so, we did that project twice. (Cue goat-like sigh). Rosie made sure to tell the judge, all about it. 

And that judge (who’s our neighbor down the road) told Rosie that her fudge was better than Gramma’s and that might have made my daughter’s life, and she’ll certainly never let my mom forget it. “Gramma, maybe you should stick to Rice Crispy Bars from now on,” she joked to her over the phone. 

It’s County Fair Week and I think our community has more kids participating than ever. More goats, more pigs, more steers and more horses in the show since I was entered in the olden days, hoping that after her only shampooing of the year, my horse wouldn’t roll in the dirt before the halter showmanship . Which she did. Every time. And yet, that event remained my favorite. The girls are going to try their hand at showing these ranch horses for the first time this year. We’ve been practicing and brushing and loving on the animals in preparation, which is the most fun part. Taking them to town is the most nerve wracking. Because there’s nothing that tests your patience more than an uncooperative animal, because sometimes, even with all the practice you could fit in, things just don’t go right. But sometimes they do, and there’s nothing better. 

Yes, sometimes your caramel rolls win grand champion, but then sometimes they land face down in the parking lot on your way to the interview. Sometimes your steer is so tame he just lays down in the ring and you’re too little to get him up. Sometimes the chicken escapes your grip, and you have to scramble to catch it, but then you’re standing next to your best friend and the two of you get a kick out of telling the story for the rest of the week, and maybe years to come. 

Photo by Judy Jacobson

And  sometimes the two hours you spent in the kitchen with your mom trying to pipe perfect rosettes on your cupcakes creates such a sweet memory for both of you that your daughter says even if she gets a red she’s proud of herself and that makes you tear up a little for some reason, probably because it’s county fair week and the kids are growing up and now it’s 7 am and I have only had four sips of coffee and we are officially running late, per usual. 

Good luck to all the 4Hers this summer! May your bread rise perfectly, and your goats (and your mothers) remain calm. 

Here to have tea

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I am behind on my column posts and the only excuse I have is that I dropped my computer in Arizona and that created a certain chain of events that have made things like posting here annoying but mostly work has been relentlessly busy in the way that has been good but also all-consuming to the point where I’m starting to miss the part where I actually climb a hilltop and find perspective every once in a while.

Good thing coaching a 4-year-old soccer team also gives me some of that.❤️🥰

And also, opportunities like the one I wrote about a few weeks ago in this column.

HERE TO HAVE TEA

Recently I spoke and sang at a local women’s event in my hometown. It was a tea party and the room was full of ladies dressed in their best seated around sweetly decorated table settings. I stood on the stage in front of them and imagined how much needed to be arranged and rearranged on their schedules to get them in these seats on a Saturday morning. The sitters or the kid’s sports runners. The newborn baby holders so she could get a shower in. The grammas leaving early for the grandkid’s birthday party they wouldn’t miss for the world. And so I said it out loud into the microphone. I said that I understand how much is going on in their lives and the schedules each one of those women had going on in the back of their minds.

 

I had just dropped my oldest daughter off at soccer camp on the way to the event and we almost didn’t make it to town because I forgot to fill up with gas on my way home from a late event the night before. Miraculously Jesus took the actual wheel and I made it the thirty miles without the assistance of a gas can. And while I sat and enjoyed my tiny sandwiches and tarts and coffee I was checking the clock to make sure I could get out of there in time to get back home and change clothes, grab a bite to eat and bring the girls back to town for a rodeo I was working.

 

My low-on-gas Chevy might have been a metaphor for my life at the moment. Also, the pile of laundry I was trying to tackle in between, and the fact that I realized for the past two-weeks I have been using dishwashing tablets instead of proper detergent in the washing machine. I suppose that’s what I get for buying the fancy, no plastic, good for the environment product with the tiny label that keeps popping up in my feed, beckoning me to be a better person the same way all the creams and exercise programs are trying to convince me my skin’s not smooth enough and I’m not lifting weights enough for my age because I’m not lifting any weights because I can’t even remember to get gas for crying out loud. 

Needless to say, I think I needed this little two-hour women’s tea as much as anyone in the room.  And, as the hired-speaker, if they were looking to me for inspiration on how to balance it all, how to make it all work together and not wake up at 2 am worrying, that’s not what I brought with me. It’s never what I bring with me. 

A bag of lettuce from my little sister’s and the bag with my daughter’s peep she’s supposed to be treating like a baby but keeps leaving in her aunt’s minivan? That I’ll bring with me…


I did, however, bring with me reminders of why living with gratitude tucked quietly in our pockets can help when we feel like we’re drowning. And probably that explains the tears that kept welling up in my eyes as I looked out at that community of women, some my dear friends, some my relatives and some I had yet to meet. I needed to hear own my words the same way I was asking them to hear the story about my dad and how he used to take us along to work cattle when we were kids, and no matter the rush we were in, he always stopped and got off his horse to pick up a fallen feather to put in our hats. With us along, he never passed up an opportunity to pick a ripe raspberry or point out a deer or pick the first crocus of spring. I know now, as an adult raising young kids in the middle of my life in the middle of a family ranch, how busy he was.  I didn’t realize then how easy it would have been for him to rush past all of the special things on the way to get work done. 

But instead, he picked up the feather. 

A picture of the first crocus my dad sent me last week, still doing the noticing for me into my adulthood
And a picture of our first calf he sent the day before

Scheduling time on a Saturday to have tea and tiny sandwiches was that feather for so many of these women in that room. Turns out, they were way ahead of me.

And I might forget the gas, and I might not take the time to read the labels, and I might have found Rosie’s lost earring by stepping on it, post up, with my bare foot last night, but I’m trying hard not to miss the tiny things that make all of this worth it. Because we are not here getting older and more wrinkly in the name of the freshest laundry. We’re here to notice that bald eagle sitting in the dead old tree every morning on our way to school. We’re here to hear the song our seven-year-old is writing in her new notebook.  We’re here to sit in a room together and talk and listen. We’re here to cry a little bit because it’s hard and we all know it but also because it’s beautiful too. 

We’re here to have tea.

The magic of childhood

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On the podcast Chad and I reminisce about some of the most magical times of our childhoods after Edie’s birthday reminded us of how exciting the little things can be when we’re young. Then I confesses some of my most embarrassing moments in the recent weeks while Chad cringes in the corner and questions his life decisions. Then stay tuned for a sweet little interview with the birthday girl!

When’s the last time you’ve been so completely excited about something that you couldn’t sleep? Like, not nerves, but the kind of happy anticipation that makes it impossible to switch your mind off. Body wiggling, so completely pumped that you wanted to close your eyes and skip days to get the thing that you could not wait for?

It’s been a while for me. I didn’t think so. If you were to ask me this question a couple months ago I’m sure I would have been able to come up with an answer to an event or activity or vacation or something that had me energized in recent years, but then last week happened and now I’m convinced that adult excited can’t hold a candle to almost-7-year-old on the night before her first sleep-over birthday party ever excited.

That kind of kid energy, it’s palpable, and for the last couple weeks we have been in a countdown to the big birthday party. With each passing day, my daughter, she leveled up, until the last two nights before the party we were left with the kind of emotion that the little darling could hardly manage. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and she certainly wasn’t going to fall asleep without checking and double checking her mother’s work, popping up out of what I thought was a dead sleep multiple times to ask me things like “Did you get the cupcakes?” “Did you call the other mommies and tell them to tell the teachers we’re picking my friends up after school?” “Do you think we should go to the pool first or just come home to play?” And then, “I’m so excited I might cry.” And then she did a little and so did I, wondering if either one of us was going to get any sleep and suddenly nervous that I was going to somehow screw something up (I mean, she has such little faith!)

So now I’ve concluded that probably the last time I’ve ever been that excited was when I was eight or nine and I was decorating our kitchen with homemade construction paper cutouts of fish and seaweed and blue and yellow streamers and planning the water balloon fight my friends and I were going to have when they came over to celebrate. And then I got a brand new bike to boot and I was over the moon.

Or the Christmas Eve night when I was right in the sweet spot of childhood and also my neighbor asked me to babysit a tiny baby goat for the holiday weekend named Filipe. And I had that goat in a box by my bed and a lit up cedar branch of a Christmas tree in my room that kept falling over with the weight of all the ornaments and lights because the little coffee can stuffed with wet newspaper didn’t stand a chance and I was anticipating the beanbag chair I’d asked for and Santa delivered…that was something. That was a memory.

And it was simple as that. A tiny baby goat in diapers and a beanbag chair on Christmas morning.

And then there was our wedding, of course. I was absolutely excited about that one, but big days like that as an adult get complicated a bit with grown-up expectations and responsibility. So much of it is in our hands then. But kids? Kids keep it simple. It’s all about the play. It’s all in their heart.

And so I hosted my first ever 7-year-old birthday party sleepover as a mom. And, to Edie’s relief, I remembered the school pickup protocol and I remembered the cupcakes. We got her the toy on her wish-list and we had tacos and did all of the things—dress-up, nail painting, charades, dance party, played house, Barbies, crafts, movie, popcorn and staying up too late. (I even let them use glitter because I’m wild and crazy and one of the girls called me fun and so it is worth sweeping it off the floor for the rest of my life.)

When we finally had to bring her friends back to their parents, I apologized to the mommies for the sugar rush and late bedtime and the glitter ornament I packed up in their bags. One of the moms even thanked me for the purple and green hair chalk in her daughter’s blonde hair. She said it was perfect for their family pictures that afternoon, but I’m not sure she meant it. I told her she’s just lucky I didn’t send a kitten home as a party favor. That was a real option…

Anyway, I asked Edie if her birthday party was everything she hoped it would be and she said she wished it lasted longer and so I took that as a yes. And I’m taking her as my inspiration going into this holiday season to strip off a few layers of adulthood-induced stress and channel that good old-fashioned childhood energy.

Anyone have a baby goat that needs babysitting?

Will our children know the quiet?

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Will our kids have a chance to know the quiet?
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On a recent trip to a Minnesota town, I took a walk along a path by the river that wound through the city. I kept my headphones out and listened to the sound of slow-moving traffic, wind moving through the changing leaves, dogs barking, a mom and dad chatting, strolling their newborn down the sidewalk on a sunny evening, the sound of my own thoughts…

In the quiet neighborhood I noticed a little girl swinging, alone on the playground behind her apartment complex, her mom sitting on a bench at the corner of the sandbox while the child sang to herself, pumping her legs up to the sky, lost in thoughts of her own, only the way a child can do it when left to herself. What might it be like to be a bird? She closes her eyes and imagines she’s flying, imagines she has wings and a place to be. She sings to herself and the world she’s created in that slow and steady moment she was given to play alone.

I used to be that girl. I hope we all have been a version of her at some point in our childhoods, whether we grew up between these sidewalks or, like me, with miles of road and trees and creeks separating me from parks like these. With years between my sisters and me, I spent plenty of time alone as a kid, using my imagination to occupy me, to come up with a project or a song or a place I needed to be that day — checking on the wild raspberries, trying my hand at catching a frog or pushing logs up along a fallen tree and calling it a fort. I didn’t know it then, but it was the best gift I could have been given, the time to learn how to be with myself.

It’s served me well now as an adult in a career that’s sent me traveling thousands and thousands of miles along lonesome stretches of highway, navigating it alone. Dining alone. On a mission to wander.

To be quiet with myself has never been a thing that’s scared me, and now, as a parent to two young children in a world that feels noisier every day, the thing that scares me about the quiet is that our children won’t have a chance to know it. And without the quiet moments, I worry they won’t get to truly know themselves.

Last weekend my husband was digging in a water tank for the cattle behind my parents’ house, along the creek that used to be my old stomping grounds. My 5-year-old suggested we take him a picnic and so we packed up juice boxes in lunchboxes and ducked through the fences behind dad’s garden, past where the tire swing used to hang and along the beaver dam where a tin-can telephone used to connect my fort with my little sister’s across the creek.

We found a log to sit on and dug into our treats, talking about how I used to float sticks and watch the water bugs row across the clear water, and pretty soon I was leading them along that creek bank, making crowns out of reeds, picking riverbank grapes, jumping after frogs and digging in the sand. I was transported and they were transfixed the way wild places work on children. Let’s go farther, stay longer, look for more frogs, please.

Do you know we can still feel this way if we allow it? The magic — it still works on us too. I forget sometimes, but I was reminded.

There’s magic in nature. Magic. Magic in reaching for the sky, in the pumping of our legs to the rhythm of the songs we sing to ourselves. What’s it like to be a bird? Close your eyes, let the quiet in and grow yourself wings…

The Wonder of Parenting

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The Wonder of Parenting
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When I was pregnant with my daughters, one of my favorite things to do at night was sit with my husband and wonder out loud who the person growing inside of me might become.

A boy or a girl, you think?

I wonder if she’ll have hair. Dark eyes?

The wondering was something I expected while we were waiting for the children’s arrival, but I didn’t realize how much wondering would continue as we work to raise them, and how it would go on to become our favorite subject of conversation.

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I think “wonder” is the key word here, because it’s all quite miraculous and mysterious, the whole process of raising these little humans. And for as much as I thought that our influence and style of parenting would mold and direct them, I’m learning that in so many more ways, these children were born to this world with their spirits and interests and challenges more fully determined than I could have imagined.

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Like, no matter how many pairs of overalls I have presented to my oldest daughter in her life as the practical choice for the barnyard, that little person was not born for overalls. She was born to wear a long, flowing dress, and grow her hair to match and run outside to climb fences, dig in the dirt and pick up all the frogs, bugs and slimy things she can get her hands on.

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And while she’s at it, she’s asking. All. The. Questions.

Because Edie is a fresh soul, new to this world and marveled by its wonders. She draws and twirls and remembers the words to every song and every book and can’t get enough of the beautiful things.

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And then Rosie arrived with her raspy little voice and laid-back attitude and I swear she’s been here before. Try to help her? Don’t you dare.

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Before she could walk, she was dancing on her knees, not willing to wait. Wake her up in the morning and the first thing she asks for is coffee. Tell her she can’t have it and she’s straight up mad, frustrated that she has to wait to grow up because she’s already developed a taste for it. In her last life.

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The girl has a history that’s longer than her two years with us. I think she might have been in a rock band.

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ARCHIVE: Read more of Jessie Veeder’s Coming Home columns

And my husband and I, we find it all completely fascinating. So much so that we spend conversations in the car or over morning coffee or between serving up another helping of slush burgers and telling them both for the 3,000th time to keep their little butts in their seats, wondering what we can do to help them become the best versions of themselves they can be.

And I’m not talking about creating these award-winning, genius, grade-skipping, super-athletic or super-artistic children. What we’re really interested in is how to help them create a life for themselves that is long on passion and wonder.

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I want to see them continue to light up for something throughout their entire lives, to have a hobby that fills them up, a few things that define them that they can be proud of and a story that they confidently own, even the parts that they mess up. Because if we do it right, they’ll know that we’ll love them anyway.

And in all of our conversations and wonder in the beginning phases of our parenthood journey, my husband and I haven’t come up with a specific strategy, except that we think it just might be as simple as being present — taking them along with us as we do the things we love so that they know what that looks like. And clapping when they twirl and letting them get dirty, and when it matters and maybe more importantly, when it doesn’t matter, just letting them be.

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Because, indisputably, they know who they are. They just need us there to nurture it, convince them to eat their broccoli and teach them some manners for crying out loud.

My husband said it best when he said he’s not as interested in what he can teach his children as much as he’s interested in what they can show him. And to that I say, “Amen.”

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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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Time, memories and the magic of Christmas

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Well, it was a Christmas to remember for so many reasons.

The first was waking up on Christmas Day to a baby who decided that she’s ready to full-fledge walk.

And so we spent the weekend watching her wobble and bobble and dance and clap and experience her world on two feet.

Tomorrow she’ll be running.

Next week she’ll tell me she’s training for a marathon.

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And in between all of the present wrapping and unwrapping, eating, drinking and being merry, an epic winter blizzard of North Dakota proportions raged outside our doors, making us grateful to be together warm and cozy inside…

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only to send the boys out the spend the entire next day behind tractors and skid steers and shovels trying to open the roads and feed the cows and whittle away at the ten foot drifts that had piled against our houses, doors and pathways.

And then there was a Christmas ditch situation and a memorable the-baby-ate-too-many-blueberries-and-other-Christmas-treats bedtime projectile vomit episode that will go down in infamy.

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And now that the company has gone and the wind has died down and the sun is out, making the chest-deep snowdrift on my deck sparkle and shine, I have a moment while the baby snacks on Cheerios (and blueberries…what’s wrong with me?) to share last week’s column about the magic of Christmas, which, I’ve decided, lies in the simple and crazy precious memories we create without even realizing it.

Even when nothing goes as planned.

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Christmas reminds us of the magic of time
12-25-16
Jessie Veeder
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

I was too old to believe in Santa Clause when reality finally started tugging at my sleeves.

I tried to shoo the truth away as long as I could, not so eager to grow up and exist in a world surrounded by it because the truth never seemed quite as thrilling as the dreamed up.

I suppose I’ve always been one to hang on to the coattails of magic as long as it lets me, as long as it doesn’t grow too wild and reckless, sending me spinning and whipping off its haunches.

I think that’s what keeps me telling and retelling the best parts then, the ones from a childhood spent believing that maybe my horse could understand the words I spoke, my “secret spot” 12 feet off the road was actually secret and Santa Clause would exist as long as I found a way to never grow up.

I never wanted to grow up.

Of all of the memories I’ve collected as a kid in these hills, I remember that most clearly.

I was sensitive enough to the trials of adulthood to know that children had it best. I knew because I was listening from the other side of my closed bedroom door — hushed conversations in the kitchen while we were supposed to be sleeping, the stories of lost love coming from dad’s record player, the hugs from strangers at my grandparents’ funerals.

I knew what time did to people, and I wondered how I might make it miss me.

My grandpa died when I was six years old. His death brought our family back to the ranch for good, and it gave me another five years or so living down the road from my grandmother.

Actually, it gave us all that time with her, but I don’t own my family’s memories. I only have mine.

And I remember one summer evening lying in the patch of sun that lit up the carpet through the open window in my grandmother’s living room.

The TV was on, but it wasn’t as interesting to me as watching the way the dust caught the stream of light, turning it from invisible to visible.

My grandma had fallen asleep in her easy chair with a newspaper on her lap, her head tilted back, sort of snoring. She had a habit of holding a toothpick in the corner of her mouth, and I noticed as she took those deep, noisy breaths that her toothpick was still there, in danger, I was certain, of being sucked down her throat as she slept, unaware.

That’s the kind of kid I was, so comfortable and in love with the familiarity of my good and safe life, and a little too aware of its volatility, a little worried I was too lucky.

I sat up, eyes fixated on that toothpick, watching my grandmother’s lips purse and pop with each breath in and out, suddenly becoming distinctly aware of time.

I didn’t want to live in a world without her.

And I didn’t want to live in a world where time made me think it too cold for sledding or allowed me to walk by a swimming pool or a lake or the perfect puddle and not want to, (have to) jump in.

And so Christmas has come again, and the new year is right behind, bringing with it the recognition of time passed, new promises and reminders to miss the people who’ve left us here to admire the twinkling lights without them.

Now that I’ve succumbed to adulthood, I wish I could remember what it was like to truly believe in such an impossible thing like Santa Clause. My six-year-old self would be so disappointed in me.

But if I could, I would tell her a secret I’ve learned in the growing up we were so afraid of: I would say she was doing the right thing in holding on tight to her gratitude. Then I would tell her not to worry so much about time, because time gives us memories, memories we get to go back to whenever we want, but also, memories just waiting to be made.

And that, child, is the most magic you’ll find in this life.

Hold on tight to its tails.

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A Letter to the Real Santa

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I’m working on my book today. The baby’s in daycare and the air outside is so cold that it burns my skin the minute I step out in it. It’s a perfect day to sit behind this computer to work to gather up memories and photographs and all the important things I think I’ve said about this life we’re living out here and who it is we think we were and who we are becoming.

It’s not an easy task. I’ve written too many words. I’ve had too much to say. I don’t know if it’s good or valuable or worth it or what.

I’m sort of sick of myself at this point.

And then I found this in the archives and, well, it seemed to lift the weight of it all a bit.

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Merry Christmas Season!

See ya in between the pages.

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Sunday Column: On a memory named Pooper

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It’s raining, the grass is getting greener and the calves are being born. I love this time of year where things are fresh and new and there’s nothing ahead of us but the promise of warmer weather (after a couple spring snow storms that leave us holding our breath of course).

The bottle calf in the barn has made me a little nostalgic and I’m having a flashback of a bottle calf my little sister and I took care of back when I was the boss and she didn’t care…

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Coming Home: Everything is better with some cows around
by Jessie Veeder
4-17-16
InForum
http://www.inforum.com 

Calving season is in full force here at the ranch, and this year it’s extra special for my husband and I because part of the new herd we’re building is our own.

And by better, by no stretch of the word does he mean easier. If I learned anything in my life it’s that better doesn’t always mean easier. (I’ve found this to be true in ranching and in motherhood.)

Anyway, it could be the green grass sprouting up on the hilltops or a little hope of warm rain in the forecast that sends us outside with the enthusiasm of a kindergartner with a new backpack on her first day of school, but I know it’s those cows grazing on the hilltop and the babies trying out their new legs beside them.

Last week, one of our best new cows gave birth to twins. I was in Bismarck with Mom and Edie at a singing job when I got a text with a photo from Dad telling me the news. My little sister, my mom and my husband all got the same message and I smiled at the realization that we’re living in an age where my dad sends group texts to his family about cows.

This morning one of those twin babies is waiting for me in the barn because, as it goes sometimes with animals, the cow didn’t recognize the second twin as hers.

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So I’m her momma now, a job I happily volunteered for because feeding babies is something I know how to do, and it’s not just due to my new role as a mom.

I have pretty vivid memories of all of the bottle calves we had when I was a kid growing up out here. One in particular left a big mark on my sister and I, mainly for the role that little calf played in our epic, sisterly fights.

I was 12 and so I pretty much knew everything, and my little sister was 7 and not as eager as she should have been at being bossed by me.

The calf, lovingly named Pooper, became our responsibility and part of our daily chores, which we eagerly took on in the beginning. Because, in the beginning, calves are adorable and have yet to grow into a 150-pound puppy on legs who has figured out two little girls are his only food source, and coincidentally has also figured out how to escape his pen in order to chase them down the road after the empty bottle, tongue out, bellering, head down in feeding position in case he caught up to one.

And he always caught up to one; it just was never this one. Because I employed the age-old advice: Want to survive a bear attack? Just be faster than the guy you brought with you.

Turns out my little sister never forgave me for it. Last weekend I took her down to the barn to have a look at the new baby, and she started getting the cold sweats. Instead of seeing an innocent newborn creature, Alex was having flashbacks of snowpants full of slobber, swift head butts to her rear and unanswered cries for help directed at a big sister sprinting to the house half a mile away, leaving her to suffer a terrifying death by the tongue of a baby calf.

Apparently, the times we spent together feeding Pooper were the first times she heard me cuss like a sailor, knocking me off my very low pedestal. I know because she brings it up at family dinners, holidays and probably the toast she made at my wedding.

Needless to say, my little sister will find different ways to help with the cattle business. Like babysitting Edie.

And I don’t blame her. It’s not easy playing momma to a baby with a giant head and four wobbly legs, especially when you’re feeding her with one hand and trying to put the pacifier back into your human baby’s mouth with the other.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Because everything is better with some cows around.

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