Tag Archives: community

To be seen and to disappear

Posted on by
2

I am behind on posting columns for the past two weeks, and so today you get a two-in-one post to get us back on the rails!

Hope it’s as pretty where you are as it is here with the colors changing and the rain falling and the weather cooling down.

Right Place, Right Time
September 19, 2026

Last week I played music in a little park by the lake about two hours from the ranch. I was supposed to bring a sound system with me, which I didn’t realize until I got there and there was no sound system. But I did bring along my dad and my steele guitar playing friend who, luckily, lived close enough to go grab his system from his house. And when I realized I also forgot my guitar strap and my capo on my kitchen counter, my dad came in clutch with extras and the two guys combined saved the day.

Forgetting something as pertinent to a gig as a sound system is not something I’ve ever done. The fact that I was so confident in my decision not to bring one sort of had me on edge. The fact that it all worked out in the end thanks to those around me that had exactly what we needed, got me thinking about all the times in life we find ourselves in predicaments that can only be solved by the good fortune of having access to the right people at the exact right time.

Like when I got stuck behind a wreck in traffic on my way to town to pick Edie up from kindergarten and it was clear not only was I going to be late, but I was going to be very, very late. I was able to dial my friend and within five minutes she was there, saving the day and the kindergarten tears from falling.

Or like when my husband’s pickup recently broke down on the way home from town and his business partner just happened to be driving by pulling Chad’s flatbed trailer.  

Or when my uncle was on his way to town to replace a broken toilet and stopped by the house to say hi first, only to discover that my husband had a brand new, extra toilet just hanging out in the garage.

Or when we were hosting a big, nationally touring country act in town and the stage management needed a drum stand in like five minutes and the local music teacher had just bought a new one–and she lived two blocks away from the stage–so she just walked it right over.

Hunter Hayes in Watford City

I’m writing this in the passenger seat of my car as my husband drives us back east to Rochester so I can get my first scan since treatment at Mayo Clinic. I’m confident we will find that the tumors are gone or shrinking nicely and we’ll head back home with good news, but I’m still annoyed we have to go at all. I mean, I’m missing Rosie’s fun run and Edie’s basketball game and Rosie’s field trip to the Dinosaur museum. And the girls aren’t happy about it either, a little residual panic from the last time I was there for so long. But this morning as we were packing up to leave, my husband looked at his phone and laughed. “You didn’t tell me it was a RUN!” my sister-in-law’s message read. She had enthusiastically said yes to Chad’s request to join Rosie on the track that morning (he could not handle her disappointed little face.) “She just LAPPED me!”

“Aunt of the year,” I wrote to a woman who found herself jogging with a hundred third graders at 8:30 in the morning in 40 degrees.

Day. Saved.

Rosie finished ten laps!

I am an independent person. Some could look at it as a strength in character, but often in my life it’s a quality that has been one of my biggest failings. As a kid, when someone would try to pick me up for a hug or to help me get more quickly from point A to point B, I would protest, “Put me down, I’m not a doll!” And then flee the scene.

My nature, when I’m sick, is to suffer in silence, away from people. If I were an animal, I would hole up and probably just die. And it’s a little bit that I hate to be a burden, and a little bit that I feel a need to regulate the room or the situation. If I’m uncomfortable or stressed, it could make you uncomfortable or stressed, and that stresses me out. And this is dumb, because this is not the way humans are supposed to exist in this world. And it’s not how I see it as someone on the other side of the help situation. One of my favorite things in the world is when someone needs a tissue or a wet wipe or a mint or a pocketknife and I am the woman who has all those things in her purse. My husband’s whole life thesis is being the guy ready for anything and willing to help in a crisis or inconvenience of any size and it’s the thing I love the most about him.

I walked into my office the other day and the chair that I ordered the week before had been put together for me when I was out. My coworker had her husband do it, because he loves that sort of thing, and as a person who hates to follow directions and also hates those tiny allen wrenches, it was as if he had hung the moon for me. And maybe this example isn’t as much about saving the day as it is about just doing something nice for someone. There are so many of you out there who operate like this, just going around making life easier for others intentionally or by being at the right place at the right time and willing to help.

Anyway, as we’re pulling off on the interstate I guess I just felt compelled to refect on the feeling of “phew,” and the sentiment of “thank you.”

See you back at the ranch!

To Disappear is Sometimes the Dream
September 26, 2026

“Do you think I could make it to the grain bins and back before it gets pitch black?” I asked my husband as I scooped the last of the rice and chicken off my plate an into my mouth. The rest of my family was lingering at the table, poking at a supper that was a little sub-par and reaching the limit of a long day. It was a little after 8 pm and supper was later than I wanted it to be, but the sun setting so quickly had me sort of shocked and frazzled.

In the summer and spring months a walk after supper was no problem. We could eat at 10 pm and I would still have time for an hour-long stroll to the fields. But it’s late September now and it was staring me down and ruining my plan to re-gain my sanity before bedtime.

“No,” my husband replied. “You’ll definitely be walking in the dark.”

I jumped up, put my dish in the sink and pulled on my shoes anyway. I’ve never been the kind of kid who’s afraid of the dark and so out I went, the three dogs jumping along in front of me, just as excited as I was to not skip this part of the day. We were a little past what the professionals like to call ‘Golden Hour,’ the time in the evening when the sinking sun casts a perfect golden hue on everything under its shine. We were well into the sunset portion of the evening, the time when the muskrats come out from wherever muskrats go, to swim in the stock dam. The time when the bats start to dive and swoop. The time when, if those dogs get too far ahead of you on the path, they will disappear entirely into the horizon.

To disappear entirely into the horizon. That’s nightfall in the country and it holds with it a certain type of feeling that’s hard to explain. It’s the feeling you get when you park your car after a long drive in the middle of the night and you shut the door behind you and look up at the sky and notice the quiet twinkling of the stars, or, maybe if you’re lucky, the northern lights. It’s 3 am and no one is out and you remember the times when you were a kid and you fell asleep in the backseat of your parents’ car, and you woke up when the engine cut, but you pretended to sleep anyway so your dad would carry you in. And you opened your eyes to see those same stars in the same type of quiet night and somehow, all these years later, you feel like that kid in the night under those stars again. I guess that’s how I would describe the feeling.

I was only out walking on the field trails for about fifteen minutes before the sun shifted entirely below that horizon and the dogs and I faded with it. Just a moment before I looked up and spotted a large mule deer on the skyline. His tall rack reached to the sky, and he was backlit by the last moment of yellow, a black dramatic silhouette staring right at something moving in the distance (that something was me) before bouncing off over the hill to disappear too.

Yesterday I got the news that my cancer is shrinking, has shrunk, will shrink more. We found out when we were in Mayo last week, but we needed one more confirmation to make it official. My husband sat next to me in the car as we were parked in the Walmart parking lot on our way through one town to get to the next for a meeting across the state. We video conferenced in for a quick confirmation. You look good. Things look good. Cancer is shrinking, has shrunk, will shrink more. See you in three months for another follow up, goodbye. We ended the call and continued driving east.

“It feels like maybe that news needed a bit more fanfare,” I said as we moved down the street a bit.

“Like, what do you mean?’ my husband asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. It was the same feeling I felt when I completed my last chemo treatment and I was alone with my little pin and too introverted to ask someone to take my picture. The moment felt at least selfie-worthy, but I wasn’t in the mood.

“Maybe a cake or something?” I laughed.

“Well, there’s Cashwise, want me to pull in?” he joked.

No. No I didn’t, I realized. I didn’t want a cake or a party or a fuss really. I just wanted to go about our day, make it to our meeting on time and home that night because we had work in the morning. I wanted to watch that moment, that tumor, that blip, shrink and disappear into the horizon of my life. To disappear is sometimes the dream.

The nights will be longer now as the sun sets sooner, but it’s ok. I’ve never been the kind of kid who’s afraid of the dark.

Villages everywhere

Posted on by
1

When I heard the news about a six-week stay in Rochester, the turnover needed to be quick to make the arrangements to get things rolling. And first and foremost, I needed a place to stay. There’s an option here for free housing for cancer patients undergoing treatments, and there are apartments and  Airbnbs and long-term hotels and so I set to looking into what was available. And then I set into being overwhelmed. And then I got a message in my inbox.

“Thinking and praying for you. We own a townhome in Rochester and we don’t have a tenant now. If you’d like to stay there, we’d be honored to have you.”

It was a column reader, a concert attender, a fellow North Dakotan who had nothing to gain from the offer but to show kindness. Her family, unfortunately, knows what it’s like to be displaced by cancer. She was paying it forward.

I took a quick breath and tears came to my eyes. I messaged back to take her up on it and a wave of relief washed over in her response.

This is that village they’re talking about, only sometimes they take care of you while taking care of their own ailing loved-ones hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

I’m writing this now from their little back deck facing a small field on the edge of town under a blanket my friends put in a care package full of carefully researched gifts: throat spray, notebooks, crossword puzzles, cough drops, tea, a nail kit, candy, a thermos and more all in a bag I load up with me on days I head to chemo treatments. And what was so touching about the gift is that the givers seemed to have researched more than I had about the symptoms that I may encounter and the things that I may need to send me on my way as ready as can be.

My little sister did the same thing, the master of Google, asking me questions that I didn’t know the answers to, she found out for me. And she sent me groceries for the first night we arrived at the townhome. And because I am who I am, I accidentally gave her the address to the Post Office instead of the house, which sent Chad on a little field-trip at 8 am, but we got them and were stocked up for the first week.

My little sister is the queen of my village, living right over the hill and working in our daughters’ school as the guidance counselor, I couldn’t have picked a better woman to take it from here. I mean, as my daughter said, “Can we just stay at Alex’s? She’s just like mom.”  I’m comforted knowing that with her my kids feel safe to be themselves, even when it’s ugly and messy and emotional. They can misbehave and not feel ashamed. She will get after them the same way I do, hold them to the same standards, and force my youngest into group hugs when she needs it and won’t admit it.

And she’ll let them try to catch the chickens and make sure they have fun.

Meanwhile, friends are sending spaghetti and roast beef suppers home with my husband a couple days a week so he doesn’t have to worry about meals every night. And they’re taking the girls on play dates and making sure they get their 4H presentation done. The lemons-to-lemonade theory is in full effect as they’ve spent special time with their other aunts, uncles and cousins and of course, they’re grandparents.

Turns out the best thing in the world you can do for your kids is to set up that village. I’m seeing first-hand, again, what it means.

A fun gift basket for the girls sent with a meal from a friend

But I’m here to tell you that I know I am fortunate to have placed our lives in the middle of family and friends I have known for decades. It was a choice my husband and I made when we knew we wanted to have a family, and there are some sacrifices that come with that, but they have never outweighed the rewards. I understand fully that being surrounded by family is not a reality for everyone and I know the struggles that come with that. And I know it’s so hard to find those friends who you can rely on to be fully vulnerable in a community that hasn’t always been yours. I’d like to give some sort of profound advice here, but I don’t have any. I just have examples of how people showing up for us has informed my life and made me realize that existing in the village means paying attention not only to your own needs but to the needs of others. I’m here to tell you it is as simple as a text, a card dropped in the mail, an actual phone call without the expectation that they will pick up or call back. I am the first to admit I am not so good at that. But you all are teaching me every day during this blip in my life what it means to be cared for and I thank you for that. I thank you for being my village at home and from hundreds of miles away.

Who are we without one another?

Remain Calm, it’s the County Fair

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
1

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.

Honoring the women who made me who I am

Posted on by
4

Greetings from Nashville where I’m deep in the woods of recording an album. I’ve been here since early Sunday morning (like 4:30 in the morning) where I blew in on the back of a major thunderstorm and will be working out these songs until the end of the week.

I’ll share more about this experience, but for now I’m focused on the project and will be tracking vocals all day for the next few days.

In other music news, it has been a busy couple weeks of performances where I’ve had the honor of speaking to rooms full of women across the state as they celebrate Mother’s Day and spring and just good ‘ol fashioned fellowship at a variety of brunches, all so sweetly planned and executed.

So that’s what this week’s column is about, specifically about my hometown event where I was overcome with emotion and gratitude looking out at the room full of women who have had such special impacts on our community.

No podcast for this week as I’m not sure I’ll be able to fit it in, but I’ll sure have lots to talk about when I get back. Also, I heard Edie wrote me a note to read when I get back home and it says something like “Never ever ever ever leave me again!” so now you know how she feels about this situation. Rosie? Well, she’s had some really great days and mostly just wants to know what I had for supper and also if i am going to get her a treat while I’m here.

To which I say “of course!”

Honoring the women who made me who I am

Recently, I had the honor of sharing stories and singing for the Lutheran Ladies in my hometown at their annual Sunday brunch. They were celebrating this sunny spring afternoon with tiny cucumber and egg salad sandwiches, homemade mints, and a tea bar. Each table was decorated and set by different women who stood up to introduce their guests and explain the stories behind the centerpieces and dishes, silverware and place settings.

I had come off a week that sent me back and forth across the state to speak and sing in front of rooms full of people I had yet to meet, and I was, if I’m being honest, exhausted. I got ready that morning with a little apprehension. Truthfully, performing to a room full of people you know is sometimes the most nerve-wracking. I wondered if I had anything to say that they hadn’t already heard.

My mom, little sister and I were invited to sit at our neighbor Jan’s table decorated with her childhood cowboy boots, a vintage lunchbox, and themed around her grandmother’s colorful old ceramic pitcher.

This woman was raised right alongside my dad. Her mother, who was at the table as well, was my grandma Edie’s best friend. Sitting next to her was the grandmother of one of my best friends. Next to me was Jan’s daughter, who used to come to play at the ranch in her beautiful pink boots of which I was so envious.

I’m setting this scene here for a purpose, and I’ll take a moment to explain, as it took a moment for me to realize the significance as I stood up in front of those women that afternoon, behind my guitar talking about the crocuses blooming on the hilltops and holding my grandmother’s hand on a hunt to pick a perfect bouquet.

I told them a story about my great-grandmother Cornelia’s yellow roses that still bloom in the barnyard. Then I moved on to a bit about community and how our role is to help build it, like my great-grandma Gudrun — an immigrant from Norway, just 16 years old on her way across the ocean to raise crops and cattle and 12 children on this unforgiving landscape — did.

It was then that I realized, looking into those familiar faces looking back at me smiling and laughing, or closing their eyes and nodding along, rooting for me, quietly encouraging me, that the lessons I was offering that afternoon were lessons I learned from them.

As is my motto, I felt like I had to say something then. It sort of washed over me, and out of my mouth came an effort to thank them, not just for their collective spirit, but for what their perseverance and individuality has meant to this community and to girls like me trying to figure out what it means to grow up here.

I got home that evening and had a chance to reflect a bit on the fact that there was more I wished I could have articulated, so I want to say it now.

These women, they are leaders and caretakers. They show up, they bring food, they stay to put away the chairs and wipe the counters and offer a laugh or advice on the way out the door. They have vision, they’re loyal, they’re feisty, they’re elegant and artistic, just like the event they put on that afternoon. They’re teachers, coaches, handywomen and true friends who will say what needs to be said and who hold secret recipes to casseroles and bars and that boozy slush she serves every Easter.

When I tell stories and sing songs about strong women in North Dakota, I am singing about them. And their mothers. And the daughters they’re raising. I grew up in this small town under their gaze, under their care, under their expectations, or I was raised alongside them, or I am getting to know them, happy they’re here.

Some of them wash and put away the dishes, some of them stop at Jack and Jill for the doughnuts, and some of them make tiny sandwiches and homemade mints and bring the good dishes. You would think those things are small things, but I will tell you now that they are not.

They are big things, rooted in the unspoken rule that you show up the best possible way that you can. And if you can’t, they’ll wrap a plate up for you. If you forget for a moment what you’re made of, if you let them, if you listen, they will remind you.

The heartbeats in between

Posted on by
16

The heartbeats in between 
Forum Communications

My husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary in my surgeon’s office on the fourth floor of Mayo Clinic, almost 700 miles from the oak tree on the ranch in western North Dakota where we were married 14 years ago when I was on the edge of turning 23. We vowed for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, as if we really knew what that meant at all.

But we never know what’s coming, do we? We’ve sure learned that lesson in these 14 years, watching our plans try their hardest to fly out the window while we hang on for dear life. Turns out, even when you think you might never come up for air, there’s always the surface, the other side of the hard things. We just have to wait for it.

And so we treated our latest visit to Rochester as if we already knew the news. Eight weeks out of a sternotomy to remove a cancerous tumor attached to my airway, I was feeling a bit more like myself, a bit more like laughing, a bit lighter from the weight of pain easing. After dropping the kids with the in-laws we took to the road like we were going on vacation. Because why not? We were together. We were OK. We were driving along Interstate and highway surrounded by sunflower fields reaching toward the sky and corn taller than two of us stacked up.

We spent the five days between doctors and tests eating as much as we could and finding shelter from the rain and sun under Minnesota trees and patio umbrellas. Once, as we were indulging in a 2 p.m. cocktail and late lunch, the woman a table over stood up to tell us that we really know how to live. We didn’t know if it was the calamari, the drinks or the loud laughter, but we decided it was the best compliment we could have received.

To know how to live.

BF134834-02BE-44CA-92B1-5D6B2FCDFBD3

I’ll tell you now that the doctor, on our 14th wedding anniversary, told us I am going to be OK. He said he couldn’t have done a better job repairing my airway. And that the cancer? Well, he got it all.

Life will now look like a big scar down the middle of my chest and a CT scan every six months for the foreseeable future to make sure the cancer stays gone, moving it to the back of my mind, instead of the center of our worries.

And for that we are the lucky ones.

Fourteen years ago I carried sunflowers in my bouquet as I walked down the “aisle” in that cow pasture, toward the man who would become my husband that day. Little did I know that it takes so much more than a wedding to make a marriage. Little did I know that the only thing you can really count on is that things go wrong.

And then, right again.

As we headed west out of Rochester and toward the rolling buttes of home, I imagined those fields of sunflowers waving us on into a new year, a new season, spectators with encouraging smiles, reminding me of the love and support we’ve received from our family, friends and community during these past several months.\

3A8043A5-9938-45F0-9FEB-2624DFA031C6

Reminding me that life is just a series of triumphs, roadblocks, joy and heartache. But my favorite times have always been the millions and billions of heartbeats in between.

Dear Daughters…

Posted on by
11

101847092_3162385317145025_4092026346052517888_o

Dear Daughters
Forum Communications

Dear Daughters,

I want to tell you about all the summers the two of you stripped down naked in the backyard and ran with arms wide open into the sun and through the freezing, glistening splash of the garden hose, your small, soft bodies reflecting the sky and the innocence of a moment that will inevitably get stripped away with the years.

I want to remind you of the time that no voice of reason could stop you from taking a running leap toward that puddle of mud that always pools up in front of our driveway after a spring thaw or a summer rain. Not that I ever really wanted to stop you. Because what’s a little mud in the beginning of the story of a life that could take you anywhere, send you right back where you landed or find you fighting every day to be brave, to do the right thing, to reconcile mistakes or to let go?

62312269_2414173991966165_7766249260076498944_o

You don’t know what any of this means yet. You are too fresh to this world. That’s why I’m writing to you. Because I want you to know there was a time that you felt safe enough, loved enough, free enough, happy enough and beautiful enough to strip down and squeal at the sky. And while you ran naked and free in our backyard, the world was standing up to yell “enough enough enough!”

That’s what happens when you have a voice, dear daughters. You can sing, you can coo and whisper. You can tell stories out loud to yourself in the dark of your room about unicorns with sparkling tails to help you fight the worry of the monsters in your closet. And you can comfort your friends with that voice. You can whine and complain. You can ask a thousand questions. A million. And you can answer them.

You can shush shush shush a baby, or a skittish pony, or your sister who won’t leave you alone. And you can yell. Yes, you can yell.

Kitten
But first. First. First, you need to listen.

Because yes, you have a voice. But you also have ears, dear daughters. And let me be clear here. You don’t get to use one without the other.

Dear daughters, you were born with blue eyes and blond hair and the dirt of this earth under your fingernails, the wind in your lungs, the grass bent under your feet and the stories of your blessings and your struggles, they will be forever in your mouth.

And make no mistake, your story is precious. But it is not more precious than your neighbor’s.

IMG_6190

And as much as you want to tell yours, so that you can be seen, so that you can be loved or understood or helpful or praised or protected or trusted, please remember, please always know, your neighbor wants the same.

Dear daughters, right now you are little and wiggly and hungry and wild and innocent, and no reasonable voice can stop you from jumping in those puddles. But I am your mother and it is my job to love you and teach you and today, even though you’re too young to understand it, I need to tell you, I have to tell you, that the best, most useful gift you can give to your neighbor, to the world, is an open heart.

Even when it’s heavy. Or broken. Or tired. Or angry. Or confused. Or hurt beyond repair…

And so, dear daughters, today I’m going to plant the garden. Some people will tell me it’s too late in the season, but I won’t believe them. Because I’ve always had hope, even in times I had to dig to the dark, damp, chilled places on this earth, I find it.

Because even if it’s too late for the pumpkins or the watermelon, I know I can grow a peapod. And won’t it taste sweet on a hot July day when you run out naked into the backyard, arms stretched out to the sun!

Dear daughters, I love you. Now go love others.

From the bottom of my heart,

Your Mom

IMG_5540

Do what we can do

Posted on by
4

Do what we can do
Forum Communications

Last week, I sat down and recorded myself singing. It was sort of chilly, but warming up the way early spring mornings do. And I wanted to be outside.

I wanted the recording to pick up the sound of the wind and the geese flying in overhead. I wanted to show the trees and sky behind me, and the sun I was squinting into. It wasn’t the most professional or produced, but it was a moment I felt I needed to take to do something in the face of the circumstances that are out of our control.

So I did one thing I knew I cold do — I sang familiar songs and hymns and talked into the camera about the crocuses blooming and the calves being born, my way of sending a little mini-concert and a piece of spring to the residents at nursing homes in our communities who can’t go out and can’t receive visitors.

This weekend at the Good Shepherd Home in town, they were supposed to be having a prom, complete with dresses, a fancy meal and a live band. Instead, they are playing tic-tac-toe on the window with their relatives and friends who sit on the other side, close enough to touch, but still so far away. What a heartbreakingly backward scenario our elderly find themselves in, the people they love most staying away to keep them safe.

It feels especially tragic when you know the positive effects that human interaction has on their physical and mental well-being. It’s the same for humans of all ages. We were made to be social. Made to be part of a village, made to take care of one another, to touch and hold and to laugh and cry together in the same spaces.

What an impossible situation to find ourselves in, going out in the world with the notion that every other person we see is a threat to our health. And yet, for now, this is our reality. To help one another. To keep one another safe.

On Feb. 4, 1920, The McKenzie County Farmer reported, “The McKenzie County Board of Health on account of a number of cases of influenza in the county deem it advisable to close all churches, lodges, theatres and public gatherings for a period of two weeks, or until further notice.”

100 years ago, in a time before video chat, Amazon Prime, grocery and food delivery, the county was asked to stay home, too. But 100 years ago, people weren’t as accustomed to instant gratification and 24/7 news and information streaming into their homes and in the palm of their hands.

It makes me wonder how the fear and uncertainty, isolation and loneliness compare. Those stories are held now only in journals, letters, newspaper clippings and the memories passed down in conversations with the people who raised us.

So much of the perspective we need right now can be found in the past. Because in the middle of it all, it’s the good memories that sustain us, and the new, good memories made that help push us on into another day.

And so I sang for them, because music can help transport us. And my friend, she brought her horses into town for a nursing home visit, because the smell and touch of something so familiar does the same.

93892860_10102543680201619_8456301198595588096_o

And we arranged for an artist to come to paint on the other side of their windows and ask them questions about who they are and what they love as they watched their story come to life in a picture.

 

Bismarck artist Melissa Gordon was hired as part of the North Dakota Council on the Arts Art for Life Grant Program

And in a time where we feel helpless, doing what we can do, whether it’s singing or sewing or cooking or making a phone call or simply playing tic-tac-toe on a friend’s window, can help lift us all up in these uncertain times and remind us that, even when we’re apart, we exist for one another.

Resident at her window art

*Bismarck based artist Melissa Gordon was hired by our local arts Foundation through an Art for Life Grant offered by the North Dakota Council on the Arts. 

Gather around the community table

Posted on by
4

cafe

Gather around the community table
Forum Communication

Greetings from a cafe in Valley City, N.D., where I’m waiting on my meal and drinking a glass of wine in a booth by myself at the end of a day — literally — singing for this supper.

Dining alone. That’s been the deal in my life since I started traveling and performing up and down the Midwest 17 years ago.

In a career like mine, performing and presenting in different towns often hundreds of miles away from my home in the middle of nowhere, besides the performing, the dining has become one of my favorite parts of the gig. Partly because I’ve created for myself the ultimate reason I don’t have to cook.

But mostly these days, when it’s so easy to take it on the go or order in, sometimes a girl just wants to sit down in front of a steak and learn a little bit about the town she’s in. Because you get to know a lot about a place from the food they’re serving. And how and where they’re serving it. And what they’re talking about over their hot hamburger or roast beef or #2 Sunny Side Up with a side of bacon and pancakes.

Yeah, you guessed it, I prefer cafes. Everywhere I go, big city or small town, I try to find one.

And I would say I don’t know why except I do know why. Because I pop into the right cafe in any town and I’m a little kid again, sitting next to my grandma Edie in the Chuckwagon Cafe on Main Street among my Great-Uncle Paul in a feedstore cap and his friends taking a break, ordering lunch, then ordering pie and then another cup of coffee because there’s another story to tell…

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

Spending their time. Spending the time. To gather around food, it’s an instinct of ours. It’s the watering hole where we go to feel connected over the shared necessity of nutrients.

Because “Everybody’s gotta eat!” If you’re from the Midwest, you’ve likely heard this phrase from your aunt or your mother-in-law or your grill-master cousin when you stop by to drop something off and they insist you stay for supper. Or at least a slice of cake. Or a Ziploc of cookies to go.

If I’ve learned anything from my upbringing, it’s that you could build the biggest house in the world, but the world will always want to gather in your kitchen. It’s the reason my grandma Edie was known to forget her Jell-O salad in the fridge until the end of the Christmas meal. Because we were distracting her, we were all in the way, she was sweating, but we were loving it.

And that’s why these restaurants and cafes, the coffee shops and bakeries, are the heartbeat of our communities, because they hold within them an energy we only get when we have a place to be together to talk about cattle prices and politics and new babies and inside jokes and how we would do it if we were in charge.

And even when I’m sitting solo in a four-person booth between the walls and among the wait staff that has heard it all, 300 miles away from home, keeping to myself, I feel more present and more myself in places like these with my #2 Sunny Side Up with a side of bacon and a real big slice of life.

A Cafe Somewhere in Montana...

Community runs on heartbeats

Posted on by
1

8. Great Grandma Gudrun and Great Grandpa Severin Linseth and their 12 children Edith Linseth Veeder is center in the plaidCommunity runs on heartbeats

Some days, I imagine my great-grandmother Gudrun at 17 years old, standing with her hands on her hips, 1,000 miles from everything familiar to her, looking around the place, the wind whipping her dark hair and long dress, wondering how she wound up so far away from the fjords of Norway.

Wondering how she was going to do it. Wondering what might come next.

And then I imagine her taking a big breath, letting it out quickly, and getting to work.

In her nearly 100 years of living out along the edge of the Badlands in western North Dakota, she raised 12 children — 14 if you count the ones she didn’t give birth to — and helped establish a church and a school, crops and cattle. She served as a “midwife,” before midwife was a term, delivering babies in houses on the prairie and teaching her daughters to do the same when they were needed.

I was raised 2 miles from where my great-grandmother raised those children, one of them who was my grandma Edith, the woman I named my first daughter after.

While my grandma Edith was growing up, down the road from her was a young man who laid claim to a homestead when he was just a teenager. He was married, went to war, came home and lost his wife when my grandpa Pete, the youngest of four, was just a child.

And who was there to help him with raising those children when he was trying to raise the crops and the cattle? Gudrun’s oldest daughters.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately as I watch the community where I was raised continue to work to meet the demands of an ever-growing population. Everything from groceries to day care to schools to housing is stretched and moving and shifting every day. Back when my great-grandmother was raising her family, community meant survival — and I can’t help but notice how much that rings true to us all in the middle of this booming town.

Although I think it’s easy to lose sight of it in a time when our access to technology and everything from diapers to refrigerators can be delivered to our doors.

Because community also means support. And support, now more than ever, means working to understand one another by sharing our stories, our concerns, our needs, our ideas and working beyond our differences and finding a way to go beyond survive and into thrive.

I had no idea when I was singing for my supper, driving up and down the middle of the Midwest alone with my guitar at a time when people were moving away instead of back, that I would be married to my high school boyfriend and living at the ranch that raised me before I hit 30 years old. And I certainly didn’t have any idea that would be possible because, suddenly, the opportunities in my hometown would be saving people’s dreams.

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

Where would we be if we weren’t tied here by blood and history? Would we be here anyway?

Last week, my neighbor called. She was raised a mile up the road from me in a time where we could still ride our bikes down the middle of the county road. She came home to start a business and raise her kids on her family’s ranch. I came home to do the same.

“The kids set up a lemonade stand on the corner by the highway, come over if you have a minute.”

And so my little sister and I loaded up our three little girls and headed to the highway to meet her and her husband and her dad and her mom and her four kids holding up “Get Your Lemonade Here” signs as trucks and pickups slowed down and pulled over to buy a cup and a Rice Krispies bar made by the next generation.

Times change. Our little country road is filled with daddies and mommies and sisters and brothers and husbands and wives and daughters and sons on their way to work and home again.

I stand on that road with my hands on my hips, wondering what the future holds in a world that has somehow become bigger and smaller at the same time, determined to do what it takes, and to never forget that it runs on heartbeats.

70336763_2594133180636911_8324877239447453696_o