Tag Archives: family

November at the Ranch

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November is a busy month at the ranch. Not only are we getting ready for the impending (or continuing) winter, but November is the month for roundup, working and checking our cattle and selling our calves. It’s one of my favorite times of the year because it’s one of the rare times that I allow myself to drop everything and focus on the ranch.

One of my jobs is to make sure that the people (who also drop everything to help) get fed. And that there is hot coffee and cookies out in the pens so we all have an excuse to take a few minutes to break between tasks. This is about as important to me as anything because it forces a slowdown during a moment in time that makes everyone who owns these cattle a little anxious. Because a day like shipping day is the culmination of all the work the family has put into caring for these animals–rolling out hay in the winter, fixing water tanks and fences in the spring, watching for and tending to trouble during calving season and keeping them on the best grass in the summer, free of hoof rot and pink eye.

This year we lucked out with a couple nice weather days where you could only see your breath until about noon and then we could take off a layer or two. My sister and I keep our daughters   home from school on the day we ship and sell calves so they can be a part of the grand finale. They ride along to the sale barn with a bag full of coloring sheets and snacks to sit next to Papa and our old neighbor and watch our calves go through the ring. I wonder what they’ll remember more, the sale or eating the pizza buffet and playing in the arcade in the big town after?

Unfortunately, for Rosie and everyone around her who she scared to death, it will be falling off her pony during roundup, an unpredictable incident that left me questioning all my parenting decisions. Things like this don’t happen to kids who live in the suburbs. And kids in the suburbs don’t go to the arcade smelling like the sale barn.

Maybe all we’re doing when we bring them along is solidifying the idea that marrying or becoming a professional YouTuber or a computer programmer is a safer life choice. Because is there a YouTuber or computer programmer in the history of the world who makes small talk with the community vet for two hours while he puts his arm down the backside of 120-some cattle to confirm they’re bred and then invites him over for lunch only to discover that your new kitten has somehow got herself stuck INSIDE THE WALLS OF YOUR HOUSE!!!??

Not a good look for that specific house guest.

But seriously. Anyone ever had to cut open a wall in your house to retrieve a live animal? I don’t want to admit this, but in the history of my life on this ranch, it wasn’t the first time.

Turns out that kitten was just after the dead, rotting mouse that had somehow also discovered the secret wall portal. When I tell you that feline stunk, I cannot stress it enough. And when I tell you that squirmy little barn cats don’t like baths, I also, cannot stress it enough.  

Yes, life on the ranch is messy and volatile and this time of year can make us as grateful for it as we are anxious about it. Because we can control the calf market about as much as we can control the weather and that pony trotting across the field with his reigns dragging…

What are we doing here? Well, all I can say is we’re doing our best, and learning plenty of lessons along the way.

Next up? December and keeping that kitten off the Christmas tree.

Why do we live here?

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Winter field.jpg
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts

Well, winter arrived here in full force, and I got to be one of the first to welcome it as I packed the kids into the SUV to drive 40 mph for 30 miles through sideways-falling snowflakes and atop icy, snow-covered roads while cussing under my breath. It’s not like I was surprised, I expected it. It comes every year.

And it turns out the first blizzard of the season fell on “Hawaii” day at school. And if stuffing the tropical dresses and plastic leis under winter coats and snowpants that are too small because you’ve been in winter denial and haven’t gone snowpants shopping doesn’t scream North Dakota kids, then come and see how we dress for Halloween. When it’s cold enough I don’t have to convince my daughters that cheerleaders and fairy princesses wear snowsuits, too.

It’s days like these, I understand why there are towns and why so many people live in them. 

My 7-year-old daughter and I have been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” before bed every night, and you know what? Even that beloved homesteading family moved to town in October. They figured it might be the right thing to do when Pa and Laura had to free cattle with their noses frozen to the ground after a fall blizzard. Figuring they could be next, they packed up for their version of civilization.

Why do we live up here? If you asked me last week while I was riding horseback with my family through trees lit by the golden autumn sun, I would have answered with a love song. Ask me today, and it’s a threatening breakup song.

But it’s only a threat. We’re stuck here come hell or high snowbank.

Anyway, this morning while I was plowing through the dark space-scape of blinding snow trying to stay between the invisible lines on my way to get the kids to school before the last bell, I was reminded of an epic winter school bus ride I had when I was in third or fourth grade. It was over 30 years ago now, so I figure the statute of limitations is up. And plus, it was the ’90s.

Once upon a time, I was an elementary school kid who went to a country school only 15 miles from the ranch. Every morning, I rode the school bus with about 10 of the neighbor kids, our house being the first to pick up and the last to drop off, which is the same as our parents saying, “I walked to school five miles uphill both ways,” but I digress. 

This particular morning was especially brutal. I think it was early spring or late fall, one of those times when the winter weather still surprises you. Our bus driver, as seasoned as he was, was struggling to navigate his route on roads completely slick with ice. But he diligently made his rounds, nice and steady and slow, to finally arrive at the last house at the bottom of the final long stretch of hill with only a half-mile to the school to go, only to find that he couldn’t get the bus to move another inch.

After several failed attempts at backing the bus up and taking a run at that big, icy hill with all 10 kids breathing down his neck and sending prayers up to the almighty for miraculous traction, something inside him shifted and he made a decision that, if it worked out, would be regarded as a ranch-y type of heroic that would be recorded in infamy in the Bus Driver Hall of Fame.

Turns out the move did become infamous, but only because no other bus driver in the entire history of the universe would have decided to take his attempt to cross the ditch and then rev the bus into the stubble field where he figured he could get more of that almighty traction. And so off he went, us 10 praying kids now wide-eyed and bouncing around and up and off our seats while our gallant driver slammed the pedal to the metal to keep the vehicle in motion past one tree row and on to the other before Little Yellow School Bus #25 finally sunk into the snow up to its floorboards a quarter of a mile off the highway.

It was silent then as we all took inventory of our new situation. Our bus driver reached for his CB. “Breaker, breaker, ‘Operation Go, Go Gadget snow tracks’ failed us.”

That SOS call would result in my very first ride in a four-wheel-drive SUV when an area superhero mom came down that icy hill to the rescue. I can only imagine what she was thinking as she spotted that bus, bright and yellow and stuck out of place in a white and gold sea of winter stubble field, all 10 of us kids trudging, with backpacks, snowsuits and confused looks through the snow to pile in the back hatch of that 1993 Chevy suburban, a shiny new beacon of hope that we’d make it to school at last.

Making it home would be another story, which is what I’m thinking now, a mom with my own four-wheel-drive SUV, watching the snow drift another inch outside the door.

If you need me, I’ll be checking the radar and ordering the girls snowpants that fit. Because winter’s here, just like it comes every year.

Memory Keeper Podcast

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Another podcast up and at ’em for you. This week we sit down to reflect on our role in other people’s memories, especially our children’s. Speaking of children, ours are really loud in this episode, so fair warning if you’re not as good at ignoring them as we are. Also, I brings up the time I overbid on my husband dressed as the world’s ugliest woman in a local fundraiser. This has nothing to do with anything, but you get to hear it anyway.
And as a special treat, Edie tells the story of Paul Bunyan and it’s adorable. Listen at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hold the reins and hand me my purse…

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Us as babies in a bar…
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts

Once upon a time, when my husband I were young, like 24 and 25, and just married, we were
out with friends in the big town of Fargo, ND. That was back in the old days when bar hopping
in below zero temperatures still sounded fun because it didn’t take us three to four business
days to recover. Anyway, we were about ready to wrap up the evening of yell talking,
questionable drink choices and dancing to bar bands when, while heading out the door, I
realized I should probably pee first. (Never pass up a perfectly good restroom is a lesson I
learned early). And so I asked my husband, who was the only man wearing a cowboy hat within
a 300 mile radius, to please hold my purse. And so he did, standing patiently by the door with it
swung over his shoulder like it was his own accessory. Now my mid-twenties are way in the
rearview mirror, and I’m pretty sure I was drinking whiskey sours, so the details on this next
part are fuzzy, but essentially a group of college-aged guys approached my husband leaning up
against the wall all nonchalant for a guy in a cowboy hat holding a purse and indicated that they
didn’t approve by puffing up and saying “Nice purse.”

To which my husband smiled and replied “Thanks!” and then gave that purse a proud little pat
and continued on with being indifferent about the entire situation. And off we all went into the
frozen Fargo night with not a punch thrown.
This week I released a song I wrote with this image in my head, attempting to define a man like
Chad who can “hold the reins and still hand me my purse.” I had to get that line in there
because it’s the crux of the song titled “If You Were a Cowboy,” which essentially, for the
purpose of the song, means “If you were a decent human in this relationship you would respect
me.”



There are plenty of ways to interpret all the cowboy references I sprinkled in to a punchy little
tune about love and commitment and all the spoken and unspoken expectations that come
with it, but “knowing when to shut up and when to pick up the phone,” also seems to cover it.
Anyway, last week my husband drove us and a borrowed bumper-pull camper across Montana
and into Cody, Wyoming to help and hang out with me while I participated in the Yellowstone
Songwriter Festival. He rarely gets to tag along on my singing gigs because when I’m gone he
needs to stay back with the kids, but we made arrangements for them this time so we could call
it a vacation. And it really was, because for us you can’t beat a road trip, sleeping under the
mountains and listening to good music all weekend. The fact that I was scheduled to share the
stage with other songwriters from across the country for a few hours a day was the icing on the
cake.


And here’s where I’ll tell you that if one of my daughters comes to me when she is 22 years old
and says she’s marrying her high school boyfriend I think my gut reaction will be worry. I’m not
sure if that was the case for my parents, but as a woman who married her one and only real
boyfriend, I’m not necessarily a proponent of it. I wasn’t even entirely convinced we should do
it when he asked me. I mean, my heart was saying “yes!” but my mouth said, “I guess so,”
tentative only because I knew we were young and I’ve always been fixated on the idea of
“doing the right thing.” I mean, don’t well-adjusted adults get married much later in life? My romantic and practical sides are at constant battle, but thinking about it all now it seems I
fulfilled both in my marriage to Chad.


Because never once in my long and unconventional creative career has the man become
jealous of the time I put into it. I could drive across the country for weeks at a time and he will
only ever ask how it went and “where are you again?” I know that’s the trust we’ve built, but
still, I appreciate the faith he has in me. And in us.

And while both of us are far from perfect, it’s the letting one another be exactly who we are
that has kept us together since we were just kids. And if you ask Chad why any relationship
works, he would simply say just be friends and take care of each other, the way he did without
apology all those years ago in that bar. My husband has always known who he is and who he
loves and I suppose he’d get in a fist fight over it if he really had to, but why fight about any of
it? “Fighting hurts.” (Now I’m quoting him directly.)
If you ask me? Well, I’ll just write a song about it.



Go have a listen to “If You Were a Cowboy” wherever you get your music or on
www.jessieveedermusic.com! Now go take of one another.

Making Music. Making Pies.

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The kids are back to school, the mornings are cool, the tomatoes are ripening in the garden and so are the wild plums in the sharp and poky brushes of the ranch. Just yesterday my nieces came in with handfuls they had collected with their mom and grandpa and informed me that they are ready by dropping them on my kitchen counter and inviting us all to indulge.

Ripe wild plums are one of the signs that we’re transitioning into fall and so I wanted to share with you a memory from the archives from when I found myself with a bag full of homegrown apples and the urge to do something beautiful with them. And so my mom, little sister and I  (none of us seasoned bakers) decided to take on my grandma Edie’s pie recipe, crust and all.

It’s a sweet memory sprinkled with nostalgia from when my oldest daughter (who just started second grade) was just a baby.  She was fresh and new to this world, named after the grandma’s whose recipe we had in hand, and I was fresh and new to motherhood and feeling domestic and content in the kitchen surrounded by the comfort of generations and the promise of a cool down.

Enjoy this season. Enjoy the fruits of your labor and lock your doors because it’s also the time of year that zucchini starts hitchhiking…

Making Memories. Making Pies.
September, 2016

My mom keeps a small wooden box in her kitchen, tucked up in the cupboard next to her collection of cookbooks. On the front it reads “RECIPES” in the shaky, wood-burning technique of a young boy trying his hand at carpentry.

And inside is an assortment of recipe cards, of course, notes from a kitchen and a cook who left us all too soon, taking with her that famous homemade plum sauce.

And the from-scratch buns she served with supper.

And the familiar casseroles that you could smell cooking as you walked up toward the tiny brown house from the barnyard after a ride on a cool fall evening.

Every once in awhile my mom will open that box on a search for a memory tied to our taste buds. She’ll sort through the small file of faded handwriting and index cards until she finds it, setting it on the counter while she gathers ingredients, measures stirs and puts the dish together the best way she remembers.

I’m thinking about it now because it’s sitting on my kitchen table, the one that used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen all those years ago acting as a surface to roll out dough and pie crusts or a place to serve countless birthday cakes or her famous April Fool’s day coffee filter pancakes.

And so they’ve met again, that table and that box, which is currently sitting next to a pie pan covered in tinfoil.

Because last week we pulled the box out on a mission for guidance on what to do with the 50,000 pounds of apples my little sister inherited from the tree in the backyard of the house she bought a few years back.

“Maybe we should make applesauce or apple crisp,” we said as Little Sister plopped the fourth bag full of fruit on my kitchen counter, my mom sipping coffee and my big sister entertaining my nephew beside her.

I reached up in the cupboards to dust off a couple recipe books because we all agreed then that apples this nice deserve to be in a pie, and Googling “pie making” seemed too impersonal for such an heirloom-type task.

Then Mom remembered the recipe box.

And that Gramma Edie used to make the best apple pies.

It was a memory that was intimately hers and vaguely her daughters’. We were too young to remember the cinnamon spice or the sweetness of the apples or the way she would make extra crust to bake into pieces and sprinkle with sugar when the pies were done, but our mother did.

And most certainly so did our dad.

So we dove into the recipe with the unreasonable confidence of amateurs and spent the afternoon in my kitchen, peeling apples, bouncing the baby and rolling and re-rolling out gramma’s paradoxically named “No Fail Pie Crust,” laughing and cheering a victory cheer as we finally successfully transferred it to the top of the pie using four hands and three spatulas, certain this wasn’t our grandmother’s technique.

Wondering how she might have done it.

Little Sister carved a heart in the top to make it look more presentable. We put the pie in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.

We fed the baby and gave her a bath. We watched my nephew demonstrate his ninja moves. We talked and poured a drink. We cleared the counter for supper. We put the baby to bed.

And then we pulled the pie from the oven. We marveled at our work. We decided it looked beautiful, that we might declare it a huge success, but first we should see what Dad thinks.

So we dished him up a piece. It crumbled into a pile on his plate, not pie shaped at all. But he closed his eyes and took a bite and declared it just the right amount of cinnamon, the apples not too hard, the crust like he remembered, not pretty but good.

We served ourselves and ate up around that old table. We thought of our grandma, wondered if she might have given us a little help and put the recipe back in the box right next to her memory and the new one we made.

And we closed the lid.

This story, Grandma’s recipe and more can be found in my book “Coming Home” available for purchase here.

Music News

My new single, “If You Were A Cowboy” will be released on September 12 on all platforms! Pre-save it on Spotify here to help it gain some momentum and to get it delivered directly to your inbox on release day!

Enjoy a sneak peek into the making of the music video, which we wrapped up this week in a cool old barn near Bismarck with some great North Dakota based musicians and videographers.

Growing their wings

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Rosie, my five-year-old, fell off her horse for the first time a few weeks ago. I made plans to drive my oldest and her best friend to bible camp for the day and so my husband took Rosie on a ride to the east pasture on our trusty old gelding named Cuss. They were going to check some fences, water and the cow situation and I was going to send Edie off to pray and play along the little lake by Epping, ND. These were just our morning plans.

And because there’s never a dull moment around here, on my way home to the ranch I met my husband driving the horse trailer back to the barn, with little Rosie tucked up next to his arm. We stopped in the middle of the road the way we do on the place, rolling down windows and checking what’s new and before I could utter a “How’d it go?” Rosie, with a fresh, small scratch on her chin, leaned over her dad and proudly announced, “I got bucked off!!!”

My husband just sorta calmly looked at me then from under his palm leaf cowboy hat and dark glasses, his lips closed tight and slightly pulled back toward his ears, his tanned arm resting casually out the open pickup window. Unlike his wife, who’s jaw was on the floor of my SUV while my eyebrows reached up to the ceiling, he doesn’t have many big expressions that indicate what’s going on in his head. But I knew this one. This one meant that it was true…

Well, at least partially true, because everyone knows that old horse can’t and won’t buck. But he did make a bit of a dramatic effort when climbing a hill and that’s what put poor Rosie on the ground.

And I wasn’t going to tell this story because in this day in age there are plenty ways you can be shamed as a parent, especially when you dare to be honest about anything that doesn’t resemble picture-perfect moments topped off with themes, balloon arches and gift bags for everyone. But I decided to share it today in case it helps someone. Because Rosie was just fine. Chad calmly tended to her, helped her up and made her feel taken care of in that moment. When he assessed that her tears were more out of fear than pain and realized that it was a fair hike back to the house, he asked her if she was comfortable getting back on her horse or if she would like to ride with him on his. She wanted to get back on and so she did, but Chad took her reigns and led Rosie and her old horse home safe and sound.

In the hours and days that followed my husband and I assessed and re-assessed the incident in our heads and in conversation with one another. And even though she was alright, we felt terrible about it. We wondered what we could have done differently, if she was too young to be out there, if we are bad parents, if she’s going to be afraid now. Did we push it too far? But what’s the cost of being overly cautious with them? And, the most important question, should we get our kids bubble-wrap suits?

When parents like us (I think we’re called geriatric millennials now, which I don’t appreciate, but I digress) talk about parenting-musts like car seats and helmets, unsupervised play in the neighborhood until dark and not putting our kids in the gooseneck of the horse trailer for a ride to the next town, we tend to respond with phrases like “Ah, we all lived through it,” which, when you think about it, is the privilege given only to those who lived through it.

There are reasons for rules.

But there are no official rules when it comes to parenting, especially parenting your kids on a working ranch. And so it’s hard to know sometimes—especially when you screw up—if you’re even close to the right track or if you’re bouncing up over that far hill with Cuss.

And I wish I could tell you that my husband and I came to an enlightening agreement, making our own ranch kid parenting playbook that I could lay out for you here, but we didn’t. And even if we did, I wouldn’t share it, because, put simply, it would be ours and ours alone. You don’t need to hear from us all the ways you could improve or change the way you love and care for your kids. If you’re a good parent, then you’re assessing that for your family daily. I know we are. Oh, and one more thing I want to make sure I add –our kids are living, breathing, heart-beating, mac-and-cheese snarfing humans who are begging us every day to help them grow their wings stronger so they can fly. I’m sure I’ve said it before here, but this summer alone my kids have outdone my expectations of them. Not necessarily in the room cleaning, Barbie pick-up categories, but in the ways they ask us to trust their capabilities. At the beginning of the summer, just a few short months ago, I planned to lead Rosie on Cuss through the barrel pattern at our hometown kids rodeo and she absolutely wouldn’t have it. She knew she could do it on her own, and she did. Who are we to let our own fear hold them back? Holding too tightly to the reins has consequences of its own.

But man it’s hard isn’t it? To watch them grow up and stretch farther into this world that’s so beautiful and unpredictable. But who would they become if we could guarantee their safekeeping? They would live through it but what kind of life would they live?

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be searching Amazon for that protective bubble suit, for my kids and for my heart, just in case.

Cousins by the camper

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Cousins by the camper
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There’s a family photo that resurfaces every once in a while of six little kids with fluffy ‘90s hair sitting on a picnic bench in front of a 1980s tin-sided bumper pull camper. One of us is in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, a couple in tight rolled jeans, all of us had bangs that started in the middle of our craniums. It was summer in North Dakota on the edge of the clay shores of Lake Sakakawea and we were squinting against the morning sun, a calm moment captured between itching mosquito bites and slapping horse flies away. A calm moment captured before a picnic of watermelon and juice boxes and hotdogs cooked on my uncle’s tiny grill. A calm moment captured before we became who we really were in that fuzzy photograph—cousins, grandchildren of Pete and Edith Veeder, connected by blood and big love and orange push-up pops and a ranch with a pink road that runs right through. Cousins reunited for a weekend of camping under a fussy North Dakota sky where it’s always a little too cold for swimming with a good chance of a camper-shaking thunderstorm.

Those six kids are all grown up now and so are the two who were too wiggly to sit still for the photo, some of us raising fluffy haired kids of our own. And this summer, for many different reasons, I will have seen every one of my cousins in person, on both sides of my family, in the matter of a few months. This very likely hasn’t happened since we were kids and it’s been an unexpected blessing in this season that is rolling in and out of my life as quickly as one of those thunderstorms.

I watch my daughters take the road that cuts between my house and my sister’s on their way to play because they can hardly stand a day without seeing one another. Now that they are old enough, they take that road themselves. And when I tag along, they leave me in the dust, holding hands and pulling tight on that thread that binds me to them, stretching it out to reach the people they need beyond me. What I would have given to have lived right down the road from my cousins.

I watch these girls run toward one another and I can’t help but wonder how these relationships will continue and evolve through the years, as sisters and cousins and friends. Their innocence presently has us all fooled into thinking that it could last forever, that they will eternally be bonded in this same tender and intricate way. But years have shown me enough scenarios in which it can all quietly or not so quietly fade or crumble or implode because humans are complicated, and our hearts are tender, and time is a thief. Sometimes my sister and I let ourselves imagine our daughters as teenagers fighting over boyfriends or driving themselves to town for a rodeo or a football game. We think my youngest, Rosie, will insist on driving and then we think she’ll drive too fast. And Edie, my oldest, will try to keep them in line but Emma, my youngest niece will take Rosie’s back. And Ada, the animal lover, might prefer to stay home with the horses, but could be convinced to break any rule because Rosie and Emma plead a good case. Oh it’s fun to imagine but not without wondering how they could ever be anything but here safe at the ranch at 3 and  5 and 6 and 7, in the sweet spot of sprinkler running and Bible Camp songs and endless game of babies in our basement.

Is that what our parents thought that day they asked us to sit shoulder to shoulder on the picnic bench? That if they pointed that camera and developed that film that it would help them remember this fleeting moment where we were together and sun kissed and smiling, before we knew that growing up could simultaneously ache and excite us. Before that thread pulled tight on us across the countryside as we wandered off to find out who we were supposed to be beyond the grass-stained knees of those tight-rolled jeans. I know it is. And then I wonder if they knew that it was because they believed in that pink road and that picnic table bench and family camping trips and Christmas suppers and Easter egg hunts at gramma’s that even now, after all these years, we do what it takes to have the chance to be who we really are, who we’ve always been, Pete and Edith’s grandchildren, squeezing in to say cheese.  

Rescue Mission

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My three-year niece, Emma has a bird book. She stands on the couch in the living room and looks out the window with that book in her chubby little hands and marks the ones she sees. It’s adorable, and that kid doesn’t miss a beat. She’s looking up at the sky whenever she can.

The other day I was walking with all the girls, my two daughters, who are five and seven, and Emma and her sister Ada, who is also five and probably loves animals the most of any kid I’ve ever met. Like, she has a gift with them, truly. Now bear with me here, this all matters because as we approached my house I noticed Emma stop dead in her tracks to stare intently at something way up in a tall tree by the road. When I caught up to her I looked up too and realized that what had her attention was a bird, about twenty feet up in an ash tree, flapping and panicked, trying to escape the small piece of twine that had somehow wrapped around its leg and attached him to a small branch. I later learned it was a cedar waxwing, which explained why other cedar waxwings would occasionally fly in to check on it, wondering why it couldn’t join the flock.

It was heartbreaking to watch, and even more heartbreaking to watch these four little girls discover the bird’s misery. Edie, my oldest, looked at me with urgency and, of course said, “We have to help it! Hurry!” Which is exactly what would have been going through my mind as a 7 year old, and, actually, it was going through my mind as a mom then too, but with a little more apprehension because I was home by myself and I’m afraid of heights and, frankly, a little unnerved by flapping birds. Also, so many things could go wrong in this situation if I actually figured out a way to get up there. Like I wouldn’t make it in time for one, or if I did, the bird might be gravely injured. Or, maybe of more concern, I could be gravely injured, I mean, I don’t have a great track record with ladders.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been in an urgent situation where four innocent and sweet little animal-loving girls are looking to you to SAVE A LITERAL LIFE, you can’t blame me for trying to do something. So they told me they’d keep watch while I ran to the house and got the ladder…and the pickup… because my plan was to, you guessed it, back the pickup up to the tree, put the ladder in the box, climb up there with my scissors and bibbidi bobbidi boo, release the wax wing like a Disney Princess Superhero.

But first I needed to call my sister to hold the ladder, grab me those gloves, and, in case it all went south, divert the attention and call the ambulance. Only a sister would come tearing in the yard in minutes flat after only being told, “there is a bird situation here.”

Turns out, once I got the ladder in the back of the pickup and got to the third rung, I also needed her to give me a pep talk. “If you’re going to do this, you just gotta commit” she said handing me the scissors and then wrapping a tight grip on my leg because even though we both knew that wasn’t going to keep me from falling to a bloody death in the name of a tiny bird, it made us both feel better. Oh, and also she needed to call off the dogs that suddenly came to investigate, both of us imaging that unfortunate scenario.

Anyway, if these girls ever say I never did anything for them, I’m documenting it now in this publication that me,  their mother, who is indeed truly afraid of heights, backed our pickup up to that tall tree, placed the ladder in the bed, climbed it, pulled the branch attached to the bird down to my level and detached it, untangled the tiny little bird leg from the twine and didn’t scream once (or at least not too loud) in front of my audience of little girls. In fact, I held that bird long enough for all of them to get a quick, closer look and then let it go, off safe and sound into the trees.

And then I sopped the sweat from my face and calmed my shaky legs and we all went on with our weird, wonderful little lives feeling good about the one we all saved. And Emma marked Cedar Waxwing in her bird book.

My grandma, she could float

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This week we said goodbye to my grandma Ginny, my mom’s mother, in a little lake town in Minnesota.

It’s easy to look back at what I knew of this woman and be proud to have called her my grandmother. And for a few days we spent time with family in her and grampa’s cabin on the shores of Lake Melissa. And it seemed she ordered the weather up just for us, so our kids could jump in its cool, clear waters and pull up fish after fish after little sun fish. She was smiling down for sure.

Due to the crazy travel schedule, watch for the podcast to be published tomorrow.

My grandma, she could float
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There are things about people you remember when they’ve left this world and it’s never what you think will stick with you when you’re mourning their death at their funeral or writing an obituary or a note of condolence.

I want to say something profound here today about my grandmother Virginia Blain, who died peacefully in her bed last week in a little lake town in Minnesota at 89 years old. I want to tell you about a woman who grew up as a baker’s daughter and married and nurtured the love of her life for nearly 70 years. I want to tell you how she built a professional career in the 1950s, kept her own checking account and raised four smart and independent daughters. I want to tell you how she swam in lakes and oceans around the world and planted hundreds of flower gardens and read a thousand books and played a million games of bridge before time made her mind betray her, slowly taking her away from the people who love her, in this life, where she will be dearly missed…

But all I can think about right now is how she could float. My grandmother, who was an accomplished Girls Scout and a lifeguard and a strong swimmer who spent her long life on the shores of Minnesota lakes, would walk out into the water and just let it hold her up as she smiled under her straw hat and splashed her grandkids with the hands she didn’t need to use to keep her head above water. And we would all try it then as we watched her, our skinny, pale, Midwestern bodies flailing, our cheeks puffed out as we held our breath and sunk under the water while she laughed.

“Ginny was a happy person,” that’s what my grandfather wrote at the end of her obituary and I can’t stop crying over it and I’m not sure why. After all the things that she was, that line reaches inside me and stirs it all up.

Because it’s true. In fact, she might have been the definition of it, even in the most challenging times in her life. She dealt with doubt or loneliness by organizing a card game or hosting a party or getting to work. When her husband’s military career took her from the familiar sidewalks of her North Dakota home to Japan in the infancy of marriage and new motherhood, she called it an adventure and took a flower arranging class and for the rest of her summers there was never an empty flowerbed or bud vase in sight.

To be loved by a person like my grandma Ginny is to feel like she created her sunshine just to have you stand in it and warm up. She had a way of making it all special. I wanted to make sure I said that because it’s true. Serving pretzels? She’d put them in a pretty dish with sour cream and garlic salt for dipping. She’d wrap the son-in-laws’ Christmas socks in a nice box with tissue paper and a curled bow, making Hanes look luxurious. She’d mix salted peanuts with M&Ms and make sure the glass bowl was always full for company. She’d make a game of waiting in line. She put a cherry in the vodka tonic. She put the music on for supper. She made plans for breakfast in bed, then made sure he made plans to reciprocate. She’d have you circle your favorite things in every catalog. She’d tell him he’s handsome. She’d tell everyone he’s handsome.

To my grandma, life was a game that she genuinely wanted to play, and she wanted you to play with her.

When you’re loved by someone like her, you want to make her proud. That alone is the greatest gift she could have left us with.

My grandma was hydrangeas in the garden and a sailboat ride with her husband. She was a good book in the lawn chair in the shade by the lake and a cold washcloth on your forehead when there was nothing else she could do. She was a big laugh, a game of Tripoly and leave the dishes for later. My grandma was lumpy mashed potatoes and mediocre Salisbury steak that tasted better than it was because she made no apologies and it wasn’t about the food anyway. She was licorice in the candy drawer and doughnut holes from the bakery and fishing with gummy worms off the dock. And my grandma, she was happy.

My grandma, she could float..

The Girls of Spring

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This week on the podcast we catch up on getting back on the horses in the spring, my dad’s horse-whispering skills and some of our epic horse wrecks. Which brings us to wishing we didn’t know how it feels to hit the ground when we watch our girls ride the big horses by themselves. We also catch up on my Nashville plans and how Chad had to rescue me once again from the side of the road. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Today it’s raining. Not a winter rain, but a true spring rain, one that smells like dirt turning to mud, one that lingers to soak the ground, not a lick of wind, it feels warm even though it’s barely above freezing.

Last Sunday I took my daughters out to the hilltops to look for crocuses. I knew it was probably a bit too soon, but when the first calves of the season are born and the snow disappears from the high spots, it’s time to check. And we did find some, though they were still sucked up tight into their buds, not quite ready to open up to the sun. But that was good enough for us. We’ve waited all this time, we could wait one more day. These are the rituals that come with the seasons, and they take patience.

Our hike around the hilltops on that 60-degree day found us next in the barnyard to greet the horses. After winter months out to pasture and bribing them in for scratches with oats and sweet feed, it was time to put on their halters and brush off their thick coats and get reacquainted.

In these moments, it seems like last fall was a lifetime ago, back when their coats were sleek and shiny and us humans were confident on top of them. It’s been months since we last saddled up the girls’ old geldings. Seven months now that I’m counting.

Seven months is a long time in the life of these little girls. Since then, both have turned another year older, they’ve stretched out inches, they’ve built new muscles and found the answers to new questions. They were ready to see what they could do with these horses now that they were all grown up.

Seven months in old-sorrel-horse-years has made them better, more understanding, a little more gray around their muzzles, and just fine with the task of trotting and turning around the still-sorta-muddy-but-dry-enough arena.

My husband and I stood shoulder to shoulder in that dirt watching our daughters get tested for stubbornness and will by their animals. I think we both held our breath, equally excited for the months ahead and lonesome for those springs that have passed, replacing our tiny, chubby, giggling daughters being lead around the pony pens with these creatures, lanky and independent and capable enough to do it themselves.

Oh, I know from experience, there’s nothing like being a young girl out here on this ranch in the spring! Nothing. The possibilities stretch out before you like that creek full of spring runoff, winding and glimmering and equal parts rushing and patient. Everything around you is waking up, and you can go out in it because you’re a part of it, reaching your bare arms up to the sun, unfolding out of your winter bud like that crocus today.

This spring, my daughters will take to the trees behind the house without having their mother as their guide. They will find a favorite, secret spot, they will wear down their own trails. They will take their baby dolls along and pretend they are mothers out in the wilderness. They will build forts and bring picnics and pick ticks off their jeans and drag mud into the house, and the world outside these doors will turn green as their skin turns brown and their hair turns gold.

They’ll scrape their knees running too fast on the scoria road, they will slap at mosquitoes, they will fight about silly things that are their most important things, and they will come in crying.

And they will have each other and their horses and the hilltops and the budding wildflowers blooming along with them. That’s all I ever wanted.

That’s all I ever wanted to give them.