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Ring the Bell

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Time’s moving at a different pace now that I’ve been home for almost two weeks. I dove right back in to the end-of-school-year hustle, graduation parties, goat wrangling, 4-H preparations, laundry, softball practice, office work and what’s for dinner. I have been feeling fine, with just a little less stamina for it all and a few reminders in my body and mind of the toll the past few months has taken on me. The girls are officially out of school, reminding me how fun it was to be eight and ten under the heat of the summer sun and that’s good medicine.

Below is last week’s column, a little repeat from what you heard from me last week, and a bit of a reflection on my treatment process and what it meant to ring that bell.

Here’s to less cancer talk in the future and more commentary on the wildflowers and cows.

Ring the Bell


I’m sitting at my kitchen counter after braiding hair and reminders to brush teeth and find shoes and get backpacks and hurry up now. The floors aren’t swept and I’ve cleared a space for myself among the crumbs, water bottles and art supplies to tell you I’m no longer counting my life in weeks, because I’m home now. 

After 33 proton radiation treatments and 6 chemo treatments over the course of 6 1/2 weeks, I rang the bell in the radiation department at Mayo Clinic on May 13th. This bell is the bell of hope, not necessarily indicating that one is cancer free, but a declaration that a course of treatment has been completed or endured with every confidence, prayer and medical advancement in the works for that outcome.

Every weekday for those six weeks I lay on the table in the radiation room and they put a  mask on me that went over my face and shoulders and strapped my head and upper body down nice and tight so I couldn’t move while I waited for the proton beam to be available to zap me and the tumors in three different places. The mask in radiation treatment is treated as a big thing, for lack of a better way to say it. It’s created as a cast over your face to fit perfectly and the care team worries about claustrophobia and takes comfort level seriously. Every day of the week they put that thing on me, and I lay still for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, closing my eyes, listening to music and waiting for the “we have the beam,” voice to come over the speakers in that big room. In the three adjacent, identical rooms, there were three other people at the same time doing the same thing—strapped to a table, waiting on a beam. And then dozens of others in the waiting room, or on their way there, or making plans for their first or last visit. There are only 48 active proton radiation therapy centers in the US, so the machine at Mayo Clinic runs from 8 am to 11 pm every weekday, like clockwork.

As I entered the radiation room for the final time a tech asked me if I wanted to take my mask home with me, which some people do, as a reminder of what they conquered or for a Halloween costume or something. I said no, you keep it.  Burn it. It’s over. But as I lay there getting my final zaps, I changed my mind, a little because I wanted to explain the process to my curious family and a lot because I wanted to burn it myself.

When I walked into the treatment room for the first time back in late March, I was about as annoyed as a person can get with my circumstances. Which was better than scared and better than angry. But I was sick of talking about how the process was going to make me feel, both physically and mentally. I was sick of the waiting and the explanations and all the tests and pre-appointments and answering the question, “Where are you from?” and “Where are you staying?” and “How are you today?” Me, the Queen of Small Talk and Chatter and Banter, didn’t find myself filling any awkward silence with my voice. I stepped in each elevator and just stood there, quietly, like a normal person. And when someone cracked a joke about sardines in a can or close quarters, I just wished they wouldn’t.  I sat to get my blood drawn,or followed a staff member out of the waiting room and I didn’t do the work I typically feel so compelled to do in trying to make people comfortable with conversation.  I just didn’t have it in me.

And when I read the long pamphlet laying out the schedule and expectations on how the treatment plan was going to go, complete with annoying side-effects and annoying appointments, finished off with a ringing of a bell, I couldn’t see myself participating in that ceremonious action. I wasn’t going to do it.

I know now I felt that way then because ringing the bell meant that this was happening, and at that time I was trying to hang on to every shred of normal I could hang on to like every strand of hair that has fallen out of my head since then. But as the weeks went on and I trudged down those hallways and stood in those elevators and sat in those waiting rooms and became a seasoned visitor to the radiation room, I softened to the experience.

Was it perspective, seeing those around me who are sick and fighting harder? Was it that I got more comfortable with my circumstance? Was it that I realized staying annoyed wasn’t going to make it easier?  Was it the routine of it all bringing me closer and closer to the finish line?  I’m not sure, but I became more myself in the process eventually, opening up, picking my favorite front desk lady and radiation therapist and giving people directions and smiling and sometimes even laughing in the elevator. When my husband joined me on my last trip through the parking garage and down the elevator and through the long hallways, I felt like grabbing his hand and skipping all the way.

So yeah, I changed my mind about that bell. There’s a reason it’s there.

Because this time has taken me away from my family for longer than anyone wants to be away, but I get to go home with shrinking tumors and bring with me what this time has given me:

Four new songs

Time to slow down and understand who I am in the quiet

An interest in watercolor painting

The Cher autobiography

Visits with my cousins, aunt and uncle and my far away friends

A little stress fracture in my foot from wandering to all the nearby pretty places and consequently, a better pair of walking shoes

An unreasonable annoyance with parking garages and construction

An appreciation for Kwik Trip Gas stations

More adoration for my husband and all he is

Appreciation for the messy and noisy parts of my life propelled by my daughters
A heart and body full of gratitude for my village

Heartburn and hair loss

Faith in the process

Hope

Thank you for all the love, notes, emails, calls, prayers and gifts along the way. If you need me, I’ll be making the preparations for the ‘burning of the mask’ celebration.

Getting Ice Cream

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My grandpa Bill loves ice cream. Every time we would visit him throughout my childhood he would always make a moment for the sweet treat, whether it was a banana split complete with hot fudge and peanuts or a trip to the local Dairy Queen where he would get a hot fudge sundae or a milkshake. Ice cream was his love language, and he didn’t phone it in when we’re talking about making it a ritual—he always had all the toppings at hand should the moment call for it. He is the sort of man who gives things like ice cream a little extra thought and I always appreciated that about him.

And so, I was thinking about him today as I made my way back to the condo after one of my last radiation treatments here in Rochester. A friend sent me a gift card to an ice cream place with a note that instructed me to get a little treat as I finished up my last week. It was such a kind gesture, and I put the gift card in my purse, thinking maybe I’d save it for the next time we were in a big town with the kids. For some reason, grabbing an ice cream by myself didn’t seem like something I was going to do, especially since the last few days had me feeling a little more sick and a little more emotionally drained, despite the promise of the end in sight.

Anyway, maybe it was the sun-shiney, almost 70-degree afternoon that changed my mind and gave me an actual, grampa-like craving for ice cream, or maybe it was my friend’s note and the gift card in my purse, but suddenly I was overcome by the certainty that a chocolate milk shake would cure me, and so I made the stop.

I had a similar feeling when the girls were here visiting me a few weeks back. Rosie wasn’t feeling well, so it left my oldest daughter and I to our own devices. And what does a mom and her ten-year-old daughter do on a beautiful day with no real agenda? You get ice cream and sit at the picnic table with an umbrella and listen as the girl talks. I thought about my grandpa that day too, how he would love the place with its dozens and dozens of ice cream flavors and how he would probably just order a hot fudge sundae or, like me, a chocolate milkshake, despite the endless options. I watched my daughter spoon tiny bites of her strawberry cheesecake flavor to her mouth while she talked about friends and basketball, and I could tell she was feeling special and grown up hanging out, just her and I. There’s a different way your kids act when you find it’s just the two of you. I think, somehow, both of us can be much more ourselves this way. I could have sat there forever I think, frozen in that space where we were together and we were just fine, and the sun was warm and the ice cream was delicious.

Back home, as part of our work in the arts, we also run a Visitor’s Center store called The Merc that scoops up six different flavors of hard ice cream. Whenever my mom picks her grandkids up from school they wind up there, sampling the new flavors and negotiating bigger scoops. The Merc is that place for a lot of grammas and grandpas, an easy way to do something special together.

And we have our regulars in the community who come to sit together at the tables or on the deck on a sunny day, and then those who always make it a stop on their way through town. For some time, there was a man who came almost every day for one scoop, well dressed with time for a visit, because ice cream is only half of it. And then once, when I was working behind the counter, a young man came through the drive-through and ordered a vanilla cone. I might have asked him a question about a double scoop or if he wanted anything else, and he replied by telling me the cone was for his dog, who was laying in the backseat of his pickup. She was sick and he was giving her one last treat. I couldn’t stop the tears when I handed him the ice cream and told him it was on the house.

What am I trying to say here? Something profound about ice cream? Yes, maybe I am. That there are simple things like the coveted chokecherry flavor that only your favorite place has, or the way I know what my husband would order even before makes the choice. There’s something  purely human about sharing a double scoop or offering up a taste or trying to soften a bad day with something so simple. Or whenever you chose chip and mint or cookie dough, you think of who you were on the front porch of your childhood home and maybe you can smell the fresh cut lawn or the clover.

Or maybe you take a sip of that milkshake to give yourself a little reprieve from a hard day because your friend loved you enough to suggest it could help. And you think of your grandpa then, and how he once drove you across the Midwest to play music because he didn’t think you should go all those miles alone and there was always a diner with a sundae waiting for the two of you along the way.

I paid for my milkshake and as I headed out the door, the teenage boy who was sitting at the table behind me shuffled up to the counter where a pretty girl was working her after school job, hell bent on continuing the flirting I had interrupted with my order, and I was glad to see that teenagers are still teenagers the same way ice cream stays ice cream. And I hope they fall in love… 

Things to Look Forward To

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I’m a little late in posting last week’s column. As I type this, I am officially HOME at the ranch as of Wednesday evening.

On Wednesday morning I rang the bell to celebrate the completion of 33 proton radiation treatments and 6 chemo treatments over the course of 6 1/2 weeks.


This time has taken me away from my family for far longer than anyone should be away from their family. But it has given me the following:

Four new songs

Time to slow down and understand who I am in the quiet moments

An interest in watercolor painting

The Cher autobiography

Visits with my cousins, aunts and uncles and my far away friends

A little stress fracture in my foot from wandering to all the nearby pretty places and consequently, a better pair of walking shoes

A heart and body full of gratitude for my village

An unreasonable annoyance with parking garages and construction

An appreciation for Kwik Trip Gas stations

More adoration for my husband and all he is

Appreciation for the messy and noisy parts of my life propelled by my daughters

Heartburn and hair loss

Faith in the process

Hope

Chad flew in on Tuesday to help me pack up and drive me home. As always, no matter what comes, we ride home together.

It feels good to be back in my life and making the regular plans for track meets and goat wrangling and end of the school year celebrations. I am trying to take it a bit easy, but it’s hard to do when we haven’t really built our life around that concept. I know Chad was happy to have his help back getting the kids out the door the past couple days, that guy needs a vacation in the woods after all of this.

Anyway, below is a column I wrote after he and the kids visited me a few weeks back. Those weekend plans with family and friends in any capacity really made the weeks go faster. And while I won’t know until August how things are looking in the cancer-shrinking department, I am feeling fairly confident that we have this under control.

Lots of love to all of you who have helped see us through this. I could not be more grateful.

Things to look forward to


“Are you coming to visit me this weekend?” I asked my husband over a Facetime call last week while our daughters popped in and out to show me the kittens, or make funny faces to the camera, hair wrapped up in a towel after a bedtime shower. During our nightly visits while I’m at treatment in Rochester, at least one, or sometimes both of my girls, takes the phone into her room to have a private conversation with me, their mom, a little video square. Usually, the chat is about what they’re playing at recess, or news of a crush and then the “I wish you were home,” portion of the evening. Mostly Rosie, my eight-year-old, just turns herself into every cartoon animal in the rolodex of options and I have to see how she’d look if she were an octopus or a fox and so on until we both run out of steam and I wind up saying something motherly like, “when’s the last time you cleaned your hamsters cage?” or “have you been practicing your spelling words?” and she quickly hands the phone over to another family member.

I am not good on the phone, so being a phone-only mom for the past six weeks has sucked.

“No, I don’t think so actually. We just have so much going on here,” my husband replied, suspiciously.

And I say suspiciously, not because he’s not a good actor, but because I know him. He planned to make the trip last week and there’s no way this man wasn’t coming to see me.

“No, Mom. We can’t come” Edie chimed in from across the room and then the phone panned to her, a terrible liar.

“Quit messing with me people,” I demanded. “I need to know how to mentally prepare for my weekend.”

Turns out my husband was attempting a surprise visit with the girls, one where they would take a flight and show up at my door unannounced and I would be shocked and delighted after being sad and lonely. It was a sweet thought, but I made him confess. “The last thing I need in my life right now is any more surprises. I need something to look forward to!”

And so, on a Wednesday night during week five of my treatment schedule, he gave me just that, and I went to the store and shopped for the groceries the girls liked and made a little mental list of all the little trails I wanted to show them when they arrived. Turns out that along with their cute little suitcases, Rosie brought a little bug with her, so we spent most of our time together snuggling, coloring and watching movies from the 90s.

We did get a little rollerblading in on the endless sidewalks, which is a big deal for kids who live on gravel roads

But on Sunday afternoon I left my husband and youngest to nap in the basement and took my ten-year-old out to enjoy the beautiful, seventy-degree day, just the two of us. She sat in the front seat of the Jeep singing to the music she chose on my phone and somehow looking taller and more grown up with every passing minute. I asked her if she wanted to go shopping or try one of those electric scooters they have hanging out all over town, but the girl indulged me and so we headed to one of my favorite nature trails on the edge of town.

The sun was warm on our pale limbs and made the trees and blooms look neon against the blue sky. Everything in town was waking up with that sunshine and we strolled along the paved path holding hands and noticing the baby geese swimming with their momma in the pond, and the turtle sunning himself on a log, and a really ugly dog hanging with his family and all the babies in strollers and cute kids skipping and running and fishing, just happy to be out and together, like us. After getting the initial lay of the land, I found myself letting my ten-year-old lead the way in this big park with dozens of trails and things to explore. It wasn’t premeditated, I just followed behind her as she stopped to pick up a rock, or put her nose in a blossom, chattering and singing and trying out her favorite Texas accent, reminding me what it was like to be ten and outside and completely myself. And because she’s a country kid she found her way off the paved path to the dirt trails along the running water where she sat down on a rock and I sat beside her, watching the water run.

When Edie was a baby, I would take her with me every day on a walk like this. I would put her in her little pack and face her toward the world, and we would trudge through the hills together. When she got older, I’d pull her in a wagon out of the driveway and down to the barnyard or on the dirt trail up to the fields. And then she could walk on her own and, with her little sister strapped to my chest, I would just follow her outside on the road and into the grass or trees, to keep her safe while she splashed in a puddle or pulled up a flower or jumped off a rock.

Now, at ten, she doesn’t need me to wander with her anymore, and so it occurred to me that it’s been a while since we’ve done the thing we used to do together every day that the sun was warm enough.

I watched her make a little boat with a stick and two leaves and throw it in the creek, laughing as it drowned in the water. I followed her up to a mural on an old building foundation, and then we found ourselves in an old cemetery reading  the names on the headstones and wondering about what life was like one hundred years ago before finding the trail back to the car and stopping for ice cream on the way home.

“It was so nice to spend that time with just Edie,” I said to my husband who was snuggled on the couch for a much-needed break with our youngest. “I know she loved it too. She needed her mom, in person.”

 The next day I drove my family back to the airport and hugged them goodbye while I stayed back for another week-and-a-half of cancer zapping. I cried alone in my empty Jeep on a new but now familiar highway,  anxious to have my life back soon, anxious to be an in-person mom again, anxious to get to all the things to look forward to soon… 

Villages everywhere

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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?

Visiting Home

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After I completed the second week of my six week cancer treatment at Mayo Clinic, I was able to get back to the ranch for the weekend. I spent Saturday morning helping coach Edie’s first soccer game

and Saturday night dancing with my husband and celebrating with family and friends at a gala we host to raise money for arts and parks and recreation programming in our community.

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My treatment schedule allowed me to stay home all day on Sunday to spend time with my family.  It turned out the first calf of the year waited for me to get home to be born and so I got to be part of the start of the season. Calving on our place always coincides with crocus season, so my sister and I packed the girls into or side-by-side (which is harder to do these days now that they’re growing up so fast) and popped up to the hilltops to collect a hat full and deliver them to grandmas in exchange for ice cream. I got to see the new kittens that were just born and meet my sister’s new little chickens, sit in the sun on my parents’ deck, visit with my in-laws who came down to watch the girls for our night out, scratch the dogs’ ears, shoot a million hoops with the girls and eat my husband’s grilled hamburgers before packing my bags and getting back on a plane. All of these things that are part of the regular programming held extra shine for me, of course.

Up until this point I have been able to see the girls every weekend, but I’m not sure now exactly when I’ll be back before the end of this. I guess it all depends on how I feel, but it will be at least two more weeks. I fought back tears the whole trip.  

It’s a strange thing to be a weekend visitor of your own home, especially when you consider yourself the Co-CEO of the operation. In some ways the visit reminds you of the ways you’re needed, like the un-swept floors, the girls’ rooms that noticeably haven’t had a mom’s reminder and the Christmas lights that still need to come down off the house. These are the things I pay attention to, but they aren’t that important. The important things are handled just fine without me—getting to and from school, cooking and the meal-train that my friends set up to help Chad, after-school activities, bedtime snuggles, playing at the cousins’, homework—to know that I can step away and leave our lives generally unscathed, except for maybe the matters of the heart, is a gift.

But then that leaves me here, in this duplex, hundreds of miles from that life, with only myself to take care of for the first time since we got married nearly 20 years ago.

Now, I travel quite a bit with my music, so it’s not uncommon for me to be on my own and away from the family for a week at a time, maybe twice a year or so. It seems like this has helped prepare the girls and myself for this weird blip better than if I was a full-time stay at home mom. So that’s a blessing. But people have been asking me how I’m doing in terms of my energy-level, and to be honest, I haven’t been as rested since before Edie was born.

I went grocery shopping the other day and had to ask myself, what do I eat? What do I cook if it’s just for me? I picked up a box of macaroons and raspberries and just sort-of wandered around because well, I had time to do that–time to wander the grocery store without little people trailing behind me or a rush to get to the next meeting or event.

In every community I visit when I am traveling for music or work, I always picture what my life would be like if I lived there. If I have time, I like to walk their parks or neighborhoods or visit their cute cafes and shops and get to know the place and how I feel in it a bit. Here in Rochester, I imagine I would be a bike rider using their pretty paths along the river every night. And I would have a little dog for my lap on the couch and a big dog to come with on those bike rides and walks. I would have a nice lawn to mow and pretty flowers out front that the deer would eat. I would have a job in marketing or run a little shop or, maybe something like I do now, and my kids would play soccer in that cute park I walked past last night. There was a time I thought a community like this was where I would wind up, before moving home to the ranch was an option. If it did become my fate, I will tell you, there would have been a scooter era.

In preparing my mind for my time here away from my family I lined up some goals for myself, like get outside every day so I don’t go crazy, play my guitar more, do some sit-ups and pushups, read a book, start work on my new book and doodle–all the things working parents wish they had time for when we’re in the thick of parenting things. As it turns out, trying to morph back into a single, child-free woman for a few weeks at a time after a twenty-year hiatus is weird. To be honest, I’m spending most of my time working. And there’s a nice blessing in that too.

But I’m also eating avocado toast for breakfast and those macaroons whenever I want without judgement. And doing some sit-ups and always getting outside. I’ve considered knocking on my neighbor’s door to see if she needs me to walk her dog, but I probably won’t. That might be weird too.

Thank you for all the love and support you’ve sent my way during this journey. I read every card and every email and, by the time you read this, well, I’ll be half way done!

Onward!  

Make Art. It’s an Emergency.

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“Make art now. It’s an emergency.”

I saw this sentiment come across my feed the other day and it made me pause for a minute. Art as an emergency? It shouldn’t make sense, but it does. Entirely. In fact, I wish I would have thought to put it as bluntly. 

Emergency indicates a frantic moment forward to fix something that is broken, but the process of making art and music is quite often slow and methodical, one that’s personal, meditative, trial and error and try again. To make a painting, for most of us, is not lucrative. To sing at the top of our lungs in the car or out in the hills with your kids makes us no money at all. Dancing in the kitchen, you may argue, is not going to save a life. 

But could it? 

Recently I received confirmation the cancer that was cut out of my airway over five years ago has slowly crept back, this time on the outside of my esophagus. After a month or so in the weird and worried place of not really knowing what it all means, I’ve learned that it’s time to head back to Mayo clinic to handle it. After some testing and intake in Rochester this week, I’ll be there for six weeks of radiation treatment and a low dose of once-a-week chemo. We’ve been keeping an eye on this, it’s treatable and I’m going to be fine, but ugh. It’s annoying. 

Is that a word anyone uses for a cancer diagnosis? I don’t know, but I think I’m grateful for it. To be annoyed means I’m not in imminent danger, or in pain. It just means I’m inconvenienced.

But let me tell you the worst part about a reoccurring cancer diagnosis for me (and maybe some of you who have found yourselves in similar situations can agree) it’s hands down sharing the news with the people who love and worry about you. 

I hate it. I don’t want to be the reason anyone worries. That’s a big one for me. Don’t worry. Don’t worry about me. There’s that part. 

And I don’t want to be away from them. 

That’s the other one.

But what you want in times like these doesn’t matter. You do what you have to do and then you get called brave, even though brave indicates a choice. There’s no choice. There’s just the next step. 

Which brings me to the art. I’ve spent most of my career working to figure out how to bring more of it to rooms of people in rural communities. And over the course of six months or so I’ve seen that vision really blossom in the work we’re doing with our arts foundation. And I’ve felt it more profoundly on the stages on which I have been so fortunate to stand and sing. The rooms have been full, every seat in the crowd there waiting to listen, to tap their toes, to feel connected to something. Every chair sat behind an easel waiting for instruction, or body hovered over a paint pallet looking to create, is there to make something that wasn’t there before. Not for money. Not for acclaim. Not for anything but the learning, the sitting together, the laughing, the making. 

What is that?

 What brings people out of their homes or out of the everyday tasks of being human to create or witness art? And why is it hard to explain? Maybe because it’s primal? Like, we weren’t born to live behind computer screens, or to move eighty-miles-per-hour down a four-lane highway for hours a day. We weren’t born to know tax structure or the best product made to clean our floors. But turn on some music and watch a baby start to wiggle. Give a toddler a brush and watch her create circles. Grab your husband’s hands and he might just spin you around. Sing “You are my Sunshine” to your ailing grandmother and watch her toes tap and her lips move to sing along.

I told my kids the news the other day. They cried a bit because cancer is scary. I told them I was going to be just fine, but daddy might make them do the laundry when I’m gone. I showed them my muscles; they showed me theirs and then hit the ground to do some pushups. They can do more than me. Way more.  

After school, they asked me if it was still ok to feel happy. It hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to give them that permission, but now I know. We turned up the music loud on the way home, they sang the National Anthem at the top of their lungs in the kitchen while I made supper. They sit at the table and draw pictures of aliens and unicorns and a girl on a hill with long black hair. They dance down the hallway with the music on blast on the way to bed. I sit behind my guitar in the dark when they’re sleeping and things I didn’t know I had to say come out of my mouth in a song. 

We lose this instinct, and we lose ourselves in the sorrow and callouses that living creates.  We can’t let it happen. It’s an emergency.

Snow on the backs of horses

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It’s March now, and I feel the chilled surrender that January brings start to break up and separate inside of me, even as I stand under a gray sky that blends into the horizon as if it weren’t a sky at all but a continuation of the snowy landscape…below us, above us…surrounding us.

Flakes fell from that sky yesterday afternoon, big and soft and gentle they drifted down to the icy earth and coaxed me from behind my windows to come outside and stick out my tongue.

When the snow falls like this, not sideways or blowing or whipping at our faces, but peaceful and steady and quiet, it’s a small gift. I feel like I’m tucked into the mountains instead of exposed and vulnerable on the prairie. I feel like, even in the final days before March, that someone has shaken the snow globe just the right amount to calm me down and give me some hope for warmer weather.

When the snow falls like this, I go look for the horses. I want to see what those flakes look like as they settle on their warm backs, on their soft muzzles and furry ears. I trudge to the barnyard or to the fields and wait for them to spot me, watching as they move toward that figure in a knit cap and boots to her knees, an irregular dot on a landscape they know by heart.

I know what they want as they stick their noses in my pockets, sniff and fight for the first spot in line next to me. I know they want a scratch between their ears.

I know they want a bite of grain.
They know I can get it for them.
Our horses in the winter take on a completely different persona. The extra layer of fur they grow to protect them from the weather makes them appear less regal and more approachable.

Softer.

I like to take off my mitten and run my fingers through that wool, rubbing them down to the skin underneath where they keep the smell of clover and the warmth of the afternoon sun. I like to put my face up to their velvet noses and look into those eyes and wonder if they miss the green grass as much as I do.

On this snowy, gray, almost March afternoon the horses are my closest link to an inevitable summer that doesn’t seem so inevitable under this knit hat, under this colorless sky.

I lead them to the grain bin and open the door, shoveling out scoops of grain onto the frozen ground. They argue over whose pile is whose, nipping a bit and moving from spot to spot like a living carrousel. I talk to  them, “whoah boys, easy” and walk away from the herd with an extra scoop for the gelding who gets bullied, his head bobbing and snorting behind me.

In a month or so the ground will thaw and the fur on the back of these animals will let loose and shake off, revealing the slick and silky coat of chestnut, white, deep brown, gold and black underneath. We will brush them off, untangle their manes, check their feet and climb on their backs and those four legs will carry us over the hills and down in the draws and to the fields where we will watch for elk or deer or stray cattle as the sun sinks below the horizon.

I move my hand across the mare’s back, clearing away the snowflakes that have settled in her long hair and I rest my cheek there, breathing in the scent of hay and dust and warmer days.

She’s settled into chewing now, his head low and hovering above the pile of grain I placed before him. He’s calm and steady so I can linger there for a moment and wonder if he tastes summer in the grain the same way I smell it in her skin.

My farewell to winter is long, lingering and ceremonious.

But it has begun. At last, it has begun.

Hamster search and rescue

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“Mom, uh, I need your help,” a little voice chirped from the living room.

I was sitting at my computer at the corner of the kitchen counter, my perch and work desk for when one of the kids is home sick, which was the case today. Rosie had a suspicious runny eye that required antibiotics, so we thought best to keep the infection quarantined at home, but otherwise, she felt perfectly fine, which was a problem. Because the girl was bored.

Rosie is the second born and doesn’t do solo playing very well and so after she was done bouncing the basketball all through the house, and then the football, she decided to go get her hamster for a little snuggle on the couch while she watched a show. I had forgotten about the un-caged rodent, and apparently so had she, until she felt it maneuver out of her hand and watched his little nub of a tail disappear into the cracks of the couch.

“What do you need?” I asked, barely looking up from my laptop.

“Uh, my hamster’s, uh, in the couch.”

I popped up, panicked.

“What do you MEAN he’s in the couch?” I responded as calmly as a mom possibly could when presented with the possibility of yet another missing hamster situation.

“I mean, I was holding him and then, well, I think he’s in the cushions…”

Slowly and surely, I removed the cushions from the couch, while directing Rosie to stand by, hoping to the rodent gods that Rocket would just be waiting in the corner to be rescued.

He wasn’t.

But do you know what was waiting for us under those couch cushions? Sixty hair ties, a half-eaten sucker, twenty-seven candy wrappers, a bouncy ball, a squishy frog, a half a cookie, a million crumbs, a couple coloring pages and a partridge in a pear tree. If the hamster was indeed loose, at least he could come back to the couch to for supplies and a buffet.

“Rosie, start searching everywhere!” I declared as I ran my hands along the edges of the couch searching for any cracks he might have descended into before tilting the piece of furniture on its side.

“Oh noooo!!!! I can’t do this again!!! I should have gotten a lizard,” my daughter wailed.

Turns out our couch is sealed up on the bottom and so there was still hope that Rocket was contained. I was in the process of tilting the couch on its side when my husband returned from chores and assessed the scene. I’ve never been so happy to see another adult, honestly.  And I swear, he didn’t say a word about any of it, because that’s his superpower—to keep the judgement of his family’s actions locked up for eternity so he can focus all his energy on problem-solving. I put my ear up to the couch to listen for signs of life. My husband got down on his hands and knees in the under-the-couch rubble and shined the flashlight through the semi-transparent mesh stapled on to the bottom of the couch. Rosie held her hands to her chest and whimpered “Oh, not again. Please, not again.”  I poked my right eye through the crack next to the arm rest and spotted the bandit.

“Get the carrots!” I whispered to her. “He’s hiding behind the arm, I think we can lure him out.”

Chad whipped out his multi-tool-plier, clearly made for emergencies exactly like this one, and started pulling the staples securing the mesh from the edges under the couch, I stood guard on the back side and, after one failed attempt, Rocket was returned via carrot sticks back into Rosie’s little hands.

“I think I’ll put him back now,” she declared with relief.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I agreed.

And that’s just one way a day can be derailed around here. I swear, between the cows and horses, the lizard, dogs and cats, I think the hamster even has the goats beat in the drama department.

If you need me, I’ll be cleaning under all the furniture because, apparently my superpower isn’t keeping up with the vacuuming.

Nothing’s Forever

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“Sometimes I don’t know how happy to be…”

I wrote this line nearly fifteen years ago in a song I titled “Nothing’s Forever.” I sing it at nearly every show, and it’s one of those lines that has popped into my head at different times in my life. I remember where I was when I wrote it, sitting on the hand-me-down leather couch in my grandma’s old ranch house. I had just moved back to the ranch with my husband and was in the in-between time of trying to decide what I wanted to do next—take a big girl job or keep on writing and singing. To figure it out I took to walking the hills daily, and on one of those walks, this little waltz came into my head.

“Sometimes I don’t know how happy to be,” was a line that came while alone in that ranch house. The world was changing all around me, with oil wells being punched in the hills and new roads being made and old buildings and barns and fences that had been fixtures of my childhood crumbling and losing their shine. The community I knew as a kid wasn’t going to look exactly the same for my kids, and there was a part of me mourning that loss, and then the other part was excited at the possibilities ahead.

Fast forward now to the possibilities ahead. We’re living them, with the kids we prayed for growing fast and the old barn still standing, but barely, begging us to make a decision about it. And the oil wells have turned to pumping units and the new roads are well worn and we keep moving.

“Sometimes I am scared I won’t know who I am, because nothing’s forever, baby.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” I think as I glanced at my oldest daughter looking out the window of our SUV on the way to school. Her hair is long and blonde and it waved so pretty under the brush this morning. She doesn’t like it. She wants it to be straight and slicked and I remember that feeling when I was her age. My hair was too poofy, too brown, my nose too big, my arms too long. I don’t want her to feel that way, I want her to love her long blond wavy hair and her face and her lanky limbs, and so I looked in the rearview mirror and told both my girls they’re beautiful, which seemed out of the blue to them as they sang along to the latest song they love. They looked at my eyes and smiled. I tell them this often, even though there’s conflicting parenting advice about it. But I say it anyway. And I tell them they’re smart too. And kind. And brave. I say it all. I have to, because, well, you know, nothing’s forever, baby.

When we got home that afternoon my daughters headed outside to shoot hoops on the cement slab. The weather has been so nice, we’re being tricked into doing spring things, like switching from basketball to mud puddle jumping. When my daughters came inside, they happily presented me with shoes and pants and boots and freshly washed town jackets all coated in mud. And, as it turns out, they’re not too grown up for giving themselves mud beards. I had been stressed about the amount of laundry that had piled up and was finally getting to the end of it, and so my initial reaction was “Good Lord, I just washed your jackets!”  It was a choice that quieted their giggles, and I regretted it instantly.

“Sometimes I don’t know how happy to be…” it ran through my head, and I changed course.

I’ve never cared about broken things really. Dirty things can come clean. Remember? Remember what will matter down the road.

And so, I laughed. “You girls are crazy, get together for a picture then get in the shower!”

“If you hold tight the water, it slips through your hands, the same goes for wild birds and hourglass sands. You can chase down the light of the last setting sun, but you will not catch it, no matter how fast you run. Of all of the wild things no one can tame, one thing remains, one thing still remains, My love is forever, baby.”

Owl song

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I woke up this morning to our owl hooting outside our bedroom window. I call it our owl because he lives in the trees where we live too. I see him sometimes when I pull down our drive at dusk, perched on the road or on the top of an old oak tree. It isn’t often, but when I get to witness his big wings spread and swoop silently away in the disruption of my headlights, I feel like a witness to a sacred thing.

And so, the declaration of the owl’s presence was the first thing I said to my husband when I woke up this morning. “The owl was hooting,” I declared before my eyes were even fully awake. He opened his arms up and I buried my head there for a few moments before pouring the kids their morning cereal.

I read somewhere that in many spiritual traditions, seeing an owl is a reminder to pay attention to your inner wisdom. In some cultures, an owl hoot is viewed as a sign of spiritual protection or a guide through personal transformation or spiritual growth. A little more digging into the symbolism of the owl uncovers a dozen differing and conflicting interpretations of the animal’s presence in your life, from a hoot at night signifying immanent death to an owl’s call predicting the gender of an unborn baby.

I don’t know what it means for me that I’ve been hearing the hoot of our owl more regularly lately, except maybe that I’m listening, and that it’s comforting to me somehow to be reminded we’re out here making our casseroles and snuggling under blankets alongside the wild things, especially when the world seems heavy.

When we built our house, we put in big glass doors that slide open to the tall hill and stock dam outside. Everyone that comes to visit will first take a stop by each door to look out, hands in their pockets, to see what might come over that big hill, or walk toward that water for a drink. They’ll press their faces closer to the glass and I’ll worry that they’ll notice how are deck needs to be redone, or the grill that needs to be cleaned, but they never do. They’re looking beyond that always, into the grass and the trees and the sky.

This morning the fog settled in the low spots and blocked the sunrise. The turkeys came down to wander through the swing set and pick at the old tomato plants in my garden.

Later a coyote will come up over that hill and slink down through the path in the oaks and ash. The doe and her two fawns will eat acorns by the tire swing and it’s warm today, so the squirrels will be out, fat and frantic and chattering in the treetops where our owl sleeps.

There was a time this was the only news a human could know, and in this they looked for more meaning. In all this evolution of language and technology, connectedness and schooling and travel and religion, still, where’s the answer?

What will become of us?I close my eyes and listen for the owl call.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

from The Peace of Wild Things And Other Poems (Penguin, 2018)