Tag Archives: life

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.

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)

Stories will save us

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Photo by Jessica Lifland | http://www.jessicalifland.com

I’m writing this from my hotel room in Elko where I’m here for the 41st Annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. I have made this trip to perform for several years now, but it feels like we need a gathering of storytellers now more than we ever have.

I spent the past few days traveling to schools to perform with a Utah rancher and cowboy  poet named Darrell Holden. A couple lovely volunteers drive us around to these schools in a mini-van with a sound guy and by the time it’s done we all fall in love with each other and the kids too.

In two days, we visited five schools, so the gig isn’t tough. The two of us shared in the 45-minute set where I explained how snot-scicles can form in thirty below temps and made them all sing “You Are My Sunshine” with me so loud they blew Darrell’s hat off. Darrell shared a poem about all the things he will NOT rope, and gave a succinct and funny presentation on why cowboys dress the way they do.

Anyway, every session was a bit different, but in one Darrell shared a story about how he used to ride to his grandmother’s ranch by moonlight when he was a kid. It was nearly 40 miles (with a little help by trailer from his dad in the rough patches). He recalls the tradition and the quiet and the way he felt when he rode up over the hill to see the lights on in his grandmother’s kitchen. She would always be up waiting for him, ready with a big meal of homemade bread and porkchops and gravy. It was their tradition, and one of the things I imagine makes him smile as big as he does and show up grateful in the world. He wished every kid to have a grandma like his and he wished it out loud to them as if it could make it true…

I remembered the lights of my grandmother’s house then too and the times I would come in from sitting shotgun with my dad when he fed cows in the dark after his day job. I remembered the smell of the dusty seats and the summer released into the winter air when the bale rolled out behind that old pickup. And the hum of the heater and the sweat that would form under my beanie as me and the pickup warmed up too much. He didn’t need my help, I would ride along just to be with him.

It’s why the smell of diesel exhaust makes me feel loved.

These stories we’ll share on and off stages this week are not big tragedies or sagas or dramas worth a novel. But they are ours and they might be yours too and lately all I can think is it’s our stories that will save us.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth | http://www.marlaaufmuth.com

I think it’s as good a time as any to share a new love song…

Honey, let the dogs in

Honey, let the dogs in, it’s two below
the wind’s blowing cold through that unset door
where the flies get in in the summertime
breeze in the spring, and the soft moonlight
Thank God for cracks sometimes

Speaking of cracks, are you ever gonna fix
The one in the drive, been there since ‘06
I never really minded the dandelions growing
until the kids got too big for picking, and blowing
Then they turned to weeds again

Sometimes it rains and shines all at once
Look around, it’s just the two of us
A pot of gold in a pile of dust
Come outside before it’s gone

Honey, stomp the snow off your winter boots
You smell like Marlboros and diesel fumes
Makes me wonder who we might be
Between the sidewalks and city streets
Probably just us, but clean

Sometimes it rains and shines all at once
Look around, it’s just the two of us
A pot of gold in a pile of dust
Come outside before it’s gone

You build these walls up nice and square
And put a piece of your heart in there
I love the blue walls and creaky stair
and the times we all fit in the big chair

Honey let the dogs in, you hear them whine
It was never money, it was always time
time that slips in through that unset door
how can forever leave you wanting more…

Listen!

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Rosie made a free throw in one of her basketball games last week during a tournament in the big town three hours away. It was the last game of three, each game resulting in pretty terrible losses, as they tend to be when you’re a small school playing a big school.

Essentially, they got whipped. Every. Time.

But if you asked Rosie how it went that weekend, she will tell you that it went great. According to her, making that free throw was the happiest she’s been in months, and that included Christmas.

And I believe it. We had positioned ourselves and her grandpa and grandma and family friends to watch the game right behind the basket she made. And you should have seen her face look up at us in the crowd when that basket sunk in. Pure proud-of-herself beaming smile. I caught it on video. She’s watched it a dozen times.

Turns out it was the only point the team made in that game, but it didn’t matter to Rosie. Her fans were there to see her shining moments, and she had a couple, including a rebound and a good pass. When you’re in second grade, the little steps are huge strides in learning something new and it’s fun to see.

“I’m glad we came,” my dad said as we walked out of the school in the big town that afternoon. “Just to see her look up in the stands for us made the trip worth it.”

Now, I know there are many more important things I could be addressing today as we watch political strife play out before us in our communities and in our national news. But I think there’s a lot to take from the showing-up part in this story.

Because a few weeks ago I missed Rosie’s shining moment. I signed up to work a busy concession stand during a time her team happened to be playing. I would try to pop away to peek, but with 84 teams in town, there was quite a demand for taco-in-a-bag. And so I missed the hoop she made.

It happens.  And the kid understood the concept of “it takes a village to pull a tournament off, and the moms and dad are that village” when I explained myself. (Because Lord knows I needed to explain myself.)  But if her smile was as big when she heard the swoosh, I wouldn’t know. I sure know it wasn’t as big on the way home.

The joy is as important to share in as the hard stuff. And sometimes sharing in that can simply mean being there to witness it, to look up and acknowledge that something is happening here and I need to pay attention. I need to listen. I need to be there.

It’s not a new message, but it bears repeating: The happiest times in my life have only been the happiest because I had someone there to share it with. The hard times were only made bearable because I had someone there to help shoulder the load. Or at least hear me.

At least hear me.

My ten-year-old shot that word at me recently as she was sharing about some issues she was having with her friends at school. I usually try that tactic first, but on this day I decided to try a fix-it technique. “Just ignore it,” I said, or some type of all-encompassing advice to try to move her past the tears quickly. And she stared me square in the eyes and said, “You don’t understand. You aren’t listening!”

And she was right. I thought I knew what I needed to know from being a ten-year-old girl myself, but that that wasn’t the point. And if it was, she didn’t need me to know everything. She just needed me to hear her.  

Listen. Hear me. Be there.

It’s a small action and it’s sometimes harder than it sounds. But in parenting and in community it’s a small action that can make all the difference.  

.

Basketball Season

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January is settling in in rural North Dakota and my husband and I have found ourselves in a new season of our lives–and that season is called basketball.

Now anyone who grew up in a Class B school is familiar with the amount of passion a little town can put into their sports teams. And while Watford City has grown out of their Class B status, when it comes to who chooses to sit in the stands game after game, I would say the passion is still there.

4th Grade Girls hanging with the Varsity team last week

Our daughters started practicing for the first time with a little travel ball team in December. My husband picked up a hand-me-down basketball hoop for the driveway this fall in anticipation for this turn of athletic events, and we spent a fair number of evenings teaching the girls to dribble and competing in games of Lightning and PIG. When I was a kid in the summer this was a regular after-supper activity and so it’s bringing back some fun memories of shooting hoops with my little sister and my dad on our driveway—the only paved spot on the 3,000 acres.

In the fall my sister and I were taking a walk down the creek behind our childhood home with our daughters. We were admiring the changing leaves and watching our kids float sticks down the trickling stream when we came across a faded and severely deflated basketball about a half mile away from the house.

“I guess this is what happened to the ones we couldn’t get to,” my sister laughed, remembering the way that the hoop was positioned meant that every single air ball you threw was guaranteed to roll through a barbed wire fence into a gnarly patch of burdock, down the steep hill of the coulee and, if you didn’t make it in time (you never made it in time) land, splash, in the creek.

Oh, it made a good shot out of my little sister, who was the athlete of the family. Competitive by nature, basketball was her sport. So much so that I was able to watch her play in the state tournament in the big town next to my mother who was dressed head-to-toe in Wolves gear, complete with a cow bell and face paint. I would have laughed at her enthusiasm if I wasn’t siting there right next to her with an “Alex’s Sister” t-shirt and a temporary wolf paw tattoo on my face. So I guess I should have seen it all coming…

Last week our two daughters and my niece played in a huge tournament in our hometown. Over 80 teams participated in games over the course of two days, which meant that, counting parents, siblings and a smattering of extended family, there were probably like seventy-thousand fans in the building, all emotionally invested in every point, steal, pivot and play these elementary school kids were pulling out on the court.

The me that existed before motherhood, the one who didn’t understand that having children changes your DNA or something, would have been surprised to witness the back-and-forth commentary that went on between my husband and I as we stood between the courts trying to watch both kids play at the same time. As if a choir girl and a former wrestler had anything constructive to say about playing defense. At one point my husband had to stop me from just yelling “Hey! Hey! Hey” over and over at Edie, because I was nervous and I didn’t even realize I was even yelling anything at all.

What. Has. Happened. To. Me…

“The heart-rate-spike a mom gets watching her kids play sports equals a full workout.” My friend sent this to me after she too had spent that day in the gym going through the physical and emotional turmoil that is being a parent of a kid that plays elementary school sports.

“So that’s why I had to lay down on the heating pad when I got home,” I responded.

And let me be clear here, I’m not advocating for the yelling. Nothing good comes from sideline instructions from an over-anxious parent. But being there to witness the big beaming faces of our daughters’ looking into the crowd for us after making a basket or stealing the ball, well, that’s where the cheering comes in. And I’m a big promoter of that part. Apparently, it’s part of my DNA now.

Anyway, If you need me, I’ll be in some bleachers somewhere. You’ll probably hear me…

Only in dreams

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I just woke up from a dream where I was in my grandma’s old house on the ranch. I was in the basement in the top bunk of the bedroom with the hot-lava colored carpet, under a new blanket, noticing the spiderwebs in the corners of the ceiling and barn-wood covered wall. I asked the girl in the bed next to me, someone I knew in the dream but don’t know in the real world, how strange it is to feel like you’re nine-years-old again when you’re in your gramma’s house. And then I flicked a spider off my covers and walked across the hallway to the next room to find that my daughters had been there, they had set up a school-room for their dolls, using the nightstand and the bed with the scratchy comforter.  The dolls were lined up neat in the space and I scanned my eyes across each one and then I cried.

There are places I can only visit now in my dreams, but it seems I go this little house more than any other place in my memory.

We had a childhood friend who we lost in an accident a few years out of high school. He loved to work on cars and had the neatest handwriting and sat behind me in science class and always had a stick of gum to share. He was smart and neat, a mix of sweet and serious. I think of him always in his corduroy FFA jacket or at Charlie’s working on our friend’s race car. He was the first boy to ever buy me flowers. I was in seventh grade and I didn’t know how to act when a boy buys you flowers. I know I said thank you, I know I did that much, but then what? Like the old house I’ll never visit again, too quickly he became someone I now only see in dreams. And, again, like the old house, out of all the people I’ve lost, for some reason, he visits most often. And it’s always good to see him, except I wish that it could be that he lived on his farm on the other side of town and he works on tractors with his boys and my husband would text him to come over for New Years Eve and he should bring beer and the kids of course. I like to imagine he would have made his way back home like us, because I think that’s what he would have wanted.

The stock dam outside our house has frozen over smooth this winter, good enough for the girls to shove stocking feet in ice skates and head over the hill to glide around under the watch of the big hill we call Pots and Pans and the tall oak and ash. I stand on the side and watch them spin and fall and laugh and bruise their knees under fluffy snowpants. I wonder if I should buy my own ice skates this winter, it’s been years since I’ve been on them, but man, it used to be so fun. My little sister and I would walk down to the creek and shovel the snow off, then sit on the bank and lace up our skates. I remember one winter the snow didn’t need to be cleared and we could skate all the way up that little creek, like a magical icy trail among the trees. I watch my girls working on spins with their arms out and know there are versions of myself that I can never be again, not even if I put on the skates.

On New Years Eve I will ask my husband to build a fire on the side of that dam and we will invite our neighbors and family to come and skate. We’ll do this to create a memory for those kids and to recreate the good ones we have tied to this season. Because, yes, there are places we can only go in our dreams, and people we will only find there now. But while we’re here, while we’re here, maybe we should, maybe we could, make something for us to dream about…

My favorite thing

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My favorite thing is the sound of little voices at Christmastime, singing out without restrain and all the confidence and innocence only a child holds. “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolf” sound the best when sung standing up in the bleachers of the elementary school gym, or on risers under lights at the holiday program. These songs were made to be sung by kids with boogers plugging their tiny noses, dressed in itchy sweaters and floofy skirts with at least one kid getting so entirely in the spirit of things with his dance moves that all eyes are inevitably on him, as they should be.

My favorite thing is the sound of voices together in a little country church after the lights have been dimmed and we have successfully lit one another’s candles without starting anyone’s hair on fire.  Your dad and mom make a sandwich of you and your sisters and maybe your gramma and grampa, aunts and uncles and cousins are within arm’s reach, if you’re lucky and need another lap to sit on. Your best friend is across the room with her family too and her hair’s fixed in curls and she looks beautiful, and so do you and we all know the words to “Silent Night” and so you sing together with confidence, and love and gratefulness and it feels like peace.

My favorite is wondering if the magic of Santa could truly be real and if you could hear the reindeer on the roof if you stayed up late enough and listened. My favorite is believing the story that your grampa told you of the hoofprints he found on the front lawn when he was a kid. And the bites those reindeer took out of the carrots you left, and the cookies you baked and frosted with your mom you’ve set out with the milk, even when you’ve grown old enough to know better, you do it anyway, for your parents and little sister, and maybe, just in case. 

My favorite is throwing the horses and cattle a few extra scoops of grain or cake in the crisp morning of the holiday and how, in some way, it always feels like those animals know it’s a special day too.

My favorite is the smell of caramel rolls when you come in with the cold on your coat, shaking off the snow, stomping your boots, your husband or your dad switching from work clothes to town clothes to stay in for the day….unless there is snow for sledding later. Then we’ll all go out again and then that is my favorite, because on Christmas we all to go the hill. On Christmas, even mom and gramma take a turn down. 


My favorite is the prime rib dinner served on the good dishes from the old buffet in the living room. And I like the broccoli salad the way mom does it, and I like to make the cheeseball in the shape of a snow man and everyone makes a fuss over it because there has to be a cheeseball in the shape of something or it’s not Christmas. My favorite is the sound of my dad’s guitar in the living room after the dessert has been served and we’re all full and sleepy and he asks the grand kids to sing along and he chooses “Go Tell in on the Mountain” just like we sang in Sunday School when he was young and we were young and you get a little lonesome for a time and place you can only go again because of the music. My favorite has always been the music. My favorite has always been the songs…   

‘Tis the Season for Christmas Songs (Even the Traumatic Ones)

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WATFORD CITY, N.D. — For the past few weeks, I’ve been turning on the Christmas music for our drive to and from town with our daughters. ’Tis the season, of course, and also, we were looking for just the right song to sing together at church on Christmas Eve.

These girls of mine are tough DJs and make quick judgments about whether a song is worth a complete listen. I know, typically, what is going to land well with them at this point.

Rosie likes a little rock and R&B, and Edie loves a female powerhouse voice, preferably one singing about keying her ex’s car or (gasp!) offing him entirely. Maybe I would be more concerned about it if I wasn’t singing along at the top of my lungs to Reba’s “Fancy” and The Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” at her age like these songs weren’t about the darkest of female experiences. Turns out “Goodbye Earl” transcends generations as one of Edie’s top 10 go-to car ride requests.

Knowing this, I thought I would be safe to have a little fun with our Christmas song mix this morning, so I cranked it when “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” came up on the stream. “Have you heard this one?” I asked, looking back at them from the rearview mirror.

“Oh, my dad loves this song,” replied my sweet little niece.

And then, after the first verse rolled through, I heard Edie’s distraught voice: “Did the grandma die?!”

“Uhhhhh,” I said, pausing to think about it. “No, I think she just got hurt.”

Cue the second verse where I find out that indeed, the grandma died. And consequently, the grandpa was taking it well because he got to drink his beer uninterrupted with the only concern being whether to open her gifts or send them back.

“Well, yeah, I guess she does die,” I admitted after the song revealed itself.

“This song is TERRIBLE!” Edie exclaimed.

“What kind of CHRISTMAS song is THIS?!” Rosie demanded.

“My dad sings this one loud,” my niece chimed in.

I flipped the mix to a Carrie Underwood Christmas mix and we all calmed ourselves, because apparently these girls do have limits.

Anyway, by the time you read this, we will have practiced our version of “Little Drummer Boy” about 6,000 times, and I will have had to break up a dozen or so arguments about the whole ordeal, because is it really Christmas without a couple sister fights while the elf is watching from his recent perch, probably on top of the fridge, because he’s running out of ideas?

I hope you’re all settling into the season and looking forward to your celebrations. If you need me, I’ll be looking for that gift exchange T-shirt I bought for my niece’s boyfriend that somehow disappeared into the black hole that is our house.

The missing hamster is probably using it as bedding, so I hope she likes it. (Although I have a suspicion one of the girls will be opening it on Christmas Day because I let my husband loose on the gift wrapping job …)

Oh, and we’ll be making this fudge. You should, too.

Merry Christmas!

Mom’s Famous Fudge

Ingredients:

  • 1 12-oz package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 12-oz package milk chocolate chips
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla
  • 4 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 pound of butter
  • 1 12-oz can evaporated milk

Directions:

Butter an 8-by-12 baking dish.

Bring sugar and evaporated milk to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue to stir and boil for 7 minutes.

Remove pot from heat and stir chocolate chips, vanilla and butter.

Stir until smooth and pour into the buttered baking dish.

Refrigerate until set.

Muster up your incredible strength to cut the fudge into squares and serve it on cute little platters or in festive tins for your friends.

Become the favorite.