Tag Archives: life

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.

Scars

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Three summers ago, when my daughters were four and two, we brought them to the shores of Lake Sakakawea to take a boat ride and get an ice cream cone at the marina. I was only a couple months or so post-surgery to remove the tumor that had been blocking a large part of my airway, the one that sliced me right down the middle and left me with three scars where the tubes went and one big one that, for a while, and at that time when it was fresh, resembled a zipper, nice and straight starting at my clavicle and running all the way down my sternum.

I like to think now, from far away, it makes me look like I have the cleavage God never gifted me, but I digress…

Anyway, at that time I wanted to do anything and everything that got me out of the house and distracted from the pain of healing up and the worry and fear that would cling to the back of my throat if I laid too still or it got too quiet. Not that it was ever quiet those days with two daughters young and healthy and growing in the summer sun, a blessing that would keep me out of my head and into their latest art project or wild thing they were attempting to catch. So that hot day we all put on our swimming suits under our shorts and summer dresses and headed out to do what normal families do when they don’t have a mom recovering from major surgery and are spared, at least for now, the black cloud of cancer or loss, as if any breathing adult is walking around completely free from burdens.  As if being a human isn’t knowing what could happen, what inevitably is going to happen, and mowing the lawn or ordering the cocktail or training for the race despite it or because of it, depending on the day. Depending on the outlook.

The girls swam and made sandcastles and swatted away the horseflies and we probably ate the sandwiches my husband made or maybe we made the decision to just grab a cheeseburger at the marina restaurant, what we all wanted to do in the first place. Truth is, I don’t remember the exact details of the day. I don’t remember what my daughters’ swimsuits looked like or even the little nuances we swore we’d never forget, like all the words two-year-old Rosie mis-pronounced or the soft pudge of their toddler cheeks under my smooches, but I do remember I couldn’t lift them then, so they would hold my hand and ask me when. And I do remember they would want to see that scar, to face it, to know about it, even when it was fresh and scabbed and weird and new. And they were young, and I was their mom and while I only had a few years of this parenting thing under my hat, I understood quickly that if I wasn’t scared, then they weren’t scared and so I wore that swimming suit and put on the sunscreen and lived in the world with my big new scar and that was it. This was a part of us now.

I have a point to make here and I get to it more quickly when I tell this story on stagewhen it’s my mission to argue that our failures and imperfections, our bumps and bruises and struggles aren’t for hiding, but for acknowledging, and here’s why. From across the yard of that marina, while I was standing up by the picnic tables to help situate my daughters, a man waved at me and yelled “Hey!” I looked up thinking that I knew him, but I didn’t know him, and so I just yelled “hey” back because we’re friendly here. And then he pointed to his chest and loudly asked (because he was across the yard) “Heart surgery!?”

“No!” I replied, understanding in a few beats, what he was asking. “Tumor!” I yelled back, suddenly and weirdly feeling a little proud that a stranger noticed and acknowledged the very thing that had been running and disrupting my life for months and months.

“Oh, heart surgery here!” he yelled back, pointing again to his chest before giving me a wave and getting back to living a life he was given thanks to that scar under his shirt.

Once, right after my surgery and before this stranger and I nonchalantly hollered at each other about the most terrifying time in our lives, I had a woman ask me why I didn’t hide my scar. She said her husband had one too, but she buttons his shirts up to the top for him if he forgets. She’s embarrassed? Maybe. Or maybe it just reminds her how scared she can be. 

I told her I wear it for all the people who would have given anything to wear this scar if it meant they had one more day here with their kids, or in their garden or on their boat fishing the rocky shores and stopping in the marina to grab a bucket of minnows and a candy bar. It never occurred to me to hide it, but her question made me wonder why, really. The exchange with the stranger on the edge of that lake that had me proudly declaring the imperfection to him and my daughters and anyone withing yelling range, solidified the reason—if you allow yourself to be truly seen, scars and all, others see themselves in you. I argue the act brings with it more hope and acceptance and love than anything else we can do for one another, and that can make all the difference in the healing part.

And also, sometimes, those imperfections can make you look like you have cleavage, at least maybe, from far away…if you squint…

Green snakes and rainbows

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Happy mid August! We’re late with the podcast this week because I was traveling and helping host our big Ribfest event in town on Friday. Saturday we celebrated our 17th Anniversary by recovering from slinging beers at the concert until well past mid night. Both my husband and I have the same syndrome, we would much rather be hauling chairs, punching tickets or working the bar at these things, we think it’s more fun? Is that weird? It is fun though, to be a part of making the wheels of these community events turn ’round, even if it meant our idea of an anniversary activity was a nap.

(Cue pictures of the legendary BlackHawk and regional favorite tribute band Hairball…and all the thousands of People!!!)

Anyway, so I’m behind, like I’ve been all summer, but honestly, who isn’t? It’s a gift to not have enough time for all the things you want to do isn’t it? So enjoy last week’s column and if you didn’t yet, check out last week’s podcast (where we cover the snake situation). If you like to hear us chat in the kitchen while we intermittently get interrupted by kids and cats and company, tell your friends to like and subscribe to Meanwhile, back at the ranch… on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/veederranch

Green Snakes and Rainbows

My daughters brought a tiny green grass snake into the house recently. I was working in the kitchen and they excitedly called up from the basement with big news, but before I could turn around, there they were, standing behind me excitedly introducing me to “Greenie.”

Rosie, my five-year-old, fell in love with that little grass snake. She made a habitat for him in a cardboard box with rocks and grass, shade and a little dish of water. It would wrap around her hand and wrist and everyone who stopped by that day got an introduction. She was proud to have had a hand in discovering this little wonder, curious about its tiny tongue and what it eats and where it sleeps and, of course, how to tell if it’s a girl or a boy, which in case you’re wondering, is impossible, even if you Google it.

If she had a say in it, that little grass snake would have stayed with us here, in the house, in that box by her bed. But the rule about wild animals is that they just get to visit. No sleepovers. Rosie cried when her sister helped her release it that afternoon. Then, when I wasn’t looking, she caught it again. And so another round of tears fell when I helped her release it that evening. She held it close to her little chest before setting it free in the weeds and I lingered to be sure the snake didn’t make it in our family Christmas card photos. I didn’t point out the other tiny green grass snake I noticed had met its end on the road a few dozen feet from us.

The next evening the humidity brewed up a dramatic summer storm and as it moved across the countryside it left behind a rainbow that refused to give up. I drove toward it the entire 30 miles from town to the ranch and still it held onto its colors so I could see what it looked like against the backdrop of the old red barn. We need to tear that barn down, but it seems that everyone around here is waiting for the other to make the first move. It’s hard to let go, even to things made of wood and stone. In that moment though, I was glad it was there, quietly hanging on to the landscape, slowly and silently fading like old red barns and rainbows do.

A couple years ago, when Rosie was three or so, we were at the start of a long road trip and I asked her if she wanted to color or watch a show. “No,” she replied, “I’m just going to look out the window in case there’s a rainbow.”

I fixed my eyes on the road and the colors stretching over it. I just heard the news that someone I thought would live forever had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. And this sounds silly, but the news was the reason I stopped on my way home to get my favorite flavor of ice cream cone for the road. It’s the reason I drove a bit slower, a bit more carefully thinking about Rosie and the rainbow and the little green garden snake and the man I knew that was on this earth yesterday and somewhere else today, maybe somewhere rainbows go when they disappear if you want to get poetic about it.

And I did want to get poetic about it I think. I took a walk that evening as the sun was setting and the wind calmed down. I thought I would make it quick and beat the dark and the rain, but as I turned to head the half mile back to the house the sun sunk below the horizon and the sky began to spit rain. I lifted my face up and closed my eyes, trying to feel each drop hit my forehead and then my cheeks, my lips and my hairline and my nose and my eyelids.

In a few weeks I will turn 40 and I will wonder how it happened and I will wonder what I’ve learned in all these years and I will wonder where the time has gone.

But in that moment, on the dark road with my face to the sky, I was alive and breathing with my feet on the earth.

Look up. Look down. Look out. Look around. In case there’s a rainbow. In case there’s a beautiful little green snake.

Why we’ll never own a yacht…

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I could give you one hundred reasons that we will never be invited to lounge with rich people on a yacht, but probably the main one is that we are the kind of people who put up a hand-me-down, above ground, sixteen-foot swimming pool directly behind our house in July. And in order to enjoy it we first must chase the horses out of the yard because they keep pooping on our lawn and trying to drink out of it. And then we have to spend at least fifteen to twenty minutes fishing the horseflies and waterbugs out of the water with a net. And then we have to dig around the house for the right pairs of goggles so that our daughters can pretend they are mermaids in a fish tank, landlocked on the prairie with nothing but big, blue sky, nosy horses and a mom hollering  “Yes, I saw that!” and “Be careful!” while I weed the tomato patch.

Oh, and also, we have to watch the leak. Because, of course, there is a leak. It’s as slow one, but we need to make sure we top it off every few days. But don’t worry, we ordered a $30 pool cover off Amazon that’ll help with the bugs and the horses. Should be here by October…

It’s times like these we wonder why we’re not lake people. One of the answers is currently drinking out our redneck pool, but at one point, a few years back my mom thought we all might slow down a bit on the ranch and become a family that takes a pontoon out every once in a while. I mean, it wasn’t an unreasonable dream considering Lake Sakakawea is basically our backyard, but she forgot that three out of the four people running the ranch are also running businesses of our own. So the pontoon has spent most of its life waiting in “storage” (aka the driveway on the side of our garage) for a day like Sunday when it promised 97 degrees and the air conditioning went out in our house.

So we made a plan to take the pontoon and the kids and the cousins out to the lake, finally, at the end of July. All we needed to do was remove the ripped cover, scrub the seats and hose off the floor, find out the trolling motor isn’t working and neither is the gas gage, find out the battery isn’t charged and then charge it and find out it won’t keep a charge and then pack up the cooler and the swim bag and the snack bag while my husband takes a quick 60 mile roundtrip run to town to get a new battery and fuel and ice. Then get the kids in their suits, feed them the lunch I packed because everything’s taking too long, pack another lunch and fill the tires and fill the gas and transfer the booster seats from one car to the pickup and get the kids from the house to the pickup without any grasshoppers or toads in tow and buckle them in and then we would be on our way.

And when we got to the lake, all we had to do was unload the kids and the swim bag and the snack bag and ask if anyone has to go potty and then take kids potty and then back the pickup and boat down the boat ramp when it’s our turn and then check to make sure the boat actually started and then lather the kids in sunscreen and wiggle them into their lifejackets while my husband held the boat at the dock and I parked the pickup and trailer and returned and then wait for my husband to go get the phone he forgot in the pickup and then we were on our way! We were on the lake!

All we had to do then is take a boat ride across the bay and back to get the old gas through the motor and then pick a sandy spot to park and play but first someone had to pee so we stopped right here and we all jumped out for a swim a bit because it’s hot.

And after a few failed attempts, we finally did find the perfect spot to beach the boat and play for a bit. The sun was shining and the breeze kept the horseflies away. The kids were swimming and making castles, my husband was launching them into the water the way dad’s do and my sister and I were sitting in camp chairs chewing seeds and drinking red beers, living a midwestern mother’s dream ten minutes at a time because someone’s hungry, thirsty, hot, or really has to show us this big rock over here.

It was all glorious, until I went back up on the boat for snacks and heard a weird chirping sound coming from the canopy we decided not to open on the open water because we needed vitamin D. Which turned out to be the best decision of the day because when my husband opened it up, out flew (you’re never going to guess it) a swarm of wasps AND four baby birds!!!!

Apparently, our pontoon has been so idle it has become a habitat. And so I’ll leave the chaos that ensued on the wild shores of Lake Sakakawea to your imagination because whatever you’re imagining is probably right.

And I totally get it if you never invite us on your yacht. But we’ll have you in our hand-me-down pool anytime, just give me a minute to chase the horses and scoop the horseflies out…

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.

Other people’s stories

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This week on the podcast I catch up with Chad and wonder what it says about my mothering when Rosie describes moms as “struggling.” Seriously. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes my job as a writer brings me to stories I am not looking for, but grateful to have found.

A few years back I visited a small town in the center of the state. In the middle of freshly planted corn fields and along the railroad tracks cattle grazed, a construction crew pounded nails into a new roof on a sleepy Main Street building and a group of community members gathered in a small diner, opened especially for my visit to learn about their town.

We sat around a rectangle table on diner chairs in the back of the restaurant. The room was full of local men and women who were there to talk about dairy farming and population decreases, rural living and 4-H programs, the weather and how kids these days don’t understand that chickens don’t have nuggets.

I wrote down their names and got snippets of their stories: the retired school teacher, the cook, the woman from Wisconsin, the fifth generation dairy farmer. And then I thanked them for their time as they dispersed after our visit to the t-ball game down the road, to check the cattle, to cook dinner or lead a 4-H group.

But as I was rushing toward the door, checking my watch and calculating what time I would land in bed if I left now and stopped quickly at the grocery store in the big town along the way, I heard a voice say, “And one more thing…”

I turned around to find that voice attached to a man in a clean pressed shirt and suspenders, holding his white feed store hat with green trim in front of him as he spoke. It was the man who sat across from me during our interview. The man with kind eyes and the daughter who was a dairy farmer.

He had something more to tell me.

And this is what it was:

My first train ride out of here was when I was nineteen. Boy was that a ride! You hear how the train moves along the tracks, squeaking and bumping along? That’s how it was on the inside, riding along like that for days.
In those days the train came through here often to pick up passengers. It took me to the service.
The Korean War.

I anticipated his next thought and he caught me off guard when I noticed a bit of a sparkle in his eyes. He gripped his cap a little tighter. I leaned in.

He smiled broad and looked young as he told me…

I was lucky. They sent me to Germany and, well, my family is German. It was my second language. So boy did I have a time! I think I wore out my first pair of boots dancing.
I was a cook see, and in the evenings I would go out and, well, the girls, they asked you to dance. They did! 

I was a little nervous at first, being there with all their men sitting along the bar. I asked them if they were sure, if there would be trouble, but they said go ahead and dance.
They wanted to sit and drink, see. The girls wanted to dance!  And I was young and fit and I would dance.

I was lost there in that memory with him. I wanted to be those girls, I wanted him to show me his dance steps. I wanted to know him when he was a young man finding reprieve from a cruel world in the music.

Oh, I just I loved it. I would dance all night. 

With that he pulled his cap down over his gray hair.  I thanked him for the story and he thanked me for the time.  He held the door open for me and walked me to my car parked next to those railroad tracks, the steel lines disappearing in the distance a constant memory of the young man who took the train out of North Dakota and came home with boots worn from dancing.

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..

Honoring the women who made me who I am

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

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

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

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

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

To which I say “of course!”

Honoring the women who made me who I am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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