Tag Archives: Love

Sunday Column: Highway 2 Ghosts

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Driving a familiar highway a few week’s back I was reminded of my former life.

Between the white lines that led me on a straight, flat stretch east across the state and back again in mid-November, I was greeted by passing pickups with blaze orange caps resting on the dash.

Suddenly I was five years old sitting on the passenger’s side of my dad’s pickup, back when pickups didn’t have back seats, barely tall enough to see that landscape as it stretched out before me, bringing us closer and closer to the ranch for hunting season.

When I sat down to write this column that ran today in a couple newspapers in my home state, one out east, one here in the west, it was going to be about the time in my life my family didn’t live on the ranch and how I used to take every chance I got to be my dad’s sidekick, to crawl in the passenger’s side and take that five hour drive to gramma’s.

For harvest.

For cattle shipping day.

For hunting season.

I was going to tell you all about the time when I was five or six when that pickup broke down on a lonely stretch of that highway in the middle of a nasty blizzard, before cell phones and gadgets that connect us and make us safer.

It was the first time I remember staying in a hotel. I called it an “apawtment”

I couldn’t say my “R’s.”

I didn’t know the difference between an apartment and a hotel.

I didn’t know the level of my dad’s anxiety, having a kid out on a stretch of highway, broke down, no heater, no help, in sub-freezing temperatures.

And I didn’t know that it was likely my parent’s couldn’t afford a breakdown, let alone an impromptu hotel stay.

All I knew was that I was on an adventure.

But as I sat down to recall what it was like to climb in the passenger’s seat as a happy little girl and attempt to measure time in miles, the story I wanted to tell transformed from my recollection of a breakdown on Highway 2 to the realization that the sum of my life is made up of a string of memories, stretching long and straight between tall grass in the ditches and appearing before me like that highway moving off toward the setting sun.

Coming Home: Childhood homes bring back ghosts no matter how long we’re away
by Jessie Veeder
12-24-13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

I don’t want to know…

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I don’t want to know what tomorrow brings, how it all turns out, how we might, at the end of it all, be rich or poor, lonely or surrounded, fine with it all or disappointed.

I don’t want to know the count of the stars in the sky or if they might fall one day.

I don’t want to know if this is it or if there’s more, because what is more than this?

At the end of the day all I want to know is the way the sun cast shadows and makes the manes on the horses glow like haloes in the pasture outside my window.

I want to know this. I always want to know this…

And the crunch of the leaves beneath my boots.

The smell of the sage.

The red on the berries, a gift of color that stays with us through winter.

The sound of the breeze bending the bare branches and how there’s no such thing as quiet when a heart beats.

No.

I don’t want to know the length of a good life or the minutes in forever or how it could, how it will, end.

I only want to know that golden light, the light that makes angels out of horses, and warms your face under your hat after a day’s work.

I want to know this light as it blots out the stars and makes for us a day.

And in that day and the days that might follow, the things that don’t matter, I don’t want to know.

It makes no difference, except one thing.

The thing that makes all the difference, that thing that holds on as that sun rises and sets.

The thing that I know like the light on your face.

You are loved. You are loved.

Every day you are loved.

I

Sunday Column: The miles between us.

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There are Veeders in Texas, down there where the sun shines a little longer, a little hotter, and it doesn’t snow much.

Pops’ little brother moved his family down there when his oldest daughter and I were in the phase of our childhood where we wanted everyone to think we were twins. We wore the same biker shorts and Coca-Cola t-shirt. We put our hair up with the same scrunchie. Our skin turned the same kind of brown in the summer. We were best friends.

As soon as they unpacked their bags under that big Texas sky I begin making plans with our other cousin S who lived on a farm on the southern edge of the state to save up our 4-H money so that we might make our first plane ride to visit cousin M before she developed a new accent.

We wrote letters back and forth explaining our annoyance at our younger siblings, our mutual affection for Reba McEntire and Vince Gil, our struggle to discover any kind of athletic capabilities in our gangly bodies and, like good farm kids, of course, the weather.

At the end of each letter we reported how much money we had saved for our adventure down south.

P.S. I have saved $34.67 for TX adventure…

Forty-seven long letters and a year later, miraculously and undoubtedly with a fair amount of secret financial aid from our parents,  cousin S and I stood in a small airport in the middle of North Dakota, stuffing our wallets and snacks into our fanny packs before hugging our parents goodbye.

We were ten or eleven, on our own, and headed to Texas.

My memories of that trip were some I have kept with me throughout my life. I look back on it now and understand that it wasn’t likely either one of our families had the spare cash to help a couple kid cousins hop a plane for an extended sleepover, but somehow it was more than that.

Our parents knew it meant that time spent like this would lay the foundation for a relationship we might feel inclined to keep throughout our lives, regardless of the miles that had suddenly been put between us.

Veeder Cousins: (that’s me on the left and my twin cousin next to me. Cousin S, my TX travel companion, is that tall boy in the middle)

We spent that week exploring Ft. Worth swimming in a warm Texas lake, riding a Texas sized roller coster, telling ghost stories, sleeping in a tent in the backyard and having our first taste of BBQ brisket.

When we boarded the plane back North, cousin S and I were sun kissed and tired, more grown up and more connected to a family that would spend the next twenty years under that Texas sun.

Since that initial trip I’ve been back to visit our Texas family for weddings and singing gigs booked so that we might have an excuse to all sit on the porch together, remember, catch up and laugh a little.

It’s interesting how, wherever your family resides, a piece of it becomes yours too.

Funny how the miles don’t seem to matter when your hearts beat the same way…

Coming Home: Miles don’t matter to brothers who grew up together
by Jessie Veeder
11-3-13
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com

Texas sky…

Sunday Column: Holding on is the best part…

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Wedding
Last week Husband and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. I went to the new grocery store and picked up crab legs, opened a bottle of champagne and we sat at our kitchen table and looked out the window at the tall grass and the setting sun and remembered what it was like

To be 15 and at the movies together for the first time

To be 16 driving the backroads in his Thunderbird

To be 17 and making plans to leave this place

To be 18 and away from home together

To be 21 and uncertain about where to go from there

To be 23 and married under the oak tree at the ranch with nothing ahead of us but time and gravel roads and plans we started making when we were 15.

Wedding Tree

Today my dearly beloved is outside hammering and screwing a big deck to the side of our house so that we can spend the rest of our summers opening the sliding glass doors with a glass of wine, a plate of steaks, watermelon for cutting or corn for husking, a magazine, a guitar or a good book to accompany us while we look out over our little homestead under the big blue sky or setting sun.

My future with this man has not always been clear, but it has always held him close: in the hot summer sun wiping the sweat from his forehead as he measures and saws and plans, bundled up against the winter winds on his way to work, rolling out his mother’s noodle recipe on the kitchen counter, throwing a stick for our big brown dog, riding a good horse behind some good cows, rocking our children and next to me, no matter what, just near me.

And so I hold on. I’ve held on since we I was eleven years old sitting next to him in band class.

Coming Home: Loving the same man for more than half my life
by Jessie Veeder
8/18/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com 

I hold on because it just keeps getting better.

Howling.

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Husband’s gramma is in the hospital a few towns away. Yesterday we went to visit her.

I don’t normally talk about things like this, but I think I should because there are people in our life that we just adore and maybe we don’t tell them as much as we should.

And there are things in this life that just hurt too bad and maybe we don’t just let them hurt like we should.

And there are times you just need to sit with somebody when they are probably going to be ok, I mean, you’re optomistic,  but nobody can make any promises and all you can say is, “Oh, good to see you. You are strong. We love you. Everything’s going to be alright.”

So that’s  what Husband and I did yesterday. We went to say “Hello, good to see you, we love you,” to Gramma L., a spunky, straight-up lady who has a life story I always promised myself I’d get out of her one day.

She’s in the hospital. She’s going to be ok. There’s never a guarantee, but I believe it.

I adore her. I adore how she gets right to it. I adore how she can always find the best bargain. I adore her beautiful collection of vintage pins and the cap she always wears camping with us in the summer. I like how she writes thank-you and birthday notes and makes sure to mention she got the card on sale.

I adore her spirit.

I’ve probably never told her.

So we sat with her and talked to her about the weather and the chokecherries coming.

We talked about wood ticks and Juneberry pie. We talked about how technology is moving too fast and how she used to ride a sleigh to school with her feet on the hot coals. We talked about the house and how she’ll come and see it when she feels better.

We ordered her lunch and helped her eat it and worried when she only had a few bites.

We visited with family and caught up and got in the car and drove the three hours back to the ranch the two of us sort of quiet about it all.

And when we got home it was raining a little, but the sun was shining and so there was a faint rainbow over the hill outside the house, sneaking up on us while we were warming up some soup for a late supper.

The rainbow turned to clouds and the clouds to the most beautiful pink sunset. Everything was fresh and washed from the rain. I pulled on my boots and climbed the hill to watch the sun go down.

And while I walked I remembered what Gramma L., said about family.

Thank God for family. Thank God they love me. Thank God they come to visit. I have a lot of prayers.

I got to the top of the hill and felt a little tug of loneliness that sort of bloomed into that feeling you get when something exciting is about to happen. I imagined myself taking this walk with my child one day. A walk to go watch the sunset.

I think that would be a nice thing to do with a daughter or son.

I sat up there and watched then, I watched the sun turn the clouds orange and pink and blue and then disappear below the horizon to turn things gray.

All days end. But I loved this one and how it reminded me to slow down as it went out in a beautiful show.

To breathe.

To just love someone.

Then I remembered what Gramma L. said as we were leaving.

She told us to go and have fun. That’s what makes life great.

So I lifted my head and howled at the sky, knowing that the dogs would join in and that would make me laugh.

And it did.

The windows were open at the house below. I knew Husband could hear us.

I knew he would be laughing too.

Then I sent a little prayer up for Gramma L. and made my way inside before dark.

The recipe for time.

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The best part of summer is the back of a horse on top of a hill when the sun is slowly sinking down below the horizon leaving a gold sort of sparkle in its wake. And the cows are in their place, grazing in the pasture with the big dam and the tall grass that tickles their belly.

And that guy you love is finished arguing with you about how to get them there, so you can relax now and just love each other and take the long way home to notice how the coneflowers are out in full bloom and the frogs are croaking like they’re trying to tell us something urgent. Something like, “Hey, stop worrying about trivial things. Stop working so hard to make more money to buy more stuff. Stop moving so fast.  This is it right here guys. This is the stuff.”

Who knew frogs had such insight.

Around this ranch moving cattle is a sort of therapeutic chore. With everyone working a day job, taking care of the cattle is a priority that gets us home in the evening and out of the confines of the office, the checklists, the phone calls and the stress of the highway miles full of big oil trucks we pass by with white knuckles to get back home.

If our office could be the back of a horse all day, I think it’d be better for our blood pressure.

Maybe someday it will. Maybe not.

This is my third summer back at the ranch and every day I’m gaining more insight into what it takes to keep a place like this up and running. I’m beginning to understand that there are things in my life I need to weed out to make space for the time I want and need to spend out here on the back of a horse.

It’s funny coming from a woman who, three summers ago, started writing again because she had more time on her hands.

Because she didn’t know how to sit still.

Because she needed to work through what coming home for good means.

You’d think I’d have it figured out by now, but I’m not sure I’m there yet. For months our minds have been set on the bricks and mortar that hold us and all of the stuff we’ve picked up along the way.

That’s the step we are standing on.

But every day I look out the window, step outside to feed the dogs or pull at a weed or get in the pickup to move down the highway and I’m so overwhelmingly grateful that the summer came as promised.

And then I get a little lonesome.


And I haven’t figured it out quite yet, but I have a theory.

I have responsibilities. I have burdens I’ve placed on myself to move forward, to achieve goals. I have deadlines I’ve committed to and jobs to complete, people who have questions and dates marked on my calendar to leave.

And when I’m leaving I want to stay. When I stay I think I’m missing a chance.

What chance? I don’t know. Aren’t I where I want to be?

But I’m not eleven anymore. No one is buying my milk so I can play outside all day.

All I want to do is play outside all day.

All I want to do is sing.

All I want to do is write.

All I want to do is take photographs.

All I want to do is ride.

All I want to do is drink cocktails and sit on the deck that we need to build and catch up with my friends and family and take in the sunset.

All I want to do is everything.

Is this a battle we all fight, the battle of balance? I feel I’ve been fighting it my entire adult life, with a list of so many things I want to be, so many places I want to see, and only one body, one life to achieve it.

No frogs, I don’t want stuff. I want more time.

More time to sit for a bit on the back of a horse and watch the sun go down on a place I love with a man I love and watch the cows graze.

But no one is selling time, turns out it is homemade.

I just need to find the right recipe.

Listening.

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I went to bed last night with the windows open in the loft where we built our master bedroom. It was our first night in our room we’ve been working for months to complete and when I returned home from a night away on a singing job I found that my bed was moved upstairs,  made and waiting for us to snuggle down and reap the benefits of another step almost complete.

I don’t know how Husband got it up there without the help of my giant muscles, but he did. And I was glad.

And exhausted.

When we were making plans for this house two years ago my idea was that when it was all said and done we would feel like we were living in a tree house and with the installation of the railing a few weeks ago I felt like our vision was finally coming together.

It made me feel like all that time spent looking at Better Homes and Gardens magazines and Googling things like “rustic railings” and “vintage lighting” and “log cabins” and “how to get wood glue and green paint out of my favorite Steve Earl t-shirt” was finally paying off.

I snuggled down next to Husband up there in our bedroom and made note of  how we were a little closer to the stars and I liked it that way, up there among the oak tree tops.

This morning I woke up to Husband sneaking out to work. I rolled over to catch a few more blinks, noticing how the sky was beginning to turn pink with the touch of the first moments of sun. I thought I should get up, rise with it, drink my coffee and start on my writing project, but I slipped back to sleep for a moment while the world lit up.

And I woke again to the sound of a pissed off squirrel in the tree tops next to my head reading another critter its rights over something like trespassing on his side of oak or a stolen acorn.

At least that’s what I imagined as I woke from a dream about nothing in particular that I can remember.

I laid on my back and listened to that squirrel chatter, his obnoxious, angry squawk rising above the hundreds of bird species singing their morning song, the breeze rustling the full grown leaves and a truck kicking up dust on the pink road.

And although I couldn’t hear it, I thought about the swish of the horses’ tails in the pasture, the buzz the flies make around their ears and the soft nicker in their throats when I approach with a grain bucket.

I thought about the cattle pulling dew covered green grass from the ground, munching and chewing and bellowing low for their calves.

I thought about the croak of the frogs in the dam, the familiar sound I fall asleep to each night we let the windows open and the air in.

I thought about the plop of the turtle leaving his rock for a swim in that dam. I thought about the howl of the coyote and the sound of the dogs crying back.

I thought about my fingers squeaking across the strings of my guitar, sitting out on the chair under the small oaks, working to make a melody.

I thought about the sound of my husband’s breathing and the words he says out loud at night when the world is sleeping and so is he. I thought about what he might dream about.

And then I thought about the silence in this house as I lie listening to the world I was letting in through open windows. Silence between walls that have absorbed the noise of saw blades spinning, voices discussing dinner, crying over tiling projects and laughing at the memory of the stupid kids we used to be. It will be quiet in here today with the exception of my fingers moving over the computer keys, the coffee pot beep and the ice cubes dropping in the refrigerator. I will run the shower and get ready for a trip to sing outside in a different town this evening.

When I get home it will be late and Husband will be sleeping on the couch, the television reflecting the light of other peoples’ stories off his scruffy face. I will switch it off and walk up the steps to our bedroom to get closer to the stars and fall asleep to the sound of the frogs, thinking about the mornings to come in this house, the sounds of Christmases and birthday parties, failed dinners and dancing in the living room, conversations with friends, fights about bills and schedules and time, sobs about missing someone and laughter about having just what we need in a tree house with the windows open to the sounds of our wild world.

The living room sessions

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Maybe
Jessie Veeder Living Room Session
Listen Here:

Maybe we’re supposed to be brave
I don’t know what we are but we’re not made that way
We’re meant to be broken, put together, then saved
Maybe we’re supposed to be brave

Maybe we’re supposed to hold on
when it’s hard to admit it’s gone when it’s gone
In the bright light of morning we’ll be glad we were strong
Maybe we’re supposed to hold on

If love’s not for sinners who is it for?
If luck’s not for hard times who’s keeping score?
I used to know better, I don’t anymore
These mountains we’re climbing lead to the shore

Maybe we’re not supposed to know
every leaf on the tree
every last flake of snow
Because we’re just like the wind, how we come and we go
Maybe we’re not supposed to know

Our hearts can be broken our lives can be saved
In bodies too heavy to just fly away
There’s things that I know and things that I should
Maybe we’re just supposed to be good

Maybe what we have is enough
stop fixing and fighting to own all this stuff
We were meant to be brave, to hold on and give up
For sinners like us, what we have is enough

Sunday Column: When the right words fail us.

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IMG_6694
It’s a beautiful weekend. The sky is blue, the wind has chilled out and the crocuses are in full bloom.

Words don’t do justice to the way 70 degrees feels after a long winter. And as a woman always searching for the right language, this week’s column is about how, when it comes to beauty, our words sometimes fails us.

Enjoy whatever sun you can find today!

Coming Home: Finding right words not always easy
By Jessie Veeder
May 5, 2012
Fargo Forum

Prom Day, thirteen years later…

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It’s prom season and on Saturday young couples in Boomtown spent the day dressing up, pinning on corsages, posing for photographs in front of the mantle, eating a fancy dinner, laughing and dancing the night away.

In honor of the season and happy memories, I’d like to take this moment to cue up a flashback:

Yes. There we are back in the year 2000, back before Garth Brooks retired, before bedazzled flip-flops were cool, every teenager on the planet owned a data plan and before I knew what I was getting myself into.

If only we could have seen into the future.

If only someone would have warned us that thirteen years later these gangly, innocent, teenagers who single-handedly kept Suave hair gel on the shelves and were so convinced they were in love would find themselves un-showered and un-filtered, wearing overalls and saggy work jeans, crammed ass to ass in an unfinished bathroom in an almost finished house arguing about what iPod mix to listen to while in the middle of another argument about how someone is hovering and someone else doesn’t understand the importance of cleaning the mortar off the trowel between tiling projects.

Thirteen years ago the plan would have been to get a job where you make enough money to hire someone to tile the damn bathroom.

Thirteen years ago we would have been listening to Garth Brooks and there would be no argument.

Thirteen years ago we would have been pretty excited about the whole iPod thing.

If only we would’ve known. Perhaps we could have avoided this situation all together. I could have suggested that my future husband, the one standing so coiffed, cute and confident next to that girl in the bedazzled flip-flops, just go ahead and become a trapper/mountain man like he dreamed of as a boy and I would just go on to marry a man who wears khakis and doesn’t own a table saw or a wet saw or a hand saw or any other kind of saw that would give him the idea that maybe, perhaps, he should build an entire bathroom from scratch, and then spend a good three to four days with his dearly beloved tiling the damn thing, from floor to ceiling.

I would have missed that mountain man, but as I pick the mortar from under my fingernails and behind my ears, I think maybe I could have gotten used to the khakis.

Why manicures don’t work on me…

I mean, did you know endless hours of mixing mortar, scraping it on the walls, cleaning it from the floors, accidentally splashing it into your eyeball and spraining your wrist while operating the high powered drill necessary to mix the stuff can turn you into the worst possible version of yourself?

Did you know that you can sprain your wrist operating a drill?

Me neither. But it’s true.

Turns out that forty-thousand trips up and down two flights of stairs to get to the wet saw does something weird to your right butt cheek too.

It’s true.

Just ask Husband.

Oh, now you might be thinking to yourself ,”Well, a couple that can survive building a house together can survive anything.” And the two of us might agree, but only under the condition that the house doesn’t have a single tile in it.

Because tiling sucks. It is hard and it is messy and it makes perfectly sweet and well-intentioned wives really mouthy and equally well-intentioned husbands really annoying.

And that, I fear, might be the only thing my dear husband and I agree on when it comes to the project that consumed our weekend.

But oh, I love this man, I do.

I love that he is capable and handy and looks good in those overalls. But our lives would be so much easier if he would just let me pick the soundtrack for the project.

And if he would stop with the suggestions on how I should hold the trowel, even if it might help me avoid getting so much mortar on my pants that not even tightening my belt can save him from the sight of my plumber’s crack.

I don’t need his suggestions. I mean, doesn’t twenty straight minutes of tiling make me an expert?

And don’t you think when your wife screams out in agony, drops the drill, grabs her wrist and falls to the floor that a husband should come running to her side and ask her what’s wrong instead of calmly assuming she’s overreacting to another injury, waiting for her wails to turn to whimpers before asking her sarcastically if she needs to go to the hospital?

I mean, that like, really hurt.

I’m ok. It’s fine. But still.

Somehow I don’t think Sunday morning motivational home construction pep talks that include promises of foot rubs,  negotiations on who will make the coffee and a vow not to get pissy with one another today is the future prom-goers in Boomtown imagined as they walked arm in arm with their dates at the grand march last Saturday.

But maybe it should be. I mean, if I have to tile a bathroom at least it’s a result of my own brilliant idea that our bathroom be covered in tiles.

And at least I get to do it with a man who’s willing to do what it takes to give me everything I want, even if it means spraining his right butt cheek from forty-seven thousand trips to the basement while putting up with the whining coming from his wife and the music on her iPod mix.

And if I have to tile a bathroom at least I get to do it with a boy who took me on a date to Bonanza when I had purple rubber bands on my braces and still thought I was presentable enough to pass as a prom date.

Which proves he has just the right amounts of delusion and optimism to survive a tiling project and, consequently, a marriage to me.

At least I hope so. I guess we’re not quite done yet…maybe it wouldn’t hurt to compromise a bit on the music selection…

Oh the price you pay for a pretty place to pee.