Tag Archives: memories

Sweetclover in my skin

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8

I wish I could bottle this up and send it to you.

I wish I could pick the right words to describe the sweet, fresh scent that fills the air tonight and gives me comfort when I breathe it deep in my lungs while standing still or moving across the landscape, stepping high, eyes on the horizon. Or maybe my  hands are on the wheel and the windows are open in the car as I reach out my arm. Or I may be laying down, ready to drift to sleep while the breeze kisses my skin laying silent in the night air.

I imagine everyone has something like this that hits their nostrils and brings them back to a time in childhood when they felt so deeply loved, so overwhelmingly safe, so much themselves, so free. Maybe it’s your grandmother’s warm cookies from the oven. Maybe it’s the smell of a diesel tractor plugging across a field. Maybe it’s your parent’s home or your fur on the back of your old cat or the salty air blowing across the ocean and onto vast beaches.

For me it is sweetclover.


It’s not something that graces us with its presence every year, but when the ground is saturated enough and the sun is warm it seems to pop up overnight like an old friend knocking on your door unannounced–and you just happen to have the coffee on and bread warming in the oven.

And so I think I have sweetclover in my skin. My first best memories are laying among it, rolling down the highest hill on the ranch as the sun found its way to the horizon and my cousins, tan and sweaty, hair wild, would fling their bodies after me. We would find ourselves at the bottom in a pile of laughter and yellow petals would float and move around us and then stick to our damp skin.

For us the clover was a blanket, a canopy of childhood, a comfort. It was our bouquet when we performed wedding ceremonies on the pink road wearing our grandmother’s old dresses, an ingredient in our mud pies and stews, our crown when we felt like playing kings and queens of the buttes, feed for our horses, our lawn, a place to hide from the seeker, to rest after a race,  to fall without fear of skinned knees, a promise of summer.

A wave of color to welcome us home together.

And so it has appeared again, just like it did last July, only bigger, more bountiful, taller–up to my armpits even the sweetclover grew! It’s there all season, the seeds tucked neatly under the dirt, and still I am surprised when I open the windows of the pickup after a late night drive and the fragrance of the lush yellow plant finds its way to me.

The night is dark but I know it’s there…

And I am taken back…

I am seven years old again and my grandmother has our bunk beds made up in the basement and my cousins will be coming down the pink road soon. And when they get here we will climb Pots and Pans and we will put on a wedding and look for new kittens in the barn. We will play “The Wizard of Oz” and I will be the Tin Man. We’ll catch frogs in the creek and take a ride on the old sorrel. We will play tag on the hay bales in front of the barn.

We will hide from each other in the clover that scratches and brushes against our bare legs.

Oh, I wish I could bottle it up for the cold winter days that showed no sign of release.

I wish I could build my house out of it, weave it inside my walls, plant it in my floor and lay down in it at night.

I wish I could wrap my family–my father and mother, my sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles, my grandmother and grandfather and all of the souls who have touched and breathed and lived where the clover grows–I wish I could wrap them in its soft petals and sweet stems and watch as they remember now.

And tell them not to leave. Not to grow older.

I wish I would have sat still long enough to smell it on my skin when I was looking to find the real me.

I wish I would have always known I had it there. 

But mostly I am just glad that it came to visit me this year…

so I could remember.

Small town reunion

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14

Here I am. Graduating from high school.

Do I look happy? Maybe just a little.

That was 10 years ago.

WHAT! Aren’t I still 17? What happened?

Yup, today I celebrate my 10 year class reunion.

Me and 54 of my classmates from ranches, small town neighborhoods, farms, the outskirts of town and tiny communities along the way graduated from WCHS at 17, 18 and 19 years old and made our way into adulthood somehow.

I just finished going through old photos and memorabilia to bring with me to the event this evening and was struck by how long ten years actually is (and how bad I was at managing my hair back then…).

To be honest, I am known for my poor, if not selective memory. I am also known for having a camera attached to my hip at all times. So I am thankful to my 12, 15, 17 year old self for having the foresight in the time of film cameras to dish out the cash to get these priceless photos developed, you know, the good old fashioned way.

Because it reminds me, as I imagine I’ll be reminded tonight, what it really meant to me to have grown up as a student of a small town. I thumb through photos and it is like thumbing through family albums. Because these kids making goofy faces at me from the pages of my scrapbook were by my side, for better or worse, during the years of my life when I was trying desperately to figure out who the hell I was. And for a girl from the sticks, a girl who wore wranglers and boots and took the dirt road on the small yellow bus to a country school until I was 11 years old, it was of vital importance that there were a few souls who could help save me as I opened the glass doors to the big school and prepared myself for a world completely foreign to me.

Me and my country school pal

Oh, yes, there were issues. There were fights, there were misunderstandings and tears in the halls of WCHS–that’s a given. That’s what happens when you are working your way into and out of best friendships, relationships, difficult tests and the fact that you weren’t cut out for the basketball team.

I wasn't cut out for the basketball team...

But you know what else I found in the halls of that high school besides teachers who inspired me and continue to cheer me on to this day?

Friends.

Friends who helped me remember the combination to my locker, who welcomed me into their homes after school while I waited for musical or volleyball practice to begin, who practiced with me for hours as we perfected the art of goat tying, barrel racing and cowboy chasing at high school rodeos across the state. Friends who sat next to me in the back of the pickup on the way home and got me laughing even though I may have bobbled my tie or face-planted from a tumble off my horse.

Friends who helped fix my hair for prom and came to listen to me play my guitar at my first real concert.

Although many of us may not ever be in the same room together again like this (in a matching velvet trend) I can’t forget that it was those girls who taught me about friendship, what it is and how truly amazing and heartbreaking it can be.

And the boys? The boys  have no doubt turned out be some of the best men. Because they just don’t make them like that anywhere else–good North Dakotan boys who grew up in baseball caps, tinkering with the engines of their father’s trucks, fishing on the banks for Cherry Creek and Lake Sakakawea, hugging their football teammates after a sorry loss, helping their neighbors brand cattle and always searching for the next big adventure on the back of a horse, a 4-wheeler or anything they can drive too fast.

I love one of those boys and love him more everyday.

And that a man who first met me when I looked like this…

married me anyway is a gift my small town high school gave me that I will never be able to repay.

And it makes this reunion for me more reflective, more special I think.

A Junior Prom version of husband and I...

Because in a small town you don’t have a large pool of friends and boyfriends to pick from, so it is my theory that you love stronger, hold them closer and lean on each other and often, as a result,  a bond forms between two opposite people who may have not connected otherwise.

All grown up with my very blond, very athletic, very clean and organized, very lovely, very opposite high school best friend...

And between the blacktop and dirt roads that didn’t stretch far enough for teenagers with windows open and plans stretched out wide, sometimes the rumors hurt, you felt confined and wished away the time it would take to get you to the date when you could leave this place…a place where you knew all your friends’ parents’ names and they knew what time you were to be home at night.

High School Musical, "Bye Bye Birdie"

Yes, as students of a small town we grew up in a circumstance that gave us every reason to set our eyes wide on the open highway ahead of us. But as we drove the gravel roads at night with a CD of Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring through our speakers, or built a bon fire in the middle of a field or on the edge of the big lake, when we celebrated birthday after birthday with the same neighborhood kids who drank Kool-Aid with us and gave us our first My Little Pony when we turned six, when we could sit on the roof of our boyfriend’s house in town and count the stars in the quiet of the hour before curfew, when we had our first kiss in the back our best friend’s old, beat-up car, we didn’t realize how free we really were.

And when we pushed the limits, when we drove too fast, drank too much, yelled too loud or loved too quickly, when we got our hearts broken, missed the winning point, forgot the lyrics to the song, or failed the test, we thought, indeed, the world would come to an end at 14 or 16 years old. We didn’t have all our muscles yet and didn’t understand, we didn’t appreciate that the world we lived in protected us enough to allow for these kinds of mistakes.

We didn’t appreciate that our world just picked us up, shook their heads and said things like “she’s a good kid, this will be a good lesson for her…”  and then went on loving us anyway.

And now as I prepare to reunite with old friends at 27, 28 and 29 years old, I can’t help but think that’s what most of us want right now: our best friend living next door, a place where our children, born or unborn, can see the stars, casual conversation between friends on Main Street, an open road and a home that welcomes us, no matter how far we’ve traveled away, with open arms.

My built-in-best-friend

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My little sister is home for the summer and things have sure brightened up around here.

I mean just look at her. Look at those dimples. Look at that smile. Look at those kissable cheeks…

..doesn’t she just literally scream, “aw well, shit happens, life goes on…let’s go have a beer.”


Awwww. So cute.  I love my little sister and having her around here for a few months is like having a built-in-best-friend who I can call at anytime to come and hang out, help me move heavy stuff, join us for a BBQ, or a quick trip to the lake and not have to worry about judgement when she shows up and there is a cat sitting on my kitchen table (how did that get there?) or when we finally make it to the lake with the boat and, you know, starts smoking and quits working while we watch from the shore in our swimming suits as husband floats away. 

No big deal, says little sister.

Shit happens.

And then she makes sure to record her big sister in a heroic moment of plunging into the bone chilling early June lake water to pull her man back to shore (and when I say bone chilling, I mean so cold I couldn’t breathe for a good ten minutes. So cold I think my skin shrunk. So cold I think my voice changed permanently. So cold the damages are irreparable). Anyway, yes, little sister made sure to snap a few photos and laugh her pretty little head off as the warm sun shone on her and her stubby little feet stayed dry.

I....

cant...

breathe.

I think I may have also heard her say something like “It’s times like these I’m glad I’m not married…this is the type of wifely duty I try to avoid.”

Ah, little sister, you might as well get married in that snarky hat. I hate to break it to you, but I think that phrase was coined for the union.

Anyway, I love having her out here, because I love her of course, but also because it reminds me of the old days.

The days when she stood three foot four, had a permanent crusted tear on her cheek, bandaids up and down her arms from picking at mosquito bites and patches on her little overalls.

I die.

Because she reminds me of the days when I was still learning to control my hair along with my temper and a little sister with patches on her jeans who wanted to go everywhere I went.

Including all of my secret spots.

Secret spots that weren’t so secret once I got there, having written and performed my latest Grammy Award winning song at the top of my lungs along the way, only to find that little sister was peeking her head out from behind a big oak tree four feet behind me.

Which prompted me to work on my diva attitude (you need one of those if you’re going to win a Grammy) and scream at her to go home, go away, scram, get out of here, you’re so annoying, quit following me, go play inside, etc….

But little sister has always been smarter than me. She would turn around and walk slowly toward the house, waiting for me to continue my Disney Princess-esque concert to the trees and birds and then quickly spin around and conduct her sneaking ritual, tiptoeing from tree to tree all over again until I broke down and let her stay.

I always broke down and let her stay.


In fact, by the time our childhood came to a close, little sister had secured a contract for me to build her her a matching fort across the creek, complete with an old lawn furniture chair cushion and a tin-can telephone so we could stay in touch.

What what?

Ah hell, little sister has always been savvy like that.

who could say no to this?

Because the thing is, little sister is my little sister by five years and my big sister’s little sister by eleven. That’s a lot of time between siblings. And out here where her nearest friend lived a mile and a half up hill on a gravel road, you can’t blame the little tyke for seeking company in her weird, (cool?) big sister. I mean, she had strong little legs, but that was quite the trek on her tricycle.

And at the end of the day, I was always glad she wanted a friend in me–always glad she hung on even when I left her to fend for herself after our bottle calf, Pooper, escaped from his pen, and thinking little sister was his mother, proceeded to head butt, push, lick and and chase the three foot five, band-aid clad, curly headed girl down the gravel road to our house as her hero and protector sprinted as fast as her eleven-year old legs could take her to the safety of the house.

Yup, that's us with Pooper...

But little sister could always hold her own, which came in handy when she had to deflect the lies I told her about how elves live under the big mushrooms that grow out of cow poop and she really should spend the rest of the afternoon flipping them over and trying to catch a few. Little sister’s wit and limited patience for tasks without rewards saved her on that one and I got my big sister butt chewed when, after about three mushroom overturns, she discovered more bugs than elves.

Yes, I could never pull one over on her or convince her to do anything she didn’t want to do, because what she wanted for the longest time was to hang out with me. And then the sun continued rising and setting and pretty soon we did what all little girls do eventually…we grew up.

And those years between us got in the way. Suddenly tagging along was no longer an option as I moved to town school, got a car and then a boyfriend, who, now come to think of it, would come out to the ranch to visit me and spend the entire afternoon teaching little sister to play chess…

Ahhh, there she went again…

Anyway, that’s the thing I’ve always admired about little sister–she has always known exactly who she is and what she wants. The same way she wooed me into building her a fort, and charmed my boyfriend (who became my husband and one of her best friends) into playing chess with her, to working her ass off for straight As in college while taking time to stand in the crowd to listen to her favorite band, she has always took her life and made the most of it…

smiling the whole way.

So now as she finishes up college and moves on into the real world, I am finding that those years that floated between us, pushing us together when we were both young girls and pulling us apart through adolescence and early adulthood, they just don’t matter anymore.

That little sister who followed me through the trees, listened on the other side of the hall night after night as I practiced my guitar, fought with me until her face turned red, rode with me in my 1983 Ford LTD as I learned to drive in the big town, who shares the same issues with her frizzy, always growing hair and always tells it to me straight, has always been my built-in-best friend.


And now I am beginning to understand what that little dimpled faced girl felt like as she was watching me grow up and wander away from her.  With the world at her feet and a beauty and good-humored personality that just blossoms a bit more every day, I want nothing more than to stand in her shadow, to follow her from tree to tree, to sit next to her at the table, to kick over any mushrooms she asks me to and, you know, plop down my lawn furniture in my fort across the creek and convince her, from the other end of our tin-can telephone, to never leave me.

For more sister sentiment, listen to the song I wrote about her here:  Alex

She chose us

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23

I like to imagine my mother before I knew her–before she became a mom for the first time to my big sister and wife to my father. I like to imagine her long straight hair, jeans that hugged her ballerina legs, her high heels clicking along the pavement on her way to a job she was damn good at, her tan skin on elegant arms that opened out wide to the world.

Because it was those open arms that brought me into my world. A world with gravel roads, cattle grazing in the yard, clay buttes, children on horses and neighbors who lived miles a way. A world I am certain this beauty queen who used to twirl and spin in satin dresses on stages never pictured herself in.

I like to imagine her this way, young and in love and willing to sacrifice the life between city streets, the life she was familiar with, for a man in a band with wild, black hair wearing a suit with cowboy boots and looking displaced in that city where they met–ready to bust out at the polyester seams, saddle his horse and ride out on the interstate toward home.

I like to imagine him, my father before he was my father, enamored  by this woman with quiet confidence, natural beauty and an aversion to practical shoes. A woman who was like no other woman he had ever met, who was fine on her own raising a beautiful daughter, but might be convinced, if treated with the kindness and respect that she deserved, to go with him.

Go with him to live in this wild space, a space that I imagine has always been under appreciative of a woman so refined and polished and poised. A space that required more practical shoes.

I like to picture that she pulled on her boots and listened to her new husband’s dreams of cattle and horses while she searched for work, taught dance classes in the nearby small town, had two more daughters and raised them in a landscape so far from the sidewalks and movie theaters and restaurants of her youth.

But she never complained. At least I have never heard it. And out here surrounded by snakes and trees and creeks and buttes and big blue sky my mother watched her daughters grow and get their hands dirty and tangle their fuzzy hair in the wind. She cheered them on at small town rodeos, tended to broken arms, made makeshift habitats for pet turtles in her roasting pan, gave advice on cheerleading moves, helped with 4-H projects and bought them pretty shoes, no matter the dirt and mud they insisted on dragging into the house on our boots.

And while she drove one with ballerina aspirations to lessons 75 miles away, sent one to ride horses and sing her songs on stage and  scheduled the other for basketball and volleyball camps around the state, I imagine her grabbing little pieces of her heart and spirit and handing them quietly off to her daughters…

Her pointed toes, blue eyes, poise, gentle nature and quiet beauty slipped to her oldest in her mug filled with hot chocolate on her way out the door.

The honesty, determination, quick wit, strength and social graces that exist within my mother flew out of her mouth and attached to her youngest during an argument about boyfriends or clothes or parties with friends.

And to her middle daughter, a daughter who in her younger days was convinced that she had nothing in common with the woman who gave birth to her, she gave a gift of gentle touches, encouragement, belief in wild dreams and understanding of untamed emotions. But most of all her sacrifice, her perseverance, tolerance and acceptance of a world she had to grow to understand and appreciate has been her greatest gift to me…the gift of a home on the landscape I will always belong to.

That, and an affection for impractical shoes.

But for all that she’s given, all of the sacrifices she has made through winters at the ranch that seemed to have lasted years, through snakes and skunks making their way into her home, through thankless jobs, burned tuna casseroles, drought and dust storms, drained bank accounts and children who just won’t listen, my mother has held on to the best parts of herself:

The beauty queen parts, the wine connoisseur, hilarious loon interpreter and graceful selflessness parts. The life of the party, the fashionista, giver of the most thoughtful gifts, Christmas loving, sun seeker, tasteful, best friend in the world parts. The big sister, the caring daughter, the understanding wife parts. The organized and impeccably clean and always prepared (even when 30 miles away from the nearest grocery store) parts.

The parts of her that have always known what is best for her family. Best for her daughters.

So, yes, I like to imagine my mother before I knew her, before she was my mother. I like to imagine her with all of that love to give, all of that joy, all of those dreams and talents with the world at her delicate fingertips.

And then give thanks that she chose this life. Of all of the things and people she could have belonged to, all of the places she could have laid her heart down, she chose to lay it  here.

She chose us.

And we are the luckiest.

Happy Mother’s Day momma.

Love you as wide as this prairie sky we live under…as wide as your arms reach.

Under this roof.

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17

This is what I had going on with my morning coffee today.

And this was my company.

Don’t be jealous. I know it’s hard.

See, my little big sister let me babysit little man, not just for a few hours, but for a complete sleepover stay at my house on the ranch thirty miles away from her.

Believe it.

She trusted me with her baby and his burping habits, tiny socks, and even tinier feet. She packed up a bag filled with gadgets to deal with poop, devices for boogers, wipes and clothes and blankets and baby blue outfits and stuffed toys that sing and glow and oh, those tiny, tiny socks and sent me on my way, down the snow covered road.

I was in heaven.

I was also freaked out about the fact that there was a little human strapped in his seat placed so helplessly in my care.

So I drove approximately three miles an hour and by the time I got the guy home, he was seven years old.

And a little hungry.

So I unloaded my tiny, not quite seven-year-old nephew and all of the things that go with him into our little house in the barnyard. Husband and I spent a good thirty to forty-five minutes trying to figure out that “Pack ‘n Play” thing they invented to replace the much easier to assemble, but not so convenient to transfer “Play Pen” and just like that our house was transformed into a quiet little place with a couple boring adults roaming around worrying about what to cook for supper, to a cozy, lovey, snuggly nest filled with questions about how long to warm up a bottle and if that was a poop or just a stinky fart coming from his adorable little bottom (little man’s, not husband’s).

Oh, yes there was all of that plus baby talk and burping and diapers and cooing and lullaby singing and my heart was so full as little man drifted off to sleep in the nook of my arm. And as I laid that perfect little guy down in his temporary bed in the corner of our house, it occurred to me that what I was doing, in this exact spot, under the bright stars shining down on the roof of this very house was something precious that has quietly and innocently been done for generations.

And it got me thinking about all of the children who were brought into this very home and held tight and read to at night and fed ice cream from the deep freeze and pancakes in the morning.

My grampa reading me bedtime stories...

Little man’s momma was one of them. And so was I. Although my memory doesn’t reach as far back to recall my time spent in the “Play-pen” in the spot where I laid my nephew down, I do remember piling into my grandmother’s bed with my cousins for a night of giggling and dreaming.

I do remember ice cream on the front porch, family photos on the couch, my grandfather’s chair, my gramma’s popcorn, board games, family Christmases, Jello Salad, the kid’s table and the way the house smelled…

Push-ups with gramma on the front porch. That's me in the hot-pink pants...

…and still smells sometimes.

And each of my sisters, each of my cousins will have their own memory of the place as children: filling up the plastic swimming pool on the lawn with the hose on hot days, the pajamas gramma made for us on her sewing machine, being rocked to sleep, the bunk beds, the adventure of gramma and grampa’s house on the ranch.

My first visit to the ranch...

No doubt my father, aunt and uncle and their cousins hold their own fond memories of childhood spent under this roof as well…though I don’t feel I hold the words to attempt those stories–those emotions. They are much too important. Much too precious.

And no, sweet baby nephew won’t remember the day I rocked him to sleep in the same spot where my grandma rocked her babies and her grand-babies off to dreamland.

Gramma and me

He won’t remember how his uncle held him in the easy chair and laughed as little man grabbed onto the neck of his Pabst Blue Ribbon. Truth be told, it is possible that this baby could be one of the last generations to drift off to dreamland under this roof. And with that thought I can’t help but think how much my grandparents, his great-grandparents, would have loved to have held him and watch him laugh and make him pancakes when he grew teeth and then give him gum when his momma wasn’t around to say no.

And although I would have loved to bring my own baby home to this house someday, time and life will not allow it. But as we are making plans to build ourselves a new home over the hill I am making plans to keep this one in tact so that my cousins and my sisters might bring their children from down the road, across the state and across the country, to spend a night under the stars shining on the roof over the house their great-grandfather built– a house that held them so tight with imagination, warm smells and love.

But for now I am thankful I am here to show little man, and his tiny feet, around the place…

I am thankful he was here with me…

…under this roof.

Just like her. Just like me.

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18

 

I would like to take a trip down memory lane this morning because I feel I have some explaining to do. I find I have to explain myself quite regularly given my emotional outbursts, unruly hair, borderline crazy relationships with animals, worst case scenario obsession and addiction to cheese, so don’t feel bad about it. I sure don’t.

But I feel it’s necessary given all of the drama, all of the animal created chaos, all of the love for place I have spilled all over the sweet world wide web.

Because I want you to know that this behavior, this passion, this melodramatic, arms wide open to the world life I lead and the fact that I write about it in all its glory and dirt and bruises and wind and sunshine is nothing new. Nothing new at all.

Yes, at young age I was told to write it all down, little girl. Write all those feelings down so you can capture them and understand them and maybe not worry so much.

So I did it and have been doing so ever since. And most of those thoughts were held safe in books never to see the light of day.

But sometimes we were given writing assignments in school…and, well…I guess I just couldn’t hold back the emotion and the theatrics and philosophy that emoted from my innocent mind,  seeing it was my time to expose my soul to the world.

In 3rd  grade.

And it just happened to be that one of my most prized obsessions at the time, and actually during my entire elementary school career, was my old horse and partner in crime and confidant and best friend Rindy. Rindy the old, sorrel mare.

Me with the mare at a 4-H show. I told you I was serious about 4-H and now I present the evidence-- all over that sweet, intense face.

Rindy was often the subject of my early literature.

So my gift to you, straight out of the archives, are a couple of my early pieces on the subject of friendship and love and animal whispering–all lessons learned from this beautiful, overweight and elderly creature.

Get your tissues and be prepared to be moved beyond words.

Exhibit A:

Yes, I think Exhibit A demonstrates my flair for adventure and the competitive spirit you all know me to posses as an adult. Oh, and also pure honesty at my father’s convenient forgetfulness which provided me a valid excuse for my accident. And my love of a good story.

And my feelings. Oh my feelings…

…which seemed to be placed directly on my sleeve at birth and continued to develop and grow and overwhelm my being as time marched on and my relationship with, ahem, my horse, blossomed and grew…

I give you Exhibit B:

First, I would like to point out that it was I who coined the phrase “you complete me.”

Take that Jerry Maguire.

Second, I think it is quite evident here that I needed some real friends…you know…the kind with opposable thumbs. I guess that’s what happens when you give a girl 3,000 acres years before she is legally allowed to take her drivers test (and fail).

Point three, it appears that third grade is where I developed the art of preparing for the worst case scenario as it looks like I was arranging for the eminent death of my four legged companion, or worse, her trip to the sale barn.

As if my pops would take away my only friend.

And while I have the podium, let us marvel at my remarkable use of simile, i.e:  “cling to her like a bur,” which I am certain I took from one of those children’s horse novels I was reading at the time.

In addition, it appears I was also the first horse whisperer to write about my successful experiences training the four legged beast to perform on command at such great speeds by, you know, talking it over with her.

We are a blur (or was that bur?) of athleticism and speed and pure endurance, thanks to my training skills and Rindy's agility and physique.

Also, please note the little whip I had ready in case Rindy fell out of line. A whip that was, if I’m being honest here, all show. A whip that never even grazed that horse’s butt. Not a once.

Now wasn’t that fun?

So here’s the thing about this flashback– there is more to our photos and our memories than bad red pants and other questionable fashion choices.

See, living out here for the past six months as an adult woman who is looking for her place in the world I am reminded every day of where I began:  in the hills behind this very house where I fell off multiple horses, walked the coulees, wrote my first songs and sang them at the top of my lungs to the trees, where I learned to dress warm, do what I’m told, identify the wildflowers, teach a young horse to trust me and plant and tend to a garden that would reap what I sowed.

And I know that’s a gift given to me from someone, somewhere.

Because oh, how I have searched for myself, just like we all have at different times in our lives, at different transitions: from student to employee. From woman to wife. From wife to mother. From young to-“gasp”- old. Yes, I have searched before and learned lessons from failing at goals, crying about work, messing up friendships and driving away from it all.

And in the times I have lost myself I have often closed my eyes and asked the ten year old version of myself, you know, the one you see up there, what to do. I have asked her for her spirit, for her courage, for her confidence and dreams.

I have asked her where she has gone? How could she leave me like this alone and so unprepared to take on all of our plans?

Because ten year old version of me really had it all figured out.  I really liked her.  And there were times I needed her and her purple pants to come and be by my side, to come and save me from myself.

So I came home. I traipsed around her old stomping grounds. I clung, like she so eloquently described, to the back of horses she never had the chance to meet. I named the wildflowers and searched for stray kittens and flung my body down the clay buttes during a rain storm and did all of the things that she would tell me to do if she could have seen me wallowing like this.

And it’s been six months, a half a year since I moved back here, back home where my roots are planted. So here’s my explanation, the one I promised you at the beginning of my journey down memory lane: This world in which I’ve surrounded myself remains a wonder to me.

Because this weekend as I was looking through old photographs and laughing and teasing and covering my eyes at the choice of words and the choice of outfits, tears streamed down my face at the thought of the innocence and spirit I possessed and how my life captivated me so.

During the last six months, as I saddled up horse after horse and took off over the hills smiling, flying through pastures, talking to those creatures like I did when I was young, sometime, somewhere when I let it all go and threw myself to the wind again, someone nudged me in the ribs, her face wide in a smile, curls springing out from underneath her cap, eyes big and brown looking at me with anticipation, with excitement, with creativity and energy.

She opened her smile to say,  “Hi there.”

And I saw my reflection: my hair a wreck, my jeans worn at the knees, my sorrel horse beneath me, my skin kissed by the weather and I was not afraid of myself. I was not worried. I was not unsure or fragile or grasping at the right things.

I was doing it.

The right thing.

My favorite thing.

Just like her…

Just like me.

  • Listen to a song I wrote when I was 12 or 13: White Horses