Tag Archives: motherhood

Scars

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Listen to the podcast here or on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

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…

Why we’ll never own a yacht…

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Listen to the podcast here or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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…

Rosie’s Spring Song

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On this week’s podcast episode I have a short visit with Rosie before preschool about her new song and why spring is her favorite season. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Rosie wrote a song about spring to sing at open mic at my mom’s coffee shop in town last week. Her first experience a few months ago singing her own song in front of a crowd gave her the confidence she needed to do it again. She’s only five, let me remind you, but no “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for her. She insisted I get out my pen and my guitar and help set her idea to music. “Spring is the best time of the year. It’s so happy and full of cheer.”

Yes girl, yes it is. The snow banks are melting and the creek is rising and the mud on our boots is sticky and tracking into the house and everything is dirty and a combination of brown and blue and gold. And so these suddenly become our favorite colors when white has been our existence for all of these long cold months.

“Easter comes by and it’s so fun. Because there are Easter egg hunts,” she sang, her little legs dangling off the chair, the microphone in both hands held up close to her mouth so we could all hear her words.

Rosie’s my hero. It’s possible I’ve said this before, but in case I haven’t, I am saying it again. She has been since I met her. Her very existence was improbable given the fact that I struggled for so long to keep a pregnancy. We had our first daughter and thought that might be it for us, but we tried again anyway thinking it could possibly take another ten years. But Rosie was ready to be born and so she didn’t make us wait. She came to us quick and easy at the height of one of the most difficult times my family has endured, my dad clinging to life in a hospital bed in Minnesota and his future so unsure. We gave his name to her, Rosalee Gene, because the belief that he would ever meet her was nothing but a faint light. She was a sweet distraction, a quiet force for hope that can come even in the most desperate and dark moments. She made no fuss about it. She just breathed and sucked and pooped and lived and as she grew my dad grew stronger and here we are with both of them at the ranch waiting for the snow to melt off and the baby calves to be born. Spring is hope and renewal and so it reminds me of my second daughter, singing so confidently this song about her favorite season.

“Outside the window spring is here. Bunnies and chicks and baby deer.”

The elk take a stroll through our horse pasture

Lately there has been so much tragedy exploding from the news feed, and our small communities here in western North Dakota have not been immune to it. Renewal and hope aren’t easy words to sit with when loss and uncertainty sit heavy in your guts. But time continues to change the season. Time continues to move, eventually bringing with it a thaw. The water breaks free under the ice and rushes the draws.

In a week or so we will have baby calves on the ground, still wet out of the womb. In a few more the bravest flowers and buds will start to emerge at the coaxing of a warm sun. The pair of geese will return to the stock dam outside our house. The wild plum blossoms will dot the brush with vivid green and we will climb to the top of a hill to find a dry spot and lay down in it, knowing well that it could storm again the next day, burying the ground and the new buds and babies in the chill of a white blanket. But it will be hard to imagine it then with the warm spring sun on our bare arms. If you’ve forgotten what hope is, nature can remind you.

“A big blue sky and bumblebees. Tweet-ely birds and green green trees,” Rosie sings into the microphone to a small crowd of community members gathering for coffee. They tap their feet and hum the tune on their drive home…

Darling we haven’t gone dancing…

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Listen to the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your content!

Last weekend, the girls decided that my husband and I needed a makeover. This happens occasionally. They take it upon themselves to fix our hair, put makeup on me, paint my nails, and dig in our closet to pick out our clothes.

I always like to see the outfits they come up with. Usually it’s a combination of whatever animal print I have within arm’s reach, a flowy skirt that twirls, a jacket, and some high heels. Nothing ever matches. Their dad doesn’t have many fancy options to choose from because once I thought it was a good idea to throw all of his neckties in the washing machine and, as you can imagine, none of them survived, so I always come out as the most overdressed of the two of us.

Anyway, once they get us all dolled up, the next step is, naturally, to clear out a spot in the living room so we can dance while they watch. They give us orders on how we should hold one another and how he should dip me, and this all lasts about three minutes before they run to their rooms and pull out their most frilly dresses and sparkly shoes so they can join the show.

So, once again, this was our Sunday morning routine, the same as it has gone multiple times before. We two-stepped across the crooked rug in my snakeskin booties and twirly skirt with my arm around the guy I’ve been dancing with since seventh-grade jitterbug lessons in gym class.

As we worked the rust off our best spider move, my oldest daughter came rushing up between us, hugging our legs, a smile from ear to ear, overcome with emotion. She was having the most wholesome, adorable, whole-hearted reaction to this moment she helped curate, and it caught me off guard in the most lovely way. To see her parents dancing, holding on to one another, laughing at our clumsy attempt at a dip, letting go a bit in the routine of dishes and schedules and work made her whole little being light up.

There’s an old Ian Tyson song that my dad sings with the band called “Own Hearts Delight.” The lyrics are full of nostalgia the way some of the best songs are.

The chorus goes: “Darling, we haven’t gone dancing, for such a long time now. It’s been so long since we’ve twirled around the dance floor, I’ve almost forgotten how. So gas up the pickup and I’ll get the babies, they can stay with the neighbors tonight. And if the band at the bar’s playing waltzes and shuffles, I’m gonna dance ‘til my own heart’s delight.”

Long before I was married, I used to listen to him sing this song. Even as a kid, I understood the ache that sat within its lines.

I was raised by two people who worked two or three jobs each while raising kids and cattle. My dad was always the singer in the band, so I rarely caught them dancing, and never in the living room. But those quiet evenings at home in the winter while I sat on the floor doing my 4-H latch-hooking project, or at the kitchen table working on a math problem, I would see my mom swing her legs over my dad’s lap as they sat on the couch together, him reading the paper or a book and her surfing the channels, and I would feel safe.

Before our daughters were born, my husband and I used to spend our evenings both tucked together under a blanket in our oversized chair. Then my belly started to grow bigger, and then there were three of us, and then there were four of us, and our arms became busy, our nights occupied by crying babies, then kids with the sniffles and teeth brushing and “Just one more book before bed, please.” I’ve only just recently remembered that ritual of ours. We’ve long gotten rid of that big old armchair.

Lately, my daughters have become increasingly interested in marriage and coupling up. It’s a natural curiosity, I suppose, to try to understand what love is, what it might look like, what it might feel like, and if it might be something for them someday. There was a time when my oldest was around 2 or 3 when she thought dancing meant marriage. Marriage was dancing together. I didn’t hurry to correct her.

“Darling, we haven’t gone dancing, for such a long time now …” The words couldn’t echo more true for us these days. I guess we have our daughters to thank for the reminder.

Little moments to be brave

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Hear Rosie’s perspective on this week’s podcast where I interview her and she sings her song. Listen here or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

For as long as my youngest, Rosie, could talk, she’s been asking me when she can have her own band and perform on the stage. My answer at first was to offer to accompany her, but Rosie wants her own band. And she wants to play her own guitar. And she wants to write her own music. And just this morning she informed me she wants to play drums too. So now I tell her she has to practice.

I’ve been working on writing some new songs these past few months as I prepare for a new album I’ll record this spring. This means the girls have been wandering in and out of my practice and writing sessions quite a bit lately. A few weeks ago I heard their four little feet march up the stairs and fling the door open and suddenly my lonesome little love song turned into a collaborative writing session with Rosie, who was determined to live out the promise I made to let her sing at open mic night at Gramma’s coffee shop in a few weeks.

She recently (as in, right that second) decided her song needed to be an original. Now I could skip over this part, but I don’t want you to get the impression that this was any kind of made-for-Hallmark movie-moment. Rosie’s first attempt at writing a song ended with six harmonica solo breaks, a speech about how this song is not just about her being a cowgirl, but about families working together and a stomp-off because, when her big sister wanted to try her own song, she was stealing all Rosie’s words. My husband called it their first “intellectual property dispute.” I call it the first of many dramas in the family band.

That’s where we left it, a little song unfinished on a scrap piece of paper and we all went outside to play (drama comes and goes quickly around here). Fast forward to my arrival home from my week away in Elko after taking the 17 hour drive in one shot, where I was greeted by hugs and a reminder about open mic.

Tomorrow.

She had been telling everyone at preschool, including her teachers. And they were coming to cheer her on. This was serious. I can sleep when I’m dead.

So the next morning, we finished her song and practiced it all day (I mean, are you really a rock star if you don’t cut it close?) and headed to the coffee shop to make her debut. But as the big moment grew closer, Rosie started to experience nerves, something her little five-year-old body wasn’t expecting. Her eyes were watering as she thought about not getting it right in front of a crowd. In the car, her big sister tried encouraging her and I followed with some pep talk, so completely aware of exactly how her little heart was beating. We walked in the back and practiced the song again before it was her turn. They called her name and I knelt down beside her with my guitar in the front of that tiny coffee shop filled with our smiling friends and family. It was her turn. Rosie buried her face in my arm as her cousins and big sister came up to offer hand-holding, sing-alongs, hugs, cookies or whatever it was going to take to make her brave. I whispered in her ear “come on now, you can do it!”

But little Rosie couldn’t do it. Not right then. It was all too overwhelming I think, the idea that in her head, she was a professional singer, but in real life she was still only five and she’d never done this before. Oh, I could relate. Just a few days before, getting ready to walk out to a theater full of hundreds of people so far away from home, I wondered if I truly belonged. If I was good enough. If I could pull it off. My stomach was in my throat, the same way my daughter’s was in our hometown that night. I so badly wanted her to do the thing she wanted to do, but I didn’t read the chapter in the parenting book on this.

So I told her we’d try again.

We went to the back and gathered ourselves. I wiped her little tears and told her she was brave. We practiced the song again, three or four more times. She said she wanted to try again in a little bit. So out we went to listen to the other performers and get a hug from her teachers, who promised her a pizza party if she gave it another go. Bless those two lovely women because that did it, the promise of pizza. I think that would probably do it for me too.

Her cousins and big sister at her side again, Rosie looked down, got a little teary, got it together, took a deep breath and sang.

“Daddy feeds the horses, sister cuts the twine, me and mom chase cattle, the dogs come for a ride…”

The small coffee shop crowd cheered and Rosie was so proud. She even got a tip, which she can’t get over. She didn’t know she was that good! But to everyone in that room that night, it was less about being good and so much more about being brave. That’s where it starts, at little open mics, little rodeos, little gymnastics meets, little dance recitals, little talent shows, little opportunities that we create in our little communities to help each other grow wings. I’m so thankful for the efforts of those who make things like this happen.

Anyway, if you’re wondering, Rosie’s big sister got wind of the tip and is working out her own song for next month as I type. So if you like drama, stay tuned for the saga of the sister band.

This is five

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It’s a snow day at the ranch and all the roads in ND are closed. So while all the kids were in the house, I sat down to chat with my little sister, Alex, about parenting five year olds and trying to replicate the magic Christmases we had as kids. There are interruptions, per usual, I talk about Rosie and her packrat tendencies and Alex shares a story about how she and an egg went to town.

Listen to the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play or Spotify.

Happy snow day moms and dads! Don’t forget to move that elf.

This is Five

Rosie, my youngest daughter, turned five at the beginning of the month. If you’re wondering what five is like, if it’s been a while since you had a five-year-old living under your roof, or have been five yourself, then I’m here today to paint a picture.

And that picture begins with all of the things that could be hiding under a five-year-old’s pillow. Because I, myself, just had a recent revelation a few nights back when our household was conducting one of our middle-of-the-night bed shuffling rituals, the one where Rosie wakes up and climbs the stairs with her blankie at 2 am and then climbs up on our bed and then climbs up on my head to finish her good night’s sleep. And despite contradicting viewpoints on a mother’s need for personal space, I do admit that I like mine, especially at 2 am. So I made my way down to her big empty bed only to discover that it wasn’t as empty as I assumed. I slid my arm under the pillow to snuggle in and was greeted with a half-eaten bag of goldfish crackers, a Santa squishy ball, five rolls of Smarties candies, a tiny notebook, an ice-pop wrapper, a bouncy ball, a tiny doll shoe and a partridge in a pear tree.

And so it was 2:04 am on a random Tuesday night in December when I discovered my youngest daughter is a pack rat. A sneaky one.

And that not all five-year-olds are created equally.

I mean, I could leave a bag full of chocolate in the middle of the kitchen table, within reach and sniffing distance of my oldest daughter, and she wouldn’t dare make a move without first being granted permission. And chocolate is her absolute favorite thing in the entire world. But so are rules. She’s the firstborn and her universe can only run on order.

And so I’ve been moving through parenting both daughters naively and blissfully thinking that sort of discipline and obedience must be a package deal.  But it turns out the second one is sneaky, thriving on flying under the radar, letting the older one take the spotlight until her comedy routine is honed and she can steal the show. As a middle child myself, I should have known.

Anyway, today I offered to help her make her bed and the darling assured me that she had it under control, which just turned out to be a ploy to get me off her trail while she tried to figure out what to do with the sticky stash of pillowcase Sweet Tarts she’d been hoarding. I didn’t even know we had Sweet Tarts and so this is what I’m saying.

I took the child with me grocery shopping yesterday and we had the cart overflowing with what I was hoping would be at least a week or two of meals and snacks. And while I busied myself bagging up the vegetables and cereal at the end of the conveyer belt, Rosie took my distraction as an opportunity to try a new strategy. 

Among the string cheese and tortilla shells, Rosie got one of those Kinder Joy Egg things that is conveniently placed at small-child-eye-level, the kind with the candy and a tiny plastic toy, past me and through the grocery clerk. By the time I found it, I’d already paid for it.

“Rosie!” I exclaimed. “Did you put this candy in with our groceries without asking?”

“Yeah,” she replied, not phased in the least. “I didn’t ask because I knew you’d say no.”

“I would have said no,” I told her.

And then she told me, “But now you paid for it, so I might as well eat it.”

I was so baffled by her antics that I plowed my cart full of groceries right into the Christmas tree by the door on our way out, which apparently has now become a part of her core memory, because she’s reminded me and anyone within ear shot of it at least a dozen times already.

So that’s five.

Oh, and also, tonight at supper she told me she has a crush. He’s a cowboy and he’s cool and he ropes and she’s a cowgirl so what’s the deal?

The deal is, send prayers.

Happy Birthday sweet Rosie. We love every little thing about you.   

Bow hunting, Barbie dolls and tuning tiny guitars

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So the snow has melted, and Halloween has come and gone and I am behind on everything. We’re trying out some real equipment to make the podcast sound better, so we’ll be recording an update tonight. In the meantime, here’s what we did last weekend for Halloween. . And don’t think for a second Chad put his costume together any sooner than 15 minutes before Trunk or Treat. We had some beautiful weather, no snowsuits necessary. I love Halloween

Next up is planning the girls’ birthday parties and selling calves. It’s a busy time of year around here, one that marks milestones and lots of reason for celebration. And now, this week’s column, which is sorta old news by now. We’ll catch up tomorrow on the podcast!

Bow hunting, Barbie dolls and tuning tiny guitars

As October winds down and November comes in like a yeti, so we welcome bow hunting season at the ranch. My husband has been into archery since he was a little kid and has had our daughters practicing shooting their little recurve bows at a target set against the backdrop of the trees surrounding our house for the past year or so. He takes them out there, their arrows packed in the small, homemade leather quivers their grandpa Scofield made them, and I watch my husband patiently go through the process of safety and form and encouragement. Each arrow that actually manages to stick in the target they declare a “Bullseye!” and he never corrects them. I imagine every arrow counts to him as much as it counts to them, a real-time demonstration of skill and passion passed down to a new generation.

Last weekend a couple of our good friends from college headed west with their bows and camo and coolers and groceries to the ranch. It’s become one of our favorite times of the year, having this kind of company, the kind that has known us for years, at our best and at our worst. The kind who are smack dab in the middle of the same parenting phase we are in, and so maybe I don’t have to vacuum every corner of the house or worry about a meal plan because they always have it covered with homemade lasagna and soups, wild game and donuts, drinks and the occasional can of sauerkraut, plum jelly or jerky left behind. They even do the dishes. And let me tell you, three big, burly, camo-clad men making short work of the after-supper clean-up is quite the stereotype blasting site to behold in my kitchen. Glass of wine while they finish up here? Don’t mind if I do.

And while I’m completely aware weekends of hunting house guests could go the way of the dogs, for me their visits have come to feel like a little vacation in my own home and a nice reminder of the true gift we have here at the ranch. Because these men are so grateful for the opportunity it’s fun to see our place through their eyes, even more so now that our kids are getting older, because they’ve started to include them in the action and take them along. It’s a dream these dads have had for years watching their little bald burrito babies turn slowly into tiny people curious and vocal and wanting to learn, to be like dad.

So they spent a lot of time out at that target against the trees, everyone practicing patience and celebrating each shot, bullseye or not. And I know that we don’t always consciously do this, but I imagine when we’re teaching our children about the things that we know and love, it’s with the hope that it might enrich their lives in some way, or at least give them an option to be intrigued or infatuated, or completely disinterested, if that’s the case.

When the dust settled on the hunting weekend and our guests had packed up and left us with a couple jars of sauerkraut and a plan to be back, our daughters settled into what I thought might be a lazy Sunday afternoon after a few days of fresh air and late bedtimes. But it wasn’t long before my oldest was pulling out every craft supply in the house with a mission of creating Barbie dresses out of socks and no matter how many times I suggested that I could just grab my hot glue gun, the girl insisted this was a project that required sewing.

Now, weren’t we just speaking of skills that have been passed down from generation to generation? Yeah. Sewing wasn’t one of those skills for me, (just ask my Home Ec teacher). But before I could come up with an alternative project I walked into the kitchen to find her camo-clad dad at the counter with the sewing kit making Edie’s Barbie Christmas Sock Dress Vision a reality.

The man’s versatile, you have to give him that, and holds pretty true to that ‘ol Jack of All Trades adage. We’re lucky girls. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go tune some tiny guitars. Because if winter is coming this early, they may be interested in learning a couple indoor activities to get

Sweet clover, sweet summer

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Listen to Jessie and her sister Alex get interrupted and sidetracked as they try to catch up on motherhood and memories, a real live look into the chaos of life at the ranch on this week’s podcast, “Meanwhile, back at the Ranch…”

Read in the Fargo Forum

It’s officially summer and my daughters have officially done the thing that I’ve sorta been waiting for the past month or so — they’ve made the great escape over the hill to my little sister’s place, without mention to me. By themselves.

Don’t worry, there are no major roadways between the two places. In fact, it’s just a long driveway connected by a prairie trail that cuts across the homestead place and barnyard and into another long driveway (the beauty of country living) — but it’s a big deal for them to be able to do it alone.

So much so that when they asked if they could go exploring in the trees by our house and I said yes and then also said, specifically, “Just don’t go over to Aunt Alex’s,” they went ahead and did it anyway. Because maybe they were feeling brave and maybe they were feeling grown-up in their jean shorts and tie-dye shirts, but mostly if kids listen to their parents all the time, are they really even kids?

I stepped outside and hollered for them with no answer back and had a hunch. My sister texted — “Your kids are over here in case you were wondering.” And I was. Sort of.

I couldn’t blame them really. To have an aunt who gives out Popsicles and two cousins your age who have different toys and a trampoline just over the hill and now all of the sudden your little legs (or the battery-operated plastic Jeep) can get you there unaccompanied, well, see ya later girls.

I don’t know how many times this summer I’ve said something like, “I’m so glad they have each other.” Or watched them run full speed down our scoria road and had a flashback to my childhood out here alongside my cousins, doing the very same thing.

I can almost feel my knees being skinned and scraped on that very road and the sweet clover itching my bare legs as we took a cardboard box down a grassy hill. I swat a mosquito and itch a bite and feel the curls spring out of my ponytail, unarmed against the humidity of a hot June day, and I might as well be 4 or 6 or 8 again on our grandma’s deck eating an orange push-up pop from the Schwan’s man.

I walked myself over the hill and found them hauling buckets of water to the little clay butte in front of my sister’s house so they could make mud pies. And in her daughters I saw my sister standing 3-foot-something, with a permanent crusted tear on her cheek, Band-Aids up and down her arms from picking at mosquito bites and patches on her little overalls.

Raising kids in a place that raised you will do that sometimes. In the crisp smell of a storm brewing on the horizon, or the wind blowing the sweet scent of fresh-cut hay to your door, the sprinkler whirring on your lawn and their happy screeches, a handful of sweet peas, the pop of a wild plum in your mouth, in the heat of the summer you are transported for a moment to a time when those things were all that mattered to you in the whole wide world. Those things and ice cream, maybe.

My summers with my little sister used to be fort-building in the trees by the creek, a tin-can telephone, singing at the top of my lungs running on cow trails and her following close behind despite my protests. Summer for us out here was riding horses bareback and mixing mud and flower petals in a leftover ice cream bucket and riding bikes and skinning those knees; it was a tire swing out over the banks of that crick and getting lost bringing lunch to Dad in the field and it was our bottle calf Pooper and the way he would escape and chase us down the road to the house, but I was faster and she got the brunt of it. It was telling her about the elves that lived under the big mushrooms that grow out of cow poop and her believing me.

And me wanting to believe it myself.

Because summer is magic, and it’s easy to forget that in the reality of living in this adult-sized world.

But the kids, with their sun-bleached hair and sticky cheeks and skinned knees and small voices singing while they run, full speed, down the road into the sweet spot of childhood, the sweet spot of official summer, making their great escape, they remind you. And I’m so glad they do. And I’m so glad they have each other.

Not for the Faint of Heart

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My youngest has been playing mother to her baby dolls for four weeks straight. She tucks them in at night, feeds them in the morning, washes them, changes their diapers, brings them outside to play and calls them her sweeties.

And if this sounds all sugar and spice, I also want to make sure you know she gets after them, too. They can be naughty, and she can be strict. This mothering thing, it’s not for the faint of heart. Especially when you’re only 4.

Recently I called home from a weekend away and Rosie got on the phone to update me. I asked her how it was going, and she said good. She’s very busy taking care of her babies.

“Oh, great, how many babies do you have today?” I asked.

“Edie!” she yelled to her older sister in the next room and also directly into the phone. “Come here and help me count my kids!”

Turns out, that day, she had four.

Earlier this week, those four children came with us to preschool drop-off. Adding four to the two that already live in this house made for a marathon morning routine. We barely made it to school on time due to the clothing changes, feedings, teeth-brushing, fitting them all in one baby doll car seat and then, of course, all the kisses goodbye.

Her orders for me while she was away at school? Bring them all to day care in Florida.

OK then.

“Is it hard being a mom?” both of them have been known to ask me after I let out a big sigh or, despite my best efforts to remain calm, do not, in fact, remain calm.

I reply honestly. I tell them sometimes it is hard. Just like sometimes it’s hard being a kid. And while I’m not sure if that’s the right answer, it is the truth, and I guess I’ve decided on the truth when it comes to parenting.

Turns out parenting in the truth also means things I didn’t think about, like apologizing to them when I’ve overreacted or admitting there are just some things even mommies don’t know.

So then, of course, they go ask Daddy. As if he has more of a handle on where we go when we die the same way they’ve observed he has a better handle on things like numbers and biology and why Rosie just can’t jump inside of the television and live with Bluey. (Did I ever tell you about the time I got kindergarten math homework wrong? Did I ever tell you how many times Rosie has asked us to tape her into the TV?)

Anyway, it’s as if knowing all the parts of a horse and every lyric to every ’90s country song counts for nothing…

“Did you even go to school?” my oldest asked me at bedtime last night after I failed to properly explain why the nights are longer in the winter and shorter in the summer. It was 9 p.m. on a Monday, and I’m pretty sure I was already sleeping.

But Edie moved quickly from that question to her confession for the day. These usually happen in the final hours of bedtime…

“Mommy, the kids at school all gave better valentines than me. I don’t think they liked the suckers I brought.”

Turns out jealousy is one of those things they learn in kindergarten. So is the one about friends who don’t always act like friends. And the one where you don’t always win the contest or learn it the quickest, where you’re not always the best or get the most attention and get left out, and on and on, and it can be hard for a kid…

And hard for a mom.

Which is what I went with in trying to ease her little mind. I told her that mommies get jealous too. Everyone does. And to help get through it, she should try to think about all of the good things that make her uniquely Edie. And I try to do the same. After all, there are so many reasons to be proud.

Her big blue eyes welled up then and as she leaned in for the hug, I felt like she forgave me for all the things I don’t know and just trusted me on this.

And oh, this parenting thing isn’t for the faint of heart. Even when you’re a grown-up…

The bull’s-eye kind of woman

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The year our first daughter was born, my husband bought me a bow. I’d been talking about how I wanted to get into archery for a few years, thinking it would be a fun skill to try to master, something the two of us could do together and another good excuse for me to get out into the hills.

I could have taken the initiative myself, of course, done the research and made the purchase, but I was intimidated by it all and so I just kept doing the things I knew how to do as I settled further into adulthood.

And then new motherhood hit me like a freight train and suddenly everything I thought I knew about myself, the planet and existing on it, was turned upside down.

Forget learning a new skill. Forget self-improvement. Forget quality time with the husband. Forget recreation. I just wanted time to take a full, uninterrupted shower and maybe eat a meal while it was still warm.

And so there the bow sat, in the closet of the spare basement bedroom, for close to six years. Six years. That’s how old our daughter will be in a few days.

And in that time, so much has happened. We almost lost my dad, wrote a book, welcomed baby Rosie, home-improved, built and rebuilt, broke and fixed, fed cows and kids, celebrated milestones, made a thousand messes and cleared them up, lost a job, started a new business, recorded an album, got cut right down the middle, kicked cancer, made some new plans and endured an endless worldwide pandemic.

All those things we did and all the new lessons we learned, yet still the bow sat, in the basement, a little reminder of the type of woman I could be someday, when the dust settles maybe. The type of woman who can drive an arrow right through the bull’s-eye of a target. That woman, dressed in camo and confident, sounds like she has control over things.

Bet her kids listen to her the first time when she tells them to brush their teeth. Bet she doesn’t do her makeup in the car’s rearview mirror in the parking lot after she drops her kids off at school because in the car, alone, is one of the only places she can focus fully on her eyeliner. Bet her meals are planned and she can walk around barefoot in her house without collecting a decent amount of dirt, glitter and a dead fly or two.

That woman wouldn’t have left that bow in the basement for six years waiting on her to do something she said she wanted to do.

Anyway, I’m thinking of this now because a few weeks ago, my husband brought home two little bow and arrow sets for our daughters. I watched them squeal with excitement at the idea that they were going to do something that puts them in the same world as their dad. Because at almost 6 and almost 4, they still want to be like us.

So I followed them outside and watched my husband kneel down next to them, coaching them through the safe ways to handle the bow, helping them pull it back and easing them into a couple target hits that sent them bouncing with joy and asking for, please, one more time. I clapped and encouraged, yelled “Good job!” and watched them work on getting the hang of it in repetition.

And as much as they wanted to be like their daddy, I found that I wanted to be just like them. So fresh and confident with a whole life in front of them to discover what they love, to learn, to explore, to become experts at things. At almost 6 and almost 4, every single minute these girls are learning something new about their world, and about themselves.

At 38, I wonder now, when was the last time I worked hard to learn something completely new? My daughters reminded me that there’s no better feeling really, when something finally clicks and you go from not knowing to knowing. It’s incredible. It shouldn’t be reserved solely for the young.

A few weeks ago, my husband dug that bow out of the basement for me. He tuned it up and called me out to see if I could pull it back. Turns out the whole splitting your chest open thing wreaks havoc on the exact muscles needed to become that woman who can shoot an arrow through a bull’s-eye.

So, for now, I’ll be the woman in my bedroom lifting weights and getting stronger and finding her way no longer as a mother of babies, but of two growing girls who could benefit, I think, from watching their momma grow, too.