Tag Archives: musings

Turtle Excursion

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Have you ever heard the National Anthem performed at full volume by four little girls crammed inside a two-door side-by-side while you’re driving across a bumpy field with a little dog at your feet and one perched on the tool box in the back with the wind blowing a late summer storm in?

It’s the kind of volume that sends even the most seasoned parent into a bit of a twitch. I should have known when I suggested singing instead of arguing over whether we should have stayed longer at the beaver dam to see if we could catch more turtles with a storm coming in. How dumb of me to think that they would choose a sweet folk performance as a serenade…

My sister and I have been taking our daughters and our dogs on little ranch excursions like this since the kids were tiny enough to fit in baby packs strapped to our chests as we drove prairie trails looking for crocuses or new calves, sunflowers and Christmas trees  There was a point all six of us could fit across the bench seat of our old side-by-side and still fit one or two dogs in there with us. We blinked and suddenly we have a six, eight, nine and ten year-old plus six dogs between us. It’s safe to say we’ve outgrown our little side-by-side rides together.  

But that doesn’t stop us from trying. Which is what we were doing last week when my husband came back from his daily rounds of checking on things. He was up in at the big beaver dams behind my parent’s house and walked up on dozens of turtles sunning themselves on logs and one big snapping turtle just swimming around, being his very cool prehistoric self in the middle of the modern age.

These three big beaver dams were a magical place for my sister and I when we were growing up. We would follow the creek from our backyard about a good mile or so through a thick coulee of oaks and ash and scrub trees to pick wild raspberries, catch frogs, collect ticks and see if the lily pads had appeared or if we could catch the beavers doing their work.

Each dam gets deeper and wider the farther you follow it, and the banks are steep, the brush thorny and tangled and the ground is uneven and covered in tall-green grass and reeds, the vegetation staying green until fall because it stays cool in the shade. It doesn’t feel like you’re on the North Dakota prairie when you’re following these trails cut by cattle, deer and elk. You get yourself far enough away from the house and the barn and you think maybe you’re in a true forest. When you’re a kid you think maybe you could be a wild girl out here on our own, living under a lean-to fort and surviving off of chokecherries. Sort of makes you feel that way as an adult too.

We spied a big ‘ol snapping turtle

I have spent some time in every season of my life sitting on those banks as a spectator, quietly watching the wildlife swim and drink and eat and work. The beavers always fascinated me, how they could take down all those trees and control all that water like little construction workers in round, fluffy bodies— it didn’t seem physically possible. But my favorite was always watching the turtles, so of course I was going to load up the kids to see what we could see that day.

“Can we all fit?” my little sister asked as I pulled into her driveway.

“Only if we leave a few dogs behind.”

But as you can imagine, four girls running, chatting, debating the appearance of poison ivy and complaining about the burs sticking to their jeans, two moms telling them to toughen up and that we used to come back here as kids ALONE and nobody even knew where we WERE and we were FINE and it was the NINETIES and the two dogs that decided to follow along and bark at the ducks fleeing for their lives is only sneaky enough to catch a brief glimpse of two beavers running away.  And the red-eared slider turtles probably heard us coming from three miles away and chose to save themselves the drama.  But that old snapping turtle? He’s seen some things and was so unbothered that he just swam around pulling pond scum with him, giving a show long enough for us all to fawn over how massive and old and cool he was before the wind picked up, folding the leaves on the trees and threatening a bit of rain. And so, we all headed back to that old side-by-side, pulling the barbed-wire fence open for one another to cross one by one.

“I thought we were going to catch some turtles,” Rosie said, sorta disappointed.

“I think we’re going to have to practice our sneaking skills,” I replied as I started up the machine and set her on my lap so the rest of the girls could cram in and shut the door. “Why don’t you all sing a song to get us home…”

“OOOHHH SAAYYY CANN YOU SEEEE!!!!! BY THE DAWNSERLY LIGHT!!!”

Next time they’re driving separate…

Come sit at my kitchen counter

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Come sit at my kitchen counter and I will tell you everything. 

It will be messy, and I will have to clear a space for your drink glass, maybe wipe this morning’s crumbs away, or scrub the jelly so it doesn’t stick to your forearms as you lean in and ask how things are going. Come in and sit at my kitchen counter and I will tell you how Rosie caught a little garter snake this morning and is out collecting rocks and sticks for its Tupper Wear habitat. The cousins just pulled in the driveway in their little ATV they call “The Red Aamodt.”  Edie has been sleeping in like a teenager. School starts tomorrow and we are not ready.  Don’t mind the drill sitting on the seat next to you, Chad’s still finishing up the deck. 

Come sit at my kitchen counter, come because you were invited (you’re always invited) or come because you’re passing by and want a cup of coffee and to see the kids. It’s not like my grandma’s kitchen, or my mom’s, I won’t have rolls or bars or cookies set out on a whim, I’m not much of a baker, but I always have coffee. And if it’s the right time, I will make you a drink and pull out the chips and salsa, or cheese and crackers, because I am more like my other gramma like that. And I always have a dip. 

Come sit at my kitchen counter and I will ask you, “How’s work?” “What’s your wife up to?” “How did the fair, the rodeo, the talent show, the soccer game, the basketball tournament go?” And I really want to know. I will be a bit disheveled probably, because if you’re at my kitchen counter and I am at home, I likely woke up and just got on with things like dishes and laundry and cleaning off the little table full of art supplies, or maybe I was outside cutting the weeds or the grass or pressure washing Rosie’s shoe because she got stuck in the mud while she was trying to catch frogs. But I likely didn’t take the time to look in the mirror because I forget about things like that until someone shows up and then I remember. But if you’re here, you’re in a no judgement zone, and I expect it will go both ways and you will look past the way my hair can stand straight up now and that I have grass clippings in my teeth.  

Come sit at my kitchen counter and say you can’t stay long but then stay for hours. Stay for lunch because I’m fixing it anyway. And it’s just sandwiches, but we all have to eat. And then head out with Chad to check the water tanks and game cameras and come back in for burgers because I’m fixing them anyway and we all have to eat. 

Come sit at my kitchen counter and you might have to hold a baby doll or get closer to a hamster and a gecko than you’re probably comfortable with. Sit at my kitchen counter, and I’m just warning you, my oldest will hang on every word that you say, but she won’t say much in case you notice she’s there and hold back. She wants to hear everything.

Come sit at my kitchen counter and look out the window, here comes the turkeys down to water in the dam. Sit at my kitchen counter and there’s the momma deer with her two does. There’s the elk. There’s that coyote. There are the kids out conducting a funeral for the newborn barn kitten that didn’t make it. 

Come sit at my kitchen counter, do you need more coffee? Another beer? Sorry, the puppy seems to have stolen your shoe. Do you have time to watch a dance they’ve been rehearsing? How about a play? It’s short, but we need to relocate to the living room, here, let me move the laundry…

Come sit at my kitchen counter, I love you. 

The best meal I ever ate

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The best meal I ever ate was after I jumped out of a plane over South Padre Island right behind my friend and right before my husband. I screamed a scream that came from the carnal parts of my body as we did a free fall toward the ocean. I was barefooted and strapped to a young man with wild hair and a bandana and when the chute finally opened and we floated down to the shore, he told me to take in the tranquility and beauty of it all while I fought the urge to revisit my morning breakfast. When my bare feet hit the sand, the nausea subsided and the relief kicked in—I survived a jump out of a questionable airplane, look at me, I’m young and wild and free…and starving!  When my husband made it down to earth, looking about as calm as he does when he wakes up in the morning, we all grabbed a margarita and a fish taco at a little shoreside shack and no fish taco or margarita will ever compare, because I was ALIVE!

Except once I had a margarita on a camping trip with friends and one of them brought dozens and dozens of limes and loads of ice and good tequila and he didn’t hold back on those and the salty rim served in a red solo cup while we all sat in camp chairs and watched the people with money drive jet skis back and forth across the big lake with nothing at all to do but sit together.

The best meal I ever ate was my grandma’s cold tuna noodle salad that she would make my grandpa and me the summer I lived with them at their lake in Minnesota. I was there to work for a theater program, a year out of college and two months away from my wedding, I watched my grandparents move in and out of their days together after over fifty years of marriage. I would put the coffee on for them in the morning before I left for work, a little convenience I could offer that they praised overtly. My grandma was known for her brownies and fun-loving nature, but she wasn’t known for her cooking. She made this noodle salad one pretty evening and we ate it on the porch beside the lake with short glasses of vodka tonics with a maraschino cherry and both grandpa and I agreed we loved it, and so we told her, and for the rest of the summer, that salad was always in the fridge.

The best meal I ever ate featured a big, ripe tomato and a perfect cucumber from my garden, and my little sister’s homemade bread and a recipe from Val for the dressing and I ate it at the messy counter in our home with the windows open to catch a cool, late summer breeze. I made one for myself and then another when my husband came in from work and we said, “There’s nothing better, nothing better,” while the juice of that tomato dripped out from between the bread and onto our plates.

The best meal I ever ate was wild elk from his grill after a long bow hunting season. The best meal I ever ate was his mom’s fried porkchops with a side of mashed potatoes and creamed peas when I was sixteen and over for supper for the first time. I didn’t know about creamed peas and without them, what is life?

The best meal I ever at is at my mom’s every Christmas.

The best meal I ever ate was the hot dog I roasted on a stick over the impromptu backyard campfire last night with my husband and the cousins and my parents and my kids and too many dogs running around barking at the coyotes howling as the red moon came up. And it was 10 pm and too late for supper but it was his idea because the kids asked and so we stirred up a side of mac and cheese and corn on the cob and s’mores for dessert, but it was that hotdog that was my meal after a long day where maybe I didn’t feel like a campfire but was so glad there was one waiting for me because it was a little burnt and the bun was too small but look at us out here, we’ve survived another day and we’re young enough and wild and free and hungry and we have people we love and we’re ALIVE, eating hotdogs together.  

Fine and Grateful

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“How are you feeling?”

That’s been the question of the summer for me after spending the spring in Rochester at the Mayo Clinic for radiation and chemo treatment on two tumors that reappeared outside my esophagus after a good six-year cancer hiatus.

“Fine. I’m really feeling fine,” has been my reply to those in my community who have pulled me aside for a hug, or stopped to visit in the grocery store, or sent me a text or passed by me while leading goats and kids through the fairgrounds.

“Really?” Is a reply.

“Oh good!” Is another.

“Are you sure?” Is one too.

“Good to see you’re back at it.” Is also one.

“Thank you, thank you so much for asking,” is what I say. And it’s what I genuinely mean. Even I’m surprised that this gets to be my answer.

Because it turns out that the question is a strange one to navigate. Do I feel fine? Yes, really. The little ailments that plagued me during and shortly after treatment have wound down now—the mild heartburn and nausea, the weird bone pain—but it’s hard to describe. My confidence is shaken and I don’t really feel like myself in my own body. The thought of even being in public is a little unnerving, not because I don’t want to be around people, but because I don’t feel like me in the room.

Which brings me to the, “How are you feeling?” question again. I’m finding it’s also a strange question to navigate for the people who love and care about you. Because everyone who asks wants to hear the truth of it, and I certainly want to give it, that’s sort of my thing, for better or for worse. But there is a bit of an expectation (is that the right word?) of what a cancer patient looks like. When I say I’m fine, sometimes I get the sense that they don’t believe me. When I say I’m fine, sometimes I wonder myself.

Prior to my experience, I had the notion that the results of chemo and radiation and treatment in every patient meant they were to become frail and bald. Now I understand that every treatment is different and every dose, every plan, every zap and poke and pill is concocted a thousand different ways for the thousands of different phases, stages, places and varieties a tumor presents itself and spreads. (Isn’t that a fun little sentence to write? Ugh.) My cancer didn’t make me sick this time, and neither did the treatment really and for that I am as grateful as they come. Maybe that should be my new answer to the question. “Fine and grateful.”

Because cancer recovery on me looks like a woman who used to have long, dark, thick hair who cut it off and let the grays come in because it was coming out in handfuls. And as much as I thought I would be the type of woman who wouldn’t care about my hair, the kind of woman who would just be grateful to be alive, it turns out I am not that woman. I am mad and annoyed about my hair, despite knowing better and still hanging on to enough to pull off a fluffy bob. And I overexplain it to everyone for some reason, even though I should probably just shut up and say, “Fine and grateful.”  I become annoying to myself in those moments.

Cancer recovery on me also looks a little puffy and a little more sweaty (if that’s possible) and doing what I can fit into my jeans for an upcoming concert I have on the schedule next week. Should that be important to me? Probably not. Is it? Yes. Because I would like to be in control of my body again, thankyouverymuch.

Cancer recovery on me also looks like continuing to work and show up for my kids and take long walks and get on a horse and host family suppers because slowing all the way down doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me feel less like myself.

And maybe that’s it. That I don’t want cancer to define me the same way I didn’t want infertility to define me. Maybe that’s where the confidence thing comes in. I’ve been shifting the focus away from the treatments and back into my regular life now for a bit over a month, but the reality of my situation still lingers in the shower drain, in the supplements I’m buying that probably won’t help a thing, in the closet full of clothes that don’t fit, in the little moments of overwhelm and worry when I wake up at 3 am and in the question: “How are you feeling?”

And I thank you all, truly, for asking. I’ll happily answer the question a thousand times.

A gecko at the county fair

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So, Edie showed her lizard at the county fair. 

I think this might be something worth telling you all about because a county fair of our modest size doesn’t get many leopard gecko entries. Rabbits, chickens and an occasional duck or turkey usually round out the small animal category, but we’re in the business of pushing it a bit, and so there we were at 7 am loading the trailer with a goat named Beef and another named Noodles and a visibly annoyed Tango the lizard and his cozy terrarium in the back of my SUV to get to town for the show. 

When we made this sort of reptile commitment, it was a month or so before the big event and we thought it would be fun to bring Edie’s pet into town and show it off as an exhibit. Not having a history of showing small animals at the fair, I thought that the judging process would look like a visit to the cage to interview about the proper care and feeding of a lizard, and maybe a chance to take him out quickly to show him off, and that would be it. 

I was wrong, as you can imagine. Turns out, I am wrong plenty when it comes to 4-H. 

Because showing a lizard at the fair also means filling out paperwork that includes a pet portrait, pet raising highs and lows, a feeding schedule, a cost analysis and future goals for you and your pet lizard. (Turns out it costs $8 a month to keep a lizard alive.) 

Question: What do you hope to gain from this project? 
Can keeping him alive be an answer? 

No. When Edie was interviewed about her record book that morning after she’d discussed her Lego set, ceramic and the jeans she painted for her birthday, she said she hoped to learn all she could learn about leopard geckos. Which was a cute and responsible answer, one that helped her win a blue ribbon for her bookkeeping and reptile knowledge. So that was cute and, most importantly, done.

We set the glass terrarium up on a back table in the barn next to a beam where we could hang Tango’s heat lamp. That little scaly lizard looked a bit out of place among the big, beautiful bunnies munching hay in their cages. I told Edie to throw him some worms while we figured out what was next for the guy. And let me tell you when I realized that what came next was her holding that little lizard in her hands in line between a bunny and a little chicken in the show ring, I about had a heart attack. 

“You mean she actually SHOWS it?” I panicked to my husband. “Like, set it on the little carpet in front of the judge SHOWS it?” 

“Appears so,” he replied after asking around to the fellow 4-H moms, one who had a similar experience with her son and a bearded dragon a few years back. 

“I don’t know if I want to do this,” Edie whispered to her dad while I was off somewhere declaring my own discomfort to anyone who would listen. “Nobody shows lizards here.” 

And with that my husband pulled out all the ways in which being the girl with a lizard at the fair is going to give her street cred and her attitude shifted as she pulled her pet from his cage and cupped it in her hands.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring him out to the ring in his cage?” I asked, envisioning a scenario in which the lizard leaps from the carpet and off the table and into a ring covered in wood chips never to be seen again.

“No, I got it mom,” my daughter replied confidently. 

“Ok, I could get a little box,” I tried again, wondering if domestic chickens have a taste for gecko.

“Mommmmaaa, I. Got. It.” 

And with that my daughter was off in her little green 4-H shirt and ponytail, placing her pet reptile on the carpet, keeping him safe, and telling the judge all about it with a big smile. 

In fact, everyone watching that judge try to figure out how to place three bunnies, a chicken and a lizard in the pet showmanship category was grinning as big as Edie that afternoon. What a funny little display and such a testament to what it means to be at a small-town county fair. 

“It was a tough job,” the judge declared on the microphone. “A rabbit, a chicken and a gecko don’t have much in common, but it came down to how confident and knowledgeable each kid was about their animal today. I give this boy with the rabbit on the end here a grand and the lizard comes in with reserved.” 

Well, that make me unclench my jaw a bit to grab my own smile as I watched Edie shake the judge’s hand and walk out of the arena with that lizard unscathed and her head held high. It clenched right up again at the gate when she and that lizard were swarmed by every little 4-Her that could get close. 

“Is that a lizard?”  “You’re the lizard girl!” “Can I hold him?” “What’s his name?” “Will he bite me?” “How old is he?” and on and on it went, the girl and her gecko like rock stars all the way back to the cage, where Tango got an extra worm and a chance to hide. Turns out the only spotlight he likes is a heat light. But in that moment, Tango made Edie a brave, 4-H star. I couldn’t have been more proud. 

And that is what you get when you take a lizard to the county fair. 

Ways to say “I Love You” in the summer

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Bring the noodle salad to the Tuesday T-ball picnic. And if you forgot the key ingredient at the grocery store and realized it too late so that you couldn’t make the noodle salad after all, cut up the half watermelon in the fridge and add grapes and bring that instead. And when the mom arrives with the cut-up watermelon with grapes to sit alongside the four other bowls and plates of cut up watermelon, say, “That’s ok! Kids love fruit, it will all get eaten.”

Send your ten-year-old over to hold the toddler’s hand and walk her around at the 4th of July Rodeo.

Stand behind the horse trailer or boat trailer and help line it up.

Have popsicles ready in the freezer in case the neighbor kids show up.

Go to the branding and do the ear tags or take the pictures or watch the babies or run for supplies.

Gas up the lawnmower, fill up the tires, change the oil but leave the mowing to her.

Bring the extra cucumbers to the nursing home and the extra eggs to your sister and leave the extra zucchini in the front seat of any unlocked car.  

Make a rhubarb cake for church breakfast.

Leave room for a your friend’s lawn chair next to yours at the ballgame and tell her you like her new haircut, then when she tells you the kids are going to bed too late and her house is a mess  and they’re behind on their 4-H projects, nod your head and say “same, same, same,” and then tell her the story about your daughters’ goat who keeps getting out and eating your petunias.

Take the kids to clean the ditches.

Make him an egg salad sandwich with a little baggie of chips and a full-sized Snickers bar and an orange already peeled with a jug of ice water and bring it to the field. Pack yourself the same lunch and eat with him in the shade.

Sit in your lawn chair in the garage with the door open at the end of the day and watch the cars drive slowly home and the kids play in the lawn and offer a beer or a pop to the neighbor who says hello. Have an extra chair there in case.

Take them out for ice cream and say yes to an extra scoop.

Ask, “Did you put on sunscreen?”  “Do you need a Band-Aid?” Bring the bug spray.  

Help them move the old fridge out to the garage and the new fridge into the kitchen. Stay for pizza after.

Clip his long hair short at 10 pm in the kitchen. Make sure the peach bath towel stays draped around his shoulders. Tell him he’s handsome.

Run her a cool bath.

Buy Dr. Pepper for the fridge and orange pushup pops for eating on the front stoop.

Take a 4 pm nap with the fan blowing.

Ride along for a parts-run to town, bring sunflower seeds and roll the windows down.

Help them make a lemonade stand and drive them to the highway to set it up and when they run out, drive home to make more.

Leave the shades to your bedroom open and the let the sunrise wake you up.
Bring them to the pool and go all the way in, over your head even. Fix their goggles a thousand times.

Be the parade-float supervisor.
Plan vacation bible school for your little church and invite the new family in town.

Water your neighbor’s tomato plants and geraniums while they take the kids on a waterpark vacation. Feed her cat too. Say “I’d love to,” when she calls because you mean it. You’d love to. Have fun, it’s summer. I love you.

The house he built

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I went to bed last night with the windows open in a bedroom in a house my husband has spent years building and perfecting. Last spring he finished a new master bedroom and bathroom off an expanded living room, growing our home as our family grew with the idea that we are a house for hosting and living-room cartwheels.

I snuggled down next to my husband and listened to the sound of him breathing while he slept in the bedroom he designed, equal parts grateful and in awe of his capabilities, always. His attitude has always been something along the lines of “I didn’t know how to do it until I tried to do it.” This place he’s built is a result of that quiet try, that confidence and the tenacity to just do it himself.

Building the loft thirteen years ago

The next morning, I woke up to him sneaking out to work on other people’s houses, a business he created after years worn down in the oilfield. 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 a writing project, but I slipped back to sleep for a moment while the world lit up.

And I woke again to the sound of 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 the 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 dreams 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. Soon it will be buzzing with the chatter of our own kids, waking up and pouring cereal and humming to themselves and arguing and painting and playing. It’s summer, so it won’t be quiet or clean in this house for months, or, more realistically, years. Squeals and laughter and music and questions and silliness, God willing, bouncing off the walls. In the evening, little by little my extended family will pop over to check in, my little sister and her daughters coming to play, my dad on his way from checking cows, my mom coming home from town, and they will stay long enough for supper and it will be loud in this house with stories and “watch this,” and “sit on your butt and eat,” and the scrape of forks on plates and “this is good Jess, thanks for having us over” and a little light arguing over the card game the girls picked for us all to play and that is what he built this place for. All of this.

The girls helping supervise the deck build

When everyone heads home the sun will be sinking below the horizon, but I will pop out anyway for a quiet walk in the hills before dark. When I get home, I will find my husband sleeping on the couch while our daughters lay in the crook of his arm and draped across his legs, the television reflecting the light of other peoples’ stories off his scruffy face.

I will switch it off and gather our daughters for their own beds before opening the windows in our new bedroom to let the stars in. I’ll fall asleep to the sound of the frogs, thinking about all 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 house he built with the windows open…

Nothing’s Forever

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“Sometimes I don’t know how happy to be…”

I wrote this line nearly fifteen years ago in a song I titled “Nothing’s Forever.” I sing it at nearly every show, and it’s one of those lines that has popped into my head at different times in my life. I remember where I was when I wrote it, sitting on the hand-me-down leather couch in my grandma’s old ranch house. I had just moved back to the ranch with my husband and was in the in-between time of trying to decide what I wanted to do next—take a big girl job or keep on writing and singing. To figure it out I took to walking the hills daily, and on one of those walks, this little waltz came into my head.

“Sometimes I don’t know how happy to be,” was a line that came while alone in that ranch house. The world was changing all around me, with oil wells being punched in the hills and new roads being made and old buildings and barns and fences that had been fixtures of my childhood crumbling and losing their shine. The community I knew as a kid wasn’t going to look exactly the same for my kids, and there was a part of me mourning that loss, and then the other part was excited at the possibilities ahead.

Fast forward now to the possibilities ahead. We’re living them, with the kids we prayed for growing fast and the old barn still standing, but barely, begging us to make a decision about it. And the oil wells have turned to pumping units and the new roads are well worn and we keep moving.

“Sometimes I am scared I won’t know who I am, because nothing’s forever, baby.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” I think as I glanced at my oldest daughter looking out the window of our SUV on the way to school. Her hair is long and blonde and it waved so pretty under the brush this morning. She doesn’t like it. She wants it to be straight and slicked and I remember that feeling when I was her age. My hair was too poofy, too brown, my nose too big, my arms too long. I don’t want her to feel that way, I want her to love her long blond wavy hair and her face and her lanky limbs, and so I looked in the rearview mirror and told both my girls they’re beautiful, which seemed out of the blue to them as they sang along to the latest song they love. They looked at my eyes and smiled. I tell them this often, even though there’s conflicting parenting advice about it. But I say it anyway. And I tell them they’re smart too. And kind. And brave. I say it all. I have to, because, well, you know, nothing’s forever, baby.

When we got home that afternoon my daughters headed outside to shoot hoops on the cement slab. The weather has been so nice, we’re being tricked into doing spring things, like switching from basketball to mud puddle jumping. When my daughters came inside, they happily presented me with shoes and pants and boots and freshly washed town jackets all coated in mud. And, as it turns out, they’re not too grown up for giving themselves mud beards. I had been stressed about the amount of laundry that had piled up and was finally getting to the end of it, and so my initial reaction was “Good Lord, I just washed your jackets!”  It was a choice that quieted their giggles, and I regretted it instantly.

“Sometimes I don’t know how happy to be…” it ran through my head, and I changed course.

I’ve never cared about broken things really. Dirty things can come clean. Remember? Remember what will matter down the road.

And so, I laughed. “You girls are crazy, get together for a picture then get in the shower!”

“If you hold tight the water, it slips through your hands, the same goes for wild birds and hourglass sands. You can chase down the light of the last setting sun, but you will not catch it, no matter how fast you run. Of all of the wild things no one can tame, one thing remains, one thing still remains, My love is forever, baby.”

Owl song

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I woke up this morning to our owl hooting outside our bedroom window. I call it our owl because he lives in the trees where we live too. I see him sometimes when I pull down our drive at dusk, perched on the road or on the top of an old oak tree. It isn’t often, but when I get to witness his big wings spread and swoop silently away in the disruption of my headlights, I feel like a witness to a sacred thing.

And so, the declaration of the owl’s presence was the first thing I said to my husband when I woke up this morning. “The owl was hooting,” I declared before my eyes were even fully awake. He opened his arms up and I buried my head there for a few moments before pouring the kids their morning cereal.

I read somewhere that in many spiritual traditions, seeing an owl is a reminder to pay attention to your inner wisdom. In some cultures, an owl hoot is viewed as a sign of spiritual protection or a guide through personal transformation or spiritual growth. A little more digging into the symbolism of the owl uncovers a dozen differing and conflicting interpretations of the animal’s presence in your life, from a hoot at night signifying immanent death to an owl’s call predicting the gender of an unborn baby.

I don’t know what it means for me that I’ve been hearing the hoot of our owl more regularly lately, except maybe that I’m listening, and that it’s comforting to me somehow to be reminded we’re out here making our casseroles and snuggling under blankets alongside the wild things, especially when the world seems heavy.

When we built our house, we put in big glass doors that slide open to the tall hill and stock dam outside. Everyone that comes to visit will first take a stop by each door to look out, hands in their pockets, to see what might come over that big hill, or walk toward that water for a drink. They’ll press their faces closer to the glass and I’ll worry that they’ll notice how are deck needs to be redone, or the grill that needs to be cleaned, but they never do. They’re looking beyond that always, into the grass and the trees and the sky.

This morning the fog settled in the low spots and blocked the sunrise. The turkeys came down to wander through the swing set and pick at the old tomato plants in my garden.

Later a coyote will come up over that hill and slink down through the path in the oaks and ash. The doe and her two fawns will eat acorns by the tire swing and it’s warm today, so the squirrels will be out, fat and frantic and chattering in the treetops where our owl sleeps.

There was a time this was the only news a human could know, and in this they looked for more meaning. In all this evolution of language and technology, connectedness and schooling and travel and religion, still, where’s the answer?

What will become of us?I close my eyes and listen for the owl call.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

from The Peace of Wild Things And Other Poems (Penguin, 2018)

Stories will save us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honey, let the dogs in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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