Tag Archives: parenting

Life in my car

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“The person who invented pants is really smart,” my oldest daughter’s voice chimed in from the way back seat of our Suburban.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I responded, not really that surprised that the comment came out of silence and, also, out of nowhere. She’s eight and that’s her resting state.

“Right because people used to just wear tiny chaps over their privates. And maybe not even over their butts!”

And that was her little sister’s contribution to the conversation as we rounded the corner to school drop off, just another Tuesday under a cloudy sky. Only this one was a little perilous because for some reason my phone had switched itself to Mountain time during the wee hours of the night, something that my husband didn’t bring to my attention until he noticed my level of calm strolling around the kitchen gathering breakfast and snacks and my thoughts for the day didn’t match the level of urgency 7:25 am warranted in our house.

Like we should be out the door in four minutes and all of us were still in our pajamas.

And so, of course I didn’t believe him or the kitchen clock that doesn’t ever change or the fact that it did, actually, look more like a 7:30 am sun situation than a 6:30 am situation, but honestly, I’m hanging by a thread here.

We shifted into warp speed then, but I didn’t have time to look in the mirror if we had a prayer of making it to school on time. And so I didn’t, knowing full well I have everything I need in my car to put myself together in a parking lot somewhere before heading into work. This is a special skill that rural women have. Well, maybe all women have it, but I can only speak from my own experience of living thirty miles from town for most of my life. Pair that with decades of working as a touring musician and I would guess the number of times I’ve applied my makeup in the visor mirror of my vehicle in a gas station parking lot might just outnumber the times I’ve used the one above the bathroom sink.

My husband pointed this out as he was putting the finishing touches on our new master bathroom. He has been making me a little vanity counter right in front of the window because natural light is the best light to illuminate all my flaws, something I’ve come to learn from that visor mirror. Indoor lighting can’t be trusted. I need nature to tell me the cold, hard truth.

He’s been working on a new closet for us as well, something much bigger and more convenient than the front seat of my car where I do quite a bit of my changing. I’ve been pushing my driver’s seat back to change in and out of tights and jeans and boots and dresses for so much of my life it’s a miracle that I haven’t created more embarrassing moments for myself and innocent pedestrians by now.

But then it’s hard to know how many people I actually traumatized in the McDonalds drive-through line as I removed my boots, belt and shapeware from under my dress while ordering a Big Mac for the hour drive back to the ranch.

If multitasking is the pillar from which I run my life, then my car is the sanctuary from which I carry out my last-minute tasks in the few quiet moments between drop off and workday, and workday and school pick-up line. Behind the dashboard is my desk, my phone booth, my five-minute nap space, my quick-bite kitchen table, my vanity, and, maybe most importantly, the place where I get to listen to my growing daughters ponder life as they count the power poles and trees zooming by their windows.

Anyway, if you happen to catch me deep in a rear-view-mirror-mascara situation, just kindly pass on by. The invisible-while-I’m-in-my-car façade is what I have to hold on to these days.

Peace, love and also, Big-Macs taste better when you remove your Spanx.  

“Don’t Duck” and other rules for sports

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My 7th grade basketball photo. It only went south from there…

Listen. There is not an athletically gifted bone in my body. My entire childhood, my cousins called me “Tuck and Roll,” because I spent plenty of time falling off horses and breaking bones. I had to try hard to be considered for the C Squad when it came to my short-lived basketball career. My now-sister-in-law was my junior high volleyball coach and she likes to recall, at family dinners, how scared I was of the ball. Apparently ducking when someone hits a volleyball your way is not in the play-book. Also, having your boyfriend’s sister as your volleyball coach is not embarrassing at all, especially when you’re only there for the social scene…

Ask my husband the kind of team member I was during our one-season stint as a curling team and he will tell you I was more into visiting than sweeping…

Recently, when Edie wanted to play soccer through Parks and Recreation and they were looking for parents to help with all eight 2nd and 3rd grade teams, it was my husband I had in mind for the task. Even though he hadn’t played or watched a real soccer game a day in his life, unlike me, the man has excelled in sports in his lifetime.
And he’s coached.

Me? Once I volunteered to help with a 4-H STEAM program and accidentally swore in front of all the 4th graders. And when they called me out on it, I did the mature thing and denied it to all their innocent faces. They were confused, I was ill-equipped and so it’s my husband who signed up to coach Edie’s soccer team.

But, you know, I am who I am, so I said I would help. And by help, I meant I would do the communicating with parents and the remembering of names and the organizing of lines and treats and photo taking. Basically, I would do the admin. And so they put my name as coach under Chad’s on the roster and here I am. Coach Jessie. And let me put some generous quotations around the word “coach” for all the aforementioned reasons.

My dear husband knew about these generous quotations and yet, the first ten minutes of our first practice, he asked me to help him demonstrate a drill to the kids, by running and kicking the ball to him. Excuse me sir?  2nd and 3rd graders are not a forgiving audience. I am here for the paperwork and let me tell you, it showed.

Fast forward to the first game last week and more problems started to surface with this arrangement. Because I might not be a competitive player, but I am a competitive cheerer-on-er, much to the dismay of my daughter. Squealing “Ope, good try!” when they miss a goal is not necessarily helpful. Also, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but when we told the kids we were going to take the first game slow to help teach positions and the mechanics of the game, I tried to reassure our little team by telling them “It’s not about winning, it’s about learning!” which was met with blank stares and a correction from my husband. “Uh, we can try to win while we learn.”

Ok. Point taken. On to the reason I was there, to run the timer and sub kids in. Which I thought I could handle until chaos started to ensue on the field and my husband dared ask which kids belonged to which positions.

To which he was met with a blank stare of my own.

“I have no idea, but I finally got their names right! I just replaced Autumn with Calvin.”

And then, the ultimate question: “Coach Jessie, what’s the score?”

“I. Have. No. Idea. Aren’t we here to have fun?”

If you need me I’ll be watching soccer YouTube videos and wondering if I can change my entire personality at 40. Maybe, in the name of youth sports.

Peace, love and, in volleyball as in soccer, don’t duck.

Playing sports in 50MPH winds is the way we do it in ND

Let us be bored.

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Last night while I was folding laundry, my daughters wandered out into the living room on a pretend mission to escape something. Edie, my oldest, was dressed in overall-shorts with a little toy fox stuffed into her front pocket. Rosie, well, she was dressed as a granny, complete with big glasses, a bun, sensible shoes and a stick horse as a walking cane. I listened to their conversations a bit to see where the game was going, laughing to myself at Rosie’s grandma voice and her commitment to her character. When I asked her if they could stop for a minute so I could take their picture (they were so stinkin’ cute) Rosie replied, “Well, make it quick deary, my back is killin’ me!” Which tracks, I guess, for a granny.

So did the extra pair of underwear, flashlight and cardigan that Rosie packed for their pretend adventure. But what really put the whole thing over the top was when I looked to where they were playing in the kitchen to find Rosie snoring, eyes closed, standing up. Because, well, grannies get tired.

When these girls play, I tell you, they play. And it’s the best.

Because it’s their job.

When my first daughter was just a baby, I heard one of my more seasoned mom-friends say this in a conversation we were having about parenthood. In all the expectations we have laid out for our children, the schedules and the lessons and the homework and the chores, their number one priority should be to play. It’s a sentence that runs through my head when I’m feeling overwhelmed with the variety of choices for after school activities and completing extra homework, wondering now, especially as the kids are getting older, if I’m failing them by not putting them in travel basketball or hauling them to every youth rodeo in the region. It’s not how we were raised, but that was in the olden days. What are we supposed to be doing for our children now that we have access to a world full of expert and non-expert opinions?

Well, I have an opinion too I suppose, and it’s that the very best thing we can do for our children is to let them be bored.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a scheduled play date and paid-for weekly activities as much as the next mom. There’s a place for this on the schedule too. But the most fun I had as a kid arose out of no schedule at all, just an endless afternoon stretched out before me, with nothing but my imagination to fill it. But that was back before there was a choice otherwise. We had a handful of channels on TV and, gasp, we had to watch the commercial interruptions in our 30 minute after school episode of “Garfield and Friends”. Might as well just go outside and see what’s floating in the crick.

It happened fast, in less than one generation, but here we are raising kids in a world, where, if we allow it, they can be thoroughly entertained at every turn of a moment. I mean, has anyone ever found the bottom of Netflix or YouTube? Never. It’s up to us to turn it off so they can tune into that part of their little spirit that guides them toward an interest or a passion or, heck, just the opportunity to learn how to turn inward and rely on themselves in the quiet moments. More than my daughters’ basketball career or math grades, boredom is the thing I worry about failing them most.

Taylor Swift Concert…..

Now, I’m not saying that I turned into a professional fallen log fort-maker because of all the time I spent at the crick when I was a kid, but I did hone my songwriting skills singing at the top of my lungs pretending I was in a Disney movie where I had to learn to survive in the North Dakota wilderness alone. I learned that I like making up stories. And I liked performing, even if my audience was the squirrels I was terrifying and my little sister who was following a quarter mile behind me. And I learned it meant a lot to me to be there to witness every quiet turn of the season. It taught me gratitude. It taught me how to be alone and be ok with it.

Anyway, I realize I’m reflecting on this from a parenting perspective, but maybe even more importantly it’s a reminder to do the same for myself now that I’m a full-blown adult with adult responsibilities. Because in this season of life and parenting, boredom doesn’t exist. But it should. We should demand it of our lives as much as we demand anything else. I am saying that here to remind us all. If a kid’s job is to play, who said we had to take a promotion?

In a few weeks the weather will turn and I am going to put “wander the hills” on my to-do list. Because, like my daughters last night, I need the opportunity to escape in my mind once in a while. And lucky for me I was a kid in the ‘90s, so I know how to do that.

Chad and I are working to get our “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” podcast back in circulation now that the house project is a bit more under control. Until then, take a listen to an interview I did about music and ranching and motherhood while I was in Elko with “The Art Box”

Tooth Troubles

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Ok, here’s a legitimate parenting question. When your kid finds a tiny box full of her baby teeth because you sent her upstairs to your jewelry box to look for a pearl earrings for her granny costume, what do you do?

Also, what state of parenthood sentimentality possessed me to save those baby teeth in the first place? I sure don’t possess it anymore, given I completely forgot I had that tiny box containing tiny chompers until my second born reminded me with a very concerned look on her face.

When I tell you that I took a moment to collect myself in the middle of cooking supper and packing for a five day trip away from the ranch…and a work phone call and my husband deep into painting the ceiling of the new addition and collecting  items for Rosie’s 100th day of school costume…I mean I sat there on the floor of my room staring into that box for a good five minutes while my daughter asked all the questions.

Five minutes seems like a week when the truth will pop the Fairy Tale Tooth Fairy myth right in the middle of the part of childhood where the kid with questions is losing all her teeth.

First the Elf on the Shelf and now this?! Where was this in the parenting book?!

And then I remembered that when I was a weird little kid losing teeth I wrote a letter to The Fairy asking her if I could keep my tooth and still collect on the money. And so with that realization I did what any panicked and frazzled mother would do and I lied. I told her those teeth were not her teeth. They were mine. From when I was a little kid. Because I wrote a note. Because I wanted to keep my teeth for reasons I could not explain.

“But you didn’t live in this house when you were a kid!” Rose replied.

And so I said I’ve traveled with them. My baby teeth meant that much that I’ve brought them into adulthood with me.

My six-year-old daughter looked at me like I was a crazy person, which I deserved. Because I am, clearly. And then she said, “Well that makes sense. I counted the teeth and there aren’t eight. I’ve lost eight teeth, so they can’t be mine.”

And then, over a dinner of leftover pizza, Rosie made sure to inform her dad and her big sister that “Mom saved her baby teeth.”

“Gross,” yelled Edie.

My husband didn’t even flinch. Nothing phases him at this point. But Oh Lord. What have I done?

Traumatized her is what my sister decided.

“She’s going to be haunted by that for the rest of her life,” she texted after I confessed to her immediately via text the way I do all my parenting mishaps.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Like, who invented the Tooth Fairy and how did the whole nation of parents from across the generations just jump on board with the concept? Like, yeah, that seems reasonable. Money for teeth. Sounds fun.

It surely always goes wrong as much as it goes right for parents, especially the ones who are on the struggle bus with me. Like last time Rosie lost a tooth, I asked Chad, who puts her to bed every night, to handle the switch. And then when I woke up at 5 am thinking surely he fell asleep too soon and forgot, I walked downstairs and slipped five dollars under her pillow and the next morning Rosie woke up to sixteen dollars and fifty cents. Which really angered my sister. Because, well, that’s a pretty steep precedent to set in the neighborhood.  

Help.

The Magic of Christmas

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Greetings from under the giant Christmas tree where Rosie and the Elf on the Shelf are laying because both got the three-day flu for Rosie’s sixth birthday and I’m feeling the impeding sense of doom that comes with knowing I’m probably next.

My husband just walked in from hauling hay in the balmy 50+ degree December weather and I know I’m supposed to feel grateful, especially this time of year, but I am also feeling a bit overwhelmed. I told him, after spending my entire morning moving between promoting a new music release, meeting a deadline and trying to decide if I should take my daughter to the doctor, that my creative energy is running low.

And I’m feeling like I’m falling a foot or two short at about everything I’m working at right now. And he said, “Well, why don’t you write about that?”

So then, because I was in an honest mood, I confessed that two nights ago I might have wrecked the spirit of Christmas for our oldest when she caught me scrolling through “Elf on the Shelf Ideas for Parents” on my Pinterest feed.

“Mom,” she piped up timidly, surprising me in the quiet. “Does the elf move itself or is it the parents?”

Oh no…oh no…oh no.

“What do you think?” I asked softly.

“Well, I saw what you were looking at on your phone. Now I think it’s the parents.”

Oh no again.

In my defense I thought the child was already asleep while I scrolled and snuggled in the dark of her room. And also I forget that she can read now. She is eight but I forget that sometimes too. Because it all goes so fast and in my mind she’s still three and pudgy and twirling in that oversized quilted blue dress she wouldn’t take off for a year.

Eight? Is that an age where a kid might stop believing? She has been skeptical of this Christmas magic Santa thing since she could express it. She’s a practical kid and the details of a man who delivers presents to every child in the world in a flying sleigh pulled by an animal that doesn’t even fly in real life just doesn’t line up with the things she’s come to know about how the world works. And so that’s why we told her that to believe is part of the magic.

And so that’s what I told her the night I got caught planning that felt elf’s next move. I told her I think she could still choose to believe. And then I added something stupid trying to explain the Pinterest feed, like the pictures were of other families’ elves that moms share for fun. And the kid, bless her, I think she just pretended to buy it.

Now that I think of it, it was the same way I pretended to buy it was I was about her age, old enough to know better, but aware of what it meant to choose reality over magic. To me it seemed too close to the fire of adulthood, and I was still young enough to know I wasn’t ready for that yet.

So that night I tiptoed out of Edie’s room and moved the elf to the windowsill, wrapped her in a little washcloth and propped her up against a bottle of cough syrup in solidarity with the youngest member of the family who hadn’t lifted her head off the couch for 24 hours.

On the long list of things to worry about, the idea that my oldest daughter might become wise and ruin the magic for our youngest didn’t occur to me until it was time to locate that sickly little elf in the morning. But Edie woke up surprised and happy to see the elf and Rosie was still sick and I had a deadline and appointments to reschedule so I could stay home and care for her, and my husband had a calf to find and hay to haul and Edie had a computer test she was worried about and it was just another day in reality, the way the days come at all of us regardless of the season, the traditions or the size of your Christmas tree. Except on Christmas especially, it’s nice to have a little magic help us along. Hopefully that magic is currently working as a disinfectant…

Stay healthy out there!

Listen to the new single “Whiskey in the Winter. New full length album out everywhere January 11!

Oh, Christmas Tree

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Thanksgiving weekend we completed the great Christmas Tree hunt tradition at the ranch. Nature melted the snow away but held on to its cold and wind and so we thought we better get out in the hills before we needed to borrow the neighbor’s snowmobile. So we bundled up the troops and headed out to a spot in the home pasture where we spotted a cedar we thought might work on one of our rides this fall.

It didn’t take long to find it again out there stretching toward the sky among the scrub brush and thistle, the bottom three feet of its trunk rubbed bare by the deer.

Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a potential Christmas tree out in the wild is not the same size as a potential Christmas tree in the house. My daughters, standing under the boughs of the 12-foot tree standing in its natural habitat declared the tree “tiny” before helping running up a tall butte after their cousins and sliding down on their butts.

I’ve been in this same situation for years now, so I knew to save my argument about it being too big to fit in the door. And I didn’t say a thing about how it will take up our entire living room. And not a word was spoken about how we need to work on getting the house addition done just to display this tree. It’s not worth it and it doesn’t matter to my husband anyway. If he thinks the tree will fit the tree will fit.

And so, with the help of my dad and the tarp straps that my husband always magically seems to have in every nook and cranny of every vehicle and every pocket of every jacket he’s ever owned, we strapped the world’s-most-perfect-Christmas-Tree on to the back (and top) of our ATV and puttered on home to the house where we nearly pulled the front door off its hinges dragging it into the entryway to thaw out.

But, alas, the hinges stayed put and the neighborhood (a.k.a my parents and my little sister’s family) filed in a few minutes later to get in on the spectacle of getting that thing through the house, propped up in the tree stand and screwed to the wall without any of us, tree included, losing any limbs.

And yes, you heard it right, after all these years as adults who cut wild Christmas trees from the wild prairies, and one year where the tree nearly took out my oldest daughter while she spun innocently in her Elsa dress in the living room, we have learned to skip past the hazard and just screw the tree to the wall right away. 

Is it weird that our giant Christmas tree ritual has become a spectator sport for the rest of my family, complete with bloody marys and snacks? I don’t know what’s normal anymore.

At any rate, the tree is up and it smells beautiful, the way a cedar tree should and not like wild cat pee like that one unfortunate year we only speak of when we have the tree thawed out inside and can guarantee it hasn’t happened again. These types of issues don’t occur with the plastic tree sane people take out of storage year after year says my mother over her first sip of bloody mary. Since her kids have been out of the house for years, she’s been basking in the Martha Stewart Magazine tree that she’s always wanted. Tinsel, coyote pee and abandoned bird nest not welcome.

Also, kittens. Kittens are not welcome, which is a problem because we happen to have one and that was stupid timing and also another good reason to put a few more screws in the boards connected the tree trunk to the wall.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. I hope your traditions are bringing you as much joy as they are hassle. If you need me I’ll be looking for that dang elf…

Memory Keeper Podcast

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Another podcast up and at ’em for you. This week we sit down to reflect on our role in other people’s memories, especially our children’s. Speaking of children, ours are really loud in this episode, so fair warning if you’re not as good at ignoring them as we are. Also, I brings up the time I overbid on my husband dressed as the world’s ugliest woman in a local fundraiser. This has nothing to do with anything, but you get to hear it anyway.
And as a special treat, Edie tells the story of Paul Bunyan and it’s adorable. Listen at the link below or wherever you get your podcasts.

Growing their wings

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Rosie, my five-year-old, fell off her horse for the first time a few weeks ago. I made plans to drive my oldest and her best friend to bible camp for the day and so my husband took Rosie on a ride to the east pasture on our trusty old gelding named Cuss. They were going to check some fences, water and the cow situation and I was going to send Edie off to pray and play along the little lake by Epping, ND. These were just our morning plans.

And because there’s never a dull moment around here, on my way home to the ranch I met my husband driving the horse trailer back to the barn, with little Rosie tucked up next to his arm. We stopped in the middle of the road the way we do on the place, rolling down windows and checking what’s new and before I could utter a “How’d it go?” Rosie, with a fresh, small scratch on her chin, leaned over her dad and proudly announced, “I got bucked off!!!”

My husband just sorta calmly looked at me then from under his palm leaf cowboy hat and dark glasses, his lips closed tight and slightly pulled back toward his ears, his tanned arm resting casually out the open pickup window. Unlike his wife, who’s jaw was on the floor of my SUV while my eyebrows reached up to the ceiling, he doesn’t have many big expressions that indicate what’s going on in his head. But I knew this one. This one meant that it was true…

Well, at least partially true, because everyone knows that old horse can’t and won’t buck. But he did make a bit of a dramatic effort when climbing a hill and that’s what put poor Rosie on the ground.

And I wasn’t going to tell this story because in this day in age there are plenty ways you can be shamed as a parent, especially when you dare to be honest about anything that doesn’t resemble picture-perfect moments topped off with themes, balloon arches and gift bags for everyone. But I decided to share it today in case it helps someone. Because Rosie was just fine. Chad calmly tended to her, helped her up and made her feel taken care of in that moment. When he assessed that her tears were more out of fear than pain and realized that it was a fair hike back to the house, he asked her if she was comfortable getting back on her horse or if she would like to ride with him on his. She wanted to get back on and so she did, but Chad took her reigns and led Rosie and her old horse home safe and sound.

In the hours and days that followed my husband and I assessed and re-assessed the incident in our heads and in conversation with one another. And even though she was alright, we felt terrible about it. We wondered what we could have done differently, if she was too young to be out there, if we are bad parents, if she’s going to be afraid now. Did we push it too far? But what’s the cost of being overly cautious with them? And, the most important question, should we get our kids bubble-wrap suits?

When parents like us (I think we’re called geriatric millennials now, which I don’t appreciate, but I digress) talk about parenting-musts like car seats and helmets, unsupervised play in the neighborhood until dark and not putting our kids in the gooseneck of the horse trailer for a ride to the next town, we tend to respond with phrases like “Ah, we all lived through it,” which, when you think about it, is the privilege given only to those who lived through it.

There are reasons for rules.

But there are no official rules when it comes to parenting, especially parenting your kids on a working ranch. And so it’s hard to know sometimes—especially when you screw up—if you’re even close to the right track or if you’re bouncing up over that far hill with Cuss.

And I wish I could tell you that my husband and I came to an enlightening agreement, making our own ranch kid parenting playbook that I could lay out for you here, but we didn’t. And even if we did, I wouldn’t share it, because, put simply, it would be ours and ours alone. You don’t need to hear from us all the ways you could improve or change the way you love and care for your kids. If you’re a good parent, then you’re assessing that for your family daily. I know we are. Oh, and one more thing I want to make sure I add –our kids are living, breathing, heart-beating, mac-and-cheese snarfing humans who are begging us every day to help them grow their wings stronger so they can fly. I’m sure I’ve said it before here, but this summer alone my kids have outdone my expectations of them. Not necessarily in the room cleaning, Barbie pick-up categories, but in the ways they ask us to trust their capabilities. At the beginning of the summer, just a few short months ago, I planned to lead Rosie on Cuss through the barrel pattern at our hometown kids rodeo and she absolutely wouldn’t have it. She knew she could do it on her own, and she did. Who are we to let our own fear hold them back? Holding too tightly to the reins has consequences of its own.

But man it’s hard isn’t it? To watch them grow up and stretch farther into this world that’s so beautiful and unpredictable. But who would they become if we could guarantee their safekeeping? They would live through it but what kind of life would they live?

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be searching Amazon for that protective bubble suit, for my kids and for my heart, just in case.

Why we’ll never own a yacht…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cousins by the camper

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Cousins by the camper
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There’s a family photo that resurfaces every once in a while of six little kids with fluffy ‘90s hair sitting on a picnic bench in front of a 1980s tin-sided bumper pull camper. One of us is in a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, a couple in tight rolled jeans, all of us had bangs that started in the middle of our craniums. It was summer in North Dakota on the edge of the clay shores of Lake Sakakawea and we were squinting against the morning sun, a calm moment captured between itching mosquito bites and slapping horse flies away. A calm moment captured before a picnic of watermelon and juice boxes and hotdogs cooked on my uncle’s tiny grill. A calm moment captured before we became who we really were in that fuzzy photograph—cousins, grandchildren of Pete and Edith Veeder, connected by blood and big love and orange push-up pops and a ranch with a pink road that runs right through. Cousins reunited for a weekend of camping under a fussy North Dakota sky where it’s always a little too cold for swimming with a good chance of a camper-shaking thunderstorm.

Those six kids are all grown up now and so are the two who were too wiggly to sit still for the photo, some of us raising fluffy haired kids of our own. And this summer, for many different reasons, I will have seen every one of my cousins in person, on both sides of my family, in the matter of a few months. This very likely hasn’t happened since we were kids and it’s been an unexpected blessing in this season that is rolling in and out of my life as quickly as one of those thunderstorms.

I watch my daughters take the road that cuts between my house and my sister’s on their way to play because they can hardly stand a day without seeing one another. Now that they are old enough, they take that road themselves. And when I tag along, they leave me in the dust, holding hands and pulling tight on that thread that binds me to them, stretching it out to reach the people they need beyond me. What I would have given to have lived right down the road from my cousins.

I watch these girls run toward one another and I can’t help but wonder how these relationships will continue and evolve through the years, as sisters and cousins and friends. Their innocence presently has us all fooled into thinking that it could last forever, that they will eternally be bonded in this same tender and intricate way. But years have shown me enough scenarios in which it can all quietly or not so quietly fade or crumble or implode because humans are complicated, and our hearts are tender, and time is a thief. Sometimes my sister and I let ourselves imagine our daughters as teenagers fighting over boyfriends or driving themselves to town for a rodeo or a football game. We think my youngest, Rosie, will insist on driving and then we think she’ll drive too fast. And Edie, my oldest, will try to keep them in line but Emma, my youngest niece will take Rosie’s back. And Ada, the animal lover, might prefer to stay home with the horses, but could be convinced to break any rule because Rosie and Emma plead a good case. Oh it’s fun to imagine but not without wondering how they could ever be anything but here safe at the ranch at 3 and  5 and 6 and 7, in the sweet spot of sprinkler running and Bible Camp songs and endless game of babies in our basement.

Is that what our parents thought that day they asked us to sit shoulder to shoulder on the picnic bench? That if they pointed that camera and developed that film that it would help them remember this fleeting moment where we were together and sun kissed and smiling, before we knew that growing up could simultaneously ache and excite us. Before that thread pulled tight on us across the countryside as we wandered off to find out who we were supposed to be beyond the grass-stained knees of those tight-rolled jeans. I know it is. And then I wonder if they knew that it was because they believed in that pink road and that picnic table bench and family camping trips and Christmas suppers and Easter egg hunts at gramma’s that even now, after all these years, we do what it takes to have the chance to be who we really are, who we’ve always been, Pete and Edith’s grandchildren, squeezing in to say cheese.