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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…

Our puppy

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We have a puppy in the house. And even if I didn’t tell you, and if, for some reason the little gremlin didn’t greet you coming into the door by licking your feet and stealing your shoes, you would know by the pile he has collected on the floor in our living room of all of the shoes he has successfully confiscated. He’s a hoarder of all smelly and chewable things and he gathers them up from all corners of our home and yard and brings them back to the nice pink fluffy blanket he’s claimed as his own on the living room rug so that he can lay among them.

Nothing is safe here, as everyone who has ever had a puppy in the house knows. If you’re sitting at our kitchen counter and you just casually drop a flip flop or a Birkensock, as one might in a comfortable conversation, it is gone within seconds. Same with a slipper. And, if God forbid, you let a pair of your underwear drop to the ground, out of nowhere, the puppy appears like a thief in the night. And the thing is, you might not even notice until someone stops over for a visit and there’s your undies, right smack in the middle of the floor. Or worse, he might drop them at the guest’s feet along with every stuffed animal my daughters own and their socks and random dish towels, but that’s just the inside things.

Our puppy, a little toy Australian shepherd named Scootch, really likes to bring the outside in, and he likes to do it incognito. Like, I didn’t notice the half-decayed mouse he found on our walk tucked discreetly in his little snout until I smelled it while attempting a living room lounge. How quickly our life switches to chase mode in situations like this—the little turd doesn’t give up his treasures without a fight. Treasures like acorns and dead toads and sticks and little weird bones and rocks. Remember, we live in a wild place, and this world is his oyster. 

Why do we have a puppy? Because our ranch dogs are getting older, for one thing. And another thing is the girls like to have those old ranch dogs in the house, and in their beds, and on the couch in the living room. And if you remember what I just said, we live in a wild place, one that for a ranch dog, includes at least one roll in squishy cow poop a day, one or two swims in the stock dam, a few runs through the hills to pick up burs and ticks and a lot of things to eat that aren’t helpful in the breath department. But these old dogs love the inside arrangement so much that they have taken to letting themselves in to sleep on Rosie’s bed when everyone in the house is gone to work and school. It’s always fun to discover the dog-shaped dirt outline on the bedspread and pillow when I get home, the dogs being smart enough to vacate the premise before they’re caught red-handed. It’s a real Goldilocks situation we have going here.

Which, I guess, doesn’t really explain the puppy situation better except that it seems like every time my husband and I experience something a bit traumatic (like, oh I don’t know, another cancer diagnosis?) we wind up adding a new animal to the ranch population. (It’s how we wound up with a pug who thought he was a cow dog a long time ago, but that’s a story for the archives.)  Last time I went through the cancer thing, I convinced everyone that the girls needed a little white pony I saw on Facebook. I was heavily medicated and my family would do anything I said because they were worried and so that’s how we found ourselves with an arthritic pony with an attitude problem.

When I was in Rochester this spring, I spent a lot of my six-week stint taking walks and missing my old dogs on the ranch. And so consequently, I also spent time doing research on the best kind of pup I could bring home that would love ranch life and walks and be a more reasonable pet to live in the house and snuggle on our furniture. And so, I found Scootch. The idea that once we got to the end of the rough stuff, the girls and I would have a little pup to take care of wound up to be the perfect plan in the end. It helps to have things  We sure love him and his soft fluffy coat and smarts and playful nature. And it doesn’t mean the big dogs are out forever, let me be clear, but given how little they enjoy the bath part of being inside dogs, I think they’re ok with this replacement, as long as the little dog keeps his distance and saves some stinky stuff for them.

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. 

20 Years

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“There’s a Dewalt battery operated industrial fan on sale over there,” I said to my husband as he searched the back wall of Tractor Supply for the right battery for my car that wouldn’t start. “I could use it on stage when it’s hot.”

“Well, happy anniversary!” he laughed. “Go load it up!”

We spent that morning moving cows to better grass and water, riding good horses through pretty country, commenting on how we really need the rain. We had a few additional errands and chores to get done that Sunday before sending the kids down the road to their grandparents’ so we could grill a steak and pour a glass of wine to celebrate in our kitchen. 

As of last week, we have been married for twenty years. On our actual anniversary I will be across the state performing and my husband will be at the ranch working and our daughters will be playing with their cousins on the last few days of summer. And maybe twenty years deserves a bigger celebration than a trip to Tractor Supply and clearing the table of the baby dolls so we can eat steak together at 9 pm, but in our life, grand gestures have never been a thing.

The biggest, I suppose, was our wedding in the cow pasture under the oak tree where he proposed. We planned a little movie scene ceremony, complete with an entrance on a horse drawn wagon. All our guests sat on homemade benches on a breezy August day after a much-needed evening of thunderstorms that threatened the whole plan. Chad spent the entire 48 hours prior roasting a pig in a big hole in the ground to feed the rehearsal dinner guests and, due to that thunderstorm, our back yard picnic turned into a jam session in my parents’ tiny garage, the only place on the ranch we hadn’t cleaned. We were just kids when we made these plans. I turned 23 two weeks into our marriage when, for our honeymoon my new husband came with me on his four days off his oil rig job to a small gig where I played music under a picnic shelter in Redfield, South Dakota. Along the way we splurged on a fancy hotel and a new refrigerator that was too big to fit in the kitchen in the tiny ranch house, so it sat there in the middle of the house for days until we figured out a new plan.

We were just 23, but I had already loved him for years by then, silly girl. Silly kids.

If I were a better writer, I would have worked to make a list of the top 10 things I’ve learned about marriage in these twenty short years. Or maybe I could offer some advice. But marriage, no matter how long it lasts, isn’t a tidy list. In fact, maybe the longer you’re together, the less tidy it all becomes.

“You should hear it outside, it’s just buzzing and humming,” he said as he came in from taking the steaks off the grill. “The crickets are so loud, and so is the owl. It’s dark but everything’s just vibrating.”

I stood under the big kitchen light, clearing the counter for our little supper for two, chopping the lettuce and grabbing the plates. In the movies I would have lit some candles or lit a fire, maybe I would have come out in a pretty dress. Maybe there would have been jewelry. But we didn’t get to all that because we were too busy catching up, talking about plans for the barn and the kids and the business and the funny thing that happened yesterday, letting it all sit on the counter too long. These days, with two growing girls nipping at our heels, our house is rarely filled with just our two voices. To just be us under this roof is rare.

But it won’t be rare for long—that’s the one thing we know well. We put trust in the fleeting part, the good and the hard, and we’re pretty good at linking arms and trudging on through. And it’s easier when he gets the battery for my broken car and I get the groceries and we do the dishes together and I fold his socks and mow the lawn and he cleans the drain and makes the homemade noodles and he puts Rosie to bed and I put Edie to bed and I let the puppy out and he pulls on the other end of the fitted sheet and I stand behind the trailer to make sure he’s lined out and he wipes the dust off the backup camera of my car every time he walks by it.

Twenty years of marriage and I still understand that love is hardly ever loud. I knew that as the girl who married him. I just liked being with a man who made things like cattle work, a trip to Tractor Supply, a sort of messy house and a kitchen counter supper feel like the best life anyone could ask for.

It will be hot in the summer

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It will be hot in the summer. It will be the end of July heading into the dog days and the air conditioning on your main floor might not keep up. And the day before you were working outside and it was 95 degrees and the sweat dripped off your forehead and into your eyes. And it slithered down your back too, soaked through your shirt, but you found a bit of shade for a break and a drink of water, and you caught a little breeze and you said out loud, “Breeze feels good,” and he said, “Yeah, sure does,” and only a hot summer day makes you love a tiny bit of wind that way.

It will be hot in the summer and the air conditioning on your main floor might not keep up, but maybe there’s a basement and maybe it’s Sunday and maybe it’s so cold down there you need a blanket to cover the two of you on the old couch while you watch a movie you picked and he hates. And maybe you fall asleep anyway and maybe he doesn’t move because he likes the way your head feels heavy against his chest that way, the way it used to, I guess the way it always has, when you fall asleep on him. It’s been a long time, and it was a hot day and maybe you’ll think there’s nothing better in the world than that nap.

It will be hot in the summer, and it will be the end of July heading into August and maybe your cousin will call to tell you to put on your swimming suit and get on your bike because the sprinkler’s on under the trampoline and maybe you’ll jump and slide and giggle for hours, grass clipping stuck to your little bare feet, the sun and the water helping you grow like a flower.

It will be hot in the summer, and it will be the end of July and maybe you had no plans for a Saturday and maybe you were feeling bad about that because it seems like everyone you know is at a lake or in a pool somewhere. So then maybe you just decide to throw your camp chair in the back of the car and head there yourself because who says you can’t just go jump in that big lake on your own? It doesn’t have to cost a thing to sit on the shore, maybe just the $3.99 bag of sunflower seeds and the two Coors Lights you keep in the back of the fridge. And the bug spray because the black flies bite out here in the heat, but it’s hot in the summer and that shore is yours too and so you take it and you wade in slowly, up to your waist before you let the cold water finally rush over your head—you pop back up to face the sun smiling.

It will be hot in the summer, and it will be August and in four days your job will end, and school will start and you will be seventeen. Maybe it’s a Friday night and maybe you call your friend who has one of those big round pools that sits above the ground in her backyard and you have floated back there with her almost every hot afternoon of your childhood, and so this day will be no different except that in four days you will be in your school clothes again, no watermelon pool ring in sight, and it makes you feel nostalgic for the moment you’re still in, but missing already somehow, and that’s the first time you’ve felt something like that. It’s summer and it’s hot and your legs are tan and your best friend’s face is freckled, and you don’t say much then, you just sing along to the songs you know on her mix and float and float and float.

It will be hot in the summer and it will be the end of July heading into the dog days and the cows will need to be moved so you will wake up early to help your dad to beat the heat and the flies, even though maybe you didn’t get in last night until 1 am. And maybe you’ll be glad you did because it will be so foggy and so cool in those early hours that you will forget that in just a few hours that fog will be chased away by the scorching sun. But it won’t matter then, you’re awake now, up with the early risers for the best part of the summer day, because it will be hot, and the sweat will drip off your forehead and into your eyes, it will be hot in the summer, but maybe there will be a breeze. It will be hot in the summer, but maybe there will be a cool basement or a big lake. It will be hot in the summer, but maybe there will be a backyard hose, or a little pool or a foggy morning and most certainly it will be hot in the summer but most certainly it won’t be for long…

The Best Summer Ever

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“These kids are having the best summer ever,” I said to my friend as I waded in to meet her and my sister standing waist-deep in the public swimming pool. It was a scorching 95 degree day and I just picked up my oldest daughter and her best friend from a morning softball camp, fed them a sandwich from Subway and met the rest of the crew to beat the heat with an afternoon swim.

“When I was their age just going to a restaurant was a big deal, now it’s just part of their day,” I said. “And if I got to go to the pool I town once or twice a summer, I was living the life.”

“When I was their age, I used to ride my bike five miles one way into town to get to the public pool,” my friend laughed. “I must have been a ripped little kid.”

And from there, for the next half-hour or so, three moms reminisced about summertime in the 90s, while fending off splashes and football throws to the head, keeping one eye on our kids, fixing goggles, watching three hundred and fifty-two handstands, forty-two underwater summersaults and one-thousand jump spins off the edge.

“My best friend lived a mile up the hill, we used to ride our bikes all day right down the middle of the highway,” I recalled. “I guess I probably could have had the ten-year-olds walk a quarter of a mile to the pool after practice.”

The 90s summer nostalgia is a trending topic for the millennials who are now raising their own kids in the golden age of childhood. The memories of drinking out of the hose and orange pushups, ham and plastic cheese on Wonder Bread, running through sprinklers and neighborhood yards until the porch lights came on are core memories that pop to the surface when we smell a fresh cut lawn. I think we wonder if there will ever be a time we’ll feel as carefree …and then we wonder if our children could possibly feel the same way.

Of course, a 90s summer in a small town looked a bit different than a 90s summer thirty miles from the nearest ball field. My summers as a kid were spent with that best friend up the hill, sometimes dragging our little sisters along to jump on the hay bales or head to the creek to catch more ticks than frogs, and sometimes trying to ditch them. I mowed the lawn and painted the barn and worked on 4-H projects and rode and fell off horses that dad was breaking and sat out on the deck in my swimming suit with my big sister to get a tan. I was bored in a way that had me laying on the floor of my bedroom listening to the same Brooks and Dunn tape over and over again.  I was bored in a way that had me picking the guitar for hours. Bored in a way that had me sitting cross-legged on the floor to latch-hook a giant sunflower. Bored in a way that had my friends and I confiscating my parents’ camcorder to make elaborate music videos to Reba McEntire songs and unsupervised enough to hold one scene on the roof of a house.

Bored in a way I doubt I will ever be again.

Last week I enrolled my daughters in a little summer theater program where they put on a full-scale musical in just five days. My oldest played a corn cob, my youngest a pixie. They worked on learning their lines in the evening and practiced their songs for the weekend talent show. The week before they were jumping in a Minnesota lake. The week before that they were spinning on rides at the county fair before heading to bible camp. And in between they’ve been wearing out the path between our house and their cousins’ to jump on the trampoline with the sprinkler running. As I type this, my youngest and her friend haven’t quite awoken from their sleepover last night. When they do, they will resume pushing their babies in strollers across the cow pasture and re-organizing my husband’s office to play school.  

“Isn’t having a daughter so fun,” one of my friends said as we passed one another in town. “It’s like you get to re-live your girlhood and I love it.”

Her comment came a few days after what I said in the pool about our kids living their best lives. I admit, mine was a bit snarky—maybe because I just got done holding a towel above my head to serve as the girls’ changing room before squeezing into my swimming suit in a 100-degree locker room—but I think she’s right. We were at the pool that day after softball camp because the 10-year-old girl in me also wanted to meet my friends there and go swimming. And she wants to do the talent show and the play and the rides and the trampoline and the sleepover.

I looked up from the splashing to see my little sister in a lawn chair. She went to the concessions and got a giant blue popsicle, the kind that comes in the plastic tube and is about three feet long. When she had enough, she passed it over to me and I sat next to her and finished it off with my feet in the cool water and there we were again, just two girls raising girls and having the best summer ever.  

Not so special hill

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Let me tell you about a hillside on the ranch that never used to be special.

It was just a mildly steep slope along the edge of the fields, covered in creeping juniper growing in rocky and clay soil. We ride to the top occasionally to check the landscape for cows or move past it pushing them home. The hill pops up on the other side of the fence from what used to be fields. And so, I suppose my grandpa and dad used to drive past it in the tractor, digging up soil, and then planting seeds, and then turning alfalfa into bales before that field was turned into what we called “The CRP” for most of my childhood

The soil on that hillside is no good for grazing or planting, but from up there you can see for miles in every direction, although it’s not a hill located in a spot convenient for lingering and looking. There is no real trail that connects you to it. If you’re walking, it’s a good mile and a half cross country and three fences to crawl from the main county road. If you’re driving a pickup or an ATV, I hope it has good shocks because those old fields are bumpy. I once drove out there when I was nine months pregnant with Rosie hoping I’d bounce her out.  Riding horseback is the best way to get there if you need to go there and that’s how my dad and my little sister discovered, one late June morning, that the hill wasn’t just a hill, but one covered from top to bottom in bright orange wildflowers we call the tiger lily.

Now, timing is everything on this discovery. These wildflowers have always been coveted on our place in the same way as the juneberries and wild raspberries are in the poky and buzzing brush patches of the low spots in the summer pastures. If you’re from anywhere in the rural north, you understand the weight and urgency of fleeting summer moments. And these moments hang heavy in the sweet juice of wild berries, waiting impatiently for you to find them and pluck them for your pockets and pies before the birds fill their bellies. And you have a window of only a few days to get there, which turns the hunt and gather into a sort of ritual that makes the find taste sweeter, the sky a little bluer, the breeze much more appreciated.

The wild tiger lily acts the same, not because the birds are after them, but because time and the heat of the sun are. If my sister and my dad would have timed their ride a week before or a week later, they would have missed the magic that lay dormant under those creeping juniper each winter, waiting for the right mix of heat and rain to reach toward the sky and bloom. Who knows how long those tiger lilies were growing and spreading across that hillside before a human eye detected them and made a fuss. And a fuss we make, because usually you only find these flowers growing in pairs or fours dotted sporadically deep in the back pastures. But this find, that day, about five or so years ago, it was a harvest. My sister couldn’t wait to come home and take me back there to see for myself, to fill my hands in a wide grip with their stems and put them in that special old green mason jar on my kitchen table.

And so we’ve done it every year since. The end of June rolls around and we say to one another “We should go check on the tiger lilies,” and so we round up our daughters and cram them, and sometimes their baby dolls, and all the time the dogs too, and we bring a little basket and some scissors so as not to pull up the roots and we make the drive up off the mailbox, along the field trail then off into the bumps through the gate and down the hill so we can walk up and collect along the way.  With each visit that hilltop gets a bit more special to us as we remember our daughters and how small they used to be, their dirty blonde hair tinting gold with the sun, blowing back as they stand on a big rock with their arms out and sing into the sky, a small collection of mis-matched wildflowers tight in their fists.

This year our cousins and aunts and uncles from our dad’s side were here to visit the ranch that is so special to all of us. When planning things to eat and places to take them, my little sister and I looked at each other and remembered that it was tiger lily season. And so, after lunch on a sunny Friday afternoon every all-terrain vehicle we possessed between the four places was loaded up with relatives driving in a slow-moving wagon train inching across this sacred landscape on our way to show them how an ordinary hill can be magic. And all of us up there, big cousins, little cousins, great aunts and uncles, grampas and moms and dads and kids and spouses, connected by a bloodline and the land under our feet, wandered out, climbed up, said things like ‘oh, look at that!’ and ‘so beautiful’ and ‘look at the view’ and ‘look at the sky’ and ‘look, two blossoms on one stem’ and, if they were like Rosie, sneezed at least three-thousand times while collecting and taking photos and, because you can’t really help it, fist full of flowers, climbed to the very top, opened our arms and lifted our faces to the blue sky, all together on this once not so special hill.

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. 

County Fair Ice Breaker

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Well, the county fair is wrapped up. I wrote the following column in the early morning before day one, knowing the week would be filled with early mornings, late nights and zero vegetable consumption. Since then they wrapped up the static exhibit, two goat shows, a sale, showing the lizard and surviving an afternoon of carnival rides. The girls had a fun fair, did their best and learned some good lessons along the way. So did Chad and I.

I suppose I’ll have more to say about it in this week’s column, but these were my thoughts in the calm before the whirlwind.

County Fair Ice Breaker

“I told the judge a joke,” Rosie said between dance moves at the ice cream shop in town. We were there with my parents and cousins, recapping how the interview process went for their 4-H projects that afternoon. On the way to town, to prepare, we went over what the judges might ask, and I reminded them to sit up, speak up, use eye contact and to be proud of their projects. Then we talked logistics, like remember what goat feed you use and the camera model for their photography project, but telling the judge a joke as an icebreaker never came up. That was all Rosie.

Rosie, who picked out new pink cowboy boots specifically for this reason, and for the dance in the dirt when the fair is over, the ribbons are distributed and the goats are sold. Rosie who has had about enough of Cloverbud rainbow ribbons for her lifetime and is ready for a purple rosette and belt buckle already. Rosie, who admitted she was a little nervous standing on that piece of tape waiting for her turn to sit down and talk about her ceramic garden paver, watercolor bird blobs and the picture she took of her new puppy in a box.

“How do you know that a goose can’t hear?”

“How?”

“Because everything time you talk to it, it says, “Huh?”

Rainbow ribbons for all!

So that’s how we kicked off 4-H week here at the ranch. I’m writing this in the wee-hours of the morning, twenty minutes before I need to wake the kids up to start getting their goats ready to bring to town in the rain. And the lizard, we’re bringing that too, because filling out a 4-H record book for a leopard gecko where you have to calculate the cost per pound of meal worms was a challenge only we would be silly enough to accept.  

Walking through that exhibit hall every year filled with kids from our community buttoned up in green and white, some polished and proud of their welding or painting projects, some sort of melting because their Lego set fell apart on the way to town, their parents waiting along the sides of the room dragging wagons or holding boxes asking “How did it go?” and taking pictures and patting backs or giving words of encouragement on the first day of the county fair is about as Americana as it gets. It’s all so wholesome if you forget about the kitchen table negotiations and barnyard arguments that got us all to that point that morning. That’s what the parents are talking about behind those big boxes filled with baked goods and potted plants while they wait for their kids to show off their woodworking project with community members like my dad, Papa Gene, who was there that day as a judge.

“He asked some really good questions!” our neighbor girl declared after she got done with what I’m sure was a lengthy visit about her planter. “I would have never thought he’d ask about the glue!”

But he would. He would ask about the glue, and the inspiration, and if she’s having fun and who helped her build it and if she would do the project again and then he would say ‘good job, really great job, keep it up, keep it up.’  Papa Gene has never met a kid or a horse he didn’t think had the most potential in the world. Blue ribbons for all!

“I think I did a good job,” my oldest daughter declared after she finished chatting about her painted jeans, prairie rose photo, ceramic, Lego and painting projects that afternoon. Her smile was big and genuine and from my post on the sidelines with the other moms, I could see her smiling and chatting away. The way she has matured from previous years of this 4-H experience was more evident on her this year than ever.

“Are you proud of yourself?” I asked?

“Yes!”

And, well, that’s the point of it all isn’t it?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need go wake up the girls and the goats and try to get to town on time today. See you at the county fair!

*This column is dedicated to Marcia Hellandsaas, our 4-H matriarch and true example of someone dedicated to the role of what it means to be a kind, honest and hardworking leader. We all loved you and you will be missed dearly.

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.