Dreams of My Russian Summers

Like a lot of little girls, I dreamed of being a school teacher one day. Unlike them, I also envisioned myself as a Russian ballerina and an over-the-road trucker. (There’s a bed in the truck, so you’re essentially camping for a living, hands-down the coolest job.)

In high school, I came to my senses and decided to be a writer. This was by far my most challenging goal. I’m not saying teaching is easy, but you start by getting a license, which is at least straightforward. Russian ballerina? Either you’re Russian, or you’re not. Over-the-road trucker also requires a test and license, so you pass and get in or fail and move on.

Becoming a writer is imprecise. There are courses in writing and degrees in English; someone can teach you to spell and keep your participles from dangling in public. However, I know of no test to qualify a writer. I guess you could judge how many people like your work, but what’s the magic number? (Subtract Mom and Grandma; they’d read the back of a cereal box if you said you wrote it.) In the end, I supposed I’d just wake up one day and know I made it. 

At the outset, you might not have liked my work. The poetry I handed in as a freshman was predictable and a little weepy, and my sophomore essay about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, preachy. My senior paper on fossil fuels got better, and then I won the right to give a speech at graduation. Everyone in senior English wrote an essay, and we all voted who should get the honor of sharing it at commencement. Competition was stiff, but I came out on top. (Not something you could say for any of my athletic endeavors of the same period.)

I departed high school with a note from Mrs. Collins, my senior English teacher. She wrote, “You have a gift — writing! I expect to see your published works soon! Keep working hard.”

Then college happened. I met classmates whose writing talent was so abundant it felt gratuitous. I dropped my first English course after one class, scared out of my mind, and took environmental studies courses where I felt more at ease. Even working at the college newspaper, I mostly checked others’ work for errors. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communication, of which I was proud. But I didn’t think it would open the door to being a writer, maybe unsigned public relations stories if I were lucky.

Then life happened. I wrote unsigned public relations stories for a year and liked it anyway since they promoted a nonprofit in which I believed. I got married and moved to a place where I wasn’t sure I’d get a full-time job in anything, let alone in writing. I answered phone calls from disgruntled candy consumers for five months before being plucked from my misery by the publisher of one Jackson County Pilot.

Now I’m a writer, and people buy my stuff. I even won two awards — best arts and entertainment story and second-best business story among same-sized newspapers in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Newspaper Association. 

With that first-place plaque in hand, I suddenly woke up and knew I made it. 

I believe a thank-you is in order, to Mrs. Collins, who predicted all those years before what it took an entire association of people to make me realize: I can write if I keep working hard.

This column appeared in the Jan. 31 Jackson County Pilot as "Waking up and realizing dream of writing came true after all." Read all my columns in their entirety on the Jackson County Pilot website.

P.S. Blog title is a book title - read it!

Crimes against tomatoes

My kitchen looks like the scene of a violent, delicious crime. Knives dot the countertops that are streaked with red tomato juice. Chaos reigns. The soft swish of the dishwasher thrums underneath the clank of spoons on metal and glass, but its valiant effort to keep up with me is doomed. Dishes pile up. Plump red tomatoes plop into a pot of boiling water, their skins cracking under the heat. Onion fumes assault my nose, but I press onward and coarsely chop green peppers and celery. When the tomatoes are ready, I slip them from their skins and their acid clings to my hands like a spa-grade chemical peel.

This, more than anything, tells me summer is over. The bright, cleansing smell of raw vegetables and the pruning of my fingers, the way the tomato juice finds every wound I’ve inflicted on myself wielding hammers and tin snips, insinuating itself into my skin, into me.

---

I’ve never made my own stewed tomatoes, only helped my mother, the woman who deftly conducts each kitchen utensil until the heap of raw materials has been neatly laid to waste and in its place stands an army of matching Mason jars filled with muted reds and greens. Even producing immense quantities of canned goods, she never makes as big a mess as I do.

Tonight, I looked over the box of tomatoes and onions she and my father picked for me and decided I’d better get going before they rotted. Some things came back easily – the big pot of boiling water, the slotted spoon to drop the red orbs in and pick them out, the celery and peppers and onion. But I had no idea how much of anything. I of course called my mother. She walked me through the first few steps, and I could see her in her own kitchen helping me help her for the very first time. One thing you never forget if you’ve made stewed tomatoes is to cover the chopped onions with tomatoes lickety split. If you don’t, you’ll pay for it with tears. This I always remember.

---

I finished with four quarts of stewed tomatoes and two pints of fresh salsa. No canning tonight, since I don’t have a canner or anything big enough for a boiling water bath, but I’ll make quick work of it all and freeze what’s left. I do so love to eat.

Other signs of fall arrive daily since our return from vacation in the wilds of Canada and Michigan. Our neighbor kid drained his pool, letting its sad trickle run down the curb and into the storm sewer. Jackson’s kids had to be back in school halfway through August, so there wasn’t any point.  

I saw just one firefly skittering around in the bushes near evening. In the heat of summer, they’ll rise with the dusk, like the earth releasing its heat. They bumble around and twinkle in all the corn and bean fields so the crops look like a fairytale. But now they’re gone, only to return with warmer days.

And just today I passed a row of grain semis lined up three deep at the elevator. Our soybeans are turning yellow, and the corn is following suit. Soon there’ll be a constant smell of dried, crushed plants as combines and grain carts come out in force to finish off the fields.

Harvest is different to me since I married a farmer. It used to be the sadness of hollow fields and knowing another transition had left behind a summer full of things that could never be retrieved. Now its more like a call to arms – ready the men and the machines, and no stopping until each acre is clean. Through rain, breakdowns, sun-dappled evenings and long, long nights they’ll keep going until the kernels and beans are all stored away. Women, too, and little ones dressed up like miniature farmers who supervise the rest of us from buddy seats and red wagons.

Godspeed and a good harvest, we pray. May the chilling September breezes sing you to sleep, tucked tight under warm covers and dreaming of fresh stewed tomatoes. 

The Big Woods

When I pictured our road trip to Michigan, there were considerably fewer trees. The first few hours on I90 were fine, fueled by initial vacation excitement and the tall coffee I picked up in Austin. Rolling hills and rivers near Trempealeau spiced up Wisconsin before things quieted down. A sleepy highway running past cattle, corn fields and, eventually, tourist towns seemed peaceful and interesting against the dulcet tones of David Sedaris' audio book in our CD player and carried us all the way to Ashland on the coast of Superior.
That was yesterday This morning meant a sweet service at Zion Lutheran Church, an iced Americano with maple pecan croissant and the promise of our final destination - Sault Ste Marie - hanging in the air.
Zig-zagging between stands of forest and views of the mighty Superior gave way to  tiny glimpses of the shimmering greatest lake before being plunged into pines. There was no end. Ottowa National Forest followed by Hiawatha National Forest. Mile after mile of coniferous forests with a smattering of deciduous trees, some already gone aflame in anticipation of fall. This was punctuated only by historic small towns that had seen much better days. At a metropolitan stop, we scarfed down a late lunch, and I accepted driving responsibilities after shirking them all morning. Pulling away from civilization and back into the pines, we had hours left to go. And then it began to rain. Slightly at first, then pelting my windshield with fat drops. Please, please just give me back the trees, I begged. Nope. The storm ushered us into Sault Ste Marie, where we pulled into a town not entirely unlike Duluth with its red and white freighters, its historic bay and artsy shops.

It was late, so we meandered just a little before stopping for Mexican supper. Now we're tucking in, ready to wake early and cross into Canada for a train trip through the wilderness.
I am utterly certain the tree-lined path to Michigan will just be the beginning of a fabulous vacation!

Rerouting

I take the same route to work and back home for lunch every day. (Except in the winter, when it’s so icy I’m worried I’ll slide right down Thomas Hill and into the Des Moines.) On Thomas Hill there lives a little boy. He’s maybe five or six. The first time I met him, he was playing “race the toy trike down the hill like a wild man” with another shady looking kid. He asked me my name, and that conversation degraded into him calling me doody head. Needless to say, we're not friends.
Last week, he was out front playing in his makeshift pool. He asked me if I wanted to swim with him. Umm, no. That’s weird. I told him I had to go home and make cookies. “Sorry!”
He didn’t take it so well. Later that same week he was back in the pool on my way home for lunch, and this time he tried to spray me with a garden hose. I felt a little mist on the back of my legs, and then he yelled, “Hey! Are you wet?”
“No,” I shouted as I kept walking toward home.
“Oh,” he said, sort of disappointed. “I missed.”
Yeah. You missed kid. And you’re lucky you did. Honestly, I’m wearing business slacks and a blouse and you think it would be a bright idea to spray me with a garden hose?
Even though he has crappy aim, on my way back I took a detour on the tree streets (right at Maple, left at Oak). Now every time I approach his house, I close my eyes and say a little prayer he isn’t there. So far, it’s working, but I can't avoid him forever. I just hope he's not playing with fireworks next time.
---
You’ll never guess what I got Dad for Father’s Day. Doughnuts. He doesn’t especially love doughnuts, but these were special because I picked them out of the trash at the grocery store. My husband and I stopped to get a watermelon, and we were driving around the back of the supermarket when I spied a dumpster full of bakery items, with a plastic case of doughnuts on top.
“Should we get them?” my husband joked. I laughed. Then I got that look in my eyes and said, “We should totally get them for Neal for Father’s Day!”
Dumpster diving is a family thing. My grandpa Gerald used to take us when he was babysitting. I never remember getting so much as a stomach ache at his house, and we thought it was kind of fun. Dad always said growing up they didn’t get Halloween candy until well after the holiday when the stores got rid of it. And look how he turned out!
I felt a little silly climbing out of the car to grab food out of the trash, but I was grinning like crazy. My family had a good laugh remembering Grandpa DeMars,  and by the time we left Dad’s party, all the doughnuts were gone.

A sinking feeling

I certainly should not be writing. I should definitely be washing the dishes piled up next to my sink. My brand-new, eighth-wonder-of-the-world, working faucet and everything sink. After struggling to choose a faucet, we sort of closed our eyes and clicked "buy" just to have something out of which to get water. Turns out, it's the perfect shape and color for the kitchen. I guess you can't lose them all.
Even though I'm having a love affair washing dishes at waist level instead of sitting on my toilet and bending over the bathtub - and there are plenty to wash - I couldn't resist sitting down for a little typing. The afternoon sun was shimmering in from the west, and I needed to grab a little before it fades through the neighbors' many tree limbs.
To go with the new sink, we have all new working appliances save a dishwasher. That's on the way, but the repairman is a little overwhelmed with yard chores at the moment (I can see him through our picture window fertilizing the lawn - hope he doesn't see me eating a snack!). It's been raining plenty in Jackson, and the lawn just drinks it down. I'd be lying if I said I weren't disappointed that landscaping will have to wait one more year, but at the very least we have to trim the grass.
Our recent completion of several important projects in the kitchen seemed like the perfect way to make things more homey around here, but that instant, comfortable recognition of home still escapes me. I don't really feel it at my parents anymore, either. Of course I love visiting them, and I still know where my mom likes to hide the potato chips, but it's not quite the same. Do you ever get it back, that feeling of a safe landing after a long trip?
It's really not Jackson's fault, nor our home's, that this anxious fluttering in my bones is always afoot. With lots of recent trips for parties, weddings, showers and Menards essentials, the Jackson exit on I-90 is synonymous with "Why don't we have any clean laundry?" and "There is no breakfast food in our house." Arriving back in town is like grabbing the baton for the second sprint around the track. In much the same way, coming in the front door means remembering I still have to paint one strip of red near the ceiling, our bedroom looks like an unfinished garage and there is a LOT of trim to do.
And yet, there's got to be some way to cohabitate with this unending to-do list. Everyone else does it, as far as I know. What's the secret? I'd love to come home again.

Who You Married

Well we all fall in love

But we disregard the danger

Though we share so many secrets

There are some we never tell

Why were you so surprised

That you never saw the stranger

Did you ever let your lover see

The stranger in yourself?

~Billy Joel, "The Stranger"

There are things your spouses do when you're gone that most of you would probably not approve of. Even things they do in bed ... like eat marshmallows. Sunday my husband left on business to Detroit. Shortly after he departed, I surfed the internet for a TV program I'd been meaning to check out, opened the bag of giant marshmallows he bought me for Valentine's Day and snuggled up in my bed, err, our bed.

In fact, when he's gone I pull out several bad habits. There is rampant nail-biting, staying up late watching TV on the internet, leaving the clean clothes on the couch well beyond our 18-hour maximum and completely disregarding the dishes until shortly before he returns. I realize in what light this portrays me - it's brutal, but true. And it's sort of fun, like a no-holds-barred return to what I imagine college was like for a lot of people.

It's not that I wish I were alone. Much of the time, we are the equivalent of exquisitely paired peanut butter and strawberry jam. We share wicked inside jokes, split blizzards at Dairy Queen, mix sheetrock mud together and manage not to kill one another picking out four different types of lighting fixtures at Menards (sometimes a girl just wishes they had more sconces from which to choose).

But sometimes, in that oh-so-cliche way, it's nice to be apart. I sleep crosswise on the bed and throw my arms wide because there is no one there to accidentally karate chop. I regress into the completely self-indulgent aforementioned activities and don't really worry about what time I'll be home for supper or if there's any meat or bread in our house (today for lunch I had yogurt and almonds). I pick up my embroidery, read books and don't wonder if my spouse needs entertaining or a hand with sheetrock screws.

And yet, it's a finite amount of glorying in solitude one can do as half a duo. It hits me right about bed time. The silence his absence creates suddenly fills the space around me. His not being there is just as palpable as when he is there, sticking his hand on my face at 4 a.m. in a sleepy daze. It drives me to distraction, and I can't fall asleep until I've exhausted myself so that my eyes won't remain open (hence staying up too late). By the time he's back, I'm in a state somewhat akin to college finals with the lack of sleep and sugar ingestion. And then he rescues me from myself. And we start all over again with this beautiful mess of being roommates, best friends and occasionally long-distance spouses.

P.S. If he ever shares what he does in my absence, don't tell me. I'm 100 percent sure I don't want to know.

I ain't missin' you at all since you been gone away

Rustling through the undergrowth on the abandoned, frozen shores of small lake in rural southwestern Minnesota a few weeks ago, I realized how life can take you to the most peculiar places. As I am struggling through prickly ash in search of news photos of a Ford pickup sticking out of the ice like a discarded toy - and hoping the person who allegedly stole it and left it there doesn’t come back and kidnap me - I wonder to what places your life takes you.

I think about you a lot. I know I’m terrible at phoning and emailing and going to parties – and have been even since before we moved well beyond the suburban bubble. But that’s a personality quirk, not a reflection of fading sentiment.

I wonder how cold it is where you are in North Dakota, what your school kids are doing today in St. Paul, whether you're wearing real maternity clothes now, if you’re eating lunch out someplace in Minneapolis or practicing soccer indoors, how you like your new church and if your classes are going well in Thailand. And since there’s no way I can know what you're up to in that exact moment, I substitute by remembering things we did together. Trying to pull Laura’s sweatshirt over your head after you’d had too much to drink. That time you lit the stove on fire making cream cheese wontons with Nick. Listening to Harry Potter while falling asleep in France. Taking a late-night dip in Lake Sag with what might as well have been a stranger. Drinking Radlers together. Walking into the computer lab at 3 a.m. after getting done with The Record to find you jumping from chair to chair in a hyperactivity brought on by over-exhaustion and poly-sci papers. Sharing a few bottles of wine with you only to wake up to the worst and only hangover of my life. Getting dripped on watching the Twins play outdoors.

The more I remember, the more I want to go back. Life is good, but I wish you were here, next door, so the threads of our existence could knit themselves together in a way that only seems to work with physical proximity. To be honest, I haven’t found anyone who quite fills the space you used to hold. Nice, wonderful people. But not people who tell me shocking dirty jokes and hug me with that sparkle in their eyes. Not people who have expansive dreams and recite poetry on roofs. Not people who are exactly at the same peculiar point in their lives where things go from hypothesis to heart-stopping reality while the future still holds a sheen of what’s possible – who do I chatter across my cube to about that? There’s Nate, of course. Wonderful, handsome, brainy Nate. But no one can be all things, and he sort of lacks in discussing the merits of Ryan Gosling, the south of France and dark chocolate. No offense.

I could pick up the phone and call you, but somehow it just isn’t the same.

Looking backward has a way of putting one off balance, and I don’t want to lose my equilibrium. So, I’ll keep moving forward: keep joining groups, working, and hoping. In the meantime, I wanted you to know there’s a girl at the side of a frozen lake clutching a low-hanging branch and hoping you’re doing well, wherever you are.