Take-off is smooth into the autumn morning. A soft darkness circles the plane as it pushes through the clouds. Friendly voices fill the cabin from every direction. They blend with the hum of the engines, which sound like muffled television static after sign-off. The rows are three wide separated by a center aisle.
After an hour of conversation, the man next to me opens a copy of International Archer. He flips through the pages carefully studying the articles, perhaps dreaming of William Tell. Don’t bow to the hat, be your own man. Isn’t that what we all wish in life? His friend next to him drifts to sleep, hands folded on lap, head bent slightly back.
Across the aisle a man reads a paperback. It could be a bestseller. He tilts his neck and head at an angle that points his eyes directly down to the pages in his lap. Flight attendants serve coffee and soda although one passenger wants a little wine. A boy cries in his father’s arms several rows ahead. It is a red-faced scared cry, like he had been woken suddenly and by cold water.
The woman I noticed in the terminal walks toward the front of the plane. Her blond hair falls upon the shoulders of her white cable-knit sweater. It flows straight until it flares like octopus tentacles at the ends. I wonder where she is going, and about her dark haired friend.
Two women in the van leaving Dulles are from France and the Czech Republic. The blond woman from Prague makes easy conversation with the driver. Her long hair is straight and pulls into a clip in the back. Her lips are full and she has several noticeable moles—including one on the center of her chin. Her features are smooth and round, her eyes warm and friendly.
She turns to talk to the woman from Strasborg who sits next to me and is very shy. It is the first time either has been to Washington D.C. Their voices are lyrical. I close my eyes to absorb words and listen to the careful and sometimes broken English phrases. The Czech has an American friend. They will meet tonight. She hopes after the conference she will be able to see the great art and the gardens and the fine statues of Americans along the mall. Like Prague she says, this is a city of history.
Three Australian’s talk wildly in the backseat. There’s been little rain in the south and much in the north. The conversation switches continuously. The man mentions stories about snakes and says Australian Rules football is in its championship run, called the Premiership. The lady says her team is one of four remaining, so she’s paying extra attention. She must be in her 60’s. The man’s voice is happy if happiness can be noticed in such topics.
Hadley, they are not you. I miss your high cheekbones and dimpled chin. I miss your short black hair cut round just under the ear. I miss the hunger and loneliness I feel even after we make love and you sleep soft in the moonlight. You told me there are many sorts of hunger, especially in spring. I miss our walks down by the river and on the rue de Seine where we looked in the galleries and shops and stopped at the café. You said memory is hunger. How I loved your eyes when they knew something.
All those whispered secrets. Remember when we grew our hair the same length? We had such fun with simple things. Shall we return to Austria and climb the mountains to ski, and I can write and you can knit and we’ll be warm from thick blankets and fires and dark drinks? How do we want what we want but want something more? Tell me about 1926 in Schruns and how I found my novel and Brett and Jake. Hadley, it was never your fault.
After the plane and bus I stretch my legs in the city and breathe fresh air. Flowers in many colors bloom in calculated places beside the grand buildings. I walk many streets and across the mall littered with signs. Hundreds of thousands had gathered to protest. The evening is a dying wave in this city of motion.
The clean windows stretch in great lengths from top to bottom and side to side on the downtown corner grill pub. There is a plate filled with pink strips of ahi tuna and salad with light chipotle dressing. The julienned red peppers are sweet. There are mushrooms and fresh, cool cucumbers. I sip from glasses of beer. The first is German style ale. It tastes of dry hops. The second beer is much darker and is bitter then finally sweet. The flavors wash my mouth.
The lights are soft inside and outside the street lamps cast rounded light into the shadows. Now and then a bus floats to a stop outside the big windows. Sounds of horns and sirens penetrate the glass. People cross back and forth in both directions. Two are holding hands.
It seems we have somewhere to go, and nowhere to go at the same time. Hadley, could it be you?
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Authentic grace
Spiny-Toothed Gumweed sticky with pine smell.
Another flower I see but can't name.
Two deer leap from a cornfield.
Brown bodies burst through stalks like machetes.
Run wildly wild hearts.
The sun's golden cast makes the river blue the more.
Two ladybugs each with at least five spots sway on a stamen.
Long shadows and the flow of tall grasses,
crickets and clouds.
So many types of goldenrod.
The river seems to speak but what does it say?
A combine slumbers--a necessary break following
a wet day.
Rough Blazing Star lights up the prairie--
purple spears rise from the earth.
Maximilian Sunflowers tall and top-heavy.
Pointed yellow petals line the roadway.
This walk is alive yet haunts the soul.
For the grip of love we yearn, yet may we fly away free.
Another flower I see but can't name.
Two deer leap from a cornfield.
Brown bodies burst through stalks like machetes.
Run wildly wild hearts.
The sun's golden cast makes the river blue the more.
Two ladybugs each with at least five spots sway on a stamen.
Long shadows and the flow of tall grasses,
crickets and clouds.
So many types of goldenrod.
The river seems to speak but what does it say?
A combine slumbers--a necessary break following
a wet day.
Rough Blazing Star lights up the prairie--
purple spears rise from the earth.
Maximilian Sunflowers tall and top-heavy.
Pointed yellow petals line the roadway.
This walk is alive yet haunts the soul.
For the grip of love we yearn, yet may we fly away free.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Aspen
Lean toward the wind
With each gust, dip and bow for what’s sacred.
Leaves quake and shimmer in this dance--
does anyone notice?
I see arch in your spine
sheer strength where you meet the earth
But what is underneath?
It is the question for all of us.
We see what we see
But what about what we don’t
I’ll breathe your air
and watch you flutter
and wonder what you’re thinking
or if you can.
I know I’m looking at you,
have I considered if you’re looking back ?
What could you be writing?
With each gust, dip and bow for what’s sacred.
Leaves quake and shimmer in this dance--
does anyone notice?
I see arch in your spine
sheer strength where you meet the earth
But what is underneath?
It is the question for all of us.
We see what we see
But what about what we don’t
I’ll breathe your air
and watch you flutter
and wonder what you’re thinking
or if you can.
I know I’m looking at you,
have I considered if you’re looking back ?
What could you be writing?
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Honor Flight
I see soldiers and war in a new way.
Respected North Dakota journalist Eric Sevareid has this to say. “War isn’t slogans and rhetoric and military strategy, and it isn’t scoops. War is people and what happens to them.”
A week ago Brad Feldman and I accompanied around 95 North Dakota World War II veterans to Washington D.C. to visit the memorial built in their honor. Sevareid is right. Even 65 years after combat, war is about people and what happens to them.
The veterans we met grew up all around you and me. They are our neighbors and our friends. They likely played pinochle with your grandparents, helped you change a tire on a country road, and stood tall at the local 4th of July parade.
Our veterans ran farms and built businesses. They married and had children. They helped redefine our nation when they came home, often without fanfare. I heard time and again of a returning soldier getting off the train late at night with a quick greeting from a relative only to be back at work on the farm the very next day. These men and women became the very fabric of America.
So often these heroic stories and efforts have gone unnoticed and unappreciated. Not May 8th and 9th, 2009.
I didn’t know what to expect from this trip. I wondered if seeing the memorial would revive long hidden memories of war and combat. It had the opposite affect.
The trip seemed to be a gentle rain on all souls. After visiting the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean Memorial, the World War II Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and Iwo Jima, the veterans I talked to were all overwhelmed with gratitude. One group visiting the memorial greeted the veterans with tears and thanks. Every now and then a teenager or a stranger would walk up to a veteran and thank him for his service. They were clapped for and cheered for.
Around 60-thousand North Dakotans served in World War II, both men and women. Close to 2-thousand died.
These soldiers are linked to foreign soil, to memories, and to each other. Shakespeare describes the bond in Henry V.
“But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother….”
The most telling, and in some ways haunting reminder of how these veterans continue to identify with the war, is the fact that many of them remember their serial numbers as if they are seared to their souls, even as they approach their 90’s. Much like the convict Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, labeled 24601 in prison and who was weighted down by the association, the veterans will be forever linked to their numbers. The link is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in the camaraderie of serving one anther and a nation with no alternative of turning back. It’s a curse because of the truth of the number of memories they are forever linked to.
And there are lots of numbers. 31 months and seven days says one man. They all know exactly how long they served.
One veteran called me last week, following the trip. He said he’d been waiting 63 years to be welcomed home.
Another veteran told me upon arriving in D.C., “We don’t need a memorial, we came home alive. That is enough.”
He is right and wrong. I thought of the Gettysburg Address as I lived amongst these soldiers for parts of two days, walking in their footsteps, in the footsteps of our living and dying past.
Said Lincoln, “In a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
Whatever we build, say, or do will never be enough.
Sevareid says, “War happens inside a man. I happens to one man alone. It can never be communicated. That is the tragedy—and perhaps the blessing. A thousand ghastly wounds are really one. A million martyred lives leave an empty place at only one family table. That is why, at bottom, people let wars happen, and that is why nations survive them and carry on. And, I am sorry to say, that is also why in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers.”
Sevareid was right about many things, but I discovered something different after the Roughrider Honor Flight. These veterans, these sons and daughters of the prairie, are no longer strangers, but forever friends.
Respected North Dakota journalist Eric Sevareid has this to say. “War isn’t slogans and rhetoric and military strategy, and it isn’t scoops. War is people and what happens to them.”
A week ago Brad Feldman and I accompanied around 95 North Dakota World War II veterans to Washington D.C. to visit the memorial built in their honor. Sevareid is right. Even 65 years after combat, war is about people and what happens to them.
The veterans we met grew up all around you and me. They are our neighbors and our friends. They likely played pinochle with your grandparents, helped you change a tire on a country road, and stood tall at the local 4th of July parade.
Our veterans ran farms and built businesses. They married and had children. They helped redefine our nation when they came home, often without fanfare. I heard time and again of a returning soldier getting off the train late at night with a quick greeting from a relative only to be back at work on the farm the very next day. These men and women became the very fabric of America.
So often these heroic stories and efforts have gone unnoticed and unappreciated. Not May 8th and 9th, 2009.
I didn’t know what to expect from this trip. I wondered if seeing the memorial would revive long hidden memories of war and combat. It had the opposite affect.
The trip seemed to be a gentle rain on all souls. After visiting the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean Memorial, the World War II Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and Iwo Jima, the veterans I talked to were all overwhelmed with gratitude. One group visiting the memorial greeted the veterans with tears and thanks. Every now and then a teenager or a stranger would walk up to a veteran and thank him for his service. They were clapped for and cheered for.
Around 60-thousand North Dakotans served in World War II, both men and women. Close to 2-thousand died.
These soldiers are linked to foreign soil, to memories, and to each other. Shakespeare describes the bond in Henry V.
“But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother….”
The most telling, and in some ways haunting reminder of how these veterans continue to identify with the war, is the fact that many of them remember their serial numbers as if they are seared to their souls, even as they approach their 90’s. Much like the convict Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, labeled 24601 in prison and who was weighted down by the association, the veterans will be forever linked to their numbers. The link is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in the camaraderie of serving one anther and a nation with no alternative of turning back. It’s a curse because of the truth of the number of memories they are forever linked to.
And there are lots of numbers. 31 months and seven days says one man. They all know exactly how long they served.
One veteran called me last week, following the trip. He said he’d been waiting 63 years to be welcomed home.
Another veteran told me upon arriving in D.C., “We don’t need a memorial, we came home alive. That is enough.”
He is right and wrong. I thought of the Gettysburg Address as I lived amongst these soldiers for parts of two days, walking in their footsteps, in the footsteps of our living and dying past.
Said Lincoln, “In a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
Whatever we build, say, or do will never be enough.
Sevareid says, “War happens inside a man. I happens to one man alone. It can never be communicated. That is the tragedy—and perhaps the blessing. A thousand ghastly wounds are really one. A million martyred lives leave an empty place at only one family table. That is why, at bottom, people let wars happen, and that is why nations survive them and carry on. And, I am sorry to say, that is also why in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers.”
Sevareid was right about many things, but I discovered something different after the Roughrider Honor Flight. These veterans, these sons and daughters of the prairie, are no longer strangers, but forever friends.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Loving Again
What is thunder
but a way to remind us hearts beat inside our guarded chests?
Why do the birds go quiet?
And you my friend walk out of the house
to taste the fragrant air.
Count the seconds til it happens again.
Surely inbetween the bell tolls somewhere for someone.
But don’t forget life. You can’t forget life.
It is in us to fail and weep and fall to a knee.
These are black days and sour notes on the Steinway.
Know now there are far more questions than answers.
There is an emptiness.
Some say the prairie is haunting--
a desolate beauty.
Look closely into the draws.
Fix your eyes on the far buttes.
What shapes do you see in the mango-mint horizon?
It all comes and goes. It’s really that simple.
Look into her eyes. There is soul in that guarded chest.
Thunder, come again.
"As always the body wants to hide, wants to flow toward it--strives to balance while fear shouts, excitement shouts, back and forth--each bolt a burning river tearing like escape through the dark field of the other."
Lightning, Mary Oliver
American Primitive
but a way to remind us hearts beat inside our guarded chests?
Why do the birds go quiet?
And you my friend walk out of the house
to taste the fragrant air.
Count the seconds til it happens again.
Surely inbetween the bell tolls somewhere for someone.
But don’t forget life. You can’t forget life.
It is in us to fail and weep and fall to a knee.
These are black days and sour notes on the Steinway.
Know now there are far more questions than answers.
There is an emptiness.
Some say the prairie is haunting--
a desolate beauty.
Look closely into the draws.
Fix your eyes on the far buttes.
What shapes do you see in the mango-mint horizon?
It all comes and goes. It’s really that simple.
Look into her eyes. There is soul in that guarded chest.
Thunder, come again.
"As always the body wants to hide, wants to flow toward it--strives to balance while fear shouts, excitement shouts, back and forth--each bolt a burning river tearing like escape through the dark field of the other."
Lightning, Mary Oliver
American Primitive
Monday, May 4, 2009
She
Her beauty
like the rugged hills and icy country draws
is simple, yet resplendent.
Two meadowlarks in a ponderosa pine.
A serpentine sun.
The life trickle of a clear stream.
See the turn in the creek?
Where does it begin and end?
In the field a volunteer sunflower jumps from the soil.
Crack open its stem, smell sky and earth and everything inbetween.
Life is to be noticed.
Sun rising, earth warming
life reaching, breath floating.
Tonight in the garden I think," what if"
and watch the fire lick the smoky air.
The moon looks over all of us.
Tomorrow may she emerge.
like the rugged hills and icy country draws
is simple, yet resplendent.
Two meadowlarks in a ponderosa pine.
A serpentine sun.
The life trickle of a clear stream.
See the turn in the creek?
Where does it begin and end?
In the field a volunteer sunflower jumps from the soil.
Crack open its stem, smell sky and earth and everything inbetween.
Life is to be noticed.
Sun rising, earth warming
life reaching, breath floating.
Tonight in the garden I think," what if"
and watch the fire lick the smoky air.
The moon looks over all of us.
Tomorrow may she emerge.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Wonders of the heirloom tomato
Last night the sun set tangerine orange. Before Easter we noticed two nights consecutive the moon glow cast the shape of a thick, milky cross. Nature is a glorious beauty.
Today I start my own mini miracles, planting heirloom tomatoes. Their shapes and colors fascinate me.
Today I start my own mini miracles, planting heirloom tomatoes. Their shapes and colors fascinate me.
Just seeds today, some from Gurney's, some from great uncle Bill (one kind known, one kind not). They have great names, like puple cherokee, black krims, and green zebras. These tiny little seeds, sprout up in less than a week. Life begins.
---------
Today my hands smell like tomatoes. I have dirt under my fingernails. It's May 2nd. I've just repotted 25 healthy plants. I can do 50 more. Where do I put them all? After I planted them, I bought special flourescent lights. The guy at the hardware store said he figured I was planting "something else."
The garden is a living, breathing reminder of life and death. From the birth of spring to the adolesense of June to the maturity of August, our hopes rise with the days. We nurture this life the best we can. Most of the time that is enough.
I have only to be reminded of the beauty--their beauty--to know the wait and the journey are worth the sacrifice.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
August
This day beginswhere the matted deer path wanders into the trees.
Russian Olives shape a thorny moat
dare you enter.
Inside rows of thickets and tall grasses tangle.
Columns of plum trees--fruit green for the season,
chokecherry, buffalo berry and a ripe red early berry
nourish the souless.
Follow along well worn friend,
smell the pine-shadows and junegrass.
Sun spills over tattered earth
from bark branched skeletons
deflecting light.
Silent feathered phantoms speed ahead.
A buck beds down in nature's grandfatherly lap.
This path curves gently
no need for map or compass.
The only questions to this life--
where do you emerge,
and does it matter?
Title: August, Mary Oliver
American Primitive
"In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue."
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wade Westin
Friday a friend to all he met passed away at the much too early age of 34.You likely knew Wade Westin from the Medora Musical.
Music was a passion. So was family, and North Dakota.
He was a Burning Hills singer for five years. Then he served as host for two years--known fittingly as Gentleman Wade.
Most recently he's held the position of marketing and public relations coordinator for the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.
But its Wade's character--his kindness, integrity, and class that live on in all who knew him.
He was a spokesman for our state--especially Medora and the magnificent badlands.
He made it a point to live here--and raise his family here.
I was struck by an article written about Wade in North Dakota Business Watch. Someone told him how nice his grandpa was. Wade says he thought--forget fame and fortune, that's how I want to be remembered...as a nice person. Mission accomplished. I know of no finer man.
Our nations second president shares Wade's view of life. John Adams wrote that he recognized at an early age that happiness came not from fame and fortune, "and all such things," but from "an habitual contempt of them."
I got to know Wade through numerous stories and interviews. I had the priviledge of mountain biking with him in the badlands and golfing Bully Pulpit.
Many of us at KX new Wade well. Marci Narum says she'll remember his smile, his warmth--and unassuming charm.
Lauren Kalberer remembers him as caring, kind, and giving.
It didn't matter if you knew him for five minutes or 5 years--in all cases he was genuine.
Brad Feldman remembers a meeting he had with Wade this last August. After the cameras were off Wade took the time out of his hectic schedule to just talk and ask how things were going. He genuinely cared about everyone he met.
Juan Thomas says he was warmhearted and caring. Amen.
Wade's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday morning at 10:30am at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
We already miss you, Wade.
Your wife and children, and families are in our prayers
In the same spirit that you celebrated North Dakota, we honor your life.
Happy Trails.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thomas Jefferson's Vanilla Ice Cream
2 quarts heavy cream
1 vanilla bean
6 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1. Bring the cream and vanilla bean to a simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir frequently until fragrant--about 5 minutes. Whisk egg yolks in a bowl until smooth and whisk in sugar. Mixture will be thick.
2. Slowly beat about 1 cup of the hot cream into the egg yolks and gradually stir this egg mixture into the hot cream. Cook, stirring constantly until lighly thickened--enought to coat the back of a spoon--about 5 minutes. Strain the custard through a double layer of cheesecloth or a fine strainer--and remove vanilla bean. stir until slightly cooled. Cover and refrigerate until chilled--at least 1 hour or overnight.
3. Freeze the custard in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturere's directions until set but still a little soft. Scoop the ice cream into a 3-quart mold, or several smaller molds, running a spatula through the ice cream and tapping the mold firmly to remove any air bubbles. Fill the molds completely. Cover and freeze until set, about 2-4 hours.
1 vanilla bean
6 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1. Bring the cream and vanilla bean to a simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir frequently until fragrant--about 5 minutes. Whisk egg yolks in a bowl until smooth and whisk in sugar. Mixture will be thick.
2. Slowly beat about 1 cup of the hot cream into the egg yolks and gradually stir this egg mixture into the hot cream. Cook, stirring constantly until lighly thickened--enought to coat the back of a spoon--about 5 minutes. Strain the custard through a double layer of cheesecloth or a fine strainer--and remove vanilla bean. stir until slightly cooled. Cover and refrigerate until chilled--at least 1 hour or overnight.
3. Freeze the custard in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturere's directions until set but still a little soft. Scoop the ice cream into a 3-quart mold, or several smaller molds, running a spatula through the ice cream and tapping the mold firmly to remove any air bubbles. Fill the molds completely. Cover and freeze until set, about 2-4 hours.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Recovery
There is no miraculous day.
One bleeds into another,
fibers of the soul clash and tear
and scar and rip and heal.
There is no day to look back upon
and say, "that was it."
It either happens or it doesn't
or you end up somewhere in between.
You can't say Saturday the 14th,
not until twenty or thirty years later
and then what do you know
beyond the air you breath.
People tell strangers
but they don't like to talk to the one's they love
about pain.
Do you know the taste of hot, ladled soup
when it's -44 below?
One bleeds into another,
fibers of the soul clash and tear
and scar and rip and heal.
There is no day to look back upon
and say, "that was it."
It either happens or it doesn't
or you end up somewhere in between.
You can't say Saturday the 14th,
not until twenty or thirty years later
and then what do you know
beyond the air you breath.
People tell strangers
but they don't like to talk to the one's they love
about pain.
Do you know the taste of hot, ladled soup
when it's -44 below?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Life
Step onto the gray ice.Is it thick or thin?
Carefully slide toward the horizon.
Ice bubbles, a rough surface.
When did it freeze like that.
3:32am two Thurday's ago?
Nature's photograph.
An icy gunshot reports across the lake.
Souls wake at the sound.
Some have fallen in.
Each step, at least, provides an answer.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
A Day at the Farm (1993)
Grandpa says he lived in this white farm house for some sixty-three years. Time passes and all is not the same, but as we made the turn off of the highway and onto the stretch of gravel, a part of the past came to life.
The fields on this February day are covered with snow, which pleases grandpa. As he says, there is nothing worse than watching your field blow away. The snow cover prevents this nightmare. It also adds needed moisture to the soil.
Somehow I can see him working the fields which were his life and love, as if it were 1950 or 1962 or 1974. I ask him how many hours he thinks he has spent sweating in the summer heat, praying for a good crop. He smiles and says he's wondered that himself.
The sky today is pure and light blue. The winter sun shines brightly on the spring like day. For a long uninterrupted moment, I see myself on grandpa's tractor, I see the black earth stretch as far as my eyes can see. I hear grandma calling me for lunch. I wish for the strength to work a day from dawn til I can no longer see. My friends are my family and an occasional visit from neighbors. The World Series comes to me over a crackling radio, and I must imagine all that I hear. Outside the house are the sounds of the winds and of the thunder, which often last into the night. I see myself look out of the window of the house, which today I can only look into.
The snow makes it hard to get around to the barn and to the old tree where my mother once played on a swing. I make a path so grandpa can join me. I go to the front door because its beauty is magnificent and because I can see the hands of my family open and close it as they did long ago. Grandpa tells me the back door was used most, so I join him back by the bush that is home to the bees during summer months.
On a near window are two thermometers. They must have been looked at and relied upon as much as television and the Weather Channel are today. A rain gauge stands atop a post not far away in the yard. What would have grandpa talked about over breakfast and coffee if not for its ability to count the rain?
I look in one of the windows and see my mother and her sisters around the kitchen table. I wonder how many times they have looked out my way at the fields, into the night. The upstairs windows must have been places to look out at the world and dream. I wonder what has taken me to a place once so full of life?
The barn stands back behind a row of trees. I trudge through the snow to get to it. Much of it is empty, but somehow memories remain. Oil stains an old swather, and sun shines eagerly through a window. This must have been quite a place when it was used so frequently.
As I look over the place with grandpa from our view in the car I feel so much of what must be in his heart and mind. Our two hours fast gone, it is time to return to Grand Forks. Grafton will provide us with a snack and some time to remember more, but it too moves by quickly. I know we will be back again.
Just outside Grand Forks grandpa tells me he never dreamt as a young man that he'd ever meet a woman so kind, intelligent, and warm as Georgia. I smile and say I've wondered myself how I was so lucky that grandpa was so lucky.
All the stories flood my mind as we drive our last mile, and I can no longer remember if 1961 was a year that it snowed a lot, didn't rain enough, or passed without significance. Grandpa seems to remember every year, every day. He tells me of 29 inches of snow in one falling, of politics, people and places. None seem as significant as the one we just visited.
I write my memories as I listen to music from a movie titled Stealing Home. It seems so appropriate. Grandpa writes about the house, "Nothing is as full as a life filled with love." Now I understand why the trip down that gravel road to the fast aging white house came to life so much for me. It is our lives, together, and our love that will stand in those fields and in my mind much longer than the sun will ever rise and set. So I visit the day eighty years ago when it began, and I will never stop going back.
The fields on this February day are covered with snow, which pleases grandpa. As he says, there is nothing worse than watching your field blow away. The snow cover prevents this nightmare. It also adds needed moisture to the soil.
Somehow I can see him working the fields which were his life and love, as if it were 1950 or 1962 or 1974. I ask him how many hours he thinks he has spent sweating in the summer heat, praying for a good crop. He smiles and says he's wondered that himself.
The sky today is pure and light blue. The winter sun shines brightly on the spring like day. For a long uninterrupted moment, I see myself on grandpa's tractor, I see the black earth stretch as far as my eyes can see. I hear grandma calling me for lunch. I wish for the strength to work a day from dawn til I can no longer see. My friends are my family and an occasional visit from neighbors. The World Series comes to me over a crackling radio, and I must imagine all that I hear. Outside the house are the sounds of the winds and of the thunder, which often last into the night. I see myself look out of the window of the house, which today I can only look into.
The snow makes it hard to get around to the barn and to the old tree where my mother once played on a swing. I make a path so grandpa can join me. I go to the front door because its beauty is magnificent and because I can see the hands of my family open and close it as they did long ago. Grandpa tells me the back door was used most, so I join him back by the bush that is home to the bees during summer months.
On a near window are two thermometers. They must have been looked at and relied upon as much as television and the Weather Channel are today. A rain gauge stands atop a post not far away in the yard. What would have grandpa talked about over breakfast and coffee if not for its ability to count the rain?
I look in one of the windows and see my mother and her sisters around the kitchen table. I wonder how many times they have looked out my way at the fields, into the night. The upstairs windows must have been places to look out at the world and dream. I wonder what has taken me to a place once so full of life?
The barn stands back behind a row of trees. I trudge through the snow to get to it. Much of it is empty, but somehow memories remain. Oil stains an old swather, and sun shines eagerly through a window. This must have been quite a place when it was used so frequently.
As I look over the place with grandpa from our view in the car I feel so much of what must be in his heart and mind. Our two hours fast gone, it is time to return to Grand Forks. Grafton will provide us with a snack and some time to remember more, but it too moves by quickly. I know we will be back again.
Just outside Grand Forks grandpa tells me he never dreamt as a young man that he'd ever meet a woman so kind, intelligent, and warm as Georgia. I smile and say I've wondered myself how I was so lucky that grandpa was so lucky.
All the stories flood my mind as we drive our last mile, and I can no longer remember if 1961 was a year that it snowed a lot, didn't rain enough, or passed without significance. Grandpa seems to remember every year, every day. He tells me of 29 inches of snow in one falling, of politics, people and places. None seem as significant as the one we just visited.
I write my memories as I listen to music from a movie titled Stealing Home. It seems so appropriate. Grandpa writes about the house, "Nothing is as full as a life filled with love." Now I understand why the trip down that gravel road to the fast aging white house came to life so much for me. It is our lives, together, and our love that will stand in those fields and in my mind much longer than the sun will ever rise and set. So I visit the day eighty years ago when it began, and I will never stop going back.
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