Leaning up against our piano, across from my little white desk where I’m sitting right now, is an old steel-string guitar in a case that won’t snap shut anymore. I used to play it a little.
I bought it when I was in my early 20s on a whim at Homestead Pickin’ Parlor, a quirky little music shop next door to where I worked for an adult literacy program in the basement of a used furniture store. My first “real job” out of college.
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I’ll never be a tree, of course. But if I were one, I’ve been thinking lately I’d want to be a Poplar.
There’s such beauty and poise in her pointedness that directs our eyes to the sky and God’s miracles. But her true beauty is mostly unseen in her fortitude even in the most unforgiving conditions and in her roots that unfold and extend beneath the soil like a motherly octopus.
I’ll never forget roll call on that first day of 9th grade English class.
Immediately after my balding, bearded, charismatic teacher in rounded spectacles—whom I’ll refer to as Mr. G—read my name from the roster, and I meekly said, “here,” he looked up at me, walked toward my desk located five rows back along the wall, and announced, “Class, I’d like you all to meet the younger sister of one of my favorite students.”
Yep, that was my debut into English class that first year of high school.
Mr. G was one of those teachers you wanted to please. His big, Carpe Diem personality towered over his petite physical stature. If he saw something special in you, a kernel of greatness—well, that was really something.
Some of our children’s memories will sparkle and glisten while others fade. I like to imagine the sparkling ones as scenes in a snow globe that come into clear view after it’s shaken and the snowflakes settle.
This morning, a scene of me as a young girl in long pigtails sitting on the front doorstep of a red brick house playing jacks appeared. As long as I had my little cloth pouch with ten six-pronged jacks and a rubber bouncy ball in my pocket, I never had reason to be bored.
When I look in the mirror today, I see a woman’s face crossing over into midlife. The changes in the delicate skin around and within the arcs beneath her eyes are a little unnerving.
In my mind, I’m not quite there yet. I want to tilt the mirror to a different angle, modify the light, or wipe away the years with my sleeve like fog from a steamy shower.
A lot of us are feeling the winter doldrums in full force right now.
Part of it is the cold weather and lack of sun.
Part of it, since I’m updating this post for 2017, is post-election anxiety.
And another part, for me anyway, a girl who made her debut into this crazy world during the stark of a Minnesota winter, is the realization I’m a year older again. If I stand on my tippy toes, I can peer into the other side of the half-century mark.
For the past few years, between my late January birthday and Valentine’s Day, my moods swing back and forth as though I’m in the front seat of Steel Venom, that U-shaped inverted roller coaster at Valleyfair my kids coaxed me into riding on a couple years ago.
All I can say when I feel this way is . . . thank goodness for conversation hearts.
“Mommy, look, the sky is all blue and white,” my first-born says a decade ago while buckled in her booster seat in the back of the car on the way to preschool.
I glance in the rear-view mirror and see her stretching her neck to see more sky, the sun splashing on her little brunette bob haircut that frames her face like Dora the Explorer, her favorite back then.
“Yeah, those clouds sure are fluffy aren’t they? I wish I could have one as my pillow,” I say.
“Me, too,” she says.
“How do you think we might get one?” I ask.
“Hmmmmmm. I think I might need my stool,” she says.
“Hmmmmmm. I think so, too. I say.
Apparently the latest New Year’s trend is to choose a word of the year instead of resolutions that set us up for failure. So I’ve decided—in honor of that inquisitive little moment of infinite possibilities lodged in my memories and recorded in my journal—that my word of the year is going to be Hmmmmmm.
Well, it’s that time of year again.
I’m dreaming about white water rafting through a river of mashed potatoes.
Soon, it’ll be snowing on Snoopy’s french toast.
And before we know it, Good Ol’ Charlie Brown will be scrubbing gravy stains off his zigzag shirt for his quest to find the perfect tree and true meaning of Christmas.
Author’s Notes: I published this essay on the 26th anniversary of Jacob’s disappearance. As we approach the 27th anniversary, it has recently been announced his remains have been found and his killer, Danny Heinrich, has confessed. A link to the news report is located at the end of this essay. My heart goes out to the Wetterling family. I am deeply grateful to them for all they’ve done to empower the rest of us in our efforts to keep our children safe.
As I look out my kitchen window and watch leaves fall from trees, I sometimes wonder what her quiet moments are like, still grieving the son who used to dive onto her bed like Superman.
Jacob Erwin Wetterling. Snatched into oblivion at the age of 11 on Oct. 22, 1989, by a masked gunman quarter-mile from his home and down the country road from my college campus in rural St. Joseph, Minnesota.
[first posted Oct. 1, 2015]
I had big plans.
Barely a pretween in the late ’70s, I was already dreaming about getting a perm, driving a car, becoming a jazz dancer, traveling the world as a journalist, and marrying my first Hollywood crush Steve Austin, the super-powered cyborg played by Lee Majors in the television series The Six Million Dollar Man.
Each fall, I take on the role as matchmaker. I line up a bunch of singles and do my best to pair them up.
I admit, sometimes I bring two together that aren’t perfectly matched. I figure they have enough similarities to make it work.
Still, there are always a few misfits leftover. They’re either too short, too tall, too worn out, or too offbeat to hook up with the others. I don’t mean to be ruthless, but it’s the end of the line for those mavericks. Time to let ‘em go.
Typically, when I’m seated in the dental chair with my mouth getting poked and scraped with sharp, pointy metal things, my mind drifts to far away places.
But this time, amidst the high-pitched EEEeeee-EEEeee-EEEEeeee of drills, I kept getting pulled back to reality by the syrupy, buoyant voice of my nine-year-old chatting with her hygienist in the room across the hall.
If you’re new to Minnesota or planning an extended visit, it’s helpful to know a little something about a place we locals call Up North.
Up North is a luscious land we go to boat, fish, hike, camp, buy a can of pop in the lodge of a ma and pa resort, enjoy sunsets from somebody else’s in-law’s cabin, and watch storm warnings scroll on the bottom of a TV screen while filling up on tater tots and tap beer at places named Last Turn Saloon or Pitstop—where you can still play Pac-Man for a quarter.
I lived in a lot of houses growing up (with the same family though). Big ones, little ones, old ones, a few rented ones. But the one I lived in the longest and bonded with the most was a red brick house on a lake.
It had a large, quirky dock with grass in the middle that served as the main summer hang-out for me and my eight brothers and sisters.
Our lives are made up of small moments. There are those moments we forget, or try to forget, and those we remember and cherish.
To me, these small moments are like luminous stars in the sky, guiding my journey ahead and shedding light on the experiences and people who’ve shaped me into the person I am today.
I often wonder, which moments will my children remember?
I’m no sci-fi girl and not particularly crafty. But as soon as that big fabulous box carrying our new double stroller arrived at our door a decade ago, I thought to myself I’m going to make a time machine.
On the first day of school in that one-room, country schoolhouse, most of the other kids raced to the bigger, newer, shinier desks.
But little Diane, the one with a gleam in her eye and potato in her lunch bucket, who would one day become my mother, slid knowingly into the smallest, most unassuming one of them all.
You know that endless trail of Mother’s Day handprints, inkblot paintings, tissue paper bouquets, and phallic-like animal drawings your kids have brought home from school that prompted you to consider buying stock in Rubbermaid® ?
Well, I’m here to tell you all those trips to Target you’ve made for more storage containers and fridge magnets to preserve this glimpse into their poignant, Van Gogh-ish childhood will one day be appreciated by your children’s future midlife nostalgic selves.
I'm Julie Jo, former college newsroom junkie and PR girl, now a freelance writer and editor with two desks. This is the one I doodle on about past, present, and future clinking glasses and making peace.
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