After a long pause...

So it's been a while. I haven't done much writing, as little has moved me. Which is strange because I feel so much love.

In the past months, so much has changed. And I fear (?) I am among those things. Not all of me, of course, but parts. Like a that bridge I've been trying to gap as to what my future will even remotely resemble has finally been gapped. Or at least I have the resources to allow myself to see across that vast ocean. It is so sweet. I pray it's more than an illusion.

And so this is what I've always wanted. And this is it. So I just breathe now. Breathe in and out and over and over again, trying to find the big picture among all these slides piecing together. Even if one has a tear, the show will go on and end happy or sad as all movies do. And my role in it all will forever be out there int he universe for those to call on and say, "Remember her... and them... and he?"

So now I will walk to the bathroom and put on my makeup as if I were born to. And I will go about my day as I usually do; calm, still on the outside. Composed. While the rivers run deep in my heart, pulling to shore wantings and longings and photos of your face.

Crocuses.

The last time I was home, Scott offered to hook the cattle trailer up to his truck and load up my horse Jack and take him out to my family farm. I loved the idea, so we got it all ready and I rode Jack around the pastures that we own.

Mom never came out and worked cattle with us or drove the fields and pastures with us; it was always dad, Lindsay and I. Those hills and those fences are dad, they are what I used to be.

Every spring, crocuses bloom. They are the first flowers to come up, they are up before the tulips can think about their beautiful bloom. Dad, Lindsay and I always picked them. Ever since I was little, every year we’d see them blooming from the road and go pick a bunch for mom. When we didn’t have a bucket with us, we’d fill dad’s breast pocket of his coat with the flowers. He would take off his gloves and we’d have crocus bouquets in dad’s dirty, oily gloves.

When I was out riding Jack, I noticed the dainty purple flowers. It was spring. And dad wasn’t here. It wasn’t really a sad feeling. It was a feeling that I can pinpoint as thankfulness. I am so thankful that even though throughout life’s raging waves and spins and flips, there is always going to be constants. The sun is always going to rise to chase out the dawn. The moon will always pull and mold the ocean tides. Tomorrow will come, no matter how long the night seems. Crocuses will always bloom in the spring.

We will bury dad soon. Most of him will go in the cemetery above his own dad’s grave, but I am going to take part of him for myself and place him on “my hill.” The hill he always posted me for deer hunting, the hill where he picked a tiny purple prairie flower and gave it to me saying, “I guess I’ll have to buy you flowers from now on.” Crocuses bloom there. I hope one day they will bloom in top of him. I think it will feel like home then.

"Each man who dares to dream..."

Yesterday I found myself on Harry Chapin's Website. A site that gives me one of those I-haven't-been-home-in-a-while-but-oh-Lord-I-have-returned kind of feelings. Do you know what I mean? Like you've been on vacation all your life and you finally get to come home to your own bed.

From the site, I was lead to YouTube to listen to that man's stories singing to me through my headphones in a stuffy campus computer lab.



I've never met this man. I never saw one of his concerts or listened to him from a standing-room-only, sold-out concert. I didn't grow up when his songs were on the radio or go to the store when one of his CD's first came out. But there is no one else who can make me remember how things used to be like he can. No one else can remind me of dad better than this man and his carefully molded words.


Month 4 is coming around very soon. And through these months, I have learned ways that I can feel ok about everything that has become of my life.


Yesterday I was reminded of how much Harry resembles so much of dad. Maybe they formed each other in ways I'll never know. Dad had a way of taking everyday things and making them into this beautiful kind of scene - he romanticized things. Like on Sunday mornings when he would come up from his shower just before we were to leave, he'd say "Wow, Etta, you look so nice." Harry did the same thing in songs like "Dancin' Boy" and "Corey's Coming."

"Folk singer Harry Chapin died in a bizarre 1981 accident on New York's Long Island Expressway," Google let me know. I guess they weren't much different in their death, either. Just change the year and Long Island Expressway to North Dakota's Highway 46.

As I've been writing this, Harry's "What Made America Famous" has been playing on repeat:
"We have the choice to make each man who dares to dream reaching out his hand a prophet or just a crazy God damned dreamer of a fool, yes a God damned fool."

And I now find myself wishing so badly that I could have met this man, perhaps become his wife in some different kind of life, shared his on-fire-passion for those stories he tells so well. But then I know that how things are now is how they are supposed to be. Every part of it. From my heart-ful love for Harry to my heart-heavy want for those Sunday morning compliments just once more.

Thanks to you MSUM.

I never tire of the fact that life never allows us to go bored for too long. We are never left to think that our days are mundane.

This morning after my first class I was walking in the hallway to get a Diet Coke. As I passed the mass comm lounge the chair of the department was walking into his office. He saw me and stopped.

"I'm sorry about your dad," he said.

He wished me well in getting to England someday and thanked me for helping out with tutoring a student (I was originally going to be in England this semester; I'm helping a Japanese student out with some reporting.)

Now, I'm from Gackle. College was a very impersonal jolt into reality. No one knew me or really cared to know me when I first got here. Now that I am older I have either become even more comfortable with who I am or I have just relaxed and found my own way. I now say "hi" to people in the halls and my professors have become more human.

But to be able to walk down the hall of a college building and have a professor stop me and talk to me about this personal thing is this amazing blessing. And I'm not so sure that one could get that anywhere else.

I always struggled with where I was supposed to go to college. I always assumed NDSU was where I'd be. But throughout it all, MSUM was the only choice that sat right with me. The support I've felt here and the friends I've made - Jackie, my love; my professors - Deneen and Camila and all the others that have been concerned for me; I simply couldn't ask for anything else.

So I guess this is a thank you to everyone here. The personal, familiar, homey feeling that has become Flora Frick and this mass comm lounge. It's almost as familiar as the halls of Gackle-Streeter high school became.

As I've said before, I'll say again:

I am so Blessed.

Here is a song for you today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xz3R6icUTU

Shadow on the Wall - Brandi Carlile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYgZMjW0TTE

Humble Me - Norah Jones

They've got the hardships too.

“our disappointed hearts will heal.”

(photo from Google)
We come from all of this innocence. We are born with an abundance of it. And then we grow up and learn that, hey, maybe princesses don't always live happily ever after. We see one day that our parents are human beings and are less than perfect in a beautiful kind of way. We learn that the things we said we'd never do when we were 5, we end up doing when we are in our teens - things like kissing boys and moving away from home and perhaps learning to love someone. We find that sometimes people just want to use us. And that people who shouldn't disappoint us do. And that one day you'll get that phone call that you never wanted about something you never could imagine.

Life seems to be this inevitable journey from illusionment to full blown disillusionment. And we are expected or we strive to keep a child-like faith and love the butterflies in the spring and the first flakes of wintry snow.

There isn't a purpose to most of my rantings. I lose track quickly and words often fail me. But do you understand where I'm coming from, perhaps, where I'm going?

It's just one big contradiction. We need to grow up to become less naive but keep our spirits young and youthful. We need to realize that people are sinful human beings who will stab, kill and disappoint but to never loose our trust in humanity. We need to treat everyone fairly but still know that each of us has dark secrets that are seemingly unforgivable. We need to have balance and live in harmony and share houses with spouses and children and be a wife and a mom and a good woman to a good man but still keep our individuality and passions we had in our 20's.

Contradiction and ambivalence. But its what keeps it all fresh and hard and challenging. We can never be ok because there is always something that could be changed and made new and made better than before.

God has saved us and called us to a holy life. NOT because of anything we have done but because of HIS OWN PURPOSE AND GRACE. this grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. --2 Timothy 1:9

Month 3.

Yet again, I am amazed by the way things change.

Just how quickly we can believe and un-believe and let our minds run away and come back.

I guess I am thankful for it all. I'm not guessing; I am thankful.

I'm thankful for the way we can can forgive. The way we can understand things that should probably never be understood. That we can fathom the unfathomable.

I mean just look at that picture. Really look at it.

Dad has been gone for 3 months. Today I was talking to my mom and we both agree - time seems to both have absolutely flown by and stood still.

It seems like my whole life has been lived without my dad and that I talked to him yesterday.

It's the contradiction that I love so much. We neither need to choose nor live in apathy.

Dad, I love you so much. And I wish you could see my new nose ring and how burnt I got tanning the other day. You would think it ridiculous, but never say it out loud. I wish you could wake Lindsay up tomorrow morning and kiss her.

God spoke and this is my life now. And it's a beautiful, scary thing.

I have been so blessed.

Forget.

Again, I drove back to Fargo, leaving at 6 a.m. Because of various events and conversations thatwill remain unwritten for the simple fact that I just can't bring myself to type it out, I got little sleep this weekend.

With a cloudy, thought-filled, aching head, I made it - slowly enough - to town with help from numerous cups of coffee, Augustana and an ever-moving train of thought and question.

In one weekend, so much was said and realized - things that remained silent because they were a little too scary to ever say aloud.

But now they are out there, forever in the universe. And they can't be taken back. Ever. The only hope of mercy is that lovely, beautiful forgetfullness thing we do so well.

I guess forgetting is necessary to go on, to continue on the same road you had been on. Forget what hurt you so you can remember all the things that make your heart so red-full of love.

I'll love you.

picture from PostSecret.com