This is home.

Thursday night at Midnight, I left the comfort of a warm home and went to the premiere showing of the "Hunger Games". My oldest daughter went with me and we were joined by roughly 150 teenagers of varying ages. It is my understanding that this movie premiered all over the country that night in large multi-plex theaters. We were in a one screen theater in the small town near where we live.
On Friday night, my book club met. Our discussion was not the "Hunger Games" but because it had just been released and some of the women had read the book we discussed it anyway. The women of my book club are varying ages. They are well-read, well-thought, compassionate and generous women. Their combined wisdom is inspiring. It was interesting to me to hear their take on a book and movie that somehow managed to grab the attention of nearly an entire generation of teenagers.

In the dark theater that night an entire society was playing out. When teenagers gather it is a social system rivaled by....nothing. There were the quiet ones, invisible to the rest, sitting, waiting for the movie to start. There were the ones secure in their popularity, laughing, texting, moving around the theater while the kids that wanted to be near them, moved along too. Were they all happy to be there? I think so. Were they all feeling secure and accepted? Not a chance.

The women of my book club, for the most part, felt "The Hunger Games" was too violent. The violence is not the book. It is a genre of reading I generally avoid. I started reading this series based on a recommendation from my adult nieces. They are widely read and know me well. They assured me I would not be able to put this book down. They were right. I choose to accept the violence in order to feel the story.

 When I was a kid, we moved several times. I learned to adapt. I was the new kid in school in sixth grade and again in ninth grade. I went to small schools where I knew everyone, I went to large schools where I was invisible. I wasn't bullied, I always had friends. I wasn't the most popular but I was on the wild edge of the popular crowd. I hated High School.

My husband Marty, lived in the same small town his entire life. He was part of a large farming community where three or four family names were prevalent and he and most of his friends came from those families. He didn't have to learn to adapt. He was accepted because of his last name. He would tell you, High School was hard.

When our kids were in school we moved..twice. They started out as my husband did from a community where they knew everyone and then they had to learn to adapt. They were four very separate personalities and I think they would all say different things about those years, the one thing they would agree on. High School was hard.

High school is entering hostile territory. Everyday you must show up, it is literally the law. Unlike a job, you don't care for..you have no choice. It is preparation for the society you will live in for the rest of your life. It is filled with the same players, the same social situations, the same successes and failures that you will face as an adult. The difference is, you have no experience with it. You also have no choice. You must learn the rules and they change everyday. It is in High School that you learn, who you are and what you stand for.

It is an Education Philosophy that there is zero tolerance for bullying, yet I would guess that almost all kids would tell you that isn't true. It isn't true for school because it isn't true for the real world. Bullies are alive and well and they are everywhere.
The book "The Hunger Games", and the 2 books that follow are full of physical violence but I don't think that is why the kids embrace them. I think they embrace them for the three main characters. Katniss, Gale and Peeta.These kids live in hostile territory, they have learned who they are and what they stand for. They care well for the people they love and they do what they must to survive. They intentionally hurt no one. The world is full of terrible role-models. They make the news every single day. If these three fictional characters can grab the attention of millions of teenagers, there is a chance for a subtle change. We must all know who we are, but more importantly we must know what we stand for.

Then there is this: For Mike, school was a nightmare. The bad days far outweighed the good.He cared well for the people he loved, he did what he had to to survive, he intentionally hurt no one. By the time Mike reached High School, he had it down. He knew who he was and what he stood for, he just needed to put in the time and get on to his dreams. When he left the closed society of High School, when he no longer felt that he had to try to conform, he was free to be who he wanted to be. The guy he had  spent the last 13 years getting to know. He went to college and started to lay-down his own trail. When he graduated and accepted his first full-time job, he was driving a black Nissan pick-up that he called the POS. It had no reverse. The job he accepted was in Idaho. When people said "how are you going to get all the way to Idaho in that thing", he said "I just won't back up". He found that what was important was being true to yourself. He embraced his non-conformity and in doing so he began a life of honoring...himself. Mike drove his life in forward. He never backed up.

This is what I know: There is physical violence and then there are words that can destroy you like no physical act can. Cuts, scrapes and broken bones heal, words leave scars that last a lifetime. High school is hard,  Adult life is hard. You must know who you are. When Mike died, we were surrounded by community. We felt the love that comes from living in an area for 30 years and calling it home. Three years later when our youngest daughter divorced we found ourselves in hostile territory. Some of the same people that had embraced us when we lost Mike, turned on us when Heidi left. In the short span of three years our family was in the public eye for two very different reasons. We had left the house we raised our family in and moved to the home Mike owned. In doing so we put ourselves deep in the bull-pen of the opposing team. For the first time since I was in High School, I remembered what it felt like to not fit in. The rules had changed and I spent everyday trying to remember who I am and what I stand for.  Unlike High School, we don't have to stay. Marty and I have had many conversations about the future. This is what I know:
This is home.
 A line from a favorite song of mine"where you walk the streets and think you're home..but mostly your alone. This is home." I know who I am, I know what I stand for.
Last week, I had my grand-son late in the afternoon while his Mom was working. When it came time to give him a ride home, I buckled him into his booster and handed him "Dot" the GPS. He loves this thing and treats it like a Ipod touch. He changes the maps, runs through the menu and listens when "Dot tells him we are "recalculating". He keeps an open atlas on his lap in case "Dot" fails to tell us where we are going. I got in the front and was buckling my own seat belt. Nolan turned "Dot" on and then he said this "Nannie I looked at this thing and it says, we are right where we are supposed to be".
I'm gonna take that as a sign.

The cliche' "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" needs to go away. It is generally said by someone as a way of consoling someone in deep pain, but the truth is, sometimes what doesn't kill you, can.



Make no mistake, the book "Hunger Games" really isn't about "the games" at all. We need to live our lives in forward. Don't sit in nuetral, don't back-up.
There is no doubt that teenagers need good role-models, Adults may need them more.

till next time.

Saving Grace

The dog that saved me.

Yesterday I ran to town to run a few errands. It was snowing pretty good when I left, adding a cover to the only snow we have gotten all season. I finished up and started towards home. When I turned off the highway to head out into the country, there was a guy standing on the road watching down the bike trail. He waved me through the intersection which I thought was odd, all I had seen coming down the highway was snowmobiles. In this part of the state that is a daily and common sight not usually worthy of a manned intersection. I glanced to my right and saw what he was waiting for. A musher was coming at an easy clip, nine beautiful athletes stretched out in front of him. I pulled off the road and so did the young man coming from the other direction, we watched as they made their way through town. The depth of my feelings surprised me. I was transported back to when dogs and mushing was a big part of my life. I was that person, manning intersections, handing fresh water bottles and watching as the team pulled away. I cried the whole way home.

As my brother Steve and I drove across Texas, we talked...alot. I asked him if he thought he could name all the dogs he has had in his life. When you own a kennel of dogs, when you have raced for over 25 years, you have seen many friends come and go. We ate up the miles of Texas freeway, bringing as many of them back as we could. Not only did we try to name all of his dogs, we tried to name all of Mikes. It started us on an odessey of memories. Which ones could lead, which ones wanted to fight, which ones came from Alaska, the Minnesota kennels we knew. Stories from the days when it was all about...the dogs. Dogs I found were like people you work with. They had their personalities, their quirks, some of them came ready for the job everyday and some just wanted to hang around the water-cooler of life. I didn't know in the days when the yard was full of dog houses, dog trucks, sleds and harnesses that one day there would be a dog that would save my life.

Marty and I went a few years after the kids left home without having a dog. We had buried the last two remaining friends and I was ready I thought to be dog-free for the first time in our married lives. It didn't take long tho for the urge to have a running partner re-surface. Although Marty likes dogs and helps me care for the ones that we had, I am the "dog person". I started visiting the dog shelter looking for the one that needed me. The shelter was a 40 minute drive from my house and after the 3rd visit there, coming home empty I was starting to give up. The 4th visit, I walked through the yard, the shelter operator was with me. I looked at all the dogs I had seen the first 3 times and the ones that came since. I said "no" and started walking towards my car. Off to my left, a big white coon-hound came out of a dog-house and just stood and stared at me. I asked the operator about her and she said "you don't want her. She is the longest dog we have had at the shelter. She was adopted once and returned." They called her "Daisy", she was 8 years old. Six of those she lived at the kennel. I brought her home.

Then there is this: When Mike died, I abandoned everyone and everything. The dog Daisy, who we re-named Lady had been with us for several years. I left her. I left her in a kennel at the house we owned and relied on everyone else to go home and feed her. For three years, she had run with me everyday. I had fed her, talked to her, built the trust that she felt for the first time in her dog life. She was my friend, she trusted me. When we made the decision to move to Mike's house, Marty went home and brought Lady to me. I let her out of her kennel everyday by opening the door and walking away. I didn't talk to her, I didn't walk her. I wandered around this 80 acres and she followed right behind me. When I stopped, she ran into me. She didn't ask me for a darn thing except to just be. I read all the grief books I could get my hands on. I was convinced that one of them would tell me how to do this. What I really wanted them to tell me was how to fix this. How to bring Mike back. I tried to  put into words what I felt, what I needed, but for the deepest of grief, there are no words. The deepest of grief is a sound. A sound that Lady could hear. When the day came that I could walk no more it was Lady who held me up. I leaned over and fell into her neck. I held on to her fur with everything I was, I cried the tears of the broken, she planted her feet, starred off to the west and stood there. I soaked her fur and tried to let go of the sound that was killing me, Lady leaned into me and did her best to take the pain I couldn't carry.

This is what I know: Grief scares people. It even scares the grieving. I have a friend who is a nurse, she said when there has been an accident and death is brought to the hospital, the staff is told the families grief must be contained. I sought out help in the form of a doctor that specialized in physical, mental and spiritual health. When I told her I was broken she said "I lost a brother when I was in med school, my parents were never the same". We celebrate like crazy the beginning of life and we run like hell from death. In 2010, Lady was dying. Her hearing had failed, her eye-sight was shot. She had tumors over much of her body. She had lost most of her teeth and when the grand-kids said "she stinks", they were being kind. Everyday I prayed that when I came outside she would be dead. I put Lady in the back of my Rendevous and went to the Vet. He came out of the clinic along with the Vet tech and gave Lady the medicine that would stop her full heart. The last thing I whispered to her was "go find Mike" but the truth as I know it  is Mike came and found her. I brought Her home and Marty buried her, deep in the earth where she saved a life.

This past weekend Marty and I burned a huge brush pile on the back of the property. Last night it was still a 10 foot bed of hot coals. I am using some of Mikes clothes to make quilts for his sisters but I had two large boxes of socks, underwear and t-shirt scraps that it is time to let go of. I loaded it all and carried it to the fire. To say that it is hard to do this is an understatment.  I placed the items on the fire under a nearly full moon. Standing next to me was our current dog Molly, a 50 pound somewhat overweight Bassett Hound that I rescued from a breeding kennel in the Dakotas. I looked down and Molly was holding a pair of Mike's rolled up socks in her mouth. I popped the top on a can of High Life and Molly and I stood watch over the fire.

I have owned many dogs. I have been needed by them all. At the end of the day my life was saved by a dog that nobody wanted. I can't even tell you how grateful I am.

till next time.

Waltzin Across Texas

The rock we stand on.

For 10 days in late February I traveled roughly 3,000 miles with three people I would take a bullet for. This trip was months in the planning, when four 50 somethings decide to take 10 days off from reality there is alot of planning involved. In the months leading up to the date of departure, appointments had to be canceled or re-scheduled, time off from work had to be arranged, grandchildren had to be born and cowboy boots had to be purchased. This is a group I have traveled with in the past. We have seen the Badlands together. We have been to Mount Rushmore. We have threatened to throw each other in the sulfer pools in Yellowstone and we have camped in the mountains of Idaho. The last time tho as near as we can figure was 1968.

Flash forward to 2012. My folks "winter camp" in southern Texas. For three months each year they are "Winter Texans". They re-aquaint with friends from all over the country in an RV park down south. This winter, my two sisters and one of my brothers cleared our schedules and decided to go and see what they were up to. We spent 4 days in their world. We arrived at a place that felt like home. For 4 days we were welcomed like family, hugged by strangers and felt completely accepted by some very cool people. The generation we spent time with has been around along time. They have seen good things and they have survived bad things. They live in a world they never saw coming and they do it with style. Computers, cell phones, dvd players, computerized gas pumps, they take it all in stride. They come from many backgrounds, many career paths, they have raised children and grand-children, they have buried children and grand-children, they have held on to  marriage and to life as hard as they can. They paint, they carve, they read, they play mean hands of cards. They dance, they laugh, they plan. They never give up.

My sisters and brother and I could have flown to Texas. People asked why we didn't. Although flying would have been faster, that was never what this trip was about. This trip was about belonging. These are the people I belong to. We grew up together and never let go. We took off from Minnesota on a dark Monday morning and returned on a dark Wednesday night. In 10 days this is what I learned.

1. I know nothing about music.
2. You can't get through Kansas without some kind of bad weather.
3. Iowa is the state of historic smokestacks and silos. I saw neither.
4. If you want to see how to do a memorial right. Visit Oklahoma City.
5. Texas is big.
6. The Texas 2-step is best taught by an 80 year old. Thanks Bill.
7. I make a mean Bloody Mary. I never intend to stop perfecting my recipe.
8. In 3 states you can go from jeans to shorts.
9. You can drive in silence for miles and only feel peace.
10. Gratitude.

Then there is this:  On the last night we were in the park, it was western night. The main hall was decorated in high style. Everyone came in their "Cowboy Finest". The band was made up of musicians from the park and an elegant couple that came to "make up the band". We ate, we danced. At one point I looked across the dance floor and roughly 50 men and women including my sisters, my Mom and I were all line dancing together. The final song of the night was a song I played over and over at my Grandmas when I was a child. It was a Marty Robbins tune called "You gave me a Mountain this time". When I was a child I never knew that someday, God, would give me a mountain.  It was the perfect song at the end of the night. I walked across the floor and asked the man who five years ago I layed my head on his chest and broke into a million pieces, to dance.  I took my Dad's hand as the steel guitar played"This time, you gave me a mountain. A mountain I may never climb. It isn't a hill any longer, you gave me a mountain this time."

This is what I know: There is a Johnny Cash song done with Dave Matthews Band called "For You". The lyrics are "The 1st one in...the last one gone. I'll be the rock to stand upon". This park was full of those people. The 1st ones in...the last ones gone. If you want to lead...it must be who you are. My Mom and Dad have layed down the lessons well...they have always been the 1st ones in, the last ones gone. They are the rock we stand upon. In 3000 miles and 10 days the biggest lesson I learned about my sisters and my brother is that we are those people too. I spent 10 days with my past, my present and God willing, my future. It just does'nt get any better than that.

till next time.