Baby Girl

April 11, 2012 / sgudahl / 1 Comment

Last night, my 8 year old came over to the recliner where I was sitting and tried to climb up into my lap. She didn’t say anything, just gently adjusted her long limbs until she was curled somewhat awkwardly into my lap and rested her head against my chest. I had the good sense to recognize that this was no ordinary event, so I wisely kept silent and dropped my chin down to the top of her head. We existed like that, for long minutes, in a comfortable silence.

When was the last time I held her like this? Did I hold her at 7? At 6? It seems so long ago, I don’t know if I remember. Her younger brother and sister have largely occupied my lap for the last 5 years, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I cradled my oldest in my arms this way.

I have a vivid memory of holding her at a few months of age in a blue glider in the corner of her nursery. I loved that she fit so neatly on my chest and under my neck, like she had always been there. I remember rocking her for hours, sometimes drifting off to sleep myself. I had a bedtime CD of music that I played every night as I rocked her to sleep. It was filled with real music, not the generic lullaby music compiled by some random publishing house. I carefully selected musicians and songwriters and artists who sang ballads about love and heartache, who performed with pure and raw emotion. I wanted to infuse in her already things of weight and value. I remember that I chose songs just for their haunting melodies and their connection to a wisdom that I hoped for her to someday attain.

When I rocked my daughter, and sang along to Eva Cassidy and Norah Jones, I relished those moments of togetherness. I felt her heart beating against mine; I drew breaths in rhythm with hers. I felt so intensely connected to her – I could not imagine the day would ever come when I missed a thing about her. I could catalog her facial expressions, the nuances of her mood, and I felt in tune with my child in a way that I had never felt in tune before.

It seems like a million years have passed since then. The last time she climbed up on my lap, I had no idea it would be the last time. I’m sure I was cuddling and comforting my other babies at the time. They were born ridiculously close together and demanded more and more of me every passing day. In fact, it was a comfort and a help when my oldest became old enough to manage her daily care on her own. She potty trained quickly, took to eating solid food like a champ. As soon as she could buckle her own car seat, I barely rejoiced before I was already asking her to help buckle the other kids in.

I didn’t notice that she stopped crawling up on my lap. Probably it was already full. She never asked. She never tried. I didn’t notice.

Why did she need that today? What happened at school/on the bus/on the playground/at daycare that made her need me this way? I am filled with anxiety. I want to ask her a million questions. I want to root out the cause of her need; fix it, make it better. Sometimes my intuition is smarter than my brain, and sometimes I actually manage to listen to it, so I wisely said nothing.

After a few minutes she sat up, and took a deep breath and smiled. I tried to very casually ask “how was your day?” all the while trying really hard not to sound like I was feeling inside. She said, “Good. Can I have a snack?” When I nodded, she hopped down and wandered into the kitchen. I followed her apprehensively. Why was I suddenly so uncertain? Why did I feel like I was navigating unknown territory in perilous waters? I gave her an apple and she took it upstairs to her room and shut the door.

I spent the next hour chopping vegetables for dinner with careful precision. Analyzing that moment, trying to extract some meaning. Should I go upstairs and press for more information? Surely something happened today for her to need some extra comforting. On the other hand, she’s usually very forthcoming. If she has something to say, she will say it, so maybe I should just let her be and decide on her own when she wants to tell me. I am intensely sensitive about my privacy and I hate when others intrude on that with probing questions when I just want to be left alone to think things through. Is that how she feels? Should I leave her alone? If I leave her alone, will she feel neglected? I don’t want her to think I don’t care. Is there girl drama? Believe it or not, at second grade there is already girl drama. Was someone mean to her? Is there a birthday party she didn’t get invited to? Did she fail her spelling test? Did she get in trouble with her teacher? Was there a problem on the bus?

Have I mentioned that I am tiny bit obsessive about some things? This might be a good time to mention that fact. I have a terrible habit of over-analyzing situations. As a creative thinker, this is very dangerous indeed, because I can create entire fictional universes over one random comment or action. I have more than once orchestrated a problem where none existed. I’m trying to learn from that, so part of me wants to wait her out. The other part of me really, really, really wants to go upstairs and drag it out of her.

You’re dying to know, though, right? Well. The story goes down like so: I didn’t go upstairs. I didn’t press. I did spend most of the evening fabricating multiple tragic circumstances and formulating my responses to them. Later that evening she was brushing her hair before bed and I finally said, “Everything okay with you today?” She smiled and leaned on my hip with her arm around my back and said, “Yeah. I just missed you.”

Wow. I miss you too, baby girl.

Self-Reliance

April 2, 2012 / sgudahl / Leave a comment

This weekend I had a Moment in the middle of my Saturday afternoon. I don’t have Moments all that often, but I notice that I seem to have them more and more as I get older. It wasn’t an earth-shattering, call the newspaper, broadcast it on Facebook kind of revelation. It was the kind of Moment that sneaks up on you, real slow, and takes a little time to fully appreciate.

It came to me as I was standing in my kitchen on Saturday afternoon, straining lard through cheesecloth into a mason jar. (I realize that sentence alone is likely to raise some questions…I’ll get back to that in a minute.) But there was a moment during that process when the late afternoon sun through the kitchen window was falling just so on the counter, and I could hear my kids playing with the puppy outside on the lawn, that a kind of quiet stillness crept over me. I felt very much like I was supposed to be doing that exact thing at that exact moment in time. It was a strange moment, not unlike déjà vu, when I felt inexplicably that I was just another woman, in a long line of women before me, to stand in that exact spot, and strain lard into a mason jar.

And just like that, the Moment passed. And as I came back to myself, I pondered for a while on my lot in life. (Doesn’t that sound wonderfully dramatic? To stand around and ponder your lot in life?) Anyway, that’s what I was doing. On any other day, I’m sure that I would rather be pondering my lot in life while sipping an umbrella drink on someone’s yacht in the Mediterranean. But on Saturday afternoon, I had this overwhelming sense that I was channeling the thousands of farm women before me whose sole task in life was to sustain their families.

My husband dreams of a fully sustainable life on our farm. To be able to disconnect from the modern conveniences that are actually hobbling our ability to be independent. For example, you have to eat to live. Therefore you have to buy the food you eat. Therefore you have to make enough money to buy food. Therefore you have to rely on someone else to pay you for your work so you can eat. This is the model our generation has grown up with. Even modern farmers do not have sustainable farms…they farm for money, and money pays for their lifestyle. But my husband has been questioning this model and wondering why our society has required us to move away from independence toward a much more dependent life. (This is where I could go off on a tangent about economics and capitalism, and welfare, and government subsidies, but none of those get me back to straining lard, so I will save that for another post.)

In our family’s shift toward sustainability, we have begun to gradually recover the skills left behind by our grandmothers. We raised some chickens, both for broilers and as egg-layers. The garden project that began as an experiment has evolved into a full-fledged canning and preserving extravaganza. I still have a freezer and pantry full of fruit and vegetables from last summer’s harvest. This winter I learned how to make my own laundry soap. (Shameless plug for homemade laundry detergent: why pay $13.00 for a box of laundry soap, when you can make almost 10 times that amount for about $5.00? AND it’s better quality. Fragrance-free, chemical-free, additive-free…and as an added bonus, it also cleans your clothes!) I began to churn my own butter from buttermilk and can now create specialty combinations like garlic and herb butter for Italian night, and strawberry butter for French toast.

Before you get all amazed at my prowess in forgotten skills, I have a disclaimer. I don’t really attempt anything that looks very difficult. I’m still a full-time teacher, and a mom, and a wife, and that still comes with a boatload of other responsibilities. I have been holding on to the modern conveniences of life because I was programmed this way, and it seems easier, to be honest. My husband, God bless him, has been nudging me along, hoping somewhere along the line this philosophy will take hold.

Finally…back to the lard story. We butchered two hogs a few weeks ago. We had to sit down with the butcher and choose our cuts, (also a fun adventure, if you’ve never done it.) One question he asked us was whether we wanted the lard. I instinctively responded “NO!” with a shudder. At the same moment, my wonderful husband said, “Of course!” Because apparently if you render your own lard from a farm-raised animal, it is vastly superior in quality and nutrition to the standard vegetable shortening you find in the store. You should really take a minute to read about it; it only took a couple of internet articles to convince me this was a good idea, and easy enough for me to tackle on my own.

And that is how I came to be standing in my kitchen, in the fading light of a Saturday afternoon, straining lard through cheesecloth into a mason jar. I’m grasping, now, for the proper words to frame the Moment. I can say it felt like I was on the verge of a big discovery; it felt like God Himself was whispering “pay attention, now, I’m trying to tell you something.” I felt indefinably connected to all the women who stood here before me.

I’ve been reading the Little House series with my 8-year-old daughter. I’ve been marveling at the careful description those books provide in the way of life of the pioneers. I am astounded by the depth and the quality of their lives considering the remarkable amount of work they put into everyday endeavors. As I stood there, I really felt the full weight of the mission my husband is on. I understood the beauty of self-reliance. I had a fleeting glimpse into a larger truth. But it was gone before I could really wrap myself around it.

In college, I had an entire course devoted to Thoreau and Emerson and their philosophy of transcendentalism. They believed in the inherent goodness of man; they believed that society corrupted the purity of each individual’s connection to the earth. I remember how powerful their words were to me then; how moved and inspired I was by their theory of life. When did I lose sight of that? I suspect that I am only beginning to watch these pieces of my experiences fall together in a pre-determined pattern. I think maybe I am supposed to be here. I’m supposed to do this. As silly as it sounds, on Saturday afternoon I was supposed to be straining lard through cheesecloth into a mason jar.

Homesick

March 13, 2012 / sgudahl / 1 Comment

I grew up in southern Minnesota. I grew up in a tiny little town on the border of central Iowa, with all the advantages that small-town life has to offer: a low crime rate, small schools, and the comfort of knowing that everyone in town will know every small detail of everyone’s personal life because there is nothing more exciting to occupy the time. It makes you feel really solid, this kind of childhood. What you’re lacking in adventure, you make up for in social awareness.

When I had a chance to leave, though, I left with urgency. I wanted to experience the world. I had the good fortune of having parents who supported unconditionally my adventures. They sent me to college, they sent me to Europe, and they helped me pack the truck that took me to my very first teaching job in the mountains of Colorado.

When I’m feeling nostalgic, I refer to the 8 years I spent in Colorado as the best years of my life. I could fill the pages of a novel proclaiming my affection for a little mountain town tucked away in the middle of the continental divide. When I talk about Colorado around here, I am met with calculated indifference. I sense that my adoration of Somewhere Else is taken as a criticism of Here. And I don’t mean to imply that Here is not wonderful. It’s just that my heart is Somewhere Else.

I mention this today because I am feeling particularly homesick this week. Many days can go by without me giving a thought to my time there, but every now and then Colorado sneaks up on me and I am awash with sentimentality and a verifiable ache in my chest. I miss the mountains. Or maybe I just miss the people. Whatever it is, I should probably be the keynote speaker at the school’s graduation ceremony every year so I can deliver a message to all the kids who are ready to bust out of that place. I will tell them that they can roam far and wide into all the nooks and crannies of this world, but they will never replicate the perfect peace that can be found in the air around that town.

I came back to southern Minnesota eventually, and this is likely where we will reside indefinitely. Finances and Family and Circumstances tend to determine our fates these days. Coming back here evoked a certain nostalgia that reminded me of who I am at the root of myself. But when I use the term “coming home” my mind wanders back to a 3 bedroom rambler across from the school where nothing would grow in our lawn except rocks.

So on days like today, I find my husband (who gets it) and we sit on a chair with a drink in our hands and do the remember whens. Remember when we didn’t need air conditioning in the summer? Remember when there were no mosquitos? Or flies? Or gnats? Remember when the snow would always melt by noon? Remember when we used to eat Eggs Alpine at the Evergreen every Saturday morning? Remember how you used to beg Barb to make you a container of hollandaise just to take home?

Remember when we used to ski/snowboard/hike/climb/bike/raft? Remember snaking the car up curving mountain roads with a rock wall on one side, a drop off on the other, and expecting an elk or bighorn sheep to be standing in the road around every corner? Remember the morning when I was late for school because a deer was sleeping on the porch against our front door and it wouldn’t move? Remember when the air was so clean and so crisp that you wanted to be outside just so you could breathe it? Remember? *Sigh* Me too.

Spring

February 29, 2012 / sgudahl / Leave a comment

This is the earliest I have ever wanted Spring to just get here already. Late February is always the ugliest part of winter; in Minnesota there is usually about a foot of snow and ice still covering the ground, and it is still cold, cold, cold. But this year has been anything but usual, weather-wise. It seems that from week to week it is as likely to be 50 degrees as it is to be snowing. All of these warmer-than-usual days are keeping springtime on my mind.

Spring is the busiest time of year on the farm, I have discovered. It is followed closely by harvest in the fall, but Spring takes the cake since it requires so much planning and foresight. My husband is already chomping at the bit to get some things planted and growing. He’s got seedlings germinating under lights in the basement; he’s drawing up layouts and plans for three garden plots we have going. He’s been monitoring the conditions in the greenhouse. It is usually unheard of to plant vegetables in late February, but he’s convinced that we could actually get some peas to come to fruition in May if we hurry up and plant them now. He’s like a man possessed, when it comes to the garden. And he is forever throwing out new (read: crazy) ideas that he wants to run with. I say crazy, because that is genuinely how I view these new ideas when he’s throwing them at me. However, I am learning that the crazy ideas he comes up with are sometimes actually good ideas; my perspectives are often colored by the cynicism that comes with a lot of formal education.

I think I might be a snob. Not in a mean-girl-in-high-school kind of way. But the kind that dismisses ideas that aren’t my own without giving them careful thought and foresight. This is my gravest weakness, and I am surprised by how often I catch myself doing that.

I am proud of my worldliness; proud of the good education I received from my institution of higher learning. I am well-read and pretty dang good at trivia. So I have a tendency to filter information in my head and categorize it instantly into a logical place in my brain. Often my very first filter weeds out “things I think are good” with “things I think are bad” and once banished, those bad ideas are never considered again.

But at the very least, this marriage has yielded two things: a charming collection of miniature personalities who stretch the limits of my patience and logic, and the ability to admit (gulp!) that I might be wrong sometimes. I came to this farm life kicking and screaming, so to speak. I could not imagine why in the world anyone would spend time digging in the dirt, watering plants endlessly, harvesting them painfully, and then preparing them for consumption when there was a lovely corner grocery full of pre-packaged meals just waiting to be heated up in the microwave.

But I was wrong. And when I finally caved in and let myself be led instead of trying desperately to lead, the world I thought I already saw pretty clearly, opened up and expanded and showed me how limited my vision actually was. This year, I find myself longing for Spring, And for more than just warmer weather and longer days…this year my Spring is about the regeneration of the growing things that keep our little family going. Mark Twain said it best: “It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

A Beginning

February 22, 2012 / sgudahl / Leave a comment

For a long time now, my friends have been after me to start recording some of the adventures my family happens upon. At least one unpredictable and amazing event occurs every week in our life. I’m not sure why that is, but I suspect it has something to do with the path I have chosen. It’s hard to explain or describe to people the perfect sequence of events that brought me here. In all my best-laid plans, this life was nowhere on the radar.

I am an English teacher, lover of literature, fascinated by words. I planned to live in a quaint apartment in some large city passionately grading research papers from high school students. I would dine at kitschy restaurants, become a regular at theater productions large and small, and surround myself mainly with outrageous friends and my cat.

I managed the English teacher part of things.

And I do have outrageous friends.

And a cat.

But today I am the wife of one, mother to three, teacher of an average of 150 8th graders per year, and a student of life. I live on a farm. I dine on whatever magically appears in my fridge. I have an alarming collection of animals, none of which were chosen by me. These are the true (I promise!) ramblings of a girl who is on the road not taken.