The song

The Christmas tree glows in the fresh hours of the morning. Everyone else is still sleeping. It’s too early to turn on music for the house, so I plug headphones into my ears and scroll through a music app on my phone. It’s just the dog, me, and a blanket on the couch. Transcendence is a tap away. I click.

Through the headphones, the beloved song about a small village in a faraway land two thousand years ago soothes me.

O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie!

Nothing still about our part of town. Too recently in North Minneapolis, gang members crossed into their enemies’ territory to settle a score. The sounds of gunshots reverberated off houses four blocks from ours, and before it was over, five men were shot. Ambulances rushed the injured ones to North Memorial.

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by;

That night before sleep could steal me, I gazed at the dark ceiling of the bedroom, listening. No emergency vehicles screamed by our windows. Only distant sirens sliced the night.

I thought of that day’s shootings, but no emotion stirred me. In fact, I hadn’t even heard the news until a friend, ragged with worry, called to check on us. And then too, I felt nothing; no twinge of pain, no lurch in my heart, no tug of mercy—not like in the early days in our neighborhood when I was all feelings, desperate to do something.  

Why didn’t this kind of news affect me anymore? Because this was gang violence and to be expected? That’s what many people believed. Were they right?

Alone the next day, I sank to my knees on the living room rug—in that favorite spot of mine where eternal meets temporal—and I raised it up: Let me feel something again. Let me see what You see.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light:

Now this morning, with headphones on, I draw a deep breath and let it go. Maybe that ancient village wasn’t so unlike mine. The streets were dark there too, weren’t they?

Blurry faces tied up in gangs and drugs and violence in my mind now morph into clear ones—the faces of the ones I love. The faces of the young kids in the neighborhood who once played basketball on our driveway. The faces of the ones we opened our door to—and always will. The faces of the ones I worry have picked the thorny path, the ones who might have already chosen the way of death.

What if some of my loved ones in the neighborhood have witnessed hatred blast their friends or family members from this world? What if they’re survivors with PTSD because they’ve glimpsed hell and have to walk with it? Or what if they’ve made the violence and have to live with it?

But there’s a Light. An everlasting Light.

And even in the darkness it comes to pierce their hearts—and my own again.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

This song of the season whisks me away now—and my fears with it—its message vaster than its lyrics. It reminds me we’re not from here, and it’s not where we’ll stay either. All of us were made for something higher than our fears, even higher than our hopes.

The song lifts us above the earth this Christmas season, so we feel again. And for a while, we fly free too. Together.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Rejoice

Rejoice with those who rejoice.

I’ve heard this twice now since Thanksgiving, and today a writer friend sends me an article about being grateful for what I don’t have (but others do), making this the third time the message has floated to me in one week. Be thankful for the good things that come to other people, the article says but in prettier words. Rejoice.

It’s a new facet for the gratitude journal; I could commit whole pages to thankfulness for what I don’t have but wish I did.

I mull it over with my coffee this morning and the same old thought patterns flicker like the lit candle next to me. How long will I wait for:

the thing I’ve bathed in prayer for over two decades?

the dream I offer up to the One who gave it to me in the first place?

the identity I think is for me, yet isn’t something I wear today?

But the Advent season, now upon us, is all about waiting—waiting for the One who hears petitions, the One who plants dreams, the One who is bigger and better than any version of us.

I’ll keep waiting. And I’ll rejoice in the not yet for me, but the right now for others while I’m at it.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The gratitude journal

Negativity slithered through our front door this fall, bringing darkness with it. We didn’t see it coming, of course, because that’s how it works.

But one day in late October, the dreariness captured my attention. How long had it been this dusky inside the house? I could hardly see the truth anymore for all the shadows.

“Not this again,” I said to no one in particular.

But I wasn’t the only one letting negativity’s gloom into our living quarters. Other family members had opened the door for it too. And we all seemed to entertain it most during our mealtimes together, venting our frustrations and irritations until the light over the table was as dim as a Minnesota morning in the fall before going off daylight savings time.

We were justified in our complaints, though, weren’t we? We were only discussing what was happening, right? There wasn’t any harm in it, was there? Facts were facts. And we could all agree there were too many hoops for Flicka to hop through in college, too many unanswered questions about Ricka’s life post-high school, too many worries about volleyball club teams for Dicka, too many schedule changes for Husband at work, and too many demands layered into my own days.

While the discussions stimulated me at first, negativity soon sucked away my energy.

Finally, I was done with it. So I resurrected an ancient solution for me—and for the family.

Gratitude.

“Here’s what’s happening,” I said one night at dinner, plunking down an old spiral notebook and pen. “We’re going to start a gratitude journal. It’ll stay right here on the table. Add to it whenever you think of something.”

I acted as scribe that first time, pointing my pen at each family member in the circle, forcing answers out of the whole lot of them until each had said something—anything.

At first, our gratefulness was staid: friends, family, volleyball, the dog. But as the days went, it broke free: Life Cereal, Dad telling his own embarrassing stories to comfort us, Dicka’s quick metabolism, God’s concept of time and money, when that car didn’t crash into Ricka in Uptown, candles, ChapStick, Flicka’s fast-growing hair, bagels, snow tires, the sun…

The concept of gratitude has existed since darkness was separated from light, and a person documenting his or her thankfulness has been around for eons too. Even so, I shared my not-so-creative-but-fresh-to-me idea of a gratitude journal with some loved ones.

Several had already tapped into the power of putting it on paper.

“It’s a life changer,” my sister said.

“It’s a game changer,” my friend said.

“It changes everything,” my neighbor said.

Hmm. So much change.

A week later, Ricka entered the house from school, her cell phone in hand. She tapped on it. “Mom, I took notes today about things I’m thankful for. Wanna hear them?”

She rattled off her list to me, and I transcribed the items into the gratitude journal. Taking a closer look, I noticed others had been in our notebook too—others beyond our family—scratching down their own notes of gratefulness.

That night at dinner, the dining room table looked different. Something had changed. I could see the food better—and my family too.

Was it just me, or was it brighter in here?

 

*Question for you, reader: If you started a gratitude journal today, what things/people/etc. would make your top ten?

 *Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Even more of yesterday's books

Two weeks ago, I invited you, my readers, to share your favorite books from childhood. Here is the final installment of your reading memories:

*****

Before I could devour books on my own, the earliest stories I remember were read to me by my mother, so the pictures carried the story for me. I memorized the artwork in Bible stories and in stories like Heidi by Johanna Spyri. Even today, the mental picture of the young Heidi sleepwalking, wearing a long white nightgown, brings me back to the story—an orphan girl who when living in the city became homesick for her grandpa and the mountains. Looking back now, I think this story probably gripped me because of the conflicts of the memorable characters, so unlike my own life as a preschooler.

Avis, Newfolden, Minnesota

*****

The earliest ones I can remember - from when I was three or so, and some of which I still have in the attic! - were Cyril the Squirrel, Miss Sniff, and a wonderful Cinderella. But I think one of the books which impressed me when I was about thirteen was The Diary of Anne Frank. I can actually see myself in my room reading this book and being so moved. As I teacher I also recommended books like Number the Stars and another favorite, The Devil’s Arithmetic, as important books about the Holocaust. I remember one my mother remembered from HER childhood, The Little Minister. And one of my all-time favorites - still, to this day - Alice in Wonderland! It is brilliant!

Sandy, Lacombe, Louisiana

*****

Nancy Drew mysteries! I think I read them all. An avid reader, I also snuck books from my mama’s bookcase. I read Jaws and The Exorcist when I was just 11 years old. Yeah, that was not my best idea. Be careful, Little Eyes, what you see…

Shelby, Crystal, Minnesota

*****

I suppose Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy by Henry Kissinger just cements my place in the warped corral. But I did read it when I was 10 years old. I went on to read Chemical and Biological Warfare by Seymour Hersh in 9th grade. The teacher wouldn’t take it as my book review until he quizzed me on the thing. I used to drive the librarians crazy at the bookmobile: I’d read every book and started on the college level stuff when I was in grade school. Thus, the me you get today.

Joe, Saint Paul, Minnesota

*****

I loved the book Snow Treasure written by Marie McSwiggen. The story was about Norwegian children who hid bars of gold on their sleds and took them down the mountain to the harbor to smuggle them out of the country right under the noses of Nazi soldiers. My parents and I all read the Little House books that I brought home from my elementary school library. In high school I worked at the public library which was a very uncool job, but it exposed me to many wonderful books.

Kathy, Maple Grove, Minnesota

*****

I liked the Maud Hart Lovelace books, Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High and then I started reading trashy romance novels my aunts left at my grandparents’ house. I was a little young to be reading them for sure.

Micara, New Market, Minnesota

*****

Any book about a horse! Walter Farley’s “The Black Stallion” series, the C.W. Anderson “Billy and Blaze” series, anything by Marguerite Henry and Sam Savitt (beautiful illustrator too!), and pretty much every other book on the subject I could get my hands on.

I grew up in a small town, and your prompt brought back warm memories of the excitement that I felt when the bookmobile would come to town. I would hope and wish and pray that there would be a new horse book for me to check out!

Gina, Rochester, Minnesota

*****

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

More of yesterday's books

Last week, I asked you about your favorite books from childhood. Many of you responded, so we’ll enjoy two weeks of trips to the past together. Here are this week’s memories:

I don’t know if this counts as my favorite ‘book’ but I was obsessed with any and all things Nancy Drew.  I read every single hard cover published (sometimes twice) until they went to paperback. I loved the mysteries that involved her boyfriend (Ned) and her best girlfriends (Bess and George). She was the daughter of a busy single dad which I thought was cool at the time because she had a lot of ‘freedom’ to investigate all these mysteries.  Nancy had two major impacts on my life: 1) once I was able to learn to drive I didn’t know where I was going because I had my face in a book every time we got into the car and 2) Nancy, in partnership with Clarice Starling, was influential in my choice of my Criminal Justice college major.

Karyn, Mounds View, Minnesota

*****

Charlotte's Web: Simple but profound thoughts for everyday life as well as a glimpse into deeper more spiritual realms of our existence: “Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.” “You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”; “I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.” I remember those quotes standing out to me even as a child. I'm quite sure I didn't I understand what it meant on a conscious level but I can say now that I'm sure it met and very possibly exposed my child's desire for love and friendship and a more peaceful world during that time in life. Ironically, it also sends the message that oftentimes there is a cost to it as well.

Peter, Maple Grove, Minnesota

*****

The Boxcar Children! I remember thinking they were living an exciting and adventurous life. I was extremely disappointed several years later to see the inside of a boxcar!

Sharon, Great Falls, Montana

*****

I loved all things Roald Dahl...especially his "Revolting Rhymes" which was given to me as a Christmas gift by my older (and therefore cooler) cousins in North Dakota, who really got my sardonic 9 year-old sense of humor. I spent hours in my bedroom memorizing his irreverent version of "Cinderella", and would perform it on command for anyone who'd get suckered into listening. I think I also performed in for a 4-H talent show. I'm pretty sure I can still recite it from start to finish... (Enjoy Roald Dahl’s “Cinderella” here.)

Carissa, Robbinsdale, Minnesota

*****

Readers Digest’s The World’s Best Fairy Tales from 1967. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Billy Beg and His Bull, Rumpelstiltskin, The Musicians of Bremen, Blue Beard, and The Princess on the Glass Hill were some of my favorites. Also, Louis L’amour, Jack London, and Mark Twain.

Scott, Minneapolis, Minnesota

*****

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Yesterday's books

“Reading never wears me out.” Olivia, by Ian Falconer

What book from childhood did you like best? And why?

Write me a note about your favorite book from when you were a kid (photos welcome too) and send it here. Subscribers, simply hit reply to this email. I will publish your reading memories (along with your first name and location) in next week’s blog installment.

I’ll get us started…

I dragged my finger along the tattered bindings of Maj Lindman’s books. Inside their pages frolicked triplet girls from another time and place. I tagged along with them on their adventures—with a little dog, a new friend, their new dotted dresses, the girl next door, and the three kittens. Their mother always wore high heels in the house. And did she really cook for them all day long? Was that what life was like in Sweden even before my own mother was alive? The girls’ names—Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka—plucked at something inside me. How fun to say! Maybe one day I’d have triplets of my own.

Now it’s your turn.

And until next time… “But the wild things cried, ‘Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!’” Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Doris

I first met Doris at a neighborhood block meeting in 2003. Nothing fancy, that meeting. Just a small gathering of people perched on folding chairs on the sidewalk in front of our neighbor Marta’s house. A guy named Don told us about some troublemakers messing with his garage, and he peppered the air with expletives. I shot a look at my girls—just two of them then, ages one and three—wondering if they caught the colorful language. Marta reined in the talk, funneling it in useful directions. And Doris floated above it all; she leaned into my double stroller, making funny faces at my babies until they laughed.

Doris worked in Mr. N’s yard in the summers, her face mottled from heat and hard work, sweat dripping off her chin. She bagged leaves in the fall and shoveled snow in the winter for him too. We exchanged waves and small talk whenever I spied her outside.

Then came the gifts. Doris dropped off little surprises for our girls on holidays. She worked at Litin Paper Company and snagged some good deals, she said. Each of the girls got orange pumpkin-shaped bags of goodies on Halloween, trinkets in Santa bags at Christmas, and little baskets of treasures for Easter. We’d come home from our out-of-town New Year’s festivities to jolly noise-makers and candy on our back step. And her fondness for Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka on Valentine’s Day came in the shape of hearts filled with chocolates—one for each girl.

Inspired by Doris, we decided to do some doorstep treats of our own for the neighbors. We began our Christmas cookie venture in 2004, the year Dicka was born. Just because people don’t normally deliver homemade cookies to strangers in a city neighborhood didn’t mean we wouldn’t.

Doris ranked high on our list. We trekked over to her street, a plate of goodies in my right hand, the baby propped on my left hip. My walking littles clutched the hem of my coat, and we trudged to her door through thick snow. Maybe she was too busy shoveling for the neighbors to clear her own. My hands full, I assigned the job of knocking to the toddler and preschooler.

A face in the door’s window. The sound of an unlatching deadbolt, then a chain sliding off its rails.

“Look who it is,” Doris said, her smile warming the air between us.

Behind her, the inside of the house was dark, the living room stacked with newspapers and containers. Near the doorway, a cat curved around a cardboard box, slinking toward us to check our identities.

Flicka handed her the gift of treats. And after that, the girls took turns delivering holiday cheer on red plates each Christmas until the year Doris didn’t come to her door anymore.

“Does she even still live here?” Ricka said.

“I don’t know.” I headed to the woman’s back yard, my now preteen girls scooting along behind me.

We dodged snow-covered garden tools and antique crates, rusted lawn ornaments and a broken wheel barrow, crumbled bricks and bent chicken wire. Maybe leaving a plate of cookies on Doris’ back step was safer. Maybe if we left our gift there it wouldn’t be snapped up by a passerby or squashed by a mail carrier.

But that day, the truth blew through my winter coat: we only knew the gift end of Doris and nothing else of her life. And even then, something told me our visits to her house were almost all used up.

 

Last week—fifteen years after meeting Doris—I clicked through a Facebook page for neighbors in our small corner of the city. One man grumbled about the meth houses too close to ours. Then he tossed out some facts about a certain address I knew well.

Doris’ house is boarded up now, and there are squatters there. She died a few months ago.

My mouth dried up. Where did our friend spend her last days? Did she have friends or family to see her off to the other side? How did her story end? Did she know we loved her?

I didn’t have the details I wanted, but I knew this much: As sure as Christmas cookies and snow and gift bags left on steps, the City that had hammered up those boards could take them down again, and goodness could move back in.

Doris may be gone, but hope was a survivor.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

 

That day

And just like that, everything changed.

(The following blog post was my first, published four years ago now.)

*****

September 11, 2001. That dark Tuesday for the country was the beginning of a new day for my family, but we didn’t know it then.

I heard the news of the terrorist attacks from a friend who called me, breathless, early that morning. In a fog, I watched news coverage later that day in the waiting room of a clinic in our town of Sierra Vista, Arizona. Ricka, just eleven days old at the time, screamed during her appointment when the nurse pricked her heel, squeezing out a single drop of blood for each spot on a card for the lab. Distracted, I took my healthy baby home when it was over.

Wide-eyed and incredulous, we sat in front of our television for days like the rest of the country. I nursed Ricka, and Flicka, who was only twenty-two months old, played on the floor in front of the TV. I recall several living rooms in those days. Our viewing of the nightmare rotated from our living room to our friends’ living rooms, as if watching the horrors on TV in someone else’s house would bring fresh answers, a sound conclusion.

As usual, we Border Patrol wives stuck together. Our husbands continued to go to their jobs on the Mexican border, their station located in the town of Douglas, Arizona. Just because the country was grieving didn’t mean there wasn’t work to do. Maybe even more work now. America wasn’t impenetrable anymore.

Husband worked hot, dusty shifts in the desert. He had been unsatisfied with his job since its beginning three and a half years earlier, and I wondered if he would ever be happy in a job. It didn’t help that his work on the border seemed meaningless to him. The same groups of people crossing over without documentation would be caught in the desert, gathered up, brought to the station to be “idented,” and sent back to Agua Prieta, Mexico, only to return the next day to the same agents, the same scenarios.

Husband came home with stories. Fathers abandoning their families in the desert to escape to the U.S. alone. Desperate mothers tossing their babies over the steel fence separating the U.S. from Mexico. Federal agents finding drugs in a desert also littered with garbage, discarded clothing, full and empty mayonnaise jars—and sometimes a dead body. Eventually, the government instructed the agents to look the other way from illegal border crossings. The success rates would look better that way, and it was all about the numbers. Husband wanted out.

The unabating sun, the choking sandstorms, and Husband’s uniform—stained from the red clay soil of the Sonoran desert—reminded us we were far from where we came. We had two babies, and their mere existence in the world nudged me daily.

Go back home!

We heard reports in our town of “particulate matter”—dried feces—in the air we breathed, higher rates of childhood leukemia, drug use amongst kids as young as third grade, the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country, and eventually it wasn’t just Husband looking for a way out. Something had stirred in me too.

We kept our ears open. Husband applied for jobs elsewhere—the northern U.S. border as a Border Patrol agent, anywhere as a Secret Service agent, and the Grand Canyon as a Forest Ranger. But it was 9/11—the bleakest of America’s tragedies—that was our way out. The Federal Air Marshal Service under the Department of Homeland Security was suddenly hiring hundreds of new air marshals to supplement their paltry number of pre-9/11 agents.

Nothing about the federal government moves quickly, but the hiring process for Federal Air Marshals was expedited due to a new national sense of insecurity. They demanded coverage, and now. Husband and most of his friends from the Border Patrol in Douglas, Arizona, were hired. Abruptly, our lives changed. The mild winters, monsoon seasons, and slow-paced desert lifestyle came to an end. By March 22, 2002, we handed our house keys to the landlord, slammed the U-Haul doors shut for the last time, tossed one last look behind us at the Huachuca Mountains, and started our trek north.

We spent our first night on the road in a cheap motel in Deming, New Mexico. A long enough travel day for a six-month-old and a two-year-old, we decided. Burrs peppered the carpeting in that motel room, so we kept our shoes on.

We hit blizzard conditions in Nebraska, and memories of my northern Minnesota upbringing smacked me in the face. Oh, that’s right. That’s how winter feels. I was sorry the little ones were wearing light fleece jackets and that I had stepped into flip-flops that morning, but it was cozy in the cab of the U-Haul truck.

Having survived the trip from southeastern Arizona to northwestern Minnesota in four wintry days with a baby, a toddler, our miniature dachshund, and all our earthly possessions, we wended our way to my parents’ home in Newfolden, Minnesota. It was my first time seeing their new house and new dogs—a fresh life together in their almost thirty-eight years of marriage. I pulled Mom and Dad into vice-grip hugs, relieved Dad wasn’t greatly changed from the last time I saw him. The fear I nursed on the trip was that he was worse and no one had told me. But he was between chemo treatments, enjoying an upswing in energy, and ready to play with his little grandgirls.

I looked at Husband. We had made it. I squeezed him tight. We were starting something new. He was a Federal Air Marshal now and would report the next week to a training academy. The girls and I would stay at Mom and Dad’s for as long as it took to find a house in the Twin Cities where Husband’s new station would be.

We didn’t know that in eight weeks, we’d have found our first home—a 1919 stucco—and be living in North Minneapolis, an area we knew nothing about.

We had no idea what was about to go down for us living in the hood.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.