Darkness

Prepared to post a silly blog installment today, I instead took a sharp turn. Our country—our world, really—has a heart problem. A serious one. I wrack my brain for what I can do to make things better, but it feels too late; so many people are already dead.

I yank myself out of the depths—or at least try to—and there’s Light at the top. And it’s enough light to see and keep going.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.

Here’s one from a handful of years ago. I hope it shines.

*****

I read the term thick darkness twice this week, and now there’s no ignoring it. As it is, darkness holds the known and the unknown—the what-ares and the what-ifs—but thick darkness? I feel queasy just thinking about it.

I recall an ancient people, captives in a foreign land, when the plagues broke out. As if the water-to-blood, frogs, gnats, boils, and the rest, weren’t enough, a darkness—one that could be felt—covered the land for three days, and it wasn’t the be-careful-not-to-stub-your-toe-on-the-chair-when-you-go-for-a-drink-of-water-in-the-night kind of dimness. I imagine an utter absence of light, the oily tentacles of fear threatening to strangle the already battered citizens with their every move.

Yes, I wrote a blog about darkness a few weeks ago too. Trust me, I practice habits that perk the spirits, I really do. I run, read in the sunshine, enjoy coffee, prepare healthy food, laugh hard at least once daily with Husband and the girls—but still. Like you, I hear of gas lines, continuing sickness, border woes—and that’s just here. This week, I squint across the ocean to The Cup of Trembling too, and it all hurts. Who can deny the murkiness of the world?

My petitions turn to pleas: Snap on Your light, God. It’s getting hard to see down here.

But those two things I read come back. One was King Solomon saying he had built an exalted house, even though “‘the Lord has said He would live in thick darkness.’” My breathing calms. And then the second, one of my favorites:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.

The thicker the darkness, the brighter the light.

Here comes The Glory.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

Beyond belief

Have I told you I don’t know the boundaries of the property on which our home is planted? I can’t perceive the edges of it or understand how its lines run because I don’t want to. I’ve never walked its length, and I won’t in the future either.

I’ve heard it said we own a piece of earth that’s shaped like a slice of pie—with the wide part at the back and the narrow part in the front. I know the front part; I walk through the house’s main entrance daily. It’s the terrain’s backside that’s the secret—the wide, crusty casing of it, if we keep the pastry analogy.

In June, Husband and I quarried the trees back there for slabs of flagstone the previous owner had flung into the growth, maybe hoping they’d disappear, but we discovered them in time to build Flicka’s wedding path. So, yes, I wandered into the trees then, but only so far; I couldn’t bear to see the end of the land because then I would know.

Despite surveyors with their fancy public records claiming we own three-quarters of an acre, I believe our property stretches for miles, lazily splayed out, of course. And the perennial whir I’m told is traffic on Interstate 694 rushing behind our wall isn’t something I can get behind. Instead, what I hear is the roaring of a majestic waterfall, and those screeches and honks are exotic birds summoning each other over its spray.

Husband knows what’s really out there, and the girls too, I’m sure, but they show mercy and don’t tell me. To me, there are hills and ravines and caves and paths and clearings where the deer, raccoons, coyotes, and opossums snooze after they’ve stuffed themselves with apples from the tree near our swimming pool. Those creatures romp around campfires, deliver their jokes, soak in hot springs, birth their babies, and explore various ecosystems far, far away in places beyond my scope that we still own.

When the trees go naked in the winter, and I can see more, I just don’t. I avert my eyes until spring and pretend I don’t notice a thing. It seems what we already have is none of my business, so I’m respectful of my place in it.

And I let the mystery play out.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

About time: Part 3

I needed to clock out for the day, but someone texted my work phone, asking to talk.

“I have a few minutes,” I texted back, glancing at the time. I stepped out into the fresh air, and my phone rang. That was fast.

“I should’ve called the police today when I heard the gunshots from my apartment. Maybe it could’ve helped.” His voice was twitchy, quavery at the edges.

I paced in the grass of the backyard and listened. He lived close enough to Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis to hear the massacre at Mass on the morning of August 27, 2025, during the first week of school.

Into my mind streamed a photo from a news post showing the scene full of police cars. The school building in the background had words etched in stone on its facade: HOUSE OF GOD AND THE GATE OF HEAVEN. Two little children passed through that very gate just today, and time stopped ticking for them. I shivered in the warm sun.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t your responsibility. Other people were there to help right away. This is not on you.”

He asked me questions no one could answer, and I wondered too. Why? Why did little ones have to die? Islam, his religion, considered children under the age of fifteen to be of no religion—neither Muslim, nor Jewish, nor Christian—only innocent, he said. So, why?

I shook my head into the phone and kept silent. He said if a Somali had done it, there would be riots. He said it didn’t make sense. He said if he could just run for mayor of Minneapolis and win the office, it could all change.

“Are you afraid to die?” he said suddenly.

“No.”

He asked why not, and I told him about the curse, the cross, the crown. The uncertainty of life but the peace and purpose for then, now, and later. He had heard some of it before.

“Are you afraid to die?” I asked him back.

“Yes.”

I asked why, but he changed the subject and talked about inner-city politics and drug-addled street corners and prostitution rings right outside his door.

I shook my head into the phone and kept silent.

And time kept ticking—for us anyway. For now.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

About time: Part 2

I phoned Ronnie the meeting reminder she had requested. It was 7:00 a.m.

“I’m awake,” she said, “and ready to meet you at 8 a.m.”

I believed her—again—and made the twenty-five-minute drive. I rolled up to her apartment building at 7:55 a.m., paid the meter through the app, and strode into the place. I pressed the code on the keypad and waited for her to buzz me in. No answer. I readjusted my computer bag and checked my phone. Shifting my weight, I glanced out to the street and eyed my phone again. I called her and left a message.

After a few minutes, the guy behind the reception desk stood and opened the door, welcoming me inside. He asked if I needed anything while I waited for my person.

I waved away his offer of hospitality with a thanks so much anyway and sat on the pink couch in the lobby. I texted Ronnie to let her know I had arrived in case she had missed my earlier voicemail. Silence. At 8:15 a.m., I dialed her again.

“I’m on my way down,” she said on the other end of the line. “I just have to grab my coffee first.”

“Okay.”

I breathed in the new building’s details—the morning light through expansive windows soaking the lobby, the sleek pink upholstery, the gold of the lamps and end tables and hanging lights. I looked at the clock again, and I thought of a mother’s heartbeat.

Our first introduction to time comes in the womb, I learned from a podcast, and the rhythms or violation of those rhythms teach us the concept of time and awareness of its passage. Time is marked in speech too, and auditory cues anchor us in sentences. The hearing of it matters. This is how we learn when we are.

8:20 came, then 8:30. Still no Ronnie.

Curiosity replaced the earlier irritation I felt over my client’s habitual tardiness. In a month of weekly hour-long meetings, we had only spent a total of thirty minutes together. Something was going on. But did Ronnie even know it?

I called her again.

“I’m coming,” she said. “Just had to find my keys. One of those mornings.”

“Since it’s so late,” I said, “we’ll need to reschedule.”

“Almost there,” she said, a cheery lilt to her voice, but I knew she wasn’t. “Can you wait?”

“We only have thirty minutes left now, Ronnie.”

“I’m coming,” she said with a chuckle.

My other clients’ no-shows usually turned into cancellations at the fifteen-minute-late mark, but Ronnie’s promises pinned me to my spot that day in her apartment building.

How many times had she asked a doctor to wait? Or a dentist? Or her social worker? She had done this to employers a handful of times; her resume and stories of frequent termination were a testament to that. I could wait—I was paid for my empty minutes too—but what was going on?

Was I missing something? I sifted out the what wasn’ts of Ronnie’s life: no upbringing in a foreign country, no neurodivergence, no addiction, no hearing impairment. But what about trauma, anxiety, or fear? There was something hidden in the lagging, and I wanted to know.

The American way—with its exacting clock—ticks on, and we must conform to succeed. But what if we don’t? Was my client’s case a matter of couldn’t or wouldn’t? I had visions of timers and metronomes and assigning her activities to accomplish during the span of a song. Her primary goal to get a job shuffled off to a tertiary spot in my mind, and I reordered a new plan to try with her. But maybe employment wasn’t the first thing. It sure wasn’t the only thing.

At 8:55 a.m., Ronnie strode into the lobby of her apartment building, ready to meet with me. She just had to blot up a spill from her coffee cup first—if I would only wait.

And so, I did.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

About time: Part 1

I’m obsessed with time.

Ever since I learned the big hand is on the something, and the little hand is on the something else, I attached to the concept like it was my identity. It constrains me, though, so when I see an Instagram story about a magical little place this side of heaven with no time whatsoever, I watch it.

Sommarøy in Northern Norway is a place of stunning beauty, the reel says, but it’s also a timeless place. And when they say timeless, they mean there are no 24-hour clocks there, and people hang up their watches on the bridge to the island as a symbol of their desire to forget all about time.

Husband watches with me and searches online to find out where this place is and if we can even get there from here. He finds out it’s a little over $500 roundtrip.

“That’s not bad,” I say.

“But a person has to fly to Dallas Fort Worth and from there to Helsinki.”

I nod. “Maybe that makes sense.”

“Then fly from Helsinki to Tromsø for right around $500.”

“Oh.”

“And then rent a car,” Husband goes on, “to drive an hour to Sommarøy.” My brows furrow now, and he’s still talking. “It takes almost twenty-four hours to get there and thirty-one hours to get home.”

“But while we’re there,” I say, “at least we’re freezing in a place where we’re lost to time.”

He’s still in research mode, tapping away on his phone. “We could always rent a car and drive six hours to Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, and get three countries on our Been app.”

“Doesn’t it seem a little dangerous to take a road trip from one city to another inside the Arctic Circle?” I say.

But Husband is too busy finding rental cars to answer. “Looks like almost 100% of the vehicles are electric, which seems odd in a super cold environment.”

He wonders aloud if there are enough plug-ins on our route to Sweden and learns gas stations are scarce, so we’d have to carry gas cans or batteries, depending on the car.

What he’s saying is of utmost importance—life and death, really—but I’ve lost interest. My original idea of an idyllic village outside of time where I can sleep, drink coffee, shop, and view the Northern Lights from November through February feels a little terrifying, albeit gorgeous. Maybe we visit and do our Arctic road trip between May 18 and July 26 when the sun refuses to set, and we can forego sleep because that would be something to write about.

“Any chance of us driving to Oslo?” I say.

My travel agent pecks again at his minuscule keyboard. “It would take twenty-two and a half hours to drive there from Sommarøy.”

“That’s insane. Twenty-two hours?”

“Twenty-two and a half.” He clicks away. “And if you want to visit your rellies in Finnmark, that would be a six-and-a-half-hour drive northeast of Sommarøy.”

Drops of Sami blood from my mother’s side pulse through me I learned in more recent years, but I don’t know if we have relatives in Finnmark anymore. Still, the otherworldly temptation dazzles, and I see my fictitious self (the one who likes cold plunges), who is very different from my real self (the one who shivers in an eighty-degree pool), poise to book the flights right now.

Thoughts of our traveling friends skitter to mind, and we want to take them along if we’re doing this thing. Half of the four of us, however, have already nixed the possibility of Iceland for the cold, and the same half of us weren’t fond of Ireland’s unheated restrooms with their brisk toilet seats in March either. Maybe our adventurous besties wouldn’t have the time of day for our shenanigans, but if we went to Sommarøy, they wouldn’t have to worry about that.

We learn a little more about the timelessness of the destination and how its inhabitants declared their home the world’s first time-free zone, petitioning the Norwegian government to abolish civil time on the island. I also read how that might not be accurate but instead a genius way to coax tourists to visit.

If it’s true, though, I have hundreds of questions about work in Sommarøy, how the businesses run, if a person just shows up at the dentist whenever, and how one goes about something as simple as meeting a friend for lunch. Does the clock really hold no sway over the locals’ lives?

I would say it’s about time.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

Age schmage!

I started writing three vastly different blog installments for today. None of them felt right. Do you really care about my misadventures with nutritional supplements? Do you really want to know what I do when my client is ridiculously late to a meeting? Do you really need to see more of Flicka and Snipp’s wedding pictures? If you said yes to any of these, drop me a note. You might just get lucky next week.

In the meantime, here’s one from 2021. And you can do the math. Sad to say, I’m not fifty-one anymore.

*****

1 Kings 1:1 reminds me of you, Dicka texted me the other day.

Not knowing the verse by memory, my mind raced to all the tender sentiments my girl likely meant for me. Hard to imagine a statement about a mother’s love at the very beginning of 1 Kings, but who could know? I flipped the pages to find out.

Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm.

I texted my kid a comeback, along with my signature string of emojis, but she wasn’t wrong. That ancient ruler and I were a lot alike—cold and old.

The first adjective is a no-brainer. Like people are fused to their cell phones, I’m attached to my sweater, and I’d never leave home without it. But it’s taken me a while to accept the second descriptor. At age fifty-one, am I truly old?

Relativity aside, yes. Just yes.

Years ago, when I was in my late thirties, a young mom approached me after church. With at least two little ones glued to her body and a diaper bag sagging her shoulder, she blew a piece of hair out of her face and flung out a question about raising children.

I looked around me, confused, and back at her. “Who, me? You’re asking me?”

She chuckled. “Yeah?”

Did she really think I knew what I was doing? I had hardly been at the job long enough to be an authority on parenting. I was scarcely old enough to have kids.

Except that I had worked the position for about ten years and was definitely old enough to give birth to the three who were at that moment begging me to buy them lunch at Qdoba. I could’ve even held grandma status, if life had dealt me a different storyline.

I think I mumbled something about what works for me with whatever it was she wanted to know, but I left with one thought: My age scoots ahead of me faster than my mind can follow. And maybe I know more than I think because I’m older than I realize.

We like to say with age comes wisdom, but Oscar Wilde and I know that’s not always true. What is true is that life moves quicker than our mentality to adjust to it and swifter than the perception of our place on its timeline. My grandma was nearing her nineties when she said she felt like a young woman, but when she looked in the mirror, she saw an old lady. I inherited her sense of disconnect—which is everybody’s, I’m hearing—and I’ll be twenty-seven forever.

“Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. And I smile now because it sounds like we’re stuck right in the most wonderful spot ever, and it’s called NOW. And since there’s nothing I can do about it, I’m going to relax.

Age schmage. He’s got this.

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

Storms

Our friends brought walleye over on Sunday afternoon. Husband dredged their catch in his homemade batter and plunged the pieces into the hot oil in the fryer by our backyard gate. The skies glowered and darkened, setting the timer on our outdoor cooking. He dunked more filets into the vat, turning them into crispy goodness, extracted them with tongs, and laid them to rest on a paper towel-lined dish. The atmosphere rumbled, and each passing minute warned us: Your time is short. Get in the house now or else.

My man cooked more pieces, dropping them in and pulling them out of the oil. If he heard nature’s not-so-distant timpani, his face didn’t show it.

The visiting kids climbed out of the pool, wrapped towels around their middles, and gazed at the sky, their smiles sliding away. Their mom and I scooped up the glasses, phones, and bags by the pool chairs and quickened our steps into the house, the drops chasing us. Soon, the men followed with their platter of gold.

We served up the fish, salad, and chips indoors, the flashing firmament our backdrop, and soon our meal went dark. Flicka and Snipp gathered candles from around the house, putting their leftover wedding tapers to good use in candelabras. Fully lit, our place looked more like the staging of a murder mystery dinner than a Sunday evening picnic on paper plates.

Husband and I crawled into bed after the visit, our stomachs and hearts full and the power still out. Lightning and rain thrashed the atmosphere beyond our windows, but silence hovered inside our room. No electrical noise of any kind hummed to jar our sleep.

Babies and aging had stolen my talent in sleeping well, but on Sunday night, I sank into serenity, blankets of peace swaddling me in the deepest rest I’ve known in years.

At four in the morning, though, the house snapped back to life. All the lights flicked on—I wished we had turned the switches off before retiring—and the buzzing, thrumming, and whirring of our modern home resumed.

I flew from bed, heart hammering, and turned off all the lights. The healing quietness had vanished.

I started my Monday, marveling at the blissful darkness that had enshrouded me much of the night, and the power flipped off again, this time interrupting work from my home office. It clicked back on minutes later, but the internet connection stayed away for hours, and we weren’t the only ones. Thousands in our community were still without power, the internet, and all the extras that add noise to our lives.

Tuesday seemed normal enough, if a person considers news of an 8.8 magnitude earthquake striking near Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings across the Pacific, including Japan, the United States’ west coast, and our girl’s new residence in Hawaii normal.

Dicka’s messages from Kona popped onto our screens.

Another tsunami warning. This time an alert on our phones like an Amber alert. She sent us a screenshot of the National Weather Service’s message. Certain sentences stood out: You are in danger. Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now.

Five words from my morning reading hit me—Listen to me, O coastlands—along with the smallness of our humanity, the helplessness of our position in the world, and our wait for nature to overtake us.

But likely destruction had dissipated before, and it could happen again. You will do greater things than these…

It couldn’t hurt to ask.

Calmer of wind and waves, calm these—and me.

Thousands of miles away, sirens blared, and Dicka was moved from her YWAM base to its upper campus for the night. She kept us posted about the timing of when the waves would hit. It would be 7:00 p.m., their time, she said. Midnight for us in Minnesota. The previous night’s restful sleep was nowhere on earth. I kept my phone on, my attention lasered in on new messages.

By 4:00 a.m., Central Standard Time, the storm was downgraded to a tsunami advisory. Later, our girl texted us a morning selfie from a different bed somewhere on higher ground. She held up peace fingers.

Idk if anything happened after I went to bed, but nothing happened at 7 p.m. when they said the first wave would hit

Amen and so be it.

And so, it was.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

Coco and the county fair

I awoke this morning to memories of the Marshall County Fair. Maybe it was the steamy summer day, or something else etched into my cellular makeup, but it just felt like the right time for it. I hopped online to see, and sure enough—the fair runs from July 23-27 this year.

If you can’t make it to northern Minnesota for the goings-on, no matter. Let’s fly back in time right now and walk the fairgrounds together.

*****

If the Marshall County Fair back in the late 1970s had been an opera, my older sister Coco would’ve been the prima donna. A true Renaissance 4-H girl, she was a judge’s dream. Only in junior high, she already had talents with a camera, canvas, cloth, cooking, and Checkered Giants (rabbits.) I was in elementary school at the time, and while my younger siblings may have entered items in the fair too, my memories of their efforts are fuzzy; I was too busy trying to emulate Coco to pay much attention.

In four frames, Coco captured the different stages of my cartwheel for a photo series entry. She baked the best julekage and carrot cake I, to this day, have ever tasted. She showcased her sewing skills by altering a dress and transforming it into a skirt/top duo. And she nurtured an all-white male rabbit named Dandelion to winning heights.

My industrious doings, on the other hand, sang an off-key tune. While my dried bean and macaroni kitchen plaque was solidly average, I stitched a misplaced seam on my sewing project, turning my striped skirt with patch pockets into a bag. And for the baking competition, I whipped up some biscuits using baking soda instead of baking powder.

“What’s the difference anyway?” I asked Mom after admitting my mistake in the kitchen. “Does it really matter?”

“Bake them and see,” she said.

The dog wrinkled her nose at the hard orange biscuits that emerged from the oven. I started my projects over, mixing my dough again and later ripping out the stitches in my “bag” too.

If thoughts of the fair judges’ scrutiny rattled us, the promise of the payout kept us motivated. A blue ribbon equaled $3.00, a red ribbon $2.00, and a white $1.00. A grand champion ribbon meant even more money, but I imagined the sense of satisfaction was higher than the dollars earned by winning one.

Coco secured all blue ribbons, with the exception of her julekage and carrot cake; those were grand champion winners. I don’t remember what I won on my biscuits or skirt, but I know I earned a red ribbon on my dried bean and macaroni plaque. And those two dollars made me grin.

The county fair was bigger than ribbons, though. For several shifts a year, we 4-H members and some parents performed a sweaty service manning the food booth, and that was where Coco and I shared equal ground; we both feared making change.

We kids took the customers’ orders, the hot grill spitting grease at us as we scurried by. We plated hamburgers, potato salad, rolls, and pie. We filled cups with coffee and milk. And then came time for the money to change hands.

“$5.15, please,” I said to an older gentleman with a mustache.

He opened his wallet, extracted a twenty-dollar bill, and rummaged in his pocket. He slapped a dime and a nickel down on the counter along with the bill.

I furrowed my brow, plucking up the twenty and waggling it in the air. “This is enough. You don’t need the coins too.”

His eyes smiled even though his mustache stayed even. He nodded toward somebody’s mother who worked the cash register. “Bring it over there, give it to her, and see what happens.”

Wary, I brought the twenty and change to the till. The woman handed me back a ten and a five. A light dawned, and my mouth sagged open. Mr. Mustache had shown me new ways of the world—and making change. I shot a look over my shoulder at him. He winked.

In the evening, we collected our fair items with the judges’ notes affixed to them—and ribbons too, if we were lucky—and loaded them into the station wagon. Coco’s champion baked goods, along with other people’s, had posed for public viewing all day on flimsy plates atop white-papered tables. Flies buzzed in circles over the edible winners, but that didn’t stop us from tearing into the julekage on the ride home and washing down the soft wads of Norwegian Christmas bread with ice-cold strawberry Shastas.

Back at home, we bathed, sponging away the dust from the fair while keeping our memories. Coco displayed her ribbons on a cork board in our shared bedroom, and of course I copied her. As if that year wasn’t success enough, I could tell my big sister already had schemes brewing for the next year’s entries. And maybe I did too.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands, Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

All the leaves

“Write about the leaves.”

I hear the sentence in my spirit and set to it. It’s not the flat green blades attached to stems it means. It’s the exits, les sorties (French), the releases, the departures as delicate as the kisses we blow from our fingertips to propel our loved ones on. These are fragile goings; one can’t hold them down or control their flights. Only the wind has the tiniest chance of that.

Flicka got married on June 28 and left. She lives nearby and flits in some days, her presence passing through our front door and out of it again at unexpected times in undetermined moments in the middle of normal days, and I’d like to drop my workload and rake up her words into a sweet pile and jump into them before the breeze steals them all away.

Ricka lives here still but works each day, taking time off to assist at youth camps for a week here or a week over there, winging in and out like the gusts of summer. I see the shimmer of her leaves, their floating in the winds, their landing—uncertain to me but not to her. She knows how they’ll flutter to a rest, and I don’t have to.

Dicka left on July 11 for a two-year commitment with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). She’s on staff this third time around—the winds wafting her to the same place (Kona) where her flight will slow for now. This plan has outreaches in coming months, though, and they’ll toss her and the others she leads to Fiji or Papua New Guinea or Samoa, and we can’t know exactly where yet any more than the leaves of summer know their autumn destination.

Life is a series of leaves. Some call them goodbyes, but do goodbyes turn green or yellow or orange or red or gold and layer a person’s life with changing color and untouchable beauty?

There’s nothing final to these papery fragments that whisper through our days, swirl away, and fly back to land on our lawn again when we least expect them.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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 and their husbands Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.

More of the big day

The photos from the magical day are trickling in. Here are a handful for you to enjoy this week. Yay for Flicka and Snipp!

The big day

The big day (Flicka and Snipp’s wedding) came and went.

Six months of preparation culminated in one glorious day. Of all the big and small details to oversee for the backyard nuptials, none caused me stress like the uncertainty of the weather during the rainiest summer in recent years.

Raindrops flitted in for the early photo session and fled. During the ceremony, they pattered again to emphasize the couple’s spoken vows but retreated soon after. The reception stayed dry, but when it ended, distant thunder drummed the firmament while the remaining relatives helped us break down tables and stack chairs. An hour later, sirens shrieked, and tornado warnings lit up our phones.

After our mountaintop of grace, goodness, and love, I’m back to work, opening my email after my time off to find eleven new clients waiting for me, overtime approved on my behalf so I can serve them all, and my team members saying they missed me. Another kind of grace, goodness, and love.

And hundreds of chairs to sell on Facebook Marketplace. Let’s not forget that part.

(I promise you more wedding photos when the photographer sends them, but for now, here’s one of Flicka and me. And the chairs. Always the chairs.)

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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.

Receive

In two days, Flicka will marry Snipp in the backyard. The threats of wicked weather loom, but our hope and faith hold. There’s always a way.

While I’m scrambling with preparations, enjoy this little story from 2019.

*****

Lights frame the large mirror in the makeup room, and in the center of it, she glows. I gaze at my new friend, in her late sixties now. Like me, she models every week, and together we’re grateful for the sudden and steady work—work that came to us, instead of the other way around. But she goes beyond where I’m standing.

“God is right there, his hands open, ready to put you center stage.” She presses her lips together for a moment, then smiles, her ruby lip color as brilliant as her words. “Just step forward and grab hold. I did it, and it works.”

She says it like it’s easy. Grab hold. I imagine opening my hands to receive more. But something’s filling them. What is it? What am I already holding?

Back at home, the garden calls. Husband stands on the bed of his Ford F150, extending a box of plants to me.

“Give me a second,” I say, nodding at the bag of mulch in my arms, “and I’ll get that from you.”

I haul my load to the pile of bags we already stacked in the corner of the patio and drop it there. I return to him, arms empty now, and receive the box of pansies, fuchsia, bleeding heart, euphorbia, and astilbe he hands me.

And in that small action of emptying my arms first, then accepting the box of flowers, it all makes sense.

I know I can’t receive more—I can’t grab hold—until I release what I’m clinging to. But I finally see what that is: I’m gripping the desire to be grateful at all times—the need to be satisfied with exactly what I have now.

And there’s no more room to receive gifts.

But isn’t it good to be grateful? Isn’t it better to give than to receive? That kind of teaching rings out from pulpits and platforms everywhere, doesn’t it?

And so I give. We all do. Until it gets easy. And it feels so good to us that it becomes our everything.

But what about receiving? Ask and you shall receive.

Over the soil now, I think of my friend, blossoming in her modeling career, and I think of my own hands, full of contentment goals, my fingers so tight on the concept I can’t unfurl them.

Good gifts are limitless, though; there are enough to go around.

I set down my trowel and practice opening my hands for a change.

Let’s see what happens now.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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.

Heat wave

Nine days until the wedding, and I’m slapping blog posts together at this point, so kindly take this as a warning. Since it says it’ll be 96 degrees in two days, I’m rejoicing at the soon coming heat when my family members aren’t around to hear me. Enjoy a repeat blog post from June 2021.

*****

“This is miserable,” the people around me say, plucking the fabric of their shirts away from their chests.

They’re sweaty and cranky, so I go silent. I can’t lie; I love this heat wave. The peer pressure to complain runs strong, though. Like in high school when my friends griped about diagramming sentences in English class.

“This is stupid,” they’d say on their way to the chalkboard, whispering so Miss Helgeson couldn’t hear them.

To fit in, I nodded. But I loved dissecting those sentences so much I thought my heart might explode. I even pictured one day sitting in heaven—in a coffee shop in the heart of the celestial city—drawing vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines on paper, identifying groups of words and bringing them structure at last for all of eternity.

Husband walks to the thermostat now and clicks it lower by a degree or two, and I remember I’m writing about temperature and not grammar.

Living in Minnesota, I’m chilled for seven months out of every year and continually scheming ways to warm myself amongst family members who like it brisk. If I were a single lady, I’d pass on the air conditioning altogether, but here I am doing life with this overheated group.

Husband proposes traveling to Iceland sometime and staying in an ice hotel there. I read about the novelty accommodations. Architects and designers have made sleeping on blocks of ice inviting. They’ve even created amenities like frosty cocktail bars and ice-molded dinnerware to add to the adventure. I shiver and close out the tab on my online search.

I saw a YouTube video once about why summer is “women’s winter.” In the skit, the women at the office wear furs and still freeze, their lips bluer than their skin, while the men lounge in front of their computers in shorts and tank tops, tossing around a beach ball. One commenter says, “I never truly understood this sketch. Then I visited America. Now I understand.” Yes, in this country, because of air conditioning, women stow space heaters under their desks in July.

I recall bundling up to go sledding with the kids one winter. My many layers turned me into an immobile sausage. With that memory in mind, I say to one of my girls, “There’s only so much clothing you can put on, but to cool down, you can always take off more.”

She snaps her gaze at me. “I think the real expression is just the opposite.”

I recollect my Norse Mythology class in college and the knowledge that Hel—the underworld for the ignoble dead—is located in Niflheim, a realm of primordial ice and cold. To imagine hell is freezing tells me much about the ancient Scandinavian peoples and what they found insufferable. Enough said.

The forecast promises a high of 99 today (with a heat advisory), up from yesterday’s 95 degrees. Whether it was President Truman who said it first or not, the quote is true: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

To twist this adage for my purposes, I’ll say this much: The lawn chair in the “kitchen” is calling me right now, and I’m heading out there with my iced coffee ASAP. You’re welcome to join me, if you can stand it.

This central air is too much.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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.

Ollie, the bug guy

I wish I had noted when Ollie, the bug guy, first showed up at our door. It’s usually not notable, these dates when door-to-door sales people come peddling their services. The connections are typically forgettable, the awkward interactions on one’s front steps a relief and only slightly guilt-tinged when they’re over.

Even though I’m not sure when I first met Ollie, I know it was during a workday.

“So sorry,” I said, a bit breathless, looping my purse strap over my shoulder that day in front of my open door as he stood on the front step. “I have to leave for a meeting right now.”

He pulled out an iPad with images of bugs and lobbed me a few insect questions, his eyebrows coming together each time I said we didn’t have a problem with whichever species he mentioned. It seemed his business took care of everything from Japanese beetles to house mice, and he may have even mentioned raccoons. I reminded him of the truncated time I had allotted for our visit. He flashed me a broad grin and assured me he’d be back later.

Husband and I relaxed on the couch one evening two weeks later, indulging in our show au moment. Three knocks splintered the peace of our Netflix drama. Flicka strode to the door so we didn’t have to.

“They’re preoccupied right now,” she said to the visitor. The person responded to her statement, and her melodious laugh floated up to us on the couch.

Minutes later, Flicka chuckled again at something the visitor said, delivered an affable goodbye, and rejoined us in the living room.

“You could’ve just told him we were here,” I said.

“You should’ve just told him no,” Husband said.

“He’s a good salesman,” our girl said, still smiling. She talked about him pulling out an iPad with all kinds of insect pictures to show her. Hmm. Sounded suspiciously like a certain bug guy I knew. “Anyway, he said he’ll be back.”

“Great,” I said.

The next evening, the house was all mine as I fried up six chicken patties for the others who would soon return home for dinner. A knock at the front door interrupted the sizzling.

I opened it. Ollie.

“Hey, thought I’d check in again,” he said, a sparkle surrounding his words. This one wasn’t easily dampened.

“Ah, I have food on the stove right now,” I said, thumbing the air behind me. “Sorry I can’t talk.”

“No worries,” he said, his way as beachy as the waves in his hair. “I’ll come back later.”

Later? Like today? Or a different day? Maybe sometime while I’m chewing a mouthful of food? Or on the cusp of out-of-town company arriving? Or in the chaotic mess of a painting project?

“Okay.” I started to close the door.

“Because you’re gonna wanna hear this,” he said, beaming, his confidence unswerving as he stepped away.

No one could say the guy wasn’t persistent. And in the face of likely rejection, his exuberance was commendable.

Two hours later, Flicka and her fiancé, Snipp, rolled up in Snipp’s old Silverado, just in from a Facebook Marketplace run to Mankato and back, their new-to-them elderly couch reclining in the bed of the truck like she was too old for all the nonsense.

But what was taking them so long to come in? After several minutes, the front door opened.

“Are we going down?” said a familiar voice. Ollie.

He hefted one end of the vintage couch while Snipp lugged the other end down our steps to the lower level. They put the ninety year old to rest there, and I later learned Ollie had come over by hoverboard and invited Snipp, three times his size, to take a spin on it before the couch transport occurred.

Someone sent Ollie around to the backyard—where Husband was laying flagstone—to talk with him about insect eradication. Soon, I spotted Ollie in the front yard again. He mounted his hoverboard and rode off into the sunset.

“Outside of the bug thing,” Snipp said, “Ollie would be pretty cool to hang out with.”

“No, I know,” I said.

Later, I heard about my man’s earlier conversation with the salesman.

“What kind of bugs do you get rid of?” Husband had said.

“What kind of bugs don’t you like?” Ollie had said back.

“Mosquitoes?”

Ollie was happy to inform Husband he could offer him a ninety-nine-dollar-a-month deal to erase all the mosquitoes from our lives. It was such a deep discount, he said, because he was treating our neighbors’ properties too, lucky for us.

In the end, Ollie didn’t make a sale at our place, but I wonder if he’ll find his way back to us one day anyway. Maybe while I’m in the middle of brushing my teeth or hauling an unwieldy dresser.

I’ll keep you posted.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

*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.

Buy Nothing?

Just because I hadn’t been banned from anything in my life before didn’t mean it couldn’t start now. There’s a first time for everything, see, and here’s where my story begins.

In the throes of wedding preparation in early January, I stepped into Facebook Marketplace, a magical realm I had only heard of in legends. It was real, though, and my curiosity turned to glee as I spied bride after bride on the platform offloading her reception wares at incredible prices. Never mind the driving to pick up those purchases, which took me around Minnesota and into Wisconsin. Did I want to scurry to Andover for additional brass candlesticks? Of course. Could I race to Golden Valley for another candelabra? Absolutely. Did Husband need to hustle to Bloomington for more cheesecloth table runners? One hundred percent.

It was likely around that same time I learned of the hidden joy of Buy Nothing groups on Facebook. I wanted in and now. Wouldn’t it be lovely to gather needful pieces for free AND donate my own cast-offs to group members?

While several Buy Nothing groups operated in my area, I joined the first one to pop up. Months flowed by, however, in my hurry to do other things (like my day job), and my frantic scuttling erased all memory of ever having joined a group. Did it really happen? I searched my Facebook connections and memberships. Nothing. Maybe I only meant to jump into a group, and I never did.

I clicked on a Buy Nothing group in my area—one close to me—requesting to join. Minutes later, an admin slid into my DMs, as the kids would say, her message curt. I was already a member of her group, she said, and she saw I was trying to join another group—a grievous sin that violated their rules. How dare I? Maybe she didn’t use the word sin, but it was clear she wouldn’t forgive me anytime soon.

I typed a response, words tumbling from my fingers to justify my actions. I hadn’t recalled signing up the first time, I explained. I had even checked and couldn’t find my membership, I clarified. I hadn’t meant anything by it, I apologized. She responded with a thumbs up and promptly canceled me.

Slack-jawed, I limped out of the chat. My airway narrowed. Now instead of a future of Buy Nothing delights, I’d have to Buy Everything.

And that’s where my story ends.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo), @TamaraSchierkolk (PayPal), or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)