Dexter

The creature’s personality was big enough for thirty nicknames. He started as Dexter, but over the years, permutations of the name rolled off our lips. Even our guests tried new ones: Decker, The Dex-man, and Dexy, to name a few. And Robin’s daughter Ava thought his name was connected with his habits. She called him Lickster.

In 1996, Husband and I did everything I wouldn’t approve of now. We bought Dexter from a pet store in a mall, we smuggled him into our apartment in married housing at UND where he was an illegal resident for eight months until the Flood of ’97 forced our evacuation, and we fed him people food from the get-go. 

Although he was only ten pounds, he was larger than life. He came before the girls did and acted as their guardian, mashing his hot-dog form next to their swaddled selves on the couch when they were freshly home from the hospital. He was my companion when I nursed them.

But for all his love and commitment to the family, he was too spoiled to be enjoyable at dinner time. His yipping under the table annoyed me so much I would toss down a scrap to get a minute of quiet. I knew exactly what I was doing—that it was counterproductive—but I figured my mistakes with him would be balanced by my consistency as a mother to my girls. And we’d endure the spoiled dog situation only so long; Dexter wouldn’t live forever.

Our miniature dachshund was raised in captivity, the girls later said, and that’s why he was dying to escape our yard for adventures beyond. He just didn’t know how good he had it on the inside. His naughty bolting through the gate sent me chasing after him—often with a baby on my hip—searching neighbors’ yards and bushes, my irritation and fears mounting.

Glenda liked him and kept him while we were away on trips. Her cats didn’t appreciate his exuberance, but he didn’t mind their opinions—or eating their cat food. And he sure liked Glenda.

Dexter started as my baby. But as dog years go, he quickly surpassed me in age. We watched the accelerated ravages of time on his little body. We knew from the start miniature dachshunds could live to be fourteen to seventeen years old, but it doesn’t sink in when you hear that pronouncement from a pet store employee. You only hear the cuteness of the tiny puppy nestled in your arms.

Dexter had kidney issues at the age of eleven, but some meds and better food helped. He greyed around the muzzle, walked more stiffly, and his body took the shape of an eggplant, his once manly chest appearing to have slipped down to his lower belly. We added Old Man Wiener to our list of nicknames.

By the time he was fourteen years old, I started having to get up with him several times each night. Husband made the decision, saying it was time. But I bought doggie diapers when Dexter couldn’t hold it anymore. Husband shook his head, but let me keep on.

“Am I really this person?” I said after two months of doggie diaper changes.

“Apparently so,” Husband said.

“I know he’s just a dog. I always said we’d say goodbye to him if it came to this.”

“But here he is still.”

Dexter didn’t seem to be in pain, but on December 19, 2010, something changed. He stopped eating for two days. A day later, disoriented, he tumbled down the stairs to the basement. He sat at the bottom, looking up at me with rheumy eyes. Horrified, I ran down and carried him up again. He swayed and tipped over when he was outside. He vomited blood into the freshly fallen snow.

I called our vet, explaining it had to end today. No, there was no one at the office to do it, they told me. I called a mobile vet service who came to people’s homes. No, they were completely booked. I made a third call, this time to the vet at the end of our street. Yes, they could help us. They scheduled the fifteen minute appointment. We sat on the couch together as a family, cradling Dexter in old blankets. We all said goodbye.

As a family, we drove the four blocks to the vet’s office for Dexter’s 10:15 appointment. The girls and I sat in the car while Husband carried our friend inside, still wrapped in blankets. I watched the minutes tick by on the car’s clock. The girls cried in the back seat. Twenty minutes later, Husband emerged, red-eyed. He climbed into the car, handing me the empty blankets and collar.

But it was December 22, and we had cookies to make. We cried our way through the Sand Bakkels and raspberry thumbprint cookies, Christmas music our backdrop. We sobbed through the chocolate cookies, the Haystacks, the O Henry bars, the dipped pretzels. We talked about our furry friend and how committed he had been to us, how frustrating at times, and about the knowing look in his eyes when we told him today was his last day.

We plated up the fresh cookies, slipped the plates into Ziplocks, and pressed a label onto each for our neighbors—Dallas, Glenda, Bruno, Mr. N, and more. As an afterthought, I reopened the bags and slid our family Christmas card under each plate. We dried our eyes, bundled up, and set out to deliver some Christmas cheer.

We made our usual stops, and when we got to Glenda’s, we told her about Dexter and shared a cry over her plate of goodies. Then we moved on to the next house. But Mr. N wasn’t home. We left the cookies on his front step.

Hours later, I heard a knock on the door. I glanced out the window. Mr. N. I remembered six years earlier—the last time he had come over.

“Hi,” I said, opening the door to him.

“You gave me your card,” he said. “Thank you very much.” He held it in his hands.

“You’re welcome.”

He rattled off our girls’ names, pointing to each of them in the family picture. I smiled and nodded.

“I’m sorry I haven’t put up Christmas lights on my house since you moved in. But tell your girls I’ll put them up next year. Just for them.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He walked back down my front steps, and I watched him cross the street to his house.

Though just a small thing to me, the Christmas card mattered. Names mattered. I thought being “neighborhood nice” with my smiles and cookies was enough. But it was only a surface affection, not a real showing of myself. I rethought my whole philosophy on that day in December. I would give of myself more, no matter how messy, painful, awkward, or inconvenient the response. It could change everything. But mostly, it would change me.

From then on, Mr. N called us by name. He hollered greetings to us when we were outside. And true to his word, he put up Christmas lights every year after that and we enjoyed them, knowing they were just for us.

*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 Rosebuddies and Trent

Robin kept a nice house, tending to her family well, but lived life facing outward. From her front windows, she looked out on the grassy parkway in north Minneapolis. From mine, I saw houses lined up just across the street. But we shared the same view of the neighborhood anyway.

After meeting at Jim’s memorial service at the Jay Cooke Park, our friendship quickly sprouted. We met for coffee at either her house or mine, or at one of the local coffee shops. She had two girls, Ava and Ana, woven in between my girls in age, so we compared notes.

One day, Robin had an idea. Why send our kids to different summer programs when together we could plan our own fun? She brimmed with creativity in sewing and crafts of all kinds, so I signed us up for whatever would come.

The girls’ club started in the summer of 2008. Robin’s niece Quinn broke away from her family of only brothers to join us. At the first meeting, we circled up the girls, handing them scraps of paper and pens. They suggested possible names for the club. “The Mega Fun Club” was born out of their brainstorming session that day in June and won the vote.

Life with girls under the age of nine is regularly about decorating something or someone. That first summer, we did face-painting and fingernail painting, sidewalk chalk art and drawing in journals. And to this day, the two husbands still wear the tie-dyed t-shirts that sprang from the girls’ first club meeting.

Robin hosted The Cooking Creation Day. Of all the ingredients lined up on her kitchen table, a handful were foundational requirements: flour, sugar, salt, baking powder or soda, oil, milk, and eggs. Beyond that, the array of extracts, sprinkles, and chocolate—in many forms—was dizzying. The girls set to work. Robin and I snapped pictures. We jotted down ingredients (and amounts) each girl had chosen. The oven was busy for hours. The girls named their creations, and once they cooled, Robin and I acted as judges.

Dicka’s Strawberry Cake didn’t have any strawberries in it—and wasn’t much of a cake either—but was chocolate and sprinkled with M & Ms. The mixture of peanut butter, marshmallows, and orange extract in Ricka’s Peanut Butter Sprinkles Cookies gave us pause. And the need for some water to get the thing down. Flicka’s Termite Hills were strange lumps of oatmeal and coconut, overwhelmed by orange extract. Ana’s Cookielicious Cookies were reasonably normal and speckled throughout with white chocolate chips. Quinn’s Yummy Cake and Ava’s Coconut Cake were pretty, but bland. At least they had abstained from the orange flavoring, opting for vanilla instead. Robin and I tasted each recipe, running from the room now and then to hide our nose-wrinkling and laughter. A cookbook emerged from the event, but it didn’t land on my kitchen cookbook shelf. Instead, I stowed away copies in the girls’ memory boxes.

By 2009, “The Mega Fun Club” took a vote and changed its name to “The Wild Wonders Club” which set the tone for the summer. We caught butterflies and insects in nets at the North Mississippi Regional Park and took a short class on bugs. We hot glue gunned our way to some scary creatures birthed from hacked up parts of stuffed animals and dolls mishmashed back together, courtesy of “Misfit Toys Night” at The Walker Art Center. And the girls erected a vegetable stand and sold produce from Robin’s garden on the sidewalk in front of her house.

In 2010, “The Wild Wonders Club” became “The Rosebuddies,” and the club made soap, lefse, and chocolate suckers. By 2011, two more kids joined the club. Trent and his sister Tina’s parents were from Vietnam, and Robin was watching the kids that summer. Everyone voted on an amendment to the club’s name. It became “The Rosebuddies and Trent.”

One day, “The Rosebuddies and Trent” went to the kiddie pool at a park. The kids ran off to splash in the pool, but other children swarmed around Robin and me. I had seen it before; Robin’s warmth attracted neighborhood kids. They didn’t need face paint or sidewalk chalk—just someone to push them on the swings. That had always been the story in north Minneapolis: too many kids played at the park alone and navigated the neighborhood’s streets by themselves.

When Robin took her kids home a couple of hours later, my girls and I lingered at the pool. I watched all the kids flapping around in the water. What appeared to be three siblings played together in one corner. I shot a look around. Again, no parents to watch them. Then the older brother and sister began picking on their little brother. They shoved his bike into the pool, and he started crying. I was about to talk with them, but I heard them speaking Hmong, so I sat back down on my bench. Then they all got out of the water—dragged the bike out too—and undressed down to nothing right there in the bright sunlight before pulling on dry clothes and leaving.

Just then, a small boy riding an adult bike pedaled inside the chain link fence. He jumped off, letting the bike fall with a clatter onto the cement, and hopped into the pool. I noticed his swim trunks were adult-sized too. He held up the waistband with one hand while he dove around in the water.

I watched him for a while, and then rummaged through my purse. I frowned—no safety pin. But I found something else that might work. I walked to the edge of the pool.

“Come here,” I said when I caught his eye. “I can fix your shorts.”

He jumped out of the water and came to me. I squatted down in front of him, gathered the excess fabric of the waistband into a “ponytail,” and twisted a rubber band around the whole wad.

“There you go,” I said.

He beamed, dragged the back of his hand across his dripping nose, and ran back to the pool, breaking the water’s surface in a cannonball.

I settled back on the bench in the sun. I thought of “The Rosebuddies and Trent” and how they had lots of activities and games to amuse them. They had created, cooked, played, and painted for four summers in a row, under the attentive eyes of two moms. But what about these kids at the park? There was no one to watch them and clap when they pumped spectacularly high on the swings or did a pull-up on the monkey bars.

I realized I couldn’t fix those kids or their parents. But when I was there each week, I could be the mom at the park for just a few hours.

 *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 corner stores

The bell on the door jangled, and the smell of incense from the rack near the door spoke more loudly than the scent of cigarettes that traveled in on the clothing of the two customers ahead of me. The young Colin Farrell look-alike behind the counter was cute—in spite of his unibrow—and he seemed to know it. Two other men worked alongside him, and the three of them flipped from Arabic to English when they saw us coming.

The girls scooted down their favorite aisle where they had already worn a path. They made quick work of their selections and then bickered amongst themselves about fairness and pennies. They had scrounged change from around the house for treats, but they needed an extra boost from me.

The older, balding man with the smiling eyes rang me up, pronouncing my name “Tah-MAR-ah” when he read it off my debit card. His face split into a smile and he crooned, “Beautiful Tamara.”

“Do you know this song?” he said when he finished. I shook my head. “It’s Lebanese. Did your parents once live in Lebanon?”

“No.”

“How did they choose your name, ma’am? It’s a Lebanese name.”

“It was popular during the 1970s here in the U.S.,” I said. “They just liked it.”

“You need to hear the whole song, ma’am.”

“Okay, I’ll listen online when I get home.”

As we were leaving, a man with a ball python twisted around his neck entered the store. A woman trailed him, cupping a smaller snake in her hands. The girls turned to me and whispered their wishes to hold it. Or have one like it.

The next day was Waffle Saturday at home, but there was no whipped cream in the house. I plucked some cash out of my purse for the girls, and they walked the one block to the convenience store by themselves—something Husband and I had started allowing in 2010. They got the whipped cream and came home with syrup too.

“When we went to pay, we didn’t have enough money, so the man asked how much we had,” Dicka said. “He said it was enough for both.”

“That was nice, but we didn’t need syrup,” I said. “Just the whipped cream.”

The ice cream truck played “Silent Night” as it passed by later that day in July. The girls grabbed their almost depleted change jar.

“One treat,” I said.

“That’s all we have money for,” Ricka hollered over her shoulder as she ran off.

I kept a wary eye on the beat-up white van with its cheery but faded decals of frozen confections as the girls chased it for a block before the driver applied the brakes near the convenience store.

The girls returned home with disappointed faces.

“All we could get was one snow cone. And it’s bland,” Ricka said, wrinkling her nose.

“Maybe the ice cream truck man knows the guys at the store and heard you had extra syrup at home.”

“That’s not funny, Mom.”

The four Muhammads were working the next time I went to the convenience store.

“Is this to have a Super Bowl party at your house?” one said as he rang me up.

“Sure. It’s better than admitting I’m going to eat the chips and dip myself,” I said.

He chuckled. Then his eyes darted out the window, and his smile fell away.  

A scuffle had erupted in the parking lot. Two women. Then one burst into the store, still yelling.

“Calm yourself, lady,” he cautioned her.

Turning back to me, he shook his head. Finished, I gathered my bag and dashed out.

The same crew had been employed at the convenience store for years, except for the Colin Farrell look-alike who went away for a while—to college, I imagined—before returning. They had seen a lot. Cars had smashed through the store’s front windows three times before the security barriers—those posts protecting the place from its own parking lot—went up. Then a homicide went down inside the store. Police cars dotted the parking lot for a while after that, their presence marking the spot as troubled. We gave the store our business anyway. They needed it now more than ever.

Then another convenience store opened three blocks from us in the other direction. Another magnetic spot in the neighborhood.

“All cut from the same cloth, aren’t you?” the owner of the store said to the girls and me while bagging our items one day. Another time, he told us about his high school girlfriend.

“She and her whole family were deaf,” he said. “You’d think their house would be quiet, but no. They all made more noise banging around than you’d ever imagine.”

On their own, the girls visited that second store too with their found change from the couch cushions or the top of the dryer. Or with coins Husband and I tossed into their jar when they weren’t looking.

“We didn’t have enough money,” Dicka said when they returned home one day. “But the guy said we could have the candy anyway.”

“Girls, next time, just get what you can afford. You’ve been cut a lot of deals. Too many, really.”

I was grateful the girls’ change jar was empty again when later that summer day the ice cream truck rolled by, this time playing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Now I had the song stuck in my head—five months early. But I thought of Christmas, our sweet life in the hood, and the goodwill of the neighborhood’s convenience stores. Those guys had stuck with the neighborhood—for better or for worse—for years, and with all their kindness and treats, they deserved something sweet too. I mentally added them to our annual cookie list, but wondered if they’d throw away the goodies, not knowing if they were suitable for the Muslim palate. Or maybe they'd eat them.

I decided to leave the marshmallows out of the Haystacks just in case.

*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.

Homeless Dave

The panhandler at our freeway exit was as much a fixture as the billboard sitting in stalwart silence there. The actual person varied daily, but we could always count on someone being camped out at the stoplight. I saw this from the very beginning of our life in north Minneapolis, and I wondered when the girls would notice. Observing their reactions was a study in social awareness, and it was around 2006 when Flicka and Ricka engaged in dialogue about it for the first time. They were most aware when their reading skills were more refined; they could finally decipher the homeless people’s signs for themselves.

I had read the statistics about panhandlers in the city. On a good day, one could garner between fifteen and thirty dollars an hour. And then there was the story of a guy who made over two-hundred dollars in four hours on a Black Friday. While I was moved by the issue of homelessness, I read the ones at the exits weren’t the true homeless in the city. Those folks were hidden away elsewhere.

Husband and I began to recognize faces and “shift” changes at our exit. We also observed a swapping of props. A homeless person would wear a medical boot, and then hours later, he’d be without it, and we’d see his buddy wearing it instead. The same was true of a wheelchair that changed hands. We also remembered the man whose sign said, “Need money for food” on one side and “Need money for beer” on the other. I had become jaded by the exit’s change in actors.

The girls’ hearts softened, though, with their notice of the cardboard signs, and I wasn’t about to inform them differently. Life is its own teacher sometimes.

“Could we give Homeless Dave our house?” seven-year-old Flicka said. “He doesn’t have one.”

“Homeless Dave?” I said. “Why do you think his name is Dave?”

“It says it on his sign,” Ricka chimed in.

I looked over, hoping to not make eye contact with the man. His sign read: “Homeless D.A.V. Please help. God bless.”

“Girls, D.A.V. means ‘Disabled American Veteran’,” I said.

But it didn’t matter. That man was Homeless Dave to them. We talked about veterans. They didn’t think Homeless Dave looked disabled.

“Sometimes we can see how people are disabled,” I said. “But sometimes they’re hurt on the inside.”

The girls seemed to understand and were determined to do something.

“Can we give him all our money?” Ricka said one day as we sat at a red light.

“Then how would we live?” I said.

“We could get more.”

The girls started to notice facial expressions more than signs.

“She looks hot and thirsty,” Flicka said. “And sad.”

“What could we do to help?” I said. “Something different from giving away our house or all our money.”

“We could give them something to drink—and something to eat.”

“Sounds perfect.”

Thus began the Homeless Bags. We went to the grocery store and loaded up on bottles of water, granola bars, trail mixes, jerky sticks. At home, we made an assembly line, and Ireland and Willow helped us. We prepared about thirty bags that first time, and I hauled them out to the car.

The girls would sometimes fight over who got to hand the Homeless Bags out the window at the exit. They learned to take turns. Their eyes were opened to more panhandlers around the city, so opportunities to hand a bag of treats out the window were frequent.

“And if we find ourselves in a blizzard, we can eat these bags ourselves,” I joked.

“They’re not for us, Mom,” Ricka said.

My attitude about the panhandlers slowly changed. It didn’t matter what their true situations were. We would take them at their word and not assess their needs—from outside appearances—as legitimate or not. Even someone with suspect intentions needs a snack and a bottle of water.

Anyone who was riding in our vehicle got a chance to hand a bag out the window. Ireland and Willow got their chances. So did Grandma. And lots of the girls’ cousins. On a hot summer day, one of our nieces got the pleasure of handing a bag to a woman who startled us by screaming in delight. One winter, the girls thought we should give out something warm too, so we picked up a bunch of two-dollar fleece blankets from IKEA to accompany the snacks.

We carried on with our Homeless Bags project for years, but as the girls grew, the effort waned. It had been their thing from the beginning, and Husband and I let it stay that way. If they mentioned it, I got more bag ingredients and we kept going.

If the outset was a study in social awareness so was the dwindling end. Seven years later, the girls’ comments had evolved.

“If he doesn’t have money for food, how can he afford cigarettes?” “That guy has Beats! They’re expensive. Wonder where he got the two-hundred dollars.” “Why do they leave their trash right there?”

I felt a twinge in my heart. My girls were seeing the world in a different way. Their naiveté had vanished, and I was wistful. The Homeless Bags trickled off completely.

But after almost two years of no Homeless Bags, we saw a panhandler’s sign that said, “Total Despair.” I frowned. In the rearview mirror, I caught Dicka’s expression. She had seen the sign too—and frowned. Was it a ruse? Or was the man truly in total despair?  

Be as shrewd as serpents and as gentle as doves.

The light turned green, and I drove away. No one said anything. I wondered about the man and about Homeless Dave for whom we’d developed a fondness over the years. I wondered if the girls really thought about these people anymore or if our exit inhabitants had grown unimportant to them.

“We could probably do the Homeless Bags again,” Dicka said, breaking the silence in the car.

*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 tickets

I steered clear of the U of M Campus where Dad’s hospital was. I averted my eyes when I drove by the Burger King where I had gotten chili a few times at Dad’s request before food started tasting like metal to him. I didn’t like the word Prednisone because Dad had taken it, and I threw away the set of sheets he had used when he stayed with us. They were old anyway.

Each morning’s awakening held a few seconds of normalcy until I remembered Dad had been escorted from this earth and wouldn’t be at the end of the phone line anymore.

One day while I was putting away groceries, Husband told me that while I was out, Dad had called.

“Which one?” I said, forgetting for a split-second.

Husband looked at me with furrowed brows and compassion. I abandoned the groceries and went into his arms.

I dropped the ball on some of the girls’ school activities and parent volunteering gigs. I refrained from throwing our fall party. I kept to myself, taking care of the girls and squeaking by on the laundry and meals.

One day, I drove down Washington Avenue. Since I had taken that route to the hospital so often, it reminded me of Dad. The girls were in their car seats in the back. Suddenly, I saw red and blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror. I pulled over.

“Ma’am, do you know what the speed limit is here?” the officer said.

“Forty?”

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

“Forty?”

“The speed limit here is thirty. But you’re right; you were going forty. License and registration, please.”

I pulled out what he wanted, my heart pounding.

“Wait here,” he said. He went back to his squad car.

I glanced back at the girls in the back seat. They were freely moving around the car.

“Girls,” I said. “Get back in your seats.”

I got out of the car and leaned into the back to buckle up at least two of them again.

The officer came back.

“I’m issuing you two tickets today. One for speeding and one for the kids not being buckled.”

Unable to think on my feet, I mumbled an “okay”, took the tickets, and pulled away from the curb. Thirty felt way too slow.

I contested the ticket later in court. I’d pay the speeding ticket, I said, but could the other one be taken away? I explained we had told the girls they could unbuckle whenever we stopped the car for a length of time, and that’s what they’d done.

“I get it. I’m a mom too,” the judge said. “Okay. The seatbelt violation will go away. Just pay the speeding ticket. And since you haven’t had a ticket before, it won’t go on your record.”

I was relieved and grateful. But then it happened again—this time in Pennington County on my first trip for a visit up north after Dad’s funeral.

“License and registration, ma’am.”

Seriously? I pulled out the documents.

“You were going fifteen over the limit. Wait here.” He walked away.

I rubbed my temples and let out a sigh.

“Look what happens when Mama breaks the law,” I told the girls in the back seat, their eyes wide. “Don’t ever do that when you grow up.”

The girls stayed in their seats this time. The officer came back.

“I’ve issued you a citation. Pay it, and it won’t go on your record, since you’ve got a clean one.”

I thanked him and slowly pulled away from the side of the road, humbled. The checkbook was getting lighter, but I was grateful—until I heard Mom’s church friends and some relatives in Thief River Falls had read about my speeding ticket a week later in their newspaper.

“You can cut that out and put it in my scrapbook,” I told Mom.

Months earlier, while I was wrapped up in our transplant world, the earth kept revolving, and Willow turned four. I resumed babysitting her when Dad was readmitted into the hospital, so I knew Jim’s health was worsening. Rachelle and Jim floundered through each day, and Rachelle was leaner too, her words more measured than usual.

After Dad died, Rachelle biked over to bring me her condolences. She stood outside on our sidewalk as I sat on our front steps, and we talked a little. She gently pressed the tender spot with a couple of well-placed questions, and I burst into tears. She understood. She had lost loved ones in the past and was losing one now.

I saw the need before me—Rachelle and her world—and felt the rejuvenating spark of usefulness. I couldn’t do much for her, but I could watch Willow more, and so I offered. She accepted.

After a string of days watching Willow, Rachelle told me Jim was in the hospital. Soon, his health deteriorated even more, and he became unresponsive. Rachelle stayed by his side. We had Willow more often and sometimes overnight. Then on the morning of October 6, 2006, I called Rachelle.

“I’ll come and pick up Willow this morning,” I said. “Are you at the hospital already? It’s no problem for me to—”

“Jim died this morning.”

“Rachelle, I’m sorry.”

“Could you still take Willow? She’d have more fun with you guys.”

Willow spent the day with us. I was protective of her and kept her tucked under my wing wherever we went. I read her stories. We made play-dough snakes. I wouldn’t let Ricka bicker with her like they did sometimes as almost-sisters.

“My daddy died today,” Willow said, pushing her smeared glasses up on her nose.

“I know, honey.”

A few weeks later, I drove alone to the Jay Cooke State Park for Jim’s memorial service. Rachelle was thinner, and she snuggled in for a long hug. Then she wandered away to mingle with her other guests. It was at a picnic table under a shelter at the park where I met Robin. She had girls and lived in north Minneapolis too. And her desires mirrored mine; she didn’t know what to do for Rachelle either, but she’d think of something.  

As time wedged itself between the passing of both Dad and Jim and my present, I regained my ability to focus. My foot lightened on the gas pedal, and I could listen to my kids better. I looked toward the future again, and Robin and I had a new friendship that would grow big over the coming years.

When death shows up, there’s always new life just around the corner. And of course, we laugh again.

*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.

Dad

The needle sank into the flesh of his belly. It was easier to penetrate Dad’s skin than I imagined, and I surprised him with my novice injection style—quick and more forceful than necessary. Startled by my technique, Dad burst out laughing. His drug-induced diabetes after his bone marrow transplant was just one of many new adjustments for him. I was gentler with his insulin shot after that first time.

Months earlier, Dad’s ten siblings had rushed to be tested, each with the hope of giving Dad his or her bone marrow, but only one—his youngest brother—was just the right match for him. Uncle D sat in the hospital room chair on January 3, 2006, giving away his cells, hoping they would bring new life to Dad after his nine-year struggle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and more recently, myelodysplasia, a condition resulting from chemo obliterating his bone marrow.

The transplant was a success, and Dad was released from the hospital on January 25. He spent a few weeks at a different brother’s house—another Uncle D—and then at my sister’s house in south Minneapolis for a week. Then he came to us. It takes a village at the beginning of life and at the end too, sometimes.

Husband took six weeks off from work to care for the little ones and do the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Our bedroom transformed into a hospital room—complete with an IV pole—and I was Dad’s full-time nurse, cleaning his PICC line, injecting insulin, administering countless pills, bathing him, rubbing medicated cream into his legs, and later, giving him infusions. My sister dedicated her days to him too, accompanying him to medical appointments and covering some shifts at our house, so I could catch a nap.

The neighborhood faded away. Our house was my world. I didn’t stray far, and I didn’t reach out. But the church caught wind of what was going on under our roof, and the Warm Meal Ministry set to work delivering twenty-six meals to us over many weeks. Each giver of a meal would deposit the food into a cooler on our porch and slip away, not disturbing us or our immunosuppressed patient.

“God must think you really need it,” the coordinator of the meals told me when I thanked her. “The response has been overwhelming.”

No sound made it past the lump in my throat, so I only nodded.

The weeks trudged forward, but my time with Dad was golden.

“You know I married your mom to give you kids a chance,” he said. “I’m lucky to have her.”

“You’ve said that before, Dad. She’s lucky to have you too.”

The doctor encouraged Dad to walk for exercise. Charlie, my octogenarian neighbor two doors down, stood on the front sidewalk bent over his walker when Dad and I passed him one day.

“Bless your heart,” Charlie said to Dad. “It takes some effort, doesn’t it?”

“Yep,” Dad said, winded.

“You keep going now.”

Then the setbacks started. I held onto Dad. Husband’s six weeks of leave were up, and he returned to work. Mom came to live with us, and she took over the nursing duties.

Dad grew weaker. Leaving the house one day for an appointment, he dropped onto the couch and couldn’t get back up. Husband lifted him to his feet. Another time, Dad couldn’t pull himself out of the bathtub. Husband shouldered Dad’s weight to get him out of the water and back into bed. I fought discouragement.

I told some women at church about Dad. I started crying, and my girls circled my legs. Ricka looked up, searching my face while I continued talking to the women. She clung to my hand.

“I know why you were crying,” she later said on our car ride home.

“Because Grandpa’s not doing well?” I said.

“No. Because it’s hard for you.”

Guilt sliced me. The truth had jagged edges.

I tightened my grip on Dad’s life and struggled to keep the house sanitary. If the girls had colds, I kept them out of his room.

“No,” Dad said. “Let them back in. It doesn’t matter.”

I relaxed my hold for a while, and the girls clambered up into his bed to see his magic tricks or watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos” with him. He didn’t fear the germs; he’d even stick his fingers into Flicka’s and Ricka’s mouths to wiggle their loose teeth.

A stomach bug swept through the house. I released my grip on Dad even more because I was too sick to hold on. Then, while we were all still throwing up, the sewer line in the basement bathroom floor—where a toilet would one day be set—backed up, and volumes of raw sewage spilled over onto the cement. My head reeled. I couldn’t control the germs in our environment anymore. I couldn’t control Dad’s healing. I couldn’t control anything.

Dad was readmitted into the hospital on May 2. He had an insatiable curiosity for the hospital staff, remembering their names and asking them about their families and where they had attended high school. He bowed his head to pray before eating the hospital food, now tasteless to him. He didn’t complain about the setbacks.

“Better me than some young mother with small children,” he said.

“Dad, we’ll get through this thing together,” I said.

“Thank you.”

My sister visited him every day, and every day I couldn’t go for a visit, I called. Mom mostly lived at the hospital. Separated by distance, my three other siblings grieved over Dad. They came to see him when they could. Dad had more setbacks—surgeries, fungal infections, and bad drug interactions, which required more drugs.

My girls saw pictures of Grandpa in the barometric chamber and thought he looked like an astronaut. Their days revolved around happenings with Grandpa, and that summer, their favorite playground was the one next to his building, their favorite treat the ice cream from the hospital cafeteria. But the rules on his floor said they weren’t allowed to see Grandpa anymore.

On August 2, Ricka had big news. I dialed Dad’s number. I caught him in his room just before the staff wheeled him out for more testing.

“Ricka lost her first tooth, Dad,” I said.

“I’ll call you back later.”

But Dad was put under sedation that day for an MRI and then another surgery. Afterward, the doctors tried many times to lift the sedation, but each time, Dad’s oxygen levels plummeted or fluid or bleeding in his lungs forced them to put him back under. We talked to Dad when we visited. Sometimes his eyelids fluttered. We squeezed his hand and sang to him, knowing he heard us. Aunt F played him a recording of their father singing Norwegian songs and hymns. We prayed over Dad. We anointed him with oil.

“We have it better than so many others,” Mom said. She had released her own hold on Dad and only held her Bible now.

I thought I heard the Voice again.

It’s not what it looks like. He will be healed.

I tightened my pointless grasp on Dad’s life. We waited. But after seven weeks of waiting and watching, Dad remained under sedation because of more and more complications. One day, the doctors told us the end was near. In the middle of the night that last night, I left my roll-away bed and approached the nurse in Dad’s dimly-lit room.

“Have you ever seen someone come back from this point?” I said. I flicked my eyes over at Dad. He was motionless—like he had been for weeks. Machines whirred and clicked. A ventilator helped him breathe.

“No.”

“But that’s not to say they can’t, right?”

“I guess a miracle could happen. I just haven’t seen it.”

She stared at me now, her eyes soft.

Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

It would be a miracle then. An impressive one. 

We spent that day by Dad’s side. My eyes told me what my heart didn’t want to hear. I called Husband, at home with the girls.

“Dad’s dying,” I said, “but I thought he’d be healed. I really believed it.”

“Maybe you just misunderstood.”

My fingers unfurled for good this time. I let Dad go.

I left the hospital around 7:00 p.m. on September 18, 2006. The nurse had said she thought I’d have time to go home, relieve Husband of caring for the girls so he could pick up my brother at the airport and drop him off at the hospital. And then I could get back there too—for one last goodbye.

At 9:00 p.m., I was still at home when the phone rang.

“He’s gone,” Mom said. “And it was so good.”

The way my sister tells it, she and Mom felt a lull in the room in those last minutes. The angels surrounding them held their breath, waiting for the command to take Dad.

The following days were an impressionist painting—the edges hazy, the colors melded, the lines undefined. Peace softens everything.

Dad’s retired friend who volunteered at the funeral home in Thief River Falls drove the six hours down to Minneapolis, along with his wife, to bring Dad’s body back up north—back home—for us.

In the narthex of the church before the funeral, five-year-old Ricka edged close to the opened coffin. She stood on tiptoes, peering over the side—her face just inches from Dad’s—and pressed in so tightly, I feared the casket would tip over. She stroked his face and hair. That night, two-year-old Dicka prayed God would “make Gampa bootiful.” Six-year-old Flicka cried at bedtime every night for the next year, and I grieved over her. I worried she would never get over him.

Back at home after the funeral, I faced the hospital equipment again. I hadn’t returned it yet. I called the home healthcare people, and they came and whisked it all away. The leftover pills went away too, along with my memory of the names of the meds and their dosages—something I never thought I’d forget.

All signs of illness were erased from our bedroom. Husband and I slept in our own bed again. Before I fell asleep, I thought of Dad’s last words to me, the unreturned phone call, and about my grasp on him over the many months before the sharp beauty of finally releasing him came.

Releasing someone is how we humans make our time on earth without a loved one palatable. But when I one day see Dad in that Place, I’ll grab onto him again. And then I won’t ever have to let go.

*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.

Mishaps

The old-fashioned floor grates were a necessity in the early part of the twentieth century when the house was heated by a woodstove in the basement. Now the stove was gone, but the grates remained—one on the main level and one on the floor above—bringing lots of questions from adult guests and endless hours of play for children who, when left to their own devices, would remove the grate on the second level and stick their heads—or dangle a leg—through to the floor below. Those floor grates were built-in baby monitors in the early days; I could fold laundry in the basement and hear a crying baby two floors above me like she was in the next room.

With all the charm of an old house, however, there were things I didn’t want to know—like what lurked inside the walls. A winged creature stuck behind the plaster flapped until one day the walls fell silent. We later found the dead bird’s body—fully decomposed—when we opened the little trapdoor on the base of the chimney in our basement. But what I really didn’t want to know was about the electrical wiring hidden behind the walls, done by too many homeowners over more than ninety years.

We had so many power outages in the first couple of years in the house that I asked for a discount on our electric bill a few times and got it. Some of those blackouts affected the neighborhood, some just us. Husband seemed to be away on work travel whenever those happened, but I was prepared with candles, flashlights stowed around the house, and some foods we could whip up without power.

Husband was on an international trip the day the outlets in the kitchen started snapping. When they began reeking of burned plastic and the breaker blew, I got worried. I called a co-worker of Husband’s who used to be an electrician, but his accent was so thick I couldn’t understand him. Disappointed, I hung up and dialed Husband’s friend.

“You’ll be fine. That’s what breaker boxes are for,” he said. “To trip the circuits before your house burns down.”

I don’t recall the ending to The Tale of the Stinking Outlets, but the problem stopped with or without our intervention. Later, during some home renovation, Husband learned the mysteries of the breaker box.

“What went off now?” Husband hollered from the basement. “I just flipped one breaker.”

“The outlet in the bathroom and the light in the guest room,” I hollered back. “Oh, and the ceiling fan in the living room.”

In time, Husband made peace with the irrational electrical layout.

In the early days, our furnace was as reliable as our breaker box was understandable, and I soon realized I could handle the darkness more than I could tolerate the cold. Our service plan through the gas company was solid, though, and I usually got a technician to come to our house within hours. Especially in the dead of winter like that day in January.

“Sorry to say, we don’t have the part you need, but we just ordered it. Let’s see… It’s Saturday, though, so it won’t be here until Monday. No deliveries on Sunday.”

“It’s fifty degrees in here,” I said.

“We’ll get you some loaner space heaters.”

The heaters didn’t raise the temperature in the house, but if we were the perfect distance from them, we could warm ourselves without burning our coats. Overnight, the temperature dropped even lower. We dressed in so many layers we were sausages sharing a family bed that night.

Sunday seemed endless. We had to get through to Monday when the part would arrive. We lived in our outdoor winter clothing. I even managed to pull on two stocking caps. We went to a restaurant to thaw ourselves and then home again to snuggle in bed and watch movies.

Sunday evening, a neighbor stopped over to pick up the girls for their AWANA club at church. I stood at the door and waved goodbye.

“Hey, you’ve got a package on your step,” my neighbor yelled to me before he got into his minivan.

I looked down. A package from the gas company. The furnace part slated for delivery by USPS on Monday. It hadn’t been there earlier in the day, but there it was now. A miracle in a little cardboard box.

With gloved fingers, I dialed the familiar phone number. Our heat was restored within the hour.

Husband was away the day the garage across the alley ignited. The girls and I watched the inferno from our back door.

“Wow,” Flicka said in a whisper.

“Yeah,” I said. “Look at those firemen go.”

Another time, from the kitchen window I saw a small circle of flames licking up from the middle of the alley. I investigated. A single book was on fire. I hustled back to the house and called Glenda. Yes, she saw it too.

“Should I call the fire department?” I said.

“Maybe so,” she said. “It might not be just a book but something explosive.”

A fire truck pulled into our alley. A firefighter jumped out of the cab and walked over to the burning book. He stomped out the flames with his big boot.

I thanked him, feeling foolish. I could’ve done that. After the mini-crisis was averted, I wondered about the title of the charred book and the story inside its burnt covers.

Thinking back on our mishaps, I see the humor. But I also see the Hand. Like those parents in ancient times telling their children stories of the column of clouds by day and the pillar of fire by night, about their dry passage through roaring waters, and about food falling from the sky when they were starving, I tell my girls of the electrical dangers that amounted to only a bad smell, about the impossible provision of a furnace part one Sunday night, and about the fires that didn’t touch us.

And like those ancient parents, we tell our children stories now, so on those days of fears and fires, we can all remember.

*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 cookies

We first met Doris at a neighborhood block meeting. Nothing fancy, that meeting. Just a small gathering of people perched on folding chairs on the sidewalk in front of Marta’s house. I’m sure we discussed neighborhood security issues, but I only remember the people. Don told us about some troublemakers messing with his garage, and then he swore like a sailor. I shot a look at the girls to see if they had heard. Marta reined in the talk, funneling it in useful directions. And Doris leaned into my double stroller, making funny faces at the girls.

I often noticed Doris working in Mr. Neighbor’s yard after that, her face flushed, and sweat dripping from her chin in the summer. She did leaves in the fall and snow removal in the winter for him too. We exchanged waves whenever I was outside.

And then the gifts appeared. Doris dropped off little surprises for our girls on holidays. She worked at Litin Paper Company and got 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.

Touched, we decided to do some doorstep treats of our own. 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.

Nine-year-old Ireland, Willow’s older sister, who came regularly to play too, caught wind of our idea. She abandoned her favorite game of dressing up our wiener dog Dexter in baby clothes and scrambled into the kitchen. Her innovative spirit lit up the room. She helped us bake the cookies and afterward suggested an assembly line process: one person putting the cooled cookies onto paper plates, the next person sliding the plates into Ziplocs, and someone to do the labeling. Plates for Dallas, Glenda, Doris, Marta, Charlie—the old jazz musician two doors down—and a few neighbors we didn’t know yet. We also fixed a plate for our mechanic and the lady across the street who never returned my hellos. And of course there was a plate for Mr. N, who I was determined to befriend after our air conditioner fiasco.

The cookie delivery process was arduous. Since the stroller wouldn’t move on the snow-clogged sidewalks, we trudged down the block at a snail’s pace, Flicka and Ricka clutching onto the hem of my coat while I held Dicka in one arm and balanced a plate of cookies in the other. Ireland and Willow had already gone home, so the girls and I were on our own to manage delivering one plate at a time. After work, Husband helped us finish our rounds.

Later, the lady across the street came over to thank us for the cookies. From her speech, I realized she was hearing impaired. She had never heard me yell hello all those times in the past. After that, I waited to catch her eye before waving. And since there was no reason anymore to yell hello, I mouthed the word to her instead. And she said it back.

Our list of unknown neighbors got smaller the next year, and our cookie delivery list grew. We expanded our varieties of sweets from basics I knew everyone would like—gingerbread, frosted sugar cookies, and dipped pretzels—to more risky recipes like Rømmeringer, Sand Bakkels, and Krumkake. We would shake up the neighborhood with our Norwegian goodies that varied only in their shape and proportions of butter, flour, sugar, and almond extract. But even though not one colorful sprinkle could be found on those all-white delicacies, we hoped our baked love tasted like fireworks.

Baking was neither a favorite hobby of mine nor one where I showed any impressive skill. In fact, I recalled two embarrassing kitchen errors from much earlier days.

“I just put baking soda in the biscuits instead of baking powder,” I told Mom when I was about eleven years old. “Will that make a difference?”

“Bake them and find out,” she said.

Even the family dog back then wouldn’t touch those dark orange, super salty rocks that came out of the oven.

And one day at age twenty-one—when Husband was just Boyfriend—I announced my big plans to make a turkey.

“For the great leftovers, you know,” I said, feeling domestic. “A big dinner now. Soup next week.”

“Where’s your pan?” he said, looking around my kitchen.

“Here.” I pointed to a cookie sheet.

Boyfriend saved me from a horrible mess in the oven—most likely to be followed by a kitchen fire—by purchasing me a good, sturdy roaster.

The Christmas cookies weren’t about dazzling the neighborhood with my talents. My skills were adequate—tasty, simple recipes made with clean hands—but there was more to my desire to share some sweets at the holidays with people I may or may not have known.

It was a way in.

We ultimately won the heart of Joe, our mechanic. Or if it wasn’t because of the cookies, it was because of our faithful and frequent business, thanks to our unreliable vehicles at the time. Either way, he never said no to me when I asked for a certain date for the next oil change or car repair.

Bruno, the neighbor three houses down, gave us a beautiful store-bought gift of hot chocolates and candy from a department store downtown one year. The others thanked us, sometimes asking for the names of the Norwegian goodies, expressing a particular fondness for one or the other. But I didn’t hear a word from Mr. N. Until six years later.

And what he told us then changed life in the neighborhood for us forever.

*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.

Rachelle

Willow had a flair for mismatching her clothes, just like my girls. Her red hair was cut in a choppy bob—matted in the back—and she owned so many pairs of artsy eyeglasses, it was hard to keep track. She was two and a half years old when she first came to spend some days every week with us, and from the start, she was absorbed into our family. Back then, life was a whirlwind of four little girls in dirty, bare feet and princess dresses.

Jim visited for a bit each time he dropped off Willow at our house. He was upbeat even though he awoke each day to his battle with melanoma. An outdoors enthusiast, he biked everywhere and told stories about his adventurous rides. Some days he’d have a seizure, fall off his bicycle, and pass out. He’d wake up to find himself in an ambulance heading for the ER. I cringed at his stories. He’d shrug and laugh. As we talked more about his declining health, the girls leaned into our adult mystery world, pretending to play on the floor near us, but I wished they’d play for real somewhere else. No kid should know what cancer means.

Although Willow was younger than Ricka by five months, she was bigger, so Rachelle brought us bags of clothes Willow had outgrown—those black, garbage bags brimming with delights that smelled like The Wedge food co-op and Rachelle’s house. Purple Danskos and Hanna Anderson clothes, Scandinavian sweaters and red Doc Martens—all second-hand for Willow too when she first got them.

One day, Rachelle was the one to drop off Willow. She lingered. I invited her to sit. No, she’d have to go in a minute, she said. But she stood for a while in my open front door anyway. When the girls scampered away, she showed me the hidden thing on the pages of her life’s book.

When Jim was first diagnosed with cancer, they chased after treatments. Convinced there was no way for their family to expand during his radiation therapy, Rachelle and Jim had loved without restrictions. But she had become pregnant. They didn’t know what to do. How could they manage a baby in their circumstances? And along with Ireland and Willow? What they faced was too hard, too overwhelming to bring another life into it. Jim suggested they give the baby up to his sister who was unable to have one of her own. Rachelle readily agreed. It made the most sense. They spoke with Jim’s sister about it, promising her their baby, and she was overjoyed.

Then five months into the pregnancy, Rachelle changed her mind. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give away the little one she carried. She wouldn’t give her up! But Jim firmly stated it was too late; they had already given their word. And their word was their word; they couldn’t break it now.

I dropped onto the couch, heavy under the weight of the story, forgetting I had my own children, and they were somewhere else in the house doing heaven-knows-what. Rachelle remained in the doorway, retelling her narrative without emotion. She didn’t seem to be trying to gauge my reaction, and she wasn’t pressing for sympathy. She just delivered her story—a delicate thing barely breathing as it came out into the reality of my living room.

Baby Ruby was born in February of 2004, only three months before I met Rachelle—three months before Dicka was born. Rachelle had honored her husband’s wishes after all, and Ruby went to live with Jim’s sister—her new mother.

“Can you get her back?” I finally said.

“No,” Rachelle said. “We gave our word.”

“But what if Jim’s not here one day, and it’s just you, and she’s yours—”

“No.” Her eyes were wide and soft at the same time.

My chest felt hollow. I had forgotten about the garbage bags of goodies, the seizures on bikes, the time we spent with Willow each week. It was all about Rachelle now. And Ruby.

Later, I told Husband the fragile story. Sad, he frowned and shook his head, but he fell asleep that night. I didn’t.

Bear one another’s burdens.

The next day, I paced. Distracted and on autopilot, I cared for the girls. I wasn’t hungry, and I couldn’t focus. I was sick with a regret that wasn’t mine and grieving a loss I hadn’t suffered. I was desperate for Ruby.

Later, I went shopping and picked out a fragrant bar of soap and a cute dish towel and tucked them into a gift bag.

“I can’t stop thinking about you. And Ruby,” I said to Rachelle when she came over. I handed her the gift.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said, peeking into the bag.

I looked at the pittance in her hands. A small gift to soothe a gaping heart-wound. A ridiculous offering.

“Rachelle, I’ve decided I don’t want you to pay me anymore. Just let me watch Willow for you.”

“How about a bartering system? You babysitting Willow for art?”

“I’d love that.”

If I could be an artist, my medium would be paint, and my style would be just like Rachelle’s. Egon Schiele meets early Picasso. I drooled over a few pieces of art in her house and ended up acquiring a couple of them over the next year in exchange for watching Willow. Finally, I commissioned a painting, telling Rachelle just what I wanted.

“For me to do this,” she said, “you’ll have to tell me who he is to you.”

“He’s the Lifter of my head and the Lover of my soul,” I said.

Rachelle unveiled the painting in the spring of 2006 at an art gallery showcasing her work in northeast Minneapolis. I went with a friend to the opening night. My eyes welled with tears seeing my idea on canvas combined with her artistic interpretation. I noticed the card attached by its side: “Not for Sale.”

Rachelle stood by me as I gazed at her work. I nodded. She took it off the wall to show me the title she had given it, written on the back: “Welcome.”

I took the painting home that night. It fit perfectly above the window over my buffet, and I stared at it. Jesus, his eyes intense and his palms marked by excruciating love. One of his hands pushed away the darkness, and the other was opened to welcome all who would come.   

*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.

Glenda

When we first moved in, I didn’t have a myopic view of life on my plot of land; I could see the other side of the house too, and Glenda lived over there. As we struggled with our little people and big boxes on moving day, Glenda scurried over to lend a hand by scooping up Dexter. She whisked him away to safety in her house, never mind her cats who didn’t care for his blustering ways.

Glenda told me about the previous homeowners. Besides having babies in our house, Brian’s wife had been dedicated to her healthy lifestyle and ran for exercise—nine months pregnant—with a two-year-old strapped to her back. I also heard from Glenda that before Brian and his wife’s short stint in north, our house had been hastily renovated. Some workmen had hauled out the original cast iron tub and chucked it, replacing it with a cheaper version. The men had also been very tall, setting our bathroom mirror and all our cupboards unusually high. Glenda thought our house was one of the original Sears kit houses, and I searched the basement beams for the stamp to prove it.

Not only was Glenda a wealth of information, but she also had an admirable tolerance for our noisy presence next door. At the beginning, Flicka was given to bouts of screaming when hair wash time rolled around each week. I preferred the cup-dumping rinse method since it was faster, but that made the screaming even louder and more frantic. With all my creative mothering, I couldn’t figure out a way to wash her hair, minus the shrieking and tears. I finally asked Glenda if she heard the racket since our bathroom faced her house. I learned she had tinnitus, a condition which amplified noise. But she was gracious and didn’t dole out judgment over our household decibel level on bath night.

In 2005, Dad stayed with us for a couple days while he went to medical appointments at the University of Minnesota. After eight years of chemo treatments for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, he qualified for a bone marrow transplant, and we celebrated. Our celebrations were muted, though, when early one day Dad and I spied something strange next door. Glenda’s garage door stood open with her car inside. She didn’t go anywhere without her car. I noticed she hadn’t collected her mail either. I called her. No answer on her home phone, and her cell phone went right to voice mail. I knocked on her door. No answer.

Hours passed, and the sky grew dark. Still, nothing changed next door, and no one flipped on the lights at Glenda’s. I called her number again and again. Now I was too afraid to look into the windows of her car, still parked in the open garage.

“Maybe I should call the police,” I said to Dad.

“I’d say so.”

A police car pulled up in front of Glenda’s within minutes. Although a public school superintendent by profession, Dad had been knit together with a healthy dose of curiosity and adventure. From inside our house, he surveilled the activity next door like a TV cop, and he delivered a play-by-play even though I was watching too.

The officer closed Glenda’s garage door. Then he chatted with the guy across the alley who had strolled over. While they talked, they pointed at the garage and nodded. Then the guy went back to his place. The officer walked through Glenda’s yard and swiped his flashlight beam across her front porch and into the windows. He returned to his squad car and sat for a few minutes. Then he came to our door.

“She’s in there. Said she’s okay, but sick, and that’s why she didn’t pick up.”

“Thanks,” I said, relieved.

When Husband got home, Dad and I told him all about it.

“Then the police patched a call through to her house,” I said.

“You mean they called her?” Husband said, cutting through the drama.

“I guess you could put it that way. Turns out, she’s all right.”

Glenda finally phoned me the next day.

“It was bronchitis. Couldn’t get out of bed to get the phone.”

“Glad you’re alive. I was worried, Glenda.”

“Sorry. I guess the guy across the alley was worried too. Nice to have neighbors like that.”

A week after the scare with Glenda, I heard the still, small Voice.

It’s not often the future is so clearly outlined for us. But for me, this time it was. I told Husband about the plan I believed was laid out for me. He agreed but said it was meant for us—not just me. After Dad’s medical procedure at the end of December 2005, I would be his caregiver. I didn’t have any medical background for taking on a post bone marrow transplant patient, but I knew it was for me—for us. And I wasn’t afraid.

“Dad, come to our house to recuperate after the transplant,” I told him. “You should be with us.”

“Okay.”

Dad didn’t question my sincerity. He didn’t argue about how it would be too much for me with a kindergartner, a four-year-old, a one-year-old, and taking care of three-year-old Willow too. He just said okay.

A gentle tug this way and that in life—the giving and receiving of help—when we’re sick with bronchitis or cancer. I had needed help too in the past—with vertigo and with a botched epidural that left me unable to walk for weeks after Flicka was born—and I had accepted it gratefully, because I couldn’t help myself then. But now Strength would see me through the next adventures, and I was ready to take them on.

*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 spot

“I hope it’s another girl,” Husband said, opening the door to the clinic.

“I like hearing you say it,” I said. “It might be.”

The first ultrasound revealed it was a girl. But it also showed something else.

“We’re seeing a dark spot on her heart,” the technician said over the phone a few days later.

“What does that mean?”

“It could be nothing, but to be sure, we’ve got you scheduled for another ultrasound.”

My heart sank. But Peace settled on top of it.

“We’re still seeing it. A dark spot,” they said three more times after three more ultrasounds.

“If you’re not gonna worry, I’ll worry for you,” a friend told me.

But Peace was my persistent companion back then.

“Ventral septal defect. A hole in her heart,” I told people over and over.

We weren’t opting for prenatal surgery, and we weren’t being advised that way either. We’d just wait and see how it turned out after she was born. Some days, my worry morphed into angry tears. And then Peace grew thick enough to dry them.

We remembered Flicka and Ricka’s “birth defects”—at least that’s what the doctor had called them. Both girls had light red birthmarks between their eyes.

 “They’ll get brighter when they cry or are angry,” the doctor had said with a chuckle. “Then they’ll fade away in time, and you’ll hardly notice them.”

“It’s where God kissed you,” I later told the girls when they asked to hear their birthmark stories. Now I thought about our yet-to-be-unveiled baby. She bore God’s mark too.

At thirty-eight weeks in the pregnancy, I got a phone call, but this time it wasn’t from an ultrasound technician.

 “I’m calling to hear more about the childcare you do,” a woman said.

“Sorry, you must have the wrong number. I don’t do childcare.”

“Is this your phone number?” She rattled off my digits.

“Yes. How did you get it?”

She explained, and the memory of the flyer came back. Sometime in 2002, near the beginning of our life in north Minneapolis, I had a flickering urge to make some extra money. If I wanted to stay home, what better way than to do childcare for someone? On a whim, I had dropped off a flyer—with my phone number on tear-off tabs—at our little local library, asking the woman behind the desk if she would post it for me. Then I had forgotten all about it. I had never seen it hanging on the library’s bulletin board, so the subject of the flyer surfacing now, two years later, was a miracle. Curiosity needled me. I had to meet Rachelle, the woman on the other end of the line.

Rachelle lived only six blocks from me, and later that week, she came over with her two girls, Ireland and Willow, and her husband Jim. Husband was home to meet them too. We learned that while Jim was a stay-at-home dad, sometimes he needed a respite from caring for two-year-old Willow. Ireland was eight years old and in school, so she wouldn’t normally need coverage.

While the men visited, I took Rachelle on a tour of our house. She was warm and engaging, and her eyes brightened at the art on the girls’ bedroom walls. She was an artist too, she said. She asked my childcare rates. I threw out a number, and she said she’d talk with Jim about it and let me know.

The visit ended, and I felt the warmth of connection. Another in-road into the neighborhood I was determined to embrace. As Rachelle, Jim, and the girls climbed into their car, we waved at them from the window.

“What a great family,” I said to Husband.

“When you were upstairs, Jim told me something.”

“Really? What?”

“He has cancer. That’s why he needs help with Willow sometimes.”

Stunned, I couldn't think about anything else after that.

Rachelle called me the next day.

“Your rates are reasonable, and we’d love to have you watch Willow. After your baby comes, and you’re ready, of course.”

“Rachelle, I heard about Jim’s cancer. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Now we’re happy we met you. It'll help so much.”

“I’m glad I can do it. I’ll let you know when the baby’s here.”

After seeing the baby’s insides so many times on the ultrasounds, we finally got to see Dicka’s outsides.

“She looks like her sisters,” I said when she was born. “She’s perfect.”

A day later, a nurse carted her away. We followed, our hearts pounding, and witnessed Dicka’s exam in another room of the hospital. The cardiologist didn't say a word as he focused on the screen, swirling the lubricated wand around on her bare chest for too many silent minutes.

“She’s good as new. No sign of the hole we saw before,” he finally said. “They close on their own sometimes.”

Dicka wasn't born with the mark between her eyes like her sisters. Instead, she got the kiss on her heart.

We drove our new baby home from the hospital. Climbing the front steps, I flicked my eyes over to the bustling activity next door.

A man stepped out from behind the open end of a truck filled with furniture and belongings. Even though he held a bulky box, he managed a wave.

“Hi, Dallas,” I said.

“Who’s that?” Flicka said.

“He’s our new neighbor. He’s moving in today.”

I thought of new stories—ours, Dallas’, and Rachelle’s—all tied together by geography and my craving for neighbors to have faces in a city neighborhood. When I first met Dallas, I had only imagined the happy times ahead. And when I first met Rachelle, it had seemed innocent enough; I hadn’t imagined the pain marked out for her—and us, by sharing life with her. And like our backyard sod that had found its place, our roots pushed deeper too.

*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 air conditioner

It all started with the window air conditioning unit giving up the ghost one hot night in the summer of 2003. In the silence following its final death rattle, I glanced at the clock and called it. Time of death: 3:27 a.m. We’d just have to sweat our way through the rest of the night—and summer, it turned out. But in April 2004, with me eight months pregnant and already feeling overheated, we decided to spring for central air.

A workman installed our new air conditioner. At the end of the job, he told us he couldn’t legally do the electrical wiring of the unit, but he could hire an electrician to complete the finishing touches for us. Or he could just tell Husband what to do.

Husband went for the do-it-yourself option, and he’d do it later that evening when he got home from work, he said. By the time he returned, though, it was already dark, so he rigged up a couple of work lights surrounding the new unit and set to work.

The next day, someone pounded on our screen door, shaking the windows on the front of the house. Through the curtains, I saw a man, his mouth a tight line and his brows furrowed. I stepped onto our porch to see what he wanted but kept the screen door between us locked.

“I live over there,” he said, jabbing his finger in the direction of his home. “And you were shining a light into my house last night.”

“What?”

“Why were you shining a light into my house? Were you trying to watch me?”

I remembered the late-night wiring job.

“No, my husband was hooking up our air conditioner. Sorry we bothered you. I’ll send him over later to talk to you.”

But Husband didn’t go over right away after work to talk to Mr. Neighbor. In fact, he didn’t go over the next day either. Or the day after that.

Mr. Neighbor came back a second time. More pounding on the door. Again, Husband was gone at work.

“Your man didn’t come over like you said.”

I apologized again, and sent Mr. N home with another promise of a visit. I called Husband. He’d go see Mr. N when he got back, he assured me.

After work, Husband knocked on Mr. N’s front door. The man opened it, but kept the screen door shut, and stood back in the shadows of his dark house. Husband set the record straight, wrapping his facts in a crisp apology. Mr. N said he wasn’t accusing us of anything, but only asking what we were doing with the light. And no, he didn’t have any issues with us. Husband returned home.

I had seen Mr. N only once before the doorstep confrontation—a year earlier on Valentine’s Day. I remembered an ambulance parked in front of Mr. N’s place. The paramedics removed a body, covered in a white sheet, on a stretcher from his house. When the ambulance drove away into the night, Mr. N stood in his open doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, and sobbed. He kept to himself after that. Until now.

Suddenly, Mr. N was out and about every day. He danced on the sidewalk in front of his house in a trench coat with a top hat and umbrella. He talked to the boulevard tree and then bowed to it. He set up a rummage sale in the middle of the street. Nervous, I called the police.

A female officer stopped by to check on Mr. N and had a brief chat with him. After she left, he moved his rummage sale items to his front lawn so cars could drive through again.

When Husband returned home from work, Mr. N and a female friend, sitting in lawn chairs amongst their rummage sale wares, saw him and flagged him over.

The woman pointed at Husband’s gun in its holster and accused him of having it “hanging all out there.”

“You called me over. I just got home from work,” he said.

“I remember your mama from juvie,” Mr. N said, sneering. “She loved the devil.”

“I don’t think so,” Husband said. “She’s never been to juvie.”

The one-sided accusations and ranting escalated.

“Have a good day,” Husband said, ending the tirade and heading home.

Out-of-town relatives visited that weekend. A large number of us filled the living room one evening and spilled out onto our front porch. Mr. N stopped over. He was jovial and asked to meet the family. Husband introduced him around the room. I eyed the growing ash on the end of Mr. N’s cigarette as he talked.

“Can I have some money?” Mr. N asked my brother-in-law.

“Okay, let’s go,” Husband said with a smile and walked Mr. N to the door.

Two days later, I ventured out to weed in our backyard garden. Playing on the grass near me, Flicka and Ricka blew soap bubbles at each other. Pregnant out to there and feeling creaky as I got on my hands and knees, I decided this would be the last time gardening before the baby came.

Suddenly, eight police cars pulled up on the street. Profanity wafted over into my garden. An ambulance parked out front. Obscenities punctuated the air. Flicka and Ricka were oblivious, still blowing bubbles, but now at Dexter, the wiener dog, who chomped at the air, bursting them.

“Get your hands on your head!”

From the backyard, I could see the officers handcuff Mr. N, strap him to a gurney, and shut him into the back of an ambulance. The girls, delighted by the dog’s antics, poured the whole bottle of bubbles on the pooch.

“Don’t waste the bubbles, girls,” I said, distracted, still watching the activity out front. The ambulance drove away, along with the police cars, and soon the street was quiet again.

I surveyed the garden—my mind far away—and frowned. We had gotten off on the wrong foot with Mr. N. I wondered when he would come back again. And I wondered what I could do.

Just then I heard a car door slam. Two male voices floated through the chain-link fence from the street. The men entered the Isenbergs’ old house, and minutes later, emerged, strolling out into the back yard. I stood, brushed off my hands, and rubbed out the kinks in my lower back. The men nodded at me, and I waved. The five-gallon bucket still lay on its side in the garden.

One of the men—shorter than me—was a realtor, he told me. Then his client, at least six-and-a-half-feet tall, bald, and with distinctive black eyebrows, introduced himself.

“I’m Dallas,” he said. “And I’m checking out the house.”

We chatted for a few minutes, and as we did, Dallas’ laugh rang out over the entire yard. I couldn’t help but smile. We talked some more. I had prayed for homeowners, not renters. This might be our answer.

“Please buy the house,” I said. Again, the lilting laugh from Dallas.

I imagined barbecues, impromptu neighborly visits, and sharing tips for eradicating pesky weeds. And I hoped that laugh would make us smile in the future over our shared chain-link fence.

*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 outside

Two shots fired four blocks away. A homicide somewhere on Penn. A bus stop robbery a block over.

After absorbing a few segments of the local evening news and encountering raised eyebrows from people who asked where we lived, reality seeped in. We lived in the hated part of town. North Minneapolis, the black sheep of the Twin Cities. It didn’t feel bad to me, but hearing stories from outsiders left a mark. Husband was unaffected, but I started living on the inside. And if I closed my living room curtains, I decided, they couldn’t get a clean shot driving by. I buried myself in diaper changes and orchestrating nap times. Husband was gone a lot for work. For months, the curtains stayed shut.

During the inside days, we settled into a church in the suburbs, and what I had always known came back: Needs are everywhere. My neighborhood brimmed with visible needs, but pain also hid behind expensive window treatments in suburban cul-de-sacs. Finally, I’d had enough.

Love your neighbor.

I opened the curtains and stepped outside. We started living.

Memories of our early days are blurred at the edges and planted in our backyard with its chain-link fence and lush grass—that new grass with its sod seams showing it had been displaced too and was without roots yet. But the perfect lawn didn’t last.

“Creeping Charlie?” I said when my sister explained her weedy struggles. She pointed it out in her south Minneapolis yard so I would recognize the usurper in the future. Soon I had a crop of my own.

But living on the outside wasn’t all about the grass. We had an alley too, and excitement swirled around it. The revolving door on the rental property straight across the alley from our house kept us guessing. Who now?

“Well, they seem nice,” I’d say to Husband. And then we never saw them again.

Diversity surrounded us, and two-and-a-half-year-old Flicka noticed.

“Why are we so bright?” she said while watching some new tenants move in across the alley one day.

“Because God made us that way,” I said. “And we’re okay even though we’re different.”

Later, while on my hands and knees tending my garden, I caught a flash of red in my peripheral vision. I glanced up but saw nothing. I went back to my soil prodding. The autumn sedum was doing well in spite of me. Wait. What was that red flash? Nine-month-old Ricka sat on her plump base near me, tweezing blades of grass with fingers that disappeared into her mouth. Where was Flicka? I jumped to my feet, eyes darting over the yard. I scooped up Ricka, popped her onto my hip, and ran through the gate to the front sidewalk. Our wiener dog Dexter scooted between my legs and scuttled under a bush in my neighbor’s yard. I’d deal with him later.

There was Flicka—already a half block down, clutching an opened red umbrella, and running away from me as fast as possible—wearing only her birthday suit. She was almost to the corner when I caught up with her naked self.

“Oh, you think it’s funny?” I said. She did.

I wondered if our new neighbors had ever seen so much bright skin before.

Mrs. Isenberg next door was tickled watching our girls play in the yard and also lucky enough to have witnessed the nude run on the sidewalk, she later told me over the chain-link fence. Then we chatted about her diabetes. It was getting harder for her to control, and sometimes her foot ulcer kept her in bed.

Her husband, a disabled veteran, tried to tidy the yard, but his efforts trickled off as Mrs. Isenberg required more care. He left an empty five-gallon bucket lying on its side in the garden, and it stayed there—a stark reminder she was confined to the house, and he wasn’t leaving her.

Over several months, the house next door fell into disrepair and then finally went into foreclosure. The Isenbergs were forced to move out of the place where they had raised all their children. They packed all their things and left. The five-gallon bucket was left behind.

But we weren’t done with Mrs. Isenberg yet. The girls and I followed her life and adventures into the nursing home room where she ended up after her lower right leg was amputated.

“Have a piece of candy,” Mrs. Isenberg said. “I sure don’t need it.”

“Did your surgery go well?” I said.

“I can’t complain. Do you want to see it?”

“Could we?” 

Mrs. Isenberg uncovered her leg, then pulled a stretchy stocking off her residual limb. Even though we had talked about the procedure on the ride over, Flicka looked surprised.

In the car on the way home, we debriefed.

“Her stump is round,” Flicka said. “You said they cut it off. But it’s not flat on the end.”

“Was that strange?”

“No, it was nice that way.”

Back at home, my sadness at seeing the Isenbergs’ empty house was replaced by a niggling dread. Who would live next door now?

We kept living on the outside so we could find out. We wouldn’t have long to wait.

*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.

House hunt

On a glowing recommendation from my sister, we hired Mr. Brylcreem—a chain-smoking, sixty-something realtor with a high tolerance for inner-city living. Mr. B lived in a grand, old Victorian in a rough neighborhood in south Minneapolis, so he knew what he was doing. Right away, I liked his blue eyes and warm, fatherly manner.  

Husband and I sat down with him in a coffee shop in April, 2002, and told Mr. B our real estate hopes and dreams. I wanted to stay home with the little ones, and Husband supported me, so we would have to swing this thing on one salary. We gave him our price range—an easy mortgage for us. We wanted an old house, an inner-city experience too, we said, and would he please restrict his search to Minneapolis proper? Mr. B was happy to comply and started sending us leads immediately.

Husband and I printed off the first four listings from Mr. B and got in the car to go and take a look. After ten years of marriage, we were excited to hunt together for our first house. I gazed at Husband’s profile as he drove, committing the moment to memory.

We pulled up to the first listing—a house right off 35W. I liked the vintage. Then we drove through the alley to inspect the unattached garage. Gang tagging marked its side, and the word “blood” was in all caps. We sighed and crossed it off the list.

My stomach leapt with excitement at the second house on our hunt. Charming, old, and near Uptown. Perfect. Until we got out of the car and read the sign affixed to the door. UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION: Condemned due to lead paint. Undaunted, I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the front door’s beveled glass window.

“How long until it becomes fit for human habitation, do you think?” I said to Husband.

“Too long. Let’s go.”

We got in the car and drove to our meeting spot with Mr. B. He had the keys for the next couple of houses we’d see.

The house in listing #3 didn’t have any discernible right angles; the floors slanted in every room. The pedestal ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts. The mirrored ceiling tiles in the kitchen were impressive, but what about greasy spatters? I pictured tomato sauce accidents or heaven forbid, the explosion of a pressure cooker. What if one of the mirrors broke, and a shard of glass impaled me while I washed dishes? We shook our heads and moved on.

I liked what I saw when we pulled up to the curb in front of house #4. Old charm again. This time, a Tudor style. I envisioned Christmas lights twinkling through the windows, a snow-covered sidewalk, and a wreath hung jauntily from the door in December.

I heard a dog bark as we climbed the front steps. Mr. B wiggled the key into the lock.

“I hope they put the dog away before they left,” he said over his shoulder.

He pushed open the door and took a few steps into the living room. Like two eager kids, we closely trailed him. A snarling Rottweiler appeared in the kitchen doorway a room away. In a split second, the animal started clawing his way, lips flapping, across the expanse of the living room’s wood floor, bent on meeting us as soon as possible. Just before the dog could introduce himself, though, Mr. B hustled us out, yanking the door shut with a bang. He secured the lock and smoothed his hair.

“So that house’s out,” he said.

We got back in the car and called it a day.

Husband resumed his work schedule for the week and continued his temporary living arrangements, couch hopping between my brother’s and sister’s houses in south Minneapolis. Homeless, I headed back up north to Mom and Dad’s. With both little ones in diapers and one breastfeeding, the six-hour trip took eight.

Husband fielded house listings from Mr. B. I couldn’t hop on the road for home tours at the drop of a hat, so he would weed out the undesirables and tell me about the promising ones, which we noticed were immediately snapped up. I told Husband he knew what I liked and to just pick one and make an offer if he got the chance.

Early in May, Mr. B contacted us with another lead. This time, the house wasn’t going to be advertised. It belonged to his son’s best friend, and he’d consider selling it for the right price. Husband made an appointment to see it. Afterward, he called me.

“It’s good,” he said.

“As in, I’d like it?”

“You’d love it. Might be your dream house.”

His description sounded like the house my grandparents had owned in south Minneapolis’ Seward neighborhood. He sent seventeen pictures by email, and excitement bubbled up in me. A small Craftsman-style meets bungalow. The kind Sears Catalog sold back in the day as a kit house. And yes, my dream house. I urged him to make an offer, and he did. The homeowners accepted.

Soon I was making the trek back down to Minneapolis. Husband and I parked the car in front of our future house. The homeowner, Brian, fresh scrubbed and smiley, walked us through it for Husband’s second viewing and my first.

“My wife had two babies in this house,” Brian said. “I mean, in this house. Don’t know what’s so bad about the hospital.” He showed us the two main level bedrooms that had hosted the home births.

“Wow,” Husband said.

An overloaded coat rack obstructed the view through the living room window and a massive dog kennel blocked movement in the tiny kitchen, but none of that tainted my first impression; I could envision our future there. Back again in the car after the tour, my heart was on fire.

By the end of May, we signed the papers. We were homeowners. And on June 1, having moved all our furniture and boxes in, we looked out at our north Minneapolis neighborhood from windows that belonged to us.

*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 backstory

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.

*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.