The message: Part 1

*In this blog installment, I’ve kept the real names of the Sevy quartet members. Follow this link to enjoy the music of Robin and her three daughters, Lynnea, Ivory, and Danielle—just as our family heard them on that warm summer evening in 2012. www.mprnews.org/story/2012/07/30/arts/msv-gospel

One day in early 2011, the Voice whispered into Husband’s heart. He told me what he heard.

Give the house away.

I mulled it over in the days that followed, sitting with the message tucked between my folded hands when I was alone in the living room in the quiet times of the day. In the solitary places, I asked if it was true, and peace floated down to rest on top of my question.

Husband and I consulted with a man of God—who mainly listened—and we talked about it more when we were alone together too.

“So that’s what we do,” Husband said.

We didn’t know where we should go, but we wouldn’t be Abraham just yet. We waited. Who would need our house?

We talked about some of our relatives—missionaries in another country—and when they’d return home, they could have it, we decided. I jotted notes about those days, not wanting to forget.

We kept living in our beloved 1919 stucco—kept doing life in the neighborhood. We didn’t forget the message, but we heard the clatter and jangle of daily life—the dirty dishes, the noise of our bamboozling Volvo, the pressing school commitments—and responded to those because they were louder.

For about a year, nothing happened with our house. At least nothing we could see with our eyes. And then it started.

In early 2012, I noticed a couple at church had a little one—a new person in their family. I asked about him. No, they hadn’t adopted, they said. They were a host family for Safe Families for Children.

“But isn’t it hard to let them go?” I said.

“It’s not about us,” said the woman with a smile, adjusting the toddler on her hip.

I tucked away what I heard and carried it home with me. I mentioned it to the family. It warmed me.

Shortly after, we learned our niece needed a place to stay for the summer. Between years at college, she wanted to live in Minneapolis to be close to her job instead of moving back home to Michigan. We could work that out, we said. So we tidied up a spot in the basement and made a little bedroom, outfitting it with a bed, a dresser, rugs, new bedding from IKEA, and a lamp. In the summer of 2012, our niece moved in.

One warm summer evening, our niece joined us at The Walker Art Museum for a free family night. We sat on the plaza dabbling in art of all kinds, the supplies already set up for us. And then the music started. A quartet of women stood in the fresh air and waning sunlight and sang their hearts out. Their harmony was tight, their passion evident. Gospel songs and Negro spirituals trumpeted through the air. People pressed in to hear, finding seats on the ground.

When the singing ended, I approached the group of women.

“That was amazing,” I said.

I learned they were a family: three sisters—Lynnea, Ivory, and Danielle—and their mother Robin. And they attended a church in north Minneapolis.

“I live in north Minneapolis,” I said. “Your church isn’t far from me.”

“I teach Zumba there on Saturday mornings,” said Lynnea. “You should come.”

I went to Lynnea’s church for her Zumba class the next week, shaking my northern European hips and shoulders in ways they didn’t recognize, and I wiggled my way through a sweaty hour. I wasn’t particularly coordinated, but I returned the next week anyway. And the week after that. Over the chain-link fence one day, I mentioned my Zumba class to Glenda.

“I’ll join you,” she said.

So Glenda came along. And she liked it. She returned the following week with me. And the week after that.

“I think I’ll check out that church on Sunday,” Glenda said in the car on the way home from Zumba one day.

The second Sunday in August, Glenda visited the church. The next day, she visited her doctor.

“We’re detecting something that could be a problem. Maybe a major problem,” he told her. “We’ll need to do surgery to find out.”

The thought of taking children in crisis into our home through Safe Families for Children often flitted through my mind. I had contemplated it for months. In August, I again broached the subject with Husband.

“So let’s start the process,” he said. He lived life with his hands open like that.

We dove in. By late September 2012, we had completed the paperwork, the background investigation, the home inspection, the interview with a social worker, and the online training. We were ready.

The phone rang.

“We don’t normally call host families about our urgent needs,” the placement coordinator said. “It’s usually done by email. But this need is still unfilled. If you’re willing, we could use you now.”

We quickly embraced our new title of host family and plunged into our duties when a four-year-old boy was placed in our home the next day. Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka clustered around him when they returned from school. He grabbed their attention and tugged them outside to play basketball. They laughed at his every antic and surrounded his every waking moment.

I had a lump in my throat the day he returned to his mother. As our first, he had helped himself to the first portion of our hearts. And we gladly let him take it with him when he left us.

Glenda underwent medical tests, and her surgery was slated for the first week in October. While she was away for two days in the hospital, I checked in on her cats. When she returned home, I called her. She burst into tears on the other end of the line.

“The surgeon stopped the surgery because he saw something bad—spots. He thinks it’s cancer,” she said. “Actually, he’s pretty sure it’s cancer.”

“What can I do?” I said. “I’ll do anything.”

“Can you drive me to my first oncology appointment? Be a second set of ears?”

The next week, I perched on a chair in an exam room. A nurse, svelte and efficient, keyed in information on her computer. Then she slipped out the door. I eyed Glenda, sitting near me. From my purse, I pulled a notepad and pen. My heart drummed, and I exhaled a prayer as the doctor entered the room.

*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 Volvo

The day we purchased the Volvo station wagon in 2006 was a happy day. I felt it launched me into a more exotic life. It showed I was an invested carpool mom, had an appreciation for Swedish culture, and was apt to stop at thrift stores or farmers markets with my reusable, eco-friendly shopping bag.  

Although pre-owned, our Volvo was still newer than I wanted. I had admired the 1970s wagons, but Husband talked me out of the idea; those could be a nightmare, he said. What we purchased was luxurious. Heated leather seats, a sun roof, and a gauge that kept us informed of the temperature on the road’s surface, topped off with an utterly superfluous feature: those little wipers on the headlights.

Our ownership of the Volvo started out innocently enough with the car only needing oil changes. But then things took a turn. The O rings and heater core needed to be replaced. After that, we went to a picnic, and to our disappointment, a man alerted us to fluid pooled under our parked vehicle. We had the fuel leak repaired, and then moved on to replacing the front brake pads, the rear pads, and the rear rotors. The radiator hose betrayed us a few months later, spraying fluid everywhere—including inside the car. The tie rods failed at the same time, so at least our mechanic, Joe, could take care of several items of business in one visit. Then the tail lights and the motor blower became inoperable a few short months later.

With all my frequent visits to Joe’s, we had time to visit. I learned about his family and his dogs. Maybe I wouldn’t see him again until the next oil change, I thought. But shortly after, the car wouldn’t start. Joe gave us a tow, and we learned the starter needed to be replaced. Later, the brakes went out again—this time while I was driving—and I feared for our lives. Miraculously, I steered the car home from the western suburbs without hitting anyone. Another flatbed truck tow was sprinkled in. I now considered Joe a friend. We had been through it together.

The ball joints were swapped out next and then the transmission mount. Over four years of ownership, my hope was battered, and I began to see the Volvo for what she had become: a fickle, backstabbing friend.

“This car might just break us,” I told Husband one day.

“Let’s just repair it again and see what happens.”

Next, the propeller shaft double-crossed us. Now we were getting into parts we had never heard of before. When it was fixed, I drove the car to an event. I saw a friend in the parking lot, rolled down my window to talk to her in February temperatures, and when we were done chatting, we parted ways. But the window wouldn’t roll up. It was a frigid drive home.

After the window repair came the new headlamp assembly. Because of owning a foreign vehicle, none of the work was in a normal, affordable price range. Joe and his employees did what they could to search out the best deals for parts, but the exorbitant prices were unavoidable. And what had first attracted me to a foreign car now turned my stomach bitter.

After one of our summer meetings of “The Rosebuddies and Trent,” the Volvo wouldn’t start. I hopped out and walked back to my friend Robin’s door.

“Do you have a hammer handy?” I said.

I raised the hood of the car, tapped on the starter, and the Volvo fired to life.

“Thanks,” I said, handing the tool back to her. “See you next time.”

Joe’s service station was in our neighborhood—just five blocks away. We had first learned about him in 2002 from the Isenbergs next door. They raved about his service, his reasonable prices, his generosity. He had even sold them a vehicle, letting them make payments to him as they could over many months. What they said was true: he was a man of integrity. He had even towed us a couple of times at no charge.

While I’m one to seize almost any opportunity to make a new friend, developing a friendship with Joe, the mechanic—to the tune of $500 almost every other week toward the end—wasn’t my idea of a grand time. I preferred my relationship with him to run me the cost of an oil change every 3,000 miles.

I imagine Joe saw the dollar signs as distinctly as we did. And he was kind.

“You can just write a check, and I’ll hold it until whenever you say,” he said.

“That’s nice of you, but we can swing it,” I said, propping up my pride.

In early 2011, I was driving on Highway 100 when the thumping and grinding began. I exited and careened onto a residential street just in time. The car died. I quelled the urge to vomit and instead called for a tow.

While the Volvo was in the shop for the third time that month, the unthinkable happened: Husband’s F150, Blanche, wouldn’t start. I burst into tears, and Husband looked like he had something in his eye too.

“Are we ridiculous for keeping this up?” I said. “Now it’s Blanche. When is it enough?”

“Just one more repair on the Volvo and then we’ll see,” said Husband. “The truck’ll be fine.”

Finally one day, Joe had the talk with me—the talk I feared and dreaded, but desired too.

“You might want to look at getting a different vehicle,” he said.

“I’ll admit,” I said, “this has been tough for us.”

“It’s been hard on all of us.”

Because of my denial, I had thrown away the service receipts. Later, out of curiosity, I asked one of Joe’s employees for a printout of all the Volvo’s repairs.

“Sure. I’ll just load a ream of paper into the printer first,” he said.

The day we put down the Volvo station wagon in 2011 was a happy day. But I held tightly to the golden lessons. I had learned I could be stretched further than my limits, character can be built on a couple of radiator hose jobs, and failing brakes are directly proportional to a stronger faith and prayer life.

And I learned I could live through discomfort and drive out on the other side—in a Honda Pilot.

*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.

Close

The brick commercial building—lodged between the corner store and our house—was lackluster, and only its changing name captured my eye over the years. In the early days in the neighborhood, the sign indicated the building was home to Islamic gatherings. Then it went vacant. A year later, it sprang from obscurity, snagging attention in the big news outlets. The building had been used as an illegal after-hours club, we learned, and at 3:00 a.m. on March 7, 2013, almost a hundred people were gathered at the establishment when an argument sparked, turning into a scuffle. By the time it was over, two men were dead—one inside, one outside. And the two shooters had fled. The usual course of action followed: law enforcement marked off the place as a crime scene, investigations ensued, and the police issued the landlord a notice of nuisance—the legal form of a slap on the wrist—and he boarded up the building.

The morning after the shootings, we rubbed our eyes and wondered what had gone down a half block away at the brick building while we slept in our warm beds. The streets—for many blocks around—were barricaded, and exiting the neighborhood was as tricky as in the tornado’s aftermath. When the situation cooled, we noticed mourners had slipped in behind the yellow tape to build a memorial on the sidewalk. They left behind teddy bears, flowers, signs, photos of the deceased, and remnants of meals consumed right there on the pavement. The only things that touched us from the tragedy were the fast food wrappers that blew on March winds into our yard.

The double homicide was close. But no bullets ripped through our lives. And fear didn’t find a way in.

My brother, a New York City dweller, called me one day.

“So I’ve been streaming Joe Soucheray’s ‘Garage Logic’ out of Saint Paul,” he said. “Anyway, a local news story came up. Notice any unusual police activity at the end of your block?”

“No,” I said. “But I haven’t been looking.”

“Sounds like a guy is holding his girlfriend hostage,” he said. “They’ve got the place surrounded.”

I poked my head out the front door and flicked my eyes down the street.

“Well, sure enough,” I said.

The place hummed with activity. Police cars lined the streets and a SWAT team was in position. Officers surrounded the house in question, guns drawn.

“Since it’s a domestic, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” my brother said.

“I’m not worried.”

The hostage situation was close. But I wasn’t barred in my home by an abusive boyfriend. Or by fear.

My neighbor Marta had a favorite spot in her back yard—her lounge chair—where she’d bask for a measure of each fleeting summer day. But on a Tuesday in the summer of 2014, obligation beckoned. Marta, a formidable culinary force, arose from her chair to serve the common good: she had a BBQ rib contest to judge.

While she was away, two cars sped through the neighborhood, the drivers working out their grievances through open car windows. But words wouldn’t suffice, so the men tried to settle their differences with lead. One bullet penetrated a neighbor’s fascia, and another one pierced Marta’s fence and skidded to rest in her most cherished place in paradise: right under the seat of her lounge chair.

The drive-by was close. But it didn’t keep Marta from living in freedom. Or laughing when she retold the story about the day she wasn’t hit in the backside by a bullet.

One of the two shooters in the double homicide pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison. The other had a second-degree murder charge against him dropped after serving almost a year. The landlord eventually rented the brick building to a church. The hostage-taker at the end of the block was apprehended, never to return. And the police caught the two drivers and arrested them for gunplay on a residential street.

We knew the past. But we didn’t think it into our future.

All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.

We neighbors wouldn’t be shaken. Unruffled by the exceptions who passed through our streets with guns, our area of the city always settled back into a rhythm. We didn’t look over our shoulders, and we didn’t lose sleep.

But to be safe, we kept our doors shut tight, leaving fear locked outside alone.

*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.

Veronica

The day we met Veronica was the day Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka held their lemonade stand’s grand opening. And it was grand. The girls had positioned the card table on the front sidewalk just so. They covered its marred top with a cheery plastic tablecloth, and they had signs. Signs for the lemonade and signs for the iced tea. And a sign for the books that were for sale too. Our mailman, wearing his blue cowboy hat that day, rummaged through his pockets for change. He left with some reading material—one of the Goosebumps books—and a glass of lemonade.

Then Veronica floated by with her two big dogs, walking them one on each side like she was carrying two weightless suitcases. She promised the girls she would circle back after the dog walk with enough change for a drink. And she did. We asked if she was new to the neighborhood. No, she had moved in nine years earlier. She pointed out her house—only five down from ours. What? But we had moved in nine years earlier too and had never seen her before. She said she walked by our house every day, but she hadn’t seen us before either. We recognized her dogs, though. We had recently noticed her husband walking them.

“He’s the guy who looks like Daddy except for the tattoos,” Ricka whispered in my ear.

Veronica spotted Lala observing her from our porch.

“Oh, how cute!” she said.

“Yeah. But just a few weeks ago, I wanted to kill her,” I said.

“I hear you. Puppies are crazy.”

She told us about her babies—Frog, her 75-pound pit bull, and Pig, her 95-pound bullmastiff mix.

“Frog and Lala could play together sometime,” she offered.

“The sooner, the better,” I said. “Lala needs someone to wear her out.”

Bruno, our neighbor from three doors down, strolled up with cash.

“I’ll have an Arnie Palmer,” he said to the girls.

“What’s that?” said Dicka.

“When you mix lemonade and iced tea. Here you go. Keep the change.”

The girls’ mouths dropped open. A five-dollar bill.

The lemonade stand was a success. The girls had moved some books, and they cashed out at the end of the day with lots of change—and that five-dollar bill. And Lala had the promise of a new friend.

Later that weekend, Dallas handed me a pinot grigio over the fence.

“C’mon over,” I said. “We’ve got nothing going on.”

Dallas and his friend Beth—bearing cheese, crackers, and a bottle of wine—entered the back gate and settled in around our patio table. The umbrella went up, and the music went on. Then I phoned Glenda. She came over toting fresh cookies. Two hours passed. Husband found some salami in the fridge, and Dallas ran home to forage for more snacks. I sent the girls to knock on a few neighbors’ doors to invite them over too. Dallas returned with salsa he had canned with tomatoes from his garden. Beth told us about buying the wine in our neighborhood.

“It’s not a bad store,” she said, “if you ignore the barred windows. And the woman ahead of me in line had a wonderfully creative way to carry her credit card: in her décolletage.”

Lala stretched herself out on the warm brick patio, tuning in to our chatter only when her name popped up. The girls brought out the sidewalk chalk, and soon elaborate designs swirled around our feet.

The usual kids headed over to shoot baskets. At first, it was just the four of them—Antoine, Armani, Peanut, and Keyondra. But then a few more drifted over. While they dribbled, they looked out of the corners of their eyes at our table—full of food and explosive laughter—and they didn’t seem to mind the errant ball that forced them to enter the yard to retrieve it. I didn’t mind either.

“So have you met Veronica from five doors down?” I asked Dallas.

“She and her husband have the two big dogs, right?” he said.

“Yeah. She’s lived there for nine years, and I just now met her. I hadn’t even seen her until now. And she hadn’t seen us. Isn’t that strange?”

A few days later, Veronica came over with Frog for our first play date. Lala, eager to have a new friend, pulled out her most unpleasant behavior. But with one well-placed snarl, Frog established the boundaries, and Lala fell in line. Then they ran off in the yard together like two old friends.  And so the weekly get-togethers began.

While the dogs played, Veronica and I sat side by side in lawn chairs, sipping sparkling water. We talked politics, dissected the plotlines of our favorite shows, and bemoaned our loss of nice grass because of having big dogs. I learned Veronica’s husband Sergio had a recording studio in their basement, and she worked for a bank. She was also an artist: her medium—fingernail polish. Each time I saw her, I was dazzled by the different works of art on her fingertips.

“So let’s do nails sometime,” she said. “I have lots of supplies.”

As one with short, no-nonsense nails, I was open to some new entertainment. And so were the girls. Our doggy play dates expanded to manicures at our patio table. And over the seasons, while the dogs played, we did our nails. We gathered some interesting findings: 95 degrees is too warm for nail polish to dry properly, but while 40 degrees is better, one’s fine motor skills are compromised in those temperatures.

Frog was enamored of our girls. I learned she’d wait for their school bus to bring them home each day, and she wouldn’t drop the surveillance until she was satisfied they were safely inside our house. When Frog visited our back yard on hot days, the girls would get into swimsuits and run for the hose. Our canine guest wriggled with excitement, knowing what was coming. They shot cold water in her face, and she chomped at the stream, guzzling so much it ran straight through her.

After Frog was waterlogged, she’d turn back to Lala for more games. They’d face off for some seconds—motionless—before charging each other. The two animals were so vocal in their play I worried passersby would think we were staging a dog fight in our back yard.

Even though she was bigger than Lala, Frog was happy to play the dead dog during their wrestling fun. She understood drama, but not the rules of gravity; as she flopped onto her side on the ground—eyes closed for effect—after a good match, her tongue hung up instead of down.

During one of those play dates, I surveyed the back yard from my lawn chair. Frog sprawled out in the garden in a pool of sunshine. Lala gnawed at a tug rope. The girls slurped popsicles at the patio table, chatting amongst themselves. And for the moment, my nails were perfect.

“I still can’t believe we didn’t meet years ago,” I said.

“We weren’t supposed to meet until now,” said Veronica.

“You’re not an angel showing up suddenly like this, are you?” I half-joked.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, smiling.

And it made me wonder.

*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.

Lala

“They found her wandering around the piles of rubble,” Husband said. “Check this out.”

He clicked through a series of images.

“What kind is that?” I said, squinting at the computer screen.

“A pit bull.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t they rip people’s throats out?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to just go and see her? We won’t tell the girls why we’re there.”

Our miniature dachshund Dexter had passed away almost six months earlier, and the girls still had their weepy moments. Husband thought a quick trip to Wisconsin could fix it.

Next door to our Wisconsin friends, Trixie and Todd, lived Mitsy, a woman who rescued dogs from all over the country. She’d make arrangements for their transport to her, and once in her care, she’d cover all their veterinary expenses and find them good homes. The puppy we were about to see at Mitsy’s house was a north Minneapolis tornado survivor. The dog’s savior—a tenderhearted man—had found her nosing around the rubble a week after the disaster and scooped her up. She piddled on him repeatedly as he drove her to Mitsy’s house.

We arrived at Trixie and Todd’s and entered the gate to their back yard. Their Great Dane, Sarge, played with the ratty-looking, wiggly thing we had come to see. Their son called her Blondie. The girls ran off to play with Mitsy’s French bulldog puppy. Mitsy hovered near the fence to answer our questions.

“How old is she?” I said.

“Maybe four or five months.”

Bald patches dotted the puppy’s skinny body. We watched as she flipped onto her back. Sarge nudged her belly with his nose, and then she rolled onto her feet with lightning speed and transformed into a blonde bullet that ripped through the yard.

 “She has mites, but I’ve given her meds for that,” Mitsy said.

“Will her fur grow back?”

“Oh, yeah.”

The girls giggled, delighted by the antics of the French bulldog puppy. After some minutes, I looked at Husband. Should we? I mouthed. He shrugged and mouthed back, It’s up to you.

“What do you think of her?” I said, turning to the girls.

They looked up from their play.

“Her?” They pointed to the bulldog.

“No, this one,” I said, indicating Blondie.

“She’s all right.”

“Should we take her home?”

“Are you serious?” Ricka said, her eyes wide in excitement.

The girls abandoned the bulldog to play with Blondie.

Blondie came home with us that day. In the car, she was placid, snuggling next to the girls. We lured her into the house with treats. We sized her up, trying to find a more suitable name. We settled on Lala, after Husband’s plucky great-aunt who had passed away at almost 102.

Lala was timid for three days, and then her docile nature faded away and what surfaced was pure puppy. She nibbled on us with razor-sharp teeth and shot through the living room, sliding the area rug around and banging into the furniture. She had energy to burn, but refused to go for walks outside. No amount of cajoling would move her. We decided she must have remembered the neighborhood and the tornado, and fear planted her furry haunches to the pavement.

I read about pit bulls online and learned some interesting things about “America’s Nanny Dog”—the most beloved breed during the first half of the twentieth century. And I read about the heroic Sergeant Stubby and about Petey from “The Little Rascals.” The pit bull’s reputation had changed since then, with the help of the media, and the public craved sensationalism. I was disheartened by some horrible news articles that scrolled by on the computer screen. With more research, though, I learned that as with people, it came down to how the animals were raised and treated. I decided my dog was simply the currently hated dog and the negative public sentiment would eventually pass, just as it had for the Doberman, the German Shepherd, and the Rottweiler.

I told people about our acquisition of Lala. They were happy for us. Until I mentioned her breed. If they didn’t visibly recoil, they disapproved with their silence and frowns. I had formed my own opinions about pit bulls—not based on anything concrete—before I had one too. But now I faced our reality: we owned the country’s currently despised dog. Knowing what we were up against with the general public, we wanted Lala to be an ambassador for the breed.

We signed Lala up for a dog training boot camp later in 2011, and there we met Mimi, a dog trainer sent straight to us from heaven. She owned a Malinois and a rescued pit bull too, so she understood. She laughed easily and assured us Lala was neither dog-aggressive nor human-aggressive—just an obnoxious puppy who needed an outlet for her puppyish excesses. Mimi introduced us to The Chuck-It, a long, plastic-handled miracle designed to throw tennis balls the length of a football field with little effort. Her trick was to wear out Lala before training her.

“You wouldn’t expect a hyperactive little boy to sit down to quietly read, would you?” she said. “You have to let him play on the playground first. Same here. A tired dog is a good dog.”

Lala was eager to watch us and learn. Mimi taught her to obey commands and to run on a treadmill. And Mimi became more than our trainer; I soon counted her as a friend.

One day when I picked up Lala from her boot camp classes, Mimi pointed out another dog in training.

“That’s Monkey. One of Michael Vick’s dogs. He was rescued and lives with a family now.”

I couldn’t swallow the stories that followed about Monkey’s nightmare life before he was saved. The evil in the world made me queasy. I tried to shake off what Mimi had told me and instead reminded myself I had just seen a canine celebrity—a survivor.

Because of Mimi, Lala learned to walk on a leash. Celebrating her new skill, we’d often circle the parkway and venture around a little pond the girls named Lala Lake. But once, passing by a shop on the main street near us, a man saw Lala and me coming and flattened himself against a building as we passed by. Terror etched his face. Another time, a man edged away from us as we walked by on the parkway.

“Is that your guard dog?” he called out.

For a moment, I thought about telling the truth. But instead I just smiled and kept walking.

I pondered life with Lala. What I told people about her didn’t matter; they would believe what they wanted to. Ruling a whole breed as bad for the misdeeds of some was like judging an entire race for the sins of a few. But I smiled at what it was really like living with a pampered dog who wagged her tail in her sleep, was afraid of bugs, and licked our bare feet whenever she got the chance.

Our dog’s future was bright. As bright as the sunshine that one day in the summer of 2011 when she would meet a new canine friend out for a walk in the neighborhood. And all because of Lala, I’d find a new human friend at the end of that leash, and my future would be brighter 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.

Tornado

Relatives filled my sister’s house and spilled out onto her deck in Cataract, Wisconsin, on May 21, 2011, the day of my nephew’s high school graduation. While I visited, I sat in a deck chair and cradled my brother’s two-month-old in my arms, drinking in the details of his new face.

“We should hit the road,” Husband announced late in the afternoon.

I placed the baby into the next pair of hungry arms and disbursed hugs to the family members around me. Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka gave Husband and me quick squeezes and then dashed off, disappearing into their play world again. They had worn us out with their begging for extended cousin time, and Mom offered to return them to us the next day when she would pass through Minneapolis. This meant Husband and I were embarking on a 24-hour date, culminating in the celebration of his birthday.

The next afternoon, we met our friends Mark and Susanne at the Northrup King Building in northeast Minneapolis, geared up to devour as much art as possible in the final hours of Art-a-Whirl. One had to be selective when taking in the nation’s largest art crawl in a day; there was no way to get more than just a taste of it.

As we left the Northrup King and drove on to The Casket Arts Building, the skies darkened. When we arrived, we bolted from the car, the rain pelting our skin. Inside, we lost ourselves in the art, only half noticing the sirens crying in the distance.

In a jewelry artist’s studio, Susanne and I browsed, chatting about the many uses for an old door. Her creativity overflowed as she spoke, and I caught some of it, hoping to pour it into my own projects later. As I admired a twisted copper coil on a chain, my cell phone rang. Dallas.

“Just wanted you to know your house is fine. A tree fell into Charlie’s—and more are down too. But you’re good.”

“Oh? It’s storming there?”

“Yeah, the winds were pretty bad. There’s some damage on our block.”

I thanked him for the call and hung up, telling Husband about it.

“That explains the sirens,” he said.

When the art studios closed their doors, we drove to a gastropub in south Minneapolis to celebrate Husband’s birthday. We laughed our way through the delicious meal. Before ordering dessert, I glanced at my cell phone. I hadn’t heard it ring amid the happy bustle of the restaurant, and I had missed six calls—some from only acquaintances. Puzzled, I listened to a few messages.

“I’m worried about you. Are you okay? Call me.”

“Hey! Just heard the news. Are you guys okay? If you need anything, call us.”

“Could you call me back when you get this? Heard about your neighborhood. I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

I turned back to Husband, Mark, and Susanne.

“Everyone’s asking if we’re okay,” I said. “I think we should go home.”

We said our goodbyes and climbed into the car, our thoughts now steered toward the neighborhood.

As we approached our part of the city, Husband and I noticed the sluggish traffic. We turned on the radio. The newscaster pinned a word to the wicked winds from earlier in the day: Tornado. We peered outside our car windows. Emergency vehicles speckled the freeway and multiplied as we neared our exit.

“Wow,” Husband said, after making the turn at the top.

Screaming sirens shredded the air and mingled with the whop-whop-whop of circling helicopters. We crept along, following a string of vehicles that inched forward.

Our neighborhood was unrecognizable. Giant trees, having been slammed down, exposed their tangled roots. Fallen power lines snaked across streets. Some sidewalks had buckled, the concrete tented in places.

Battered cars. Decapitated houses. Splintered roofs. Snapped power poles.

Droves of people on foot pressed through the wreckage in the streets, surveying the devastation. The police parked on the sidewalks—or anywhere else they could. Mounted police wended their way through the chaos.

“It’s a war zone,” I said, incredulous.

My cell phone rang.

“I can have the girls back to you in a few hours,” Mom said on the other end of the line.

“Don’t come here, Mom. You wouldn’t believe what we’re looking at right now.”

“I’ll just take my time. Maybe it’ll be cleared by later tonight.”

“No. You and the girls have to stay away. For your own safety.”

Mom rented a hotel room in Woodbury and kept Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka with her that night.

Husband and I eventually made it to our street.

A tree had plunged into the roof of Charlie’s house, just as Dallas said. I was relieved it now stood empty. Glenda’s back yard was impassable; trees had crashed through her fence. The power line had fallen across our alley. I eyed our property. Husband stooped to picked up one shingle that had blown from our roof, landing on the front steps—the extent of our damage.

After the sirens and helicopters stopped, silence muffled our days and darkness swallowed our nights. The world could be going mad, but with no electricity, we wouldn’t know it. So a friend called each day to give me a report.

The girls and I listened to classical music on an emergency radio while we drew and colored pictures by candlelight. We still had hot showers, delivered by our gas water heater, but the food in our refrigerator spoiled. We spent an hour on the road trying to pass through our neighborhood to go for more.

One day, Dicka pointed at a Salvation Army food truck parked a block away.

“Can we get food from there? Please?”

“That’s for people who really need it,” I said.

The girls frowned, crestfallen.

“You can eat there,” Husband said. “We live in the neighborhood too.”

The girls beamed as the Salvation Army workers handed them goulash and applesauce on paper plates; something they normally wouldn’t have liked tasted good coming from a truck on the corner.

Our power was restored five days after the north Minneapolis tornado. I learned the deadly force had ripped a northeasterly path of destruction, leaving deep scars on some of the most depressed blocks in the city. But the twister that hit Joplin, Missouri, the very same day killed 162 people, grabbing the nation’s attention instead.

In the weeks that followed, valiant men and women surfaced to tend to our community. They flooded in from everywhere. Even some of our own rose up from the rubble to feed the hungry and care for the homeless.

But that wasn’t all that arose from the rubble. Just two weeks later, something new would spring into our lives—something we hadn’t considered embracing until we were faced with it.

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

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

Charlie

Note: In this installment, the names of Charlie and his family members are real. A special thank you to Tracy for the stories of her dad she’s allowed me to share here. If you wish to hear Chuck (Charlie) Beasley’s band perform, please visit www.beasleysbigband.com for their schedule.

Two doors down lived an old jazz musician named Charlie. We saw him often in the summer, but the wintertime was lonely. Sometimes, we’d glimpse him coming out of his house in the frigid cold—his tall frame as thin as a reed—bent over his walker. He’d gingerly navigate the ice. We’d rush to his car to clear it of snow before he had to, but it was partly just an excuse to see him.

“Bless your hearts,” he’d say with such warmth that we wanted to stay.

Dallas and Charlie regularly dined at the Applebee’s on Central Avenue and 694. Charlie flirted with the waitresses and ordered “Lemonade, little ice.” The two men celebrated their friendship in the same booth each time, swapping stories while they ate. Sometimes Dallas’ friend Beth heard the stories too, and she stowed them away in her heart.

Charlie invited our girls—new bike riders back then—to use his big driveway as a practice pad. They could freely scoot around on their wheels as he watched them from his deck. And we’d gather on that same deck on warm summer evenings, along with Dallas—and Beth too, if she was visiting. Charlie whisked us back to long ago days—days of being black in the south.  

“The fields went right up to a person’s back door. No sidewalks back then, mind you. Only dirt roads—and the driest part was in the middle. So that’s where we walked. And we sat on our front porches to watch the neighborhood. That’s why black folks still do it today.”

He offered the girls sodas in glass bottles, and they clustered around him.

“Don’t ever smoke,” he told them, holding up a lit cigarette between two long, slender fingers. He took a drag and explained he had survived cancer in the 1980s—losing part of a lung in the process—but the habit still held him fast. The girls solemnly nodded, tucking away his words for later.

One day, I told Charlie Husband and I planned to hear his band—Beasley’s Big Band—play at the Wabasha Street Caves, an old speakeasy in St. Paul. Delighted, he invited me to choose a song, and he would dedicate it to me that night, he said. I sat on the couch in his living room—the air around me tinged with kindness and cigarette smoke—and surveyed the foot-high stacks of sheet music on his coffee table. I thumbed through his playlists.

Later at the Caves, Charlie and his band played “Someone to Watch Over Me” by Ella Fitzgerald, dedicating the song to Husband from me, just as I wanted. And I heard Charlie’s heart wail through the bell of his saxophone that night.

Late in the summer of 2009, we heard Beasley’s Big Band perform at the Como Park Pavilion. Later in the show, Husband and the girls deserted their folding chairs to go and dance. During one of the song breaks, Charlie told the audience that because of his recent diagnosis of cancer, this would be his last performance at the Pavilion. A hush fell. Then Charlie’s tone lifted, and he pointed out our girls to the crowd.

“There are my sweet little neighbors over there dancing with their daddy.”

Charlie decided to play his last gig at the Caves on February 18, 2010. After that, he said, he’d spend a week in Kentucky with his oldest daughter Arneida and then travel to Colorado to his daughter Tracy’s house where he would die. But Charlie didn’t stay for the entire set of his last performance. He couldn’t stomach the goodbyes, so he slipped out early. At the age of eighty-five, he made his last trip to Kentucky. He never got to Colorado.

Charlie passed away on February 28, 2010, almost eight years after we first met him on our front sidewalk. His memorial service at the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center in north Minneapolis brimmed with mourners, and several of the waitresses from Applebee’s showed up. Charlie’s loved ones spoke about the man I knew from two doors down. We took their gift of stories home with us to keep.

After the service, Charlie’s children invited us over to his house. While we visited, they sifted through his things, sorting through the mundane items that had belonged to someone extraordinary. I drank in their stories, sitting in the same spot on the couch as I had the day I flipped through his playlists.

They told of their dad, a saxophonist and the first black band member at North High School in the 1940s, and how when the band was invited to perform in Washington D.C., several parents protested. The band teacher placated the disgruntled parents, assuring them Charlie would sit, eat, and sleep separately from the rest of the students. The teacher arranged for him to stay with a black family in the city. Charlie, a featured soloist, was applauded by a white audience in Washington D.C., but had to take his meals in the kitchen along with the black staff who were proud of him and gave him all he wanted to eat.

Another time, in New York, he went to see his sister, a Katherine Dunham dancer. But he wasn’t allowed a seat in the auditorium; he could only stand against the back wall to watch her perform.

Charlie enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II in one of the first racially integrated units in the military. He played in the band—a safe place, he felt—since all the members respected each other as performers. Later, he taught music in universities in Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. And in his adventures, he played on Beale Street with B.B. King and in Chicago with Duke Ellington’s band.

Then right there in the living room amongst the cardboard boxes, his children packed away Charlie, the musician, and showed me Charlie, the father.

 “My mother divorced him when she was pregnant with me,” Arneida said. “We didn’t have any contact with him.”

“He married my mother next,” said Tracy. “Then when I was twelve years old, I snooped around in some papers Dad had left behind when he separated from my mom. I found divorce papers stating that his former wife had sole custody of their daughter. A daughter! But the papers mistakenly listed the daughter’s name as ‘Anita.’ I searched for twenty-one years to find her, contacting every Anita with her birthdate in the United States. When I learned her true name—Arneida—I found her that very day.”

Then they told me about Barbie, Charlie’s youngest daughter with another woman. Barbie was raised by her grandparents because of her mother’s mental illness. The older children kept in touch with Barbie, visiting her when they could. Then one day, her grandparents were killed in a car accident. Arneida took her in and raised her half-sister from then on.

 “I asked my father about his heart. His heart for God, you know,” Tracy said. “He told me, ‘I’ve given the Lord a lot to forgive. But dear daughter, I’ve squared it all with Him. And He’s forgiven it all.’”

I settled back on the couch, marveling at this family—marked by grace—who drew together because of one man, found a lost one against all odds, and nurtured one of their own when she was orphaned. Now that Charlie was gone, I wondered what would happen to these people who had suddenly bloomed into my life.

Months after his passing, I still contemplated Charlie—the musician, the father, the neighbor. I wondered why no seed of bitterness had taken root in him and what heaven was like now that he was a resident. Dallas told me Applebee’s had fastened a brass plate to the booth the two of them had frequented. Engraved on it was Charlie’s name and “Lemonade, little ice.”

I smiled. I was just one of many who loved him still.

*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 basketball hoop

One morning in 2009, Husband pulled on his grubby work clothes and set out for the garage. He welded when he had the time, and that day, he needed to create a piece for the school’s art gala. Hours later, I glanced out the kitchen window. He had an audience. The two boys from down the alley, tooling by on their bikes earlier, had stopped to watch. Husband handed them welding helmets, so they could witness the scrap metal transform into something otherworldly. Curious, I wandered out.

“What are your names?” I said.

“Peace,” the older one said.

“I’m Freedom,” said the younger one.

The brothers stated their ages: twelve and nine.

“Can you think of a name for this thing?” Husband said, indicating the steel shapes he had cut with the torch and fused together. “It needs a title.”

“Easy,” Freedom said. “We go to an art school.”

Under the observant eyes of Peace and Freedom, Husband completed the sculpture within two days.

“So what do you think?” he finally said.

“I know what it should be called,” said Freedom.

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

“’Springshield.’ You know, for the spring right there. And that thing looks like a shield.”

“So that’s what it is.”

Dallas attended the art gala several weeks later, bid the highest, and won ‘Springshield.’ I traced the piece’s pilgrimage from our garage to the gala in northeast Minneapolis, and then back again to Dallas’ living room right next door. If we ever missed the artwork, we’d know where to find it.

Peace and Freedom popped over whenever Husband worked in the garage. Their friend Keyondra, who was a little older than Freedom, tagged along. She coolly nodded hello, but her eyes sparkled and a smile played just under the surface.

Later that year, we bought a basketball hoop on Craig’s List. It was sturdy with adjustable height. People warned us about having a basketball hoop in the neighborhood.

“You won’t be able to control who uses it,” one well-meaning friend cautioned.

Good, I thought.

On our way home one day, we drove through the alley. Two boys we had never seen before shot baskets on our driveway. They caught sight of our vehicle signaling to turn in, abandoned their ball, and bolted. Husband parked the car, got out, and pursued them down the alley. They darted into a yard near the end.

“I asked them why they were running,” Husband said when he returned home. “They thought they’d be in trouble. I told them they have to respect our property, but they can play any time.”

Our basketball hoop became a ten-foot-tall magnet. And day after day, they came. Keyondra was usually in the mix, and each time, she rapped on our back door.

“I like that you ask permission every day,” I said. “But you don’t have to. Just come.”

“My ma said I have to knock first.”

“You have a good mom.”

I would check in with the kids playing basketball. I asked their names, and when I got back inside, I jotted them down on a piece of paper I stuck to the fridge. I didn’t want to forget.

One day, the usual four kids—Keyondra, Antoine, Peanut, and Armani—were playing, and a few extras sat on the cement, leaning against our garage door to watch. As always, I stepped outside to say hi and learn new names. Two of the names were foreign to me, so I asked for spellings.

“You’re good kids,” I said to the group, embarrassing my girls who hovered nearby. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Later that afternoon, I looked out the window and noticed the kids huddled in a group on our driveway. They took turns trying the handle on the basketball hoop’s pole. I could see it was broken. I waited.

A knock at the door. Aisha—one of the new girls—and Keyondra too.

“We broke it,” Aisha said, her eyes down.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”

I examined the handle’s plastic piece that had snapped. The kids peppered me with apologies.

“I’ll see if Husband can fix it when he gets home,” I said. “I’m really glad you were honest and told me. You could’ve just run off, but you didn’t.”

The basketball hoop got fixed, and its luster returned. The same group of four came over almost daily for three seasons of every year. In the winters, I missed them.

“Could we have your basketball schedule, so we can come to one of your games at school?” I said to Keyondra in the fall one year.

She nodded, playing the cool card again, her smile threatening to leak through.

Husband asked Antoine for his football schedule too, and we went to watch him play. We cheered when he ran out on the field. We hollered his name, and eventually, we caught his eye, and he waved back to us from the fifty yard line.

Every day in the summer, year after year, the basketball hoop hosted games. Then came the summer of 2014. We had a big yard project, and I anticipated a blissful three months of getting dirt under my fingernails accompanied by the happy, percussive sounds of the ball striking the cement and backboard.  

But the kids didn’t come.

The forlorn basketball hoop stood untouched. And no balls passed through its net, which swayed like a flag in the summer breezes.

One day while I watered the Japanese lilac in our front garden, Keyondra pedaled by on her bike. She waved at me and then circled back, applying the brakes near our front steps.

“I’ve missed you,” I said. “What’s up? It’s been forever.”

“I got a job at a bike shop in south Minneapolis.” My heart sank.

“Good for you. They’re lucky to have you.” Then I asked about Antoine, Peanut, and Armani.

“Antoine is working now too,” she said. She reminded me of their ages—all of them fifteen and sixteen years old—except for Peanut who was still fourteen.

I felt the same pang in my chest I felt when I caught Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka growing up without my permission.

“Come back whenever you want,” I said.

“I will.”

“The hoop misses you.”

Her smile escaped this time, and she let it shine.

*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.

Larry Campbell

When we returned home, coming in through the back door that day in May 2008, I felt it before I saw it. I crossed through both the kitchen and the dining room, and when I got to the living room, my stomach flipped. The front door stood wide open, sunshine streaming in from the porch. The door’s lock mechanism was on the floor all the way across the room.

“Something’s wrong,” I said to the girls. “Go back outside.”

I called the police from the back yard. Two officers arrived in minutes, and I assured them we hadn’t been inside the house long—just long enough to see the open front door and the missing lock.

“We’ll have a look around,” the first one said. “Stay out here.”

The officers disappeared inside our house.

“We’ll go back in soon,” I said to the girls. “First, let’s see who can run fastest across the yard.”

Minutes later, one of the officers called to us from the back door.

“You can come in now. It’s all clear,” he said, pulling out his notepad. “Take a look, and let us know if anything’s gone.”

I passed from room to room, checking the house. Nothing. Not even a mess—other than our own—was left behind.

“It looks okay,” I said.

“Dexter was hiding under your bed, Mama,” Ricka said, holding the trembling dog in her arms.

One of the officers jotted some notes on his pad and then gave me his card. Then I watched our sense of security walk down our front steps and drive off in a police car.

I called Husband who was at the airport ready to board a flight for a three-day trip to Amsterdam. I told him about our afternoon surprise.

“Can you come home?” I said.

“I can’t get out of the trip at this point.”

“Not even if you tell them someone kicked in your front door today?”

“No.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

“You’ll be all right.”

I paced while I talked with him, and then I noticed something. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I guess I only locked the lock on the doorknob when we left earlier—not the deadbolt. I usually lock both.”

“Good. Then you can deadbolt the door tonight. I’ll replace the lock when I get home.”

“And another thing. The glass on the door is covered with fingerprints.”

“Well, we have kids.”

“And there are prints shaped like parentheses. Like someone cupped his eyes to see in.”

“I’ll deal with it when I get home. Don’t wipe them off.”

“Let’s all sleep together in my bed,” I said to the girls that night. “It’ll be fun.”

The four of us slid under the covers. The girls snuggled down inside my arms and drifted off when the excitement of the “sleepover” melted away. I turned off the bedside lamps and steadied my breathing. In spite of the company, I felt alone in the dark.

In the shadow of His wings.

My ears perked up at the sound of each passing car, each horn in the distance. I stared at the ceiling, my eyes wide and unblinking.

I will lie down and sleep in peace for You alone make me dwell in safety. Safety.

The next day, the girls and I talked about the intruder.

“Maybe Dexter was barking so loud it scared him away,” Dicka said.

“Maybe so.”

“I bet he saw an angel in our living room, got scared, and ran off,” Ricka said.

“It’s very possible.”

When Husband returned from his work trip, he inspected the front door. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“We need someone to come over and dust for prints,” he said. “How soon could that happen?”

The cast of “CSI: Minneapolis” was at our front door within the hour. Exhaling male bravado, the men muscled their suitcases inside the porch and snapped them open. They swirled their brushes around on the glass of our front door—inside and out—and examined the doorknob with a magnifying glass.

Husband got a phone call from the police a few days later.

“Do you know a Larry Campbell?”

“No,” Husband said.

“That’s the name of the guy from the prints on your door. Sixteen-year-old. Doesn’t live in your neighborhood.”

The girls prayed for Larry Campbell that night. And every night after that for several years.

Two months after the break-in, a salesman came to our door peddling security systems. I listened to his pitch. So did Husband. We liked what we heard and agreed to the protection plan.

“Do you get tips from the police and then market these systems to people who’ve had recent break-ins?” I said.

“No,” the man said with a chuckle. “But that’s a good idea.”

We ate our dinner at the dining room table while the man installed a keypad on the wall a few feet from us. I wondered if it would make any difference. Brian, the previous homeowner, had staked a sign for a security company into the soil of the front garden when his family lived in our house. We hadn’t activated the system—just left the sign there as a scarecrow. But it was a tin lie, backed by nothing. And Larry Campbell hadn’t noticed—or cared.

The idea of paying for safety now felt ludicrous. As if we could hold our lives in our own hands and trust a system—managed by humans—to bring us security. While we agreed to the protection, I knew I couldn’t rely on it or even on Husband—away so often for work—to protect us. I could only trust the One.

And in the shadow of His wings alone was the only place I’d ever find safety.

*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 phone call

They say 84% of the fears we have never come true. That leaves a 16% chance they’re well-founded.

In late April of 2009, I had just finished coordinating the gala fundraiser for arts programming at the girls’ school. While there was plenty to do to tie up loose ends, the biggest pressure was off, and I was living in the gleaming satisfaction of having completed a monumental job.

One day, which began like any other, I scurried the girls off to school and then attacked my to-do list: call gala patrons who had left the event before learning they had won art in the silent auction, update the list of final bids, and make sure all the event rental places got their items back.

As I sipped my coffee between tasks, the phone rang.  

“Hi, Mom,” Flicka said, her voice low. “I’m in the nurse’s office.”

My mind rushed to the last time I had gotten a call from the nurse’s office. Then, the nurse told me Ricka—a kindergartner at the time—had taken a spill on the playground and split her chin open, she undoubtedly needed stitches, and could I take her to the ER right now? When I picked up Ricka from school that day, her shirt was soaked with blood, but it wasn’t alarming to me. I was calm on the drive to the ER and cool during the six stitches. But today’s call felt different from the start.

“Hi, honey,” I said, wary. “You didn’t throw up, did you?”

“I have lice.”

My mouth went dry. My heart pounded. Of all the maladies announced by the school nurse on those sheets of paper traveling home by backpack—strep throat, impetigo, pink eye, scabies—head lice was the insidious pestilence I dreaded most.

“Okay,” I said, quelling my panic. “I’ll come and get you.”

I thought head lice was something the school was supposed to keep on the down low to protect the victim’s identity, but when I arrived in the main office, the nurse came out of her room to show me—in front of a handful of onlookers—exactly what to look for, picking through Flicka’s hair right there. And in that moment I cared more about the information than my pride. I needed the knowledge ASAP. I was a rapt student, but while I could see the adult lice all right, I wasn’t seeing the nits she pointed out with a toothpick.

I took Flicka home and called Husband to share the news. His reaction mirrored mine. Next, I phoned my sister. She had been there before. She said she had some leftover products and a good lice comb I could have.

“Do you want me to check you too?” she said when I got to her house.

“I suppose.” She started picking through my hair.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“No!”

“Yeah. And you better check everyone else in the family too.”

I left feeling hopeless—and itchy. Husband got home early, and I checked him. He already had a case of the crankies—and now this. I checked Ricka and Dicka too. We all had the scourge, and the job ahead of us seemed insurmountable.

I devoured information online, shuddering through a delousing video or two, boiled all the brushes and hair supplies in the house, and then tackled the job on the girls’ heads—spending an hour on each—praying my novice eye would detect everything. I spent time on Husband’s head too, but since no one else in the family had the eye for it, I did what I could on myself and hoped for the best.

We started The Big Eradication. We bagged up every stitch of bedding and clothing in the house—whether we had worn it in the last month or not. The stuffed animals that weren’t washable got bagged up for the prescribed two weeks to starve the intruders. A hot dryer was a good thing, I read, so we lugged the twenty-eight garbage bags of laundry outside, heaved them into the truck, and sped off to a laundromat. As I watched countless loads swirling around in the industrial washers, my head crawled. The mental torture is the worst thing about a case of head lice; you’re never quite sure you got them all. And your dreams are haunted by that truth.

I sprayed the furniture with a special lice pesticide when we got home—something I learned later was overkill. In fact, much of what I did was overkill. But what else to do when stuck with the proverbial Old Maid card for the first time?

I wish I could say our first confrontation with head lice was our last, but our kids go to school with other children. And they’re girls—with clean, silky hair head lice love and a penchant for hugging their friends and having sleepovers. The second time the little buggers hit our house, I panicked again.

“’You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness’,” I said, delivering Psalm 91 in funereal solemnity over Flicka’s head while picking through her hair.

Just then while extracting nits, I had an epiphany. If “the arrow that flies by day” was north Minneapolis’ gunfire, then “the pestilence that stalks in the darkness” was what I was trying to banish from my girls’ hair. And the second was more terrifying to me.

Wide-eyed, Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka watched my meltdown without a word. Before I went into full hyperventilation mode, I caught myself.

“Girls,” I said, taking a deep breath and putting down the fine-toothed comb. “Let’s all calm down here. We’ll get through this thing. No need to panic.”

They burst into laughter. Sometimes we moms are the only ones overreacting.

I struggled with striking a balance. Should I allow my girls to have friends, or cut them off from human contact to protect us all from further infestations? As it was, I had become obsessive and developed a hidden agenda when I hugged my girls: it was a way to see their scalps more closely. And I subjected them to monthly head checks for years. In the end, I allowed our girls the pleasure of friendships, and the unwelcome pests came back to visit more times than I could count on two hands. But I had developed a sharp eye for the critters and got their annihilation down to an efficient system.

Eventually, worn down by life and lice, I made peace with the possibility of the unwanted bugs. And I realized the 16% of our fears that actually happen aren’t really so bad after all.

*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.

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.