Snow stories: Part 3

Boyfriend took on the new title of Husband in the summer of 1992, and we left Minnesota’s Twin Cities for starker pastures to complete our college degrees at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Though my Scandinavian roots and upbringing in northern Minnesota—where -40 in the winter was often the actual temperature and not just the wind chill factor—declared I was cut out for tundra living, my blood hadn’t gotten the memo. But Husband was cut from hardy cloth; the unobstructed winds ripping across the open prairies only made him zip up his jacket all the way.

We forged—against those icy winds—through two college degrees and five winters. And we entered 1997—our last winter in North Dakota—while Husband worked, and I whittled away at grad school courses. The year blasted in, inspiring new respect for the elements and reminding us nature was very big, and humanity, very small. Words like snowbound, jumpstart, and Blockbuster speckled the pages of my diary. We were grateful our parking spot in married student housing had an outlet so we could plug in our Honda Accord at night, thanks to a man named Andrew Freeman from Grand Forks for inventing the head bolt heater sixty years earlier.

Because of a blizzard, classes at the University were canceled for a day in January 1997, ushering in the tumultuous year. We were battered by snowstorms in February and March too, and worries about the later impact on the Red River—the waterway flowing through town—swirled through the news and the conversations of the residents.

In early April, Husband and I trekked down to Minneapolis for a weekend. While we were away, another blizzard bludgeoned our town. Two inches of ice yanked down power lines and forced freeways to close. The storm robbed power from 100,000 people in the area, and the authorities said it would take from three days to two weeks to restore it.

We delayed our trip home by a few days. Finally, we braved the icy conditions. Back at our apartment, I unlocked the door, and we stepped inside.

My mouth sagged open. “What on earth?”

The window stood ajar a few inches, and frigid air billowed in.

“Uh oh.” Husband strode over and closed it. Then he walked through the snow which had accumulated on the living room floor and fetched the broom. “Must’ve forgotten to shut it when we had that cooking fiasco last week.”

“This is bad.” Seeing my breath, I headed over to the thermostat. “It’s forty-five degrees in here.”

Husband swept up the snow into the dustpan and tapped the pile into the kitchen sink. “It’ll warm up soon.”

We escaped the chill to go out for dinner with some friends, but when we returned home at 11:00 p.m., the sight in our apartment socked me in the gut. Pools of water flooded the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

“Oh no.” I tiptoed through a puddle to the phone. “We have to call someone.”

Within the hour, a repairman from UND’s Plant Services came over. The guy wore a pinched face, and when he stepped inside, his gaze followed the watery trail down the hallway to our bathroom. I braced myself for the profanity I imagined would follow.

“Broken water pipe from the cold.” He thumped down his tool box onto our kitchen counter and sloshed around to assess the damage.

I turned toward Husband and muttered, “Because of the window?”

Husband shrugged and shook his head. The repairman clumped around with sighs and grunts and finished his repair job at 2:00 a.m. After he left, Husband and I sopped up the rest of the mess.

In the following days, news reporters issued ominous warnings about the rising Red River, which drove thousands of people to construct sandbag dikes based on a 49-foot estimate of flooding by the National Weather Service. But on April 16, the river levels hit 48.5 feet. City officials now warned the residents of possible evacuation and the threat of the city being shut down for weeks.

On April 18, the river levels reached 51.6 feet. When would it stop? All schools and non-essential businesses closed their doors. Around noon, Husband drove to the other side of the river to our friends’ home in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, to help them sandbag like we had done along with so many others the previous day. I stayed back at our apartment this time, packing our bags for what was coming. I clicked on the TV for updates.

As I flew around gathering our things, my anxiety rose like the river’s waters. But Husband would get me soon, and we would sandbag at our friends’ house for as long as we could—even through the night, if needed—and then leave for my parents’ place in northern Minnesota. Just then, the TV blurted out the latest:

“The DeMers Avenue’s Sorlie Bridge has now closed.”

Pictures of the submerged bridge jolted me as sirens screamed throughout the city. How much time did we have? Husband had driven our only vehicle to our friends’ place, and the river raged between us. Would he be able to cross back over the Kennedy Bridge—the last and highest bridge between Grand Forks and East Grand Forks—to get me before it was too late?

The phone rang. Hopefully Husband. I grabbed the receiver, mashing it to my ear.

“Hey.” I zipped our suitcases shut.  

“Hello, Mrs.—uh…” The voice on the other end of the line fumbled through three permutations of my last name before abandoning the effort altogether. “How are you today?”

“Fine, but I can’t talk right now.” Didn’t the man hear the sirens in the background?

“I won’t keep you then, ma’am. I’ll just tell you a bit about our organization. Did you know that 300,000 people die each year from—”

I darted a look at the TV screen. “Have you heard of Grand Forks, North Dakota?”

He chuckled. “I’ve heard it gets pretty cold up there.”

“Well, turn on the news. We have a natural disaster going on here.”

“Oh, well, I—”

“’Bye.” I punched the off button.

As I finished gathering our possessions that would have to last us for who knew how long, I heard the apartment door open.

Husband.

I ran across the room and gave him a squeeze.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We raced out to the car with our luggage and jumped in. Husband mashed the accelerator and turned up the radio.

“The Kennedy Bridge will close any minute now,” the announcer said.

Husband gripped the wheel. “If we don’t get across that bridge, we'll have to drive three hundred miles out of the way to get to your parents’.”

We sped to the bridge where cars were lined up trying to get across. National Guard troops stood post waiting for orders to stop traffic and close the bridge. As we inched forward, a house floated through the surging waters, and other homes along the river were drowning, their rooftops the only sign of their existence. I held my breath. Would we make it?

Ours was one of the last twenty cars that crossed the Kennedy Bridge that day. Later that night, some of the river’s most crucial dikes broke, and at 1:30 a.m. on April 19, we were forced to abandon our sandbagging efforts when the City of East Grand Forks issued mandatory evacuation orders.

The Red River crested at 54.4 feet on April 21. The waters reached over three miles inland, and didn’t recede below flood stages until May 30. Our apartment—far enough from the river—wasn’t touched, but our friends’ basement filled with water up to three inches below their upstairs subfloor.

I had lived with Husband through historic blizzards and the most severe flood the Red River had seen since 1826. After spending our lifetimes in cold and often wet conditions, we wanted something warmer.

Moving to Arizona the next year couldn’t come soon enough.

*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.

Snow stories: Part 2

“Give them each two pieces, Buck.” I pointed at the trick-or-treaters.

Buck—with the candy bowl in his hands—lunged at the cluster of kids and then roared out something incoherent as he dropped the treats into their bags. To counteract Buck’s startling delivery, I brightened my smile at our mini-visitors. But they bolted anyway, and I grimaced. The man had probably turned off his hearing aids again—and upped his own volume to hear himself. I shook my head but gave him a pat on the back. “Okay, good job. Now let’s shut the door before the snow blows in.”  

Buck shoved the candy bowl at me, slammed the door, and galumphed back to his favorite spot in the living room; his orthopedic shoes thumped the floor with each step, rattling the picture frames on the wall. He dropped onto the couch with a grunt, fumbled a lighter out of his pocket, and lit up a bent cigarette.

I stared out the picture window at the snow. What were fluffy flakes an hour earlier now ripped through the air, pelting the faces of little monsters or aliens or princesses—stuffed into snow suits—who tripped up the step to the group home’s front door every few minutes for treats.

The meteorologist had warned us about this October 1991 Arctic assault. We would all be wise to go home and stay put, he had said. But I was working the overnight shift with the three guys at the Juno house group home. If it kept coming down like this, would I even make it back to my place in Dinkytown in the morning?

Sal shuffled over to my side. “My turn next.” He squinted at me through smeared lenses, pushing up his wire rims with his middle finger. “It’s my turn next, ‘member? You said my turn.”

“Yep, Sal. You’re next.” I passed him the bowl, and he pulled it into a death grip, scooping up a handful of Tootsie Rolls and zeroing in on the little Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and her mother coming up the sidewalk to the house. The kid got her sweets and headed back into the gusty night. Likely driven home by the howling winds and whirling snow, the bands of trick-or-treaters soon tapered off to nothing.

Dom had refused to be a part of the candy duties. Instead, he hung out in his bedroom, watching aerobics videos and noshing on corn chips. Later, after I had dispensed the meds and the three men were settled in their beds for the night, I retreated to the staff bedroom downstairs to do the chart notes. The storm’s roaring winds shook the house as I logged the events of the day.

The next morning, WCCO’s weather forecaster said over eight inches had already fallen on the Twin Cities, and more was coming. All the schools and colleges in town had closed. And Sal, Buck, and Dom were antsy; their day programs were canceled too.

When the next staff person arrived, her car—though brushed off on the sides—wore a mound of snow like a Russian fur hat, and she wedged her vehicle as close to the curb as the drifts allowed. Inside the doorway, she stomped the clumps off her boots, and I was officially off-duty. But my brother Fred had dropped me off the night before, and his car was now stuck in the driveway at the house we rented together in Dinkytown. How would I get home? Would Boyfriend attempt the roads from his place in Mounds View to come and get me? I dialed his number, but there was no answer at his apartment.

I bundled up, stepped into nature’s freshly shaken snow globe, and trudged through drifts for a couple of blocks to hop the bus at Hamline and Randolph. On the route, the bus driver narrowly missed cars deserted in the middle of streets, and after three transfers and almost two hours on the snow-clogged roadways, I exited the bus and tromped the remaining six blocks home.

My brother Fred met me at the door, his face rosy from the cold and his eyelashes still caked with snow. “T.J., you’re home.”

“And alive.” I stepped in the door and peeled the snow-encrusted stocking cap off my head. “How’s it going here?”

“Been out there shoveling for a couple of hours.” He ambled into the living room, and I followed him. He sat down, tugged off his wool socks, shook them out, and draped them over the back of a chair. “Oh, your man came over this morning. But he headed out about ten minutes ago to get you.” 

“No.” I frowned, irritation mounting like the piles outside. “He should have called me first. I just spent two hours on a bus.”

Fred clucked his tongue. “Oops.”

More than two hours later, Boyfriend showed up at our door.

With a scowl, I let him in. “Why didn’t you call to say you were picking me up from work?”

“I wanted to surprise you.” He pulled off his boots and shrugged out of his coat.

“Oh.” My prickles smoothed. I motioned him to follow me to the kitchen. “Was it a rough drive?” I poured up a fresh mug, splashed in some creamer, and handed it to him.

He took a swallow of coffee and shrugged. “Just got stuck three times. So not too bad.”

On that day—November 1, 1991—over eighteen inches of snow fell in Minneapolis and St. Paul, leaving the storm total at twenty-seven inches in two days. Fred spent a day and a half shoveling out his LTD, so he could go and visit his girlfriend. And someone rammed into Boyfriend’s Datsun B210 that was parked on the street in front of our place. It was a hit-and-run, smashing in the side of his car and breaking off the mirror. The driver’s side door never opened the same way again.

Boyfriend had braved the storm for me that time, plunging through treacherous conditions behind the wheel of his rusty steed—with its sketchy heating system and hole in the floor boards—to rescue me from work even though I had already left. And his heroics surfaced again five and a half years later during the barrage of blizzards in 1997 that catapulted our town of Grand Forks, North Dakota, into a natural disaster zone.

But that’s a story for next time.  

*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.

Snow stories: Part 1

“The news said we can expect up to ten inches.” I dunked a tea bag into a mug of steaming water. “But that was yesterday. Who knows now.”

Mom sipped from her cup. “I’ll check the road reports before I take off in the morning.”

Our home in north Minneapolis was Mom’s first stop on her post-holiday tour. She planned to visit my sister Coco’s family in Wisconsin the next day.

“If you’re snowed in here, that’s how it goes.” I sat down in a dining room chair, a smile creeping out to play. “Remember when we went to Moorhead for piano contests, and that blizzard hit later in the day when we were at West Acres Mall? What year was that again?”

“Boy, let’s see.” Mom bunched her lips to one side and furrowed her brow. “It was you, Olive, Flo, and me. Coco must have already graduated, because she wasn’t with us. Neither was Fred. He was home with Dad, but I don’t recall why.”

“Maybe you had already let him off the hook with piano lessons.” Then a thought sparked. “Hold on.”

I left the room and strode into the bedroom. Lowering to my hands and knees, I peeped under the bed. There it was. I slid out the dusty box—brimming with the past—and toted it back into the dining room, plunking it down on the table.

“Let’s see if I can find the year.” I lifted the lid. “And some more details.”

“Here we go.” Mom chuckled. “Your old diaries.”

The February wind sliced through our coats as we hustled into the mall. 1984 had rushed in with punishing sub-zero temperatures, and the packed snow squeaked like Styrofoam under our feet. My nervousness from the MMTA (Minnesota Music Teachers Association) district piano contests had eased off an hour earlier. In front of the judges, my memory had led my fingers through the motions, but my nerves quashed any passion I could have layered into the song. And so it came out bland but mostly accurate. Oh well. Done for another year. And now was the time for shopping. What more could a thirteen-year-old girl want?

My sisters—nine-year-old Olive and six-year-old Flo—and I milled around to my favorite stores: Lerner, Claire’s Boutique, Stevensons, Vanity, Contempo. As we walked, I tossed a furtive glance at Spencer’s Gifts; I could never go there because Mom thought the place was raunchy—especially the posters and other items in the back of the store. We passed by, and she zipped in to B. Dalton to browse through some books. Later, Flo tugged her sleeve as we neared the Orange Julius. Mom pulled out some cash, and while we slurped the creamy goodness through straws, we looked out the mall’s glass doors at the end of the corridor.

“It’s really coming down.” Mom shook her head, wide-eyed. “I should call Dad and see what he knows about the roads.”

She rummaged through her purse for change and then made a beeline for the pay phones. Olive, Flo, and I listened while she discussed the weather with Dad. Terms like black ice and whiteout peppered her end of the conversation. After some minutes, she hung up, and the pay phone gulped down her coins.

“Dad thinks it might clear up if we wait a little longer before heading home.” But Mom’s mouth was a straight line, her brow furrowed.

As we continued to roam from store to store, a voice boomed out an announcement over the mall’s loudspeakers:

“This is the West Acres Mall Management. We are closing the mall due to dangerous weather conditions. For safety reasons, everyone must remain inside. We will keep our restaurants open to serve you, and for those with diabetes or other medical conditions, Walgreens will help you with insulin or other medications. Thank you.”

We girls tittered with excitement. For a 1980s teenager like me, being locked into a shopping mall was like Brer Rabbit being thrown into a briar patch.

“I guess I won’t be driving home on glare ice after all.” Mom’s face softened. “I’ll call and tell Dad the news.”

In the evening, employees tugged their store grates shut, locking them for the night. But one store rigged up a TV and VCR and played Black Stallion for the captive masses.

Finally, it was time to sleep. We curled up on a small carpeted area on the floor in front of Foxmoor. Our stocking caps stuffed with scarves served as pillows, our coats as blankets.

The thrill of the adventure staved off the chill of the hard floor. But we awakened early the next morning anyway, along with the other confined shoppers who were rousing in storefronts near ours. The voice on the loudspeaker invited us to breakfast at a restaurant which fed us the only sustenance it had left: pancakes and water.

At last, the mall management unlocked the doors, and we were free to leave. The morning air stung our faces as we trudged through the drifted parking lot. Our car’s engine sputtered to life, and the stiff seats under us warmed. But the sight of vehicles stuck in the lot and strewn about in ditches and on roadways jarred us as we rolled out of town.

At home later that evening, we watched the news and learned that after that storm on February 4, 1984, authorities found Fargo’s 19th Avenue full of cars—most of them covered in drifts. Drifts as high as speed limit signs. And just outside West Acres Mall—where we had taken shelter—a number of people had lost their lives.

I closed my diary. The blizzard account from almost thirty-two years earlier was spare of details, but our memories had poured color back into the story, filling the gaps. Then I thought of my brother.

“We never figured out why Fred wasn’t with us.” I reached for my cell phone. “I’ll ask him.”

I keyed in a message, and he texted back:

I had the flu. But remember the Halloween blizzard of ’91? That was crazy…

And like wicked winds swirling the snow, my memories blew me back to 1991 and to that old house on 8th Street in Dinkytown I had rented with Fred while we were both students at the U of M.

I smiled and thumbed a message back: How could I forget?

*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 12 days of Christmas

Sing along! (And enjoy the pictures afterward.)

On the 12 days of Christmas, we saw the following things:

1.      A Honda battery that went dead

2.      Two styles of boots (the weather can’t make up its mind)

3.      Three sick girls (the stomach flu…)

4.      Four grocery stores (in search of fig preserves)

5.      Five neighbor kids (playing basketball until the snow started)

6.      Six burned-out light strands

7.      Seven years of ballet (“The Nutcracker” at the State Theatre)

8.      Eight rolls of gift wrap

9.      Nine kinds of goodies

10.   Ten types of cheeses

11.   Eleven tasty lefses

12.   Twelve Lala kisses

Merry Christmas!             

*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 waiting season

We checked in at 9:45 for Husband’s 10:00 appointment. I sank down in the vinyl seat next to him in the waiting room and reminded myself he was in the best hands in the Twin Cities. Not only was the doctor an oncologist, but he also specialized in shoulders and arms. Then into my brain zinged the receptionist’s favorite word from a week earlier: URGENT. At least today we would hear something. At least today we would learn if it was cancer or not—and maybe even form a plan of action.

10:00 came and went. Then 10:20. At 10:30, I wondered if I had time to visit the ladies’ room. By 10:40, I believed Husband was the ugly Christmas sweater, grabbing attention once a year, but out of mind the rest of the time. Finally, at 10:50, a nurse called his name, and we followed her down a long hallway.

“Sorry about the wait.” She spritzed the apology into the air like a room freshener; the scent was sweet, but I knew it was meant to disguise a stink.

Husband shot me a side-glance and whispered, “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. The extended waiting room time—an unnecessary poke at the bruise—had stunned me. But fear rose up again and beat down the awakening anger.

In the exam room, the nurse indicated seats for us, and then she approached the computer. I scrutinized her face as she clicked away at the keyboard. Did she already know the truth? But her demeanor revealed nothing, and soon she left the room.

Ten minutes later, the doctor breezed in, introduced himself, and sat down. “So what brings you in today?”

What? He didn’t know? He hadn’t received all the messages from the orthopedic surgeon? He hadn’t reviewed the bone scan yet? Husband filled him in on the details, and then the doctor swiveled his chair toward the computer and peered at the screen. “I see you had an MRI on October 22.”

And today was December 10. Inside, I seethed. Had Husband been forgotten? Had each medical professional along the way dropped the ball?

The doctor perused Husband’s file, studying the x-ray, the MRI, the bone scan. He explained the risks of a biopsy and why he wouldn’t recommend one, and then he turned to us. “It would be low-grade if it’s cancer.” There was that word again, dangling in front of us like a moldy carrot. “I’ll consult with the radiologist and get back to you.”

“How long will that take?” I inserted the question, hoping it would remind him we were humans who had feelings and wanted answers.

“We’ll call you with the results in a couple of days.”

I suppressed a dubious look. “By the way, your receptionist told us it was urgent we see you. In fact, she said it three times in one phone call.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Your doctor had noted it was urgent for you to get my opinion. It didn’t mean urgency of the condition.”

Which you don’t even know yet, I wanted to add, but instead I nodded. “Okay.”

When the appointment was over, I exited the exam room, my shoulders drooping. Husband—his expression neutral—strode next to me.

In the lobby, he hit the elevator’s button down to the parking ramp. “I didn’t really expect answers. Did you?”

My chuckle had sharp edges. “Let’s just go out for lunch.”

Three days later, I attended the Christmas party for my writers group. I socialized, helped myself to some holiday treats, and then slipped into a seat at a table. Across the room, I spotted Pearl, a fellow writer who described herself as “no spring chicken.” She shared my admiration for Stephen King’s book on writing, and her common sense sliced through life’s murkiness. Aided by a cane, Pearl worked her way across the room and settled into the empty chair next to mine. She asked me about my life, and I told her about Husband’s recent medical adventures.

She waved away the nonsense. “I stopped going to the doctor a year ago, and I’ve been healthy ever since.”

“So that’s the answer.” I laughed but then let my smile go. “It’s been a long wait. A really long wait.”

“Ah.” Pearl held a finger in the air. “The Advent season is all about waiting.”

Six days had passed since Husband’s appointment, but only silence marked the time. I dialed the familiar number. With flagging hopes, I left a message. Hours later, the phone rang; the long-awaited call had finally come.

“First, I should apologize.” The oncologist cleared his throat on the other end of the line. “We got your husband’s results days ago. I thought the nurse had already called you.”

I pulled the phone closer. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“The radiologist looked at the bone scan and the rest of the tests, and we both agree. We don’t think it’s cancer, and we don’t believe it’s something aggressive. We’d like to do another MRI in three or four months, but there’s no cause for worry.”

Since October 22, I had lived in expectation—an active but motionless posture alternating between numbness and vitality. And now the answer had finally arrived; the phone call signaled the end of the wait. But I thought of others, still dragging along in their own seasons of waiting—anticipating the outcome of a job interview, the homecoming of a loved one, the next paycheck, a friend’s phone call, or for their dreams to materialize and their futures to bloom.

Then Pearl’s words rushed back to me, and I remembered an ancient people waiting thousands of years for the One—the same One who sat with me in the waiting space those many weeks. And He was already here with all the answers I would ever need.

Immanuel, God with 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 box

Still no answers.

Three weeks had dragged by since Husband’s bone scan. We kept waiting for the oncologist to call with the results, but he didn’t, and so we left messages. Unreturned messages. Even the orthopedic surgeon who had referred us to him scratched his head at the stunning silence.

“Maybe no news is good news,” I told a friend.

“Not necessarily,” she said, her words laced with good intentions.

While we waited, Husband didn’t amend his life in any way. He slept, ate, worked, showered, and drove the girls to volleyball practice as if the answers to his health mystery weren’t in the hands of a stranger in a white coat somewhere across town. I passed the days in the usual acts of living too, but worry was my bosom buddy, prodding me awake in the night and leering at me first thing in the morning.

“I can’t believe the guy is ignoring our calls and blowing off the orthopedic doctor too.” I poured myself a cup of coffee like my life depended on it, splashing in ample cream to take the edge off the bitterness.

Husband shrugged. “I guess I have to make an appointment with him if I’m going to hear anything.”

But he didn’t move.

A few more days evaporated, and I again broached the topic with Husband over the phone while he was on a work trip.

“Can I please make the appointment for you?”

“Sure.” 

I dialed the number of the oncologist’s office. When the receptionist answered, I gave her Husband’s name—explaining who I was—and requested an appointment.

“He needs to come in as soon as possible,” she said. “It’s urgent.”

Was his chart already in front of her? My stomach did a flip. “It is? But we’ve been waiting for weeks to hear back from your office.”

“The doctor can see him Monday at noon.”

Five days away. My mouth dry and my heart pounding, I scrolled through my phone’s calendar. “No, he works that day. But he’s free anytime tomorrow or the next day.”

“Hm. Sorry. We’re booked then.” The receptionist clicked away on her keyboard. “So could he take off work Monday? Like I said, it’s urgent.”

Was it that bad? Fear shoved me down into a living room chair. “Are you sure you don’t have time to squeeze us in tomorrow?”

“Would you hold, please?” And with that, she mashed a button and forced me into another wait. The canned music on the other end of the line plucked at my last nerve.

After two minutes, she came back on. “No, nothing tomorrow. But I just spoke with the nurses, and it’s urgent that he come in as soon as possible.”

Three ‘urgents’ in one phone call, and yet they couldn’t find fifteen minutes to drop the bomb on us. “He can’t take work off that easily.”

“Why don’t I reserve the appointment anyway, and you can talk to him about it?”

“Fine.” I steadied my breathing.

Our dog Lala—a furry donut on a cushion—lifted her head and eyed me. Had she heard my heart thumping from across the room?

“I have you all set for Monday.” The receptionist’s breezy tone carried a smile.

I hung up and called Husband to relay the news.

“I’m not missing work on Monday.” Then his irritation morphed into a sigh. “Give me their number, and I’ll call and change the appointment to Thursday when I have the day off.”

More waiting ahead. I rattled off the number, a tremor in my voice.

“The receptionist was probably just being dramatic to get attention.” He tossed out a light laugh. “I’m fine.”

“Hm.” I gazed out the window at the grey day. Neither sunny nor stormy, the weather was stuck in limbo too.

“It’ll be okay.”

I gnawed my lower lip. “Yeah.”

After I clicked off the phone, my heart’s drumming persuaded my stomach to dance, so I paced the room to the wild rhythms pulsating in my body. Back and forth. Back and forth. Urgent. Urgent. Urgent.

My phone pinged. A text message from Elizabeth, a new friend.

You came to mind, so I stopped and prayed for you and your family just now. Can you talk for a few minutes?

I had met Elizabeth three months earlier at church. She wore the fragrance of authenticity and spiritual fruit, and from the start I had liked her. But I had come to her mind just then? Was it bad timing—or perfect timing?

I thumbed a message back. Sure, but I’m emotional today. Don’t be scared off! Ha! I’ll call you. I dialed her number.

“You remember I’m a therapist, right?” Elizabeth’s voice on the other end of the line massaged away my stress.

I burst into tears, and she listened as I recounted recent events—Husband’s medical appointments, the MRI, the bone scan, the waiting, the word ‘urgent’ now pinned to it all—and then she offered me a gift.

“In your mind, picture a box. And it has a cover, a lock, and a key that only you and God can access. Can you imagine it?”

I closed my eyes. Into my thoughts flashed a rectangular, steel box with visible bolts. Its cover was formidable: heavy and sharp enough to slice off a kid’s fingers. Like the box, the lock and key were no-frills and meant for getting the job done. “Okay. I’ve got it.”

“Now whenever you have a worry or negative thought, look at it. Recognize that it’s separate from you. Then capture it, lock it in the box, and don’t let it out.”

Was it that easy? As simple as throwing dirty laundry into the hamper? “Are you able to do this?”

“Yeah, I’ve practiced a lot over the years.” Elizabeth chuckled. “And with practice, you can do it too.”

My heart rate slowed. Warmth poured over my shoulders. “I’ll try it.”

After the phone call ended, I didn’t have long to wait to use the box. Worry slithered in again and clung on, squeezing the breath out of me. I looked at its ugliness—seeing it as an enemy instead of a companion—and in spite of its sucking pull, I peeled it off and poked it into the box.

And then it happened. He slammed the lid shut and turned the key.  

*Note: Today at 10:00 a.m., I’ll join Husband at his appointment. I’ll tell you the results when I know them. Thank you for your concern, thoughts, and prayers over the past month.

*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.

Mr. Little Guy

The other day, I shoveled snow. The slushy kind that if not tended to pronto could freeze in an instant and capture footprints to last the winter. While I worked, my mind flitted through adult duties—Christmas details and shopping lists. But then as unexpected as thoughts of watermelon in January, a magical, summer memory floated in. And I recalled an elusive elf who had once captivated us all.

We first learned of Mr. Little Guy from a local news segment. The man who spoke about him had a pixelated face for anonymity, and he explained the elf resided on Lake Harriet in a hole in the base of an ash tree behind a miniature wood door with a brass lion’s head knocker. Although no one had ever seen Mr. Little Guy, his writing proved his existence; since 1995, between Memorial and Labor Days, he typed messages back to his fans. And he wrote two thousand letters each year, his little house serving as a post office for incoming and outgoing correspondence.

“Can we write to him too?” Ricka tore her gaze from the TV screen to look at me.

I nodded. “Of course.”

The girls scrambled off for stationery and pens.

Later, as I read Dicka’s note, she assessed my reaction, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

Hey, Little Guy! How small are you really? What do you eat? Do you have a wife and children? What do you do for fun? Do you even wear any clothes? I bet all my questions are going to make your little head explode! Ha ha! Love, Dicka

I jutted out my lower lip. “Poor Mr. Little Guy. Picture his tiny head.” I flicked my fingers. “Poof.”

Giggling, Dicka scurried with her sisters off to bed. But sleep for the girls crept in as easily as it did the night before Christmas.

The next day, Husband muscled our bikes onto the car’s bike rack, and we zoomed off to Lake Harriet. After we unloaded, we pedaled half-way around the lake, and Flicka was the first to spy Mr. Little Guy’s home beyond the foot path. A small garden circled the tree, assuring us we had come to the right place. The girls jumped from their bikes and made a beeline for the tiny door.

Other children had nestled gifts in the tree’s hollow—a shell, flowers, a stone, a quarter, a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy—and lots of letters. The girls’ eyes gleamed as they stuffed their own letters inside. Then I eyed a Ziploc bag, bulging with responses from Mr. Little Guy.

“Do you think he’ll write back to us by tomorrow?” Eagerness dripped from Ricka’s voice.

I assessed the stack of letters from other fans. “I don’t think so. Let’s try back in a week or two. I think he needs time.”

The girls blew off their disappointment, and we climbed back on our bikes to finish the jaunt around the lake.

For two weeks, I warded off the barrage of requests to pay another visit to Mr. Little Guy’s place. Finally, Husband loaded up our bikes and we took off. We zipped half-way around Lake Harriet again, and when the beloved little home came into view, the girls abandoned their bikes. Ricka even flung open the door to the elf’s home without knocking first. Flicka snatched out the Ziploc bag. I opened it and removed the stack of notes—all on silver papers the size of business cards.

“Let’s see if Mr. Little Guy wrote to you.” I handed part of the pile to Husband, doled out some to Flicka, and then began thumbing through the rest. Ricka and Dicka hopped around nearby, needling us for answers. We finished our search.

“Ah, girls.” Husband clicked his tongue. “Looks like he didn’t have time to write back yet. We’ll have to check in next week.”

I returned the notes to the Ziploc bag, tucked it inside the hollow of the tree for the next searchers, and then picked through the other contents. “The notes you wrote him are gone, so that’s a good sign. At least he got them.”

Grumbling, the girls mounted their bikes, and we made the long haul back to the car.

Another week passed. Husband humped the bikes back onto the rack, and we sped off for answers. We pedaled our way around Lake Harriet to The Spot and did a repeat of the previous visit, whipping through the Ziploc’s treasures in hopes of retrieving our own.  

And there they were on tiny silver papers in all their shimmering glory: three answers to three letters from three weeks earlier. Each girl grabbed her own letter.

“He eats minnow pizza!” A smile split Dicka’s face.

Ricka nodded, her eyes shining. “He’s taller than his younger brother, but shorter than his older one.”

“His name is Thom, and his wife’s name is Martha.” Flicka breezed through the information. “And his daughter’s name is Alta Lucia. She’s a princess elf.” Then she shot out a laugh that would’ve startled Mr. Little Guy if he had been home.

I reached for their notes when they were done, hoping to learn something of the elf life too. Mr. Little Guy told of playing elfball and catching rides across the water on the backs of ducks. But he explained that being an elf wasn’t all hijinks and samba dancing. He and the other elves were pretty ordinary—and a lot like us Big People. He wrote: I put on my jodhpurs both legs at the same time just like you. And I fry up my minnows in olive oil like you too.

But what caught me was the final sentence of each note:

I believe in you.

Dicka pushed up the kickstand on her bike and threw one leg over the bar. Then she cupped a hand to her mouth and hollered. “I believe in you too, Mr. Little Guy!”

*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.

Grateful

By 9:30 on that weekday morning, rush hour had ended, and the traffic flowed along on I-94E. I signaled and switched lanes to take the I-394W exit. But cars had come to a stop at the top of the ramp, and so I sat in my Honda at the end of a long string of vehicles. Was there road construction up ahead? Hopefully not an accident. I fiddled with the radio and then glanced in the rearview mirror. A car was blasting up behind me—full speed—its driver clearly not aware of the stopped traffic. A second passed. The car wasn’t slowing. In another second, it would rear-end me. I darted a look to each side. Nowhere for me to go—and no time—to avoid a crash. I gripped the steering wheel, bracing for impact.

Just then, brakes squealed. The driver veered his car off the road and careened onto the right shoulder, narrowly missing my vehicle. My heart hammered. Shaking and weak, I poured out thanks to the One who had protected me. As my breathing came out ragged, gratefulness came easy.

The next day, I drove through north Minneapolis—along Plymouth Avenue—where protesters had set up camp after the previous week’s officer-involved shooting. In the middle of the street in front of the 4th Precinct, people clustered around campfires. They had formed road blocks out of their possessions and clothes, old boxes and crates, anger and pain.

A few days later, we learned white supremacists in masks had crashed their gathering, shooting and wounding five of the protesters before speeding away. The details of the story put a stranglehold on the local news. While I surveyed the mess on the screen and in real time, my head swirled with emotions. But nothing like gratitude crossed my mind.

Later that week, Husband stopped by the doctor’s office to ask about the results of his bone scan.

“We still haven’t heard back from the oncologist,” the receptionist said. “Actually, we think he might be out of the country.”

Husband returned home to relay the news—or lack thereof. Out of the country? Frustration bubbled up inside me. We had already waited more than a week, and now we would wait longer. In the moment, gratefulness eluded me.

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Stewing, I escaped to my quiet place, determined to practice gratitude, no matter what. At first, the words tasted like wood, but I considered the circumstances of my week anyway. And soon peace tiptoed in to join me.

I hadn’t needed to call a tow truck and auto repair business, but had instead experienced a split-second deliverance on the freeway; I knew He spared me. And I was thankful.

I hadn’t witnessed resolution for the neighborhood’s problems, but owned a home in the broken part of town; I would have a front row seat to its healing when it came. And I was appreciative.

I hadn’t learned the results of Husband’s medical test, but loved ones had sent texts and Facebook messages to bolster me; they would care in the future too. And I was grateful.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

*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 waiting room

Husband worked his arm in circles, wincing. “I probably have shoulder cancer.”

“Whatever.” I shook my head. “Stop joking and just get it checked out.”

After seven months of pain, he finally made a doctor’s appointment, which led to an MRI. We awaited the results, convincing ourselves of his diagnosis: a torn rotator cuff. But we were wrong.

“I have a bone lesion.” Husband dropped the words like a pair of dirty socks. “The doctor wants to do a bone scan tomorrow.”

I furrowed my brow. Bone lesion. I had heard the term before somewhere, and it carried darkness and questions. After Husband fell asleep that night, I gave in to a temptation I rarely indulged anymore: I searched the medical term online.

My computer screen lit up with link after link—none of them innocent. I held my breath and clicked on the first one. Cancer. I chose a different link. Cancer. I selected a third link. Cancer. My heart racing, I texted two friends. I confessed my online, late-night activities.

One of them, blunt and loving, came down on me. “Quit reading. Pray.”

“You’re right,” I texted back. But after I turned off my computer, my eyes stayed open in the dark for longer than usual.

On Thursday, Husband went in for his bone scan.

“We should hear the results by tomorrow,” he said when he returned home.

Friday arrived, delivering terrible news—but not about Husband.

“Have you heard what’s going on in France?” I asked him the second he stepped in the door. “Paris is under attack.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Wow.”

I poured out the bloody details of terrorists blasting their hatred on unsuspecting patrons in bars, restaurants, a sports stadium, and a concert hall.

The story garnered international attention and gave legs to the suspicions of some in our nation. Suicide bombers, masked gunmen, hostages, rumors of repeat terror coming to our own country. And we headed into life’s waiting room. What would come next?

The weekend arrived, delivering awful news—but not about Husband. A man in our neighborhood had assaulted a woman, and when he interfered with the paramedics who tended to her, the police had fatally shot him. By Monday evening, hundreds of protesters gathered in response to the shooting and walked out onto I-94, stopping traffic for almost three hours.

The story captured national attention and churned up the muck beneath the neighborhood’s waters. Arrests, threats, clashes with police, rumors of riots about to explode all over our part of the city. And we waited in life’s waiting room. What would happen now?

On Tuesday evening, the doctor called Husband.

“Several of us have looked at your results. We don’t think it’s cancer, but to be certain, we’ve sent the scan to an oncologist.”

Husband was unfazed, but my thoughts jarred me. I remembered my first mammogram that had necessitated an ultrasound. It happened again the next year—and the two years after that—prompting the doctor to at last perform a biopsy. But test results and doctors’ answers had never brought lasting peace. And I wondered what would happen to Husband.

I hunkered down in life’s waiting room. But instead of warm assurance, I heard my heartbeat and the ticking of the clock. I sat for three hours, feeling alone and forgotten. Could bloodthirsty terrorists dictate how our world would go? Could a rioting mob decide the fate of our neighborhood? Could a doctor tell us about Husband’s life—or my own?

The silence hurt my ears, and the question marks pricked me. Then I caught a glimpse of Him in the nagging uncertainties and unanswered mysteries.

He had been next to me in the waiting room all along.

*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 alley kids

I looked out the kitchen window one day at the biggest attraction on our property: the basketball hoop. A bunch of kids—our neighbor T.J.’s three from across the alley and a few more—shot baskets. I headed outside to greet them. These were younger ones—a new batch of players. I missed the older ones who had grown up on our driveway and had ripped my heart out by vanishing from our lives—along with their basketballs—when they were about seventeen.

These new ones watched me approach the gate, and their faces split into smiles. I remembered the day three years earlier when T.J. had dropped them off—along with their pit bull Daisy—in our back yard and disappeared. Their faces had been wrapped in smiles that day too.

I stepped outside the chain link fence and clasped the gate shut. “Tell me your names again.”  

The smallest girl scuttled over to me. “I’m Laya.”

“I remember you. How old are you now?”

“Five.” Laya’s shirt—a couple of sizes too small—crept up above her plump belly, and she patted her bare skin and grinned.

As I listened to the other kids’ names, Laya stroked my hand.

“So you’re all related?”

A chunky older boy nodded. “Some of us are cousins.” He pointed at the duplex across the alley. “We all live over there.”

Ah, the mystery of the rental property across the alley. Husband had heard T.J.’s mother owned the building now and had loaded the place with family members. But although we had tried, we could never track how many adults lived there or figure out which kids belonged to whom.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here.” I turned to go back into the house, but Laya patted my hand, drawing me back.

I assessed the kids with their eager faces. All of them looked overfed. But they were starving.

The next time the kids came over to play, they left behind fuzzy pink slippers, a Barbie doll, several empty Funyuns bags, and candy wrappers. Husband called them back.

“You guys have to pick up your garbage, okay?” He indicated the receptacle by the garage. “All your trash goes in there.”

He oversaw the clean-up, and each time the kids dropped a piece of trash into the container, they peered at his face, their eyes shining.

A week later, the kids were back. But this time when they left, landscaping blocks—once stacked in a corner—were scattered. And some of the old, red bricks—from another pile—were broken, and chunks and shards littered the driveway.

Husband walked over to the duplex. Seven kids frolicked in the front yard, and he told them what he had found in the driveway. Then he had a talk with the adults.

“We enjoy having the kids come over to play, but they need to leave the blocks alone. There’s a mess out there now, and some bricks are broken.”

“How much do we owe you for the broken ones?” one of the women said.

“Nothing. The kids just need to help pick up and not mess around with them anymore.”

With a holler, one of the parents booted the kids back to our place, and Husband and Dicka helped them pick up and restack the blocks.  

I emerged from the house and surveyed the progress. “Nice work.”

The older kids’ eyes sparkled as if they were gathering gifts instead of bricks. And Laya scurried over to touch my hand.

I sat in church the next Sunday. The sermon was solid, inspiring. But my thoughts wandered off and meandered back to the neighborhood—and back to the kids from across the alley. And there was that familiar pang in my chest again. Was there something I could do?

Read to them.

Read to them? I imagined halting the basketball games, parking a lawn chair on the driveway, settling into it, and whipping out a book. No doubt the kids would huddle around me. But the trees were already naked, and winter whispered to me from around the corner. How long could my stories last before the biting winds drove the kids home for the dark months?

Invite them in.

Inside the house? But there were so many of them. Sometimes even eight, ranging from ages five to twelve. And they would tromp inside with great clods of snow on their boots and potato chip bags and no sense of time or boundaries. And if their parents allowed the reading sessions, they might view us as free childcare for whenever. I imagined the peace in my home taking wing and fluttering away.

It’s not your house.

I shifted in the pew and sighed. Those kids and their unfettered exuberance. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. I flicked my gaze at Husband. He looked back at me and furrowed his brow. I’ll tell you later, my eyes said.

I knew exactly which children’s book I'd choose first.

*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 four days

After I tucked her into bed, five-year-old Tabitha pummeled the wall with her heels, and I knew she was missing her mama. I patted her back to soothe her, but she clamped her teeth onto my t-shirt and yanked her head back until the fabric tore. She released her bite and then cried until she almost threw up. At last, she fell asleep. Whimpering, her three-year-old sister lay on her back in bed next to her, staring at the ceiling. I hugged them both, left the lamp on—at their request—and tiptoed out of the room.

We had hosted Tabitha and Tia before. In fact, this was their fourth time at our house. The first time was when Tabitha was two and Tia was six months old. They knew us. And maybe this time—since the placement had been written up for a month and not just a long weekend—we could establish some consistency in their stormy lives.

Other host families had struggled with the two sisters. Some had said they’d take Tia but not Tabitha. She was too difficult.

“That’s not right.” Dicka furrowed her brow and shook her head when I told her about the girls’ track record. “If their mom needs help, she needs help with both of them.”

“You’re right.”

We fumbled through our days, managing behavior and redirecting when attitudes soured—which was often.

“I would act out too, if I were in their place,” I told Husband after the girls fell asleep one night.

“Maybe we should offer to keep them for more than a month, so they can have some stability,” he said. “Moving them around from one host family to another doesn’t make sense.”

Their mother—trying to recover from her own fractured childhood—had suffered a fissure that was now splitting her adult life. But was there a time frame for healing? Would even two months be enough?

I rubbed my temples. “Let’s see how this goes.”

That weekend, even though the little ones’ needs were louder than the rest of our household demands, writing deadlines still nipped at my heels.

“I’ll take the girls trick-or-treating so you can get your work done,” Husband said.

In a box of toys in the basement, I found furry, stuffed tails to clip onto the girls’ back sides and some headbands with ears. Husband took Tabitha and Tia—now cats—out to circle some nearby neighborhoods. Two hours later, they came back with their pumpkin buckets full.

I kissed Husband at the door. “You’re my hero.”

After the usual bedtime battles, the girls went to sleep. It would all get better in time. One day at a time. Soon, the weekend—having been pounded by temper tantrums—was over.

But on Monday morning, I was nervous. Tabitha’s school had arranged transportation to pick her up from our house. I sat with the two little girls on the front steps, and we waited.

A school van pulled up, and the driver hopped out, holding a piece of paper and looking around as he eyed the surrounding houses. I waved to him. But just then, Tabitha jumped up and dashed into the house. A second later, Tia scrambled down the steps to the sidewalk. I scooped her up first and then ran into the house after her sister. Dicka was still home, so she distracted Tia for me.

Tabitha crossed her arms and plopped into a living room chair.

“The van is going to take you to school, honey.” I pasted on my cheery face and held out my hand. “It’ll be fun.” She shook her head and grunted. My smile slipped away. “You need to come.”

She took my hand and stomped outside. Then she turned her limbs to jelly and dissolved onto the front steps. I shrugged at the driver and then turned back to her.

I still held her hand. “Let’s go, Tabitha.”

She splayed out on the steps. I pulled her to standing.

“No!” But a tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth.

“I’ll help you.” I picked her up—sixty-eight pounds of kicking and flailing—and deposited her into the van. I buckled her in, but she unclasped herself. I clasped her in again, and again she unbuckled. Finally, I slid the van door shut and apologized to the driver. My heart hammered as I waved good-bye.

Then I drove Tia to her pre-school. On the way, she kicked the back of my seat for several minutes, and I succumbed and let her play games on my cell phone. The traffic on the freeway crept along and then came to a stand-still.

“I have to go potty.”

“Hang in there, hon.” I massaged a knot in my neck. “We’ll be at your school soon.”

When I dropped her off in her classroom, I gave her a hug and then turned to go. Tia sobbed and clawed at the air for me to hold her, but the teacher intercepted. I slipped out.

Back in the car, I took in a deep breath and then exhaled. Why were we doing this again? We hadn’t expected it to be easy when we signed up to be a host family for Safe Families for Children. But this morning had cranked up my blood pressure. And my patience was still sitting back on our front steps.

My heart rate settled back into a normal range, and I returned home to face my work deadline.  At 10:00 a.m., the phone rang. The social worker from Tia’s school.

“Tia’s mom wants the girls back today. In fact, she’s coming to pick up Tia from school in an hour.”

The next phone call came from Safe Families for Children. They relayed the same information, and just like that, the placement was over. What I had thought would be a month or more commitment had shrunk to four days. Four chaotic days.

I threw a load of the girls’ laundry into the washing machine and collected things they had strewn around the house. While I packed, the guilt seeped in. Maybe I should’ve given up the van fight and let Tabitha stay home with me. Maybe I should have hugged Tia longer when I left her at pre-school. Maybe I should have cut out the busyness of our home over the weekend and kept our days quiet. I had hoped to get past the initial rough patch and move on to smoother waters as the weeks with the girls passed. But we had been given only four days. Four difficult days.

Like Tabitha’s feet kicking the bedroom wall, my thoughts pummeled me. The girls had struggled during their stay, we had stumbled through in flawed service, and what we had given didn’t seem to help their mother. In fact, she was annoyed the organization had stepped in when she was at her lowest point. And so the girls—still shattered—returned home, their time with us having disturbed their lives once again. Had the four days counted for anything? After the refining fire burned away my shortcomings and impatience, would there be any gold left?

“Life isn’t about us.” I had preached that mini-sermon to my girls countless times. But my desire for stability for Tabitha and Tia, for a satisfying performance for us, and for eternal gold for our efforts had all kinds of me written all over it.

I sought out a friend, hoping to grab onto her wisdom. I told her about our four days and my smashed intentions of returning healthier children to their mother. I told her they might even be worse off now with the disruption of the short time in our home. And I told her I was sure none of it would count for anything on the other side.

“You did the thing that was put in front of you; you were faithful. Now give away those days—the good, the bad, and the lacking. Lay it all down as a gift. He can turn it into gold.”

I went home and gathered up the four days. I wrapped up my exasperation at the girls’ behavior, my hopes for their tidy healing on my clock, and my good intentions that fell short. Then I walked into the living room to that familiar place in the middle of the rug that I always go to when I’m at the end of myself. And I laid that gift down.

*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.

Guns and gas

One day two weeks ago, I snatched October’s fading sunlight and bustled out to clean up some of the flower beds. My purple heirloom tomato plant had exploded into a messy bush when I wasn’t looking. Now I was tired of it tumbling everywhere—no cage strong enough to support it—so I decided to dig it up and pick its fruit before the frost stole everything. I discovered it had a two-inch-thick trunk, though, so I headed to the garage for the branch clipper and a shovel.

Just then, a police car crept through the alley. Another one followed. Then a third squad car rolled through and stopped next to our driveway. Two officers emerged—in no great hurry—and one of them pointed toward the north.

I sauntered back to my job of chopping down the tomato plant. Once I had hacked through its woody stalk, I sat on the ground and plucked all the green tomatoes; they could ripen later in the warmth of the house. When I was done digging up the plant’s stump, I dragged the load of branches to the fire pit, and then glanced over to the alley. The two police officers still stood near their car—making small talk, it seemed—their eyes trained on something north of us.

Finally, I strode through the gate toward them.

“Can I ask what’s going on?” I framed it more as a statement than a question.

One of the men nodded. “Just some kids with what we think is a pellet gun.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I turned to go.

The officer stepped onto our driveway. “So, how’s the neighborhood been for you?”

“It’s pretty exciting.” I smiled. “But we like it.”

“I used to have a place in south Minneapolis.” He hooked his thumbs on his belt. “But I had to wear a gun to mow the lawn, so I figured it was time to move the family out.”

“Good idea.”

A voice crackled out a message on his radio. He listened and then turned back to me. “Better take this. Have a good one.”

“You too.”

Driving the girls home from school the next day, I turned onto our street, but saw a fire truck barricading our block, barring access to our house. I put the car into park, hopped out, and approached a firefighter sitting high up in the driver’s seat, his window rolled down.

“What’s going on?” I shielded my eyes from the sun.

“There’s a gas leak on the block. You can’t drive through here.”

I told him my address. “Is it close to my house?”

“Sounds like it.” He rattled off the location of the leak. It was the place our neighbors Jeff and Mary were renovating—two doors down from us. “You can try the alley if it’s not taped off.”

I thanked him, climbed back into the vehicle, and turned into the alley. It was clear, so I parked in the back. Even in the open air, the atmosphere reeked of gas. My mind flitted back to the empty house that had once stood on the corner a block away. One night years earlier, I had been awakened by a loud WOOF. The windows of our house had shaken, and in the morning, we saw the abandoned house had been obliterated—an eyesore erased from the landscape in one fell swoop. Hopefully today would see a better conclusion.

Emergency crews from the fire department and the gas company meandered around the street in front of our house. I spotted Mary and headed over to her.

“We were digging around the foundation and nicked a gas line.” Mary’s voice was calm but worry etched her face. “We should’ve called first.”

“Scary.” I blew out a breath. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“It’s been quite a week.” She let out a soft laugh and shook her head. “Today the fire department, and yesterday I called the police.”  

“Because of the pellet gun incident?”

Mary raked her fingers through her hair and nodded. “I saw two guys sitting on the hood of a car, holding guns that looked like assault rifles. They kept cocking them. I called 911 because I couldn’t tell they were pellet guns, you know? The police searched the car and found something that they put into a paper bag, and they ended up arresting the guys.”

A supervisor from the gas company approached us. He looked down at Mary’s feet and chuckled.

“You’re out here in stocking feet? Where did your shoes go?”

She grinned. “I left the house too fast.”

He jerked his thumb toward her place. “We were able to crimp the line. You should be good now.”

Then he wandered off and hovered near the other workers while they wrapped up their business.

“Here’s hoping I won’t have to call 911 tomorrow.” Mary sighed. “Twice in one week is enough.”

I recalled the episode in May when the fugitive fleeing from the sheriff’s department crashed his car at the end of our block and scrambled up onto someone’s roof for a three-hour stand-off with the police. I had visited with Mary that day too. And she had warmly invited me in and given me a tour of her house and a glimpse into her life.

“Sometime when we’re not busy with the police, we should have coffee.”

She bobbed her head and smiled. “I’d like that.”

*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 family holiday

“And we’re off.”

I sipped coffee from my travel mug and glanced over at Husband in the driver’s seat. The car’s back seats brimmed with luggage and kids. Ricka and Dicka flanked the car seat, and I tweaked ten-month-old Dontae’s pudgy foot to make him laugh. Safe Families for Children and Dontae’s mother had given us permission to take our little house guest with us on the six-hour road trip to Mom’s place in northern Minnesota. There we would visit my siblings and their families and bask in the magical time between Christmas and New Year’s when the agenda presented nothing more arduous than munching on cookies and frolicking in the snow.

When we arrived at Mom’s, my brother Fred, my youngest sister Flo, and their families wrapped us in hugs. My older sister Coco and her husband Ace pulled up in their fifteen-passenger van, and their eleven kids and one son-in-law streamed out. Even without my sister Olive and her family, the headcount was thirty-one. Each of our girls had a cousin her own age, and the kids scampered off together, shuffling Dontae amongst them. We adults discussed the menu for the upcoming days and each family’s meal responsibilities, and before bed, I prepped the next day’s breakfast.

“Do you have room in the fridge for this, Mom?” I pointed at the three pans of egg bake I had mixed up. “It’s supposed to refrigerate overnight. I’ll bake it in the morning.”

“Just stick it out on a shelf in the garage. It’s cold out there.”

I pulled tin foil over the pans. “But you have a heated garage, right, Mom?”

Mom waved away my concerns. “It’ll be fine.”

We awoke the next day to news about my sister Flo’s husband. He had vomited in the night, but not to worry; he was already feeling better. A couple of days earlier, a stomach bug had ripped through their household, Flo said, and he was the last to succumb.

The egg bake was a success, and we settled into our day. Dontae had been a champion sleeper; the new environment hadn’t thrown him off one bit. The kids smothered him with attention, and he beamed and pumped his chubby legs while they toted him around. The day flashed by with baby time, snowmobile rides, Bananagrams, and Hüsker Dü.

As we cleared away the dinner dishes that evening, one of Coco’s little ones curled up on the couch in the living room.

“My tummy hurts,” he said, his color ebbing away. Coco hustled him out of the room. Ten minutes later, she returned to the kitchen.

“Well, he threw up.”

“Poor thing,” said Mom.

Twenty minutes passed. Someone hollered, and Coco darted from the room again.

“Oh, boy.” She was back, her arms heaped with dirty laundry. “Another one just threw up. Do you have some old towels, Mom? And buckets?”

Mom rushed to the laundry room. Coco, Fred, Flo, and I followed.

“Help yourself to anything you need.” Mom pointed out the place where she stored pails and old towels. Then she stuffed soiled laundry into the washing machine.

Another one of Coco’s kids poked her head into the laundry room. “Mom, I think somebody else is throwing up right now.”

“Oh no.” Coco bolted from the room.

I flung looks at Mom, Fred, and Flo. “I don’t think this’ll end well.”

“Flo’s gonna hold back my hair when it’s my turn,” Fred said with a snigger.

“Yeah.” I smirked. “All your luscious, flowing hair.”

Dicka scrambled into the laundry room—her eyes wild—and tugged me aside. “Mama, I’m scared.” Her face twisted, and she burst into tears. “I don’t wanna throw up.”

“Oh, honey.” I bent down and gave her a squeeze. “You might not.”

Coco stuck her head into the room. “Another one’s down.”

Sobbing, Dicka ran off.

“I’m going to make a list.” I headed to the kitchen, and Flo joined me. I grabbed a notepad and pen off the counter and jotted a title—Vomit Fest 2012—and then the names of the four fallen ones with their approximate times of demise. “This could be fun.”

Then I ran upstairs and located Husband who was reading a book in our bedroom. I briefed him on the stomach flu situation.

“Yeah, I heard.” He raised his eyebrows and sighed. “I mean literally. I heard.”

I wrinkled my nose and gathered my hair into a ponytail. Then I pulled on a pair of tennis shoes. Husband watched me. “Getting ready to do the night shift with the sisters. I can run around faster this way.”

“Nice.” He shot me a half-smile. “Good luck with that.”

I jogged downstairs. Flicka and one of Coco’s girls lay facing each other—and chatting—on two parallel couches in the living room, a bucket stationed by each of them.  

I put my hands on my hips. “Are you guys okay?”

“We’re ready,” Flicka said, and her cousin laughed.

I headed back into the kitchen for an update.

“Two more down.” Flo scrawled the names on my list. “Do you have enough buckets for this, Mom?”

Mom scrubbed her hands at the sink. “Each bedroom has a garbage can, and I have more pails and old ice cream buckets out in the garage. We should be fine. And we’ll keep the washing machine running all night if we have to.”

A thought punched me in the stomach. “Do you think it was the egg bake? The garage didn’t seem cold enough.” I frowned, nibbling my lower lip. “I bet it was the egg bake.”

Mom vigorously shook her head. “It wasn’t your egg bake. Not everyone ate it.” Then she picked up her cell phone, a twinkle in her eye. “Hey, let’s text Olive.” She read aloud as she keyed in a message to my sister—safe and far away in Minneapolis. “‘Wish you were here.’”

I snorted. “We know she doesn’t.” 

As the evening hours passed, the body count rose, and the growing list of names threatened to trail off the page. We sisters scurried around the house and tended to the puking and listless ones. Flo, a nurse in real life too, wore rubber gloves and disinfected toilets and buckets between heaving patients. On my midnight rounds, I found her assisting Fred’s daughter who had stumbled into the upstairs bathroom.

“Fred’s whole family is sick now too.” Flo lifted the toilet seat, and the little girl emptied her stomach into the bowl. “Hand me that towel, would you?”

I pulled a towel off the rack and approached Flo at the toilet. But when I saw my niece’s hair matted with vomit, I gagged.

Flo wrinkled her brow. “Really?”

“I’m sorry. Weird.” I waved away my weakness. “I’ve been looking at vomit all night.”

I backed out of the bathroom and ventured into our family’s room—one of five bedrooms on the second floor of Mom’s house. Ricka had made a bed for herself on the floor, and she snuggled next to a bucket. She was on the verge, she said. Husband slept with a garbage can parked on the end table near his head. The baby snored in his Pack-n-Play. Curled up in her sleeping bag, Dicka wept quietly in a corner of the room, an old ice cream pail poised next to her. 

“Have you gotten sick yet?” I whispered, stroking her hair.

She clutched her pillow, her chin quivering. “No. But I’m afraid.”

“You might be okay.”

She grabbed onto my sleeve. “Would you pray that I don’t throw up?”

“Sure, honey.” I bowed my head. But my stomach roiled, churning dread along with my dinner. “Uh oh.”

The room swirled around me, and I was vaguely aware of the passing hours. Clutch my stomach. Writhe in pain. Dangle my head over a bucket. Repeat. What time was it? Did I have a fever too? I imagined I heard the baby fuss, but someone plucked him from his bed and tiptoed out of our room with him. Someone else handed me a cold can of ginger ale and a bottle of water before I slipped from consciousness. Hours passed. Or maybe days…

I needed to visit the bathroom, so I slithered out of bed and dragged myself out of the room. The mission was grueling but once accomplished, I headed on all fours—in the dark—back to bed. On the way, I bumped into Ricka, creeping along the floor in a low crawl on her way to the bathroom.

Back in bed, I listened to the sounds of the night. In contrast to Ricka’s nearly soundless style, my brother-in-law Ace’s retching pierced the darkness, trumpeting his agony throughout the cavernous upstairs with its vaulted ceiling and wood floors. As if put to a challenge, Husband rivaled Ace’s volume with his own technique. I heard others sputtering out their last remains too. How many of us were left standing? Would we all die? Did it matter? What was the baby’s name again?  

The next morning, nineteen of us were strewn about the house like used dishrags. Wan and stripped of joie de vivre, we sipped water through straws and kept the noise level down. What had happened? Had we traveled hundreds of miles simply to throw up together? Now having blown our allotted vacation days, it was time to plod home.

We gathered our things and carried our weak selves out to the car. We blew bland kisses to all and drove off. I loved the big group of people we had left behind, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see them all again at the holidays. Under one roof. Sharing the same egg bake—or Norovirus germs. It all left a bad taste in my mouth.

But as we regained strength, I noted a few positives. All of Dicka’s crying had helped; she had somehow escaped the scourge. The girls learned to do a decent impression of Uncle Ace’s vomiting. And we all learned “in sickness and in health” should be reserved for marriages and not family holidays.

*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.

Stolen

Husband entered the house, his mouth a straight line. “The garage door must not have closed before we left. It was standing open just now.”

“Really?” I tossed aside the stack of mail I had been flipping through. We had been gone for hours, and all the while, our garage had hosted a free rummage sale for the neighborhood. “Any of your tools missing?”

“No. But two bikes are gone.”

Ricka flew down the stairs from her bedroom. “Whose bikes, Dad?”

“Your sisters’. Yours is still there.”

“Hm.” Dicka shrugged. “I needed a new one anyway.”

Flicka sighed, her shoulders collapsing. “I kinda liked mine.”

Husband nodded toward a foreign bike, ditched in our driveway. “And they left their old one behind.”

I squinted out the window and shook my head. “Lovely.”

Weeks later as I trimmed the grass behind the garage, I thought of the bikes and also the red and yellow solar lanterns that had disappeared a day earlier from the plant hanger in our front yard. Just then, my neighbor Vincent drove through the alley. He waved at me, stopped, and then rolled down his car window. As usual, we tossed a few neighborhood stories back and forth, and I mentioned my missing lights.

“I can check the security cameras,” he said. “Maybe whoever took them passed by my place. It’s a long shot, but who knows?”

Years earlier, Vincent had installed six cheap security cameras from Best Buy and programmed them to cover every inch of his property. To help him narrow his search, I estimated the time of the lanterns’ disappearance.

“I’ll check tonight.” Then shaking his head, he clicked his tongue. “It’s too much, the stuff going on around here. At one point the other day, I looked out at my back yard. I had a hanging flower pot out there—you know, the kind that’s already blooming. Paid $25.00 for it. Anyway, an hour later it was gone. I went back on my cameras’ footage and saw a guy going through the alley like our backyards were a shopping center. He was picking up whatever little things he wanted from anyone’s yards. I saw him take my flowers.”

“No kidding.” I swiped my arm across my forehead.

“I drove around the alleys near here, and sure enough, there was my flower pot in a back yard. So I went to the house, and when the guy answered the door, I said, ‘I saw you on my video camera.’ He didn’t say anything, and so I took my flowers home with me.”

Later that day, Vincent told me he had buzzed through three hours of footage looking for my lanterns, but his searches came up empty.

Another day, returning home from an outing, Husband pulled the car up to the curb in front of our house, and my gaze flitted to our front yard hosta garden.

“Seriously?” I narrowed my eyes, zeroing in on an empty spot. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?”

I climbed out of the car and walked to the garden. Someone had removed a plant, patted the soil back into place, and spread the wood chip mulch over its absence. Only the tag—like a tiny grave marker—remained, its text needling me with three facts: my Ligularia ‘Little Rocket’ was really gone; I had purchased it at my beloved Bachman’s; and yes, I had paid the full price of $9.99 for it too early in the season to qualify for any discounts.

This wasn’t the act of a squirrel. I had seen the city rodents’ messy heists before. They scattered crumbs and clues everywhere. Whoever swiped my perennial knew a thing or two about plants. Maybe they had noticed it was different from the rest—the only kid “doing his own thing” amongst a choir of hostas. Maybe they had admired its jagged, dark green leaves and golden blooms like I had. And maybe they had strolled by several times before finally uprooting it and taking it home.

For a while, dark thoughts bruised my upbeat opinion of the neighborhood. But our stories were trivial compared to the neighbors’. On Christmas Day one year, someone trashed Dallas’ back door and lifted his TV from the living room. Another time, a thief slithered in through Glenda’s porch window and absconded with her laptop, digital camera, a diamond bracelet, and both her mother’s and great-grandmother’s wedding rings. No one had snatched our electronics or heirlooms. We had lost only some small things—bikes, lanterns, and a plant—that make life sunny and threaten to sour our attitudes when they’re taken away.

I tried to force the neighborhood thefts into a lesson for the girls. They shouldn’t take things that weren’t theirs, but they already knew that. What else could I tell them? “Don’t steal someone’s joy. Give compliments when they’re due”? Or, “Don’t steal someone’s time. Be punctual”? But those loftier lessons didn’t apply. Instead, I spoke to my audience of three, pinpointing one of life’s simple, hard facts: “Some people steal things.”

For a while, the memories of missing stuff robbed my thoughts, but eventually, louder truths broke in: no lives on our block had been stolen; the decent ones in the neighborhood far outnumbered the thieves; and we shared our corner of the city with good people—and their security cameras and empathy.

We tried to hold our possessions more loosely. But we also learned to make sure the garage door stayed shut when we left the house and to transfer the pretty things out of the front yard. Because sometimes removing temptation helps.

*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.

Roots

One day in late summer, I drove Ricka to one of Lake Calhoun’s beaches for a high school volleyball event. Instead of scurrying off for errands, I decided to savor the lake until she was done. The wait coaxed me into smell-the-roses mode, so I set out to log some steps on my pedometer.

I strode at a brisk clip, rounding the east side of Lake Calhoun. The promise of school had leaked into summer, staining its last weeks with a melancholy wash of responsibility and duty. Late August’s slanted light pierced the day; the wind had gotten the memo too, and hinted at September as it fluttered me along.

The trees lining the path around the lake reminded me of Dad, a conservationist, who during his lifetime planted over 50,000 trees in northern Minnesota. But Lake Calhoun’s trees were old, sturdy pillars—far from the tender poles I had watched Dad plant when I was young.

As I spanned the north side of the lake, one tree captured my attention. Something had eroded its base, wearing away its dirt and exposing its roots. But the tree—still stout and strong—stood its ground, drawing its nourishment from somewhere deep.

Living life with the roots showing.

My octogenarian neighbor Charlie had known hardship in life—and in the neighborhood. On several occasions, someone stole his car, and each time, his staid response rattled me.

“Those people don’t know any better.” His body was worn, and compassion seeped through his words.

I scowled and shook my head. “Shame on them for making your life hard, Charlie.”

“Bless your heart.” Then his pointer finger wobbled in the air. “But it’ll be okay.”

Not satisfied, I crossed my arms. “I hope the cops find them. Horrible people.”

But no leaves of malice grew on Charlie’s tree, and little by little, his roots began to show.

Dad’s cancer years washed away the superficial dirt of his busy life. And damaged bone marrow eroded his obsession with punctuality and precision, performance and productivity.

“You can’t ask for better kids.” Decision shored up Dad’s words. He adjusted himself in the hospital bed, the yellowed whites of his eyes another sign of the deterioration at work in his body. “They’re just right, those girls of yours.”

“I know, Dad,” I said, still striving, because life hadn’t swept away my soil yet.

Patience mottled the leaves on Dad’s tree, and his now visible roots reached deeper.

For years, I watched from a distance as my friend Evie’s marriage eroded. Her husband chipped away at her sanity, persuading her she was incompetent. At last, she learned she lived in a house of secrets, and her skin erupted in hives. Worry for her children’s safety pummeled her peace. The miles between us sickened me, but I couldn’t have fixed her life even if she had lived next door.

During our frequent phone calls, I paced the living room.

“Prison would be too good for him,” I said, clenching the phone in my hand. I kept my voice low; my own little ones played in the other room.

“There’s a lesson for us in this somehow.” Evie’s voice quavered on the other end of the line. “I’m just waiting to find out what.”

Before her marriage dissolved, one crisis after another crashed in like waves, wearing Evie away. I thought she would disappear altogether, but then I saw her roots, and they twisted—strong and resilient—down deep.

Battered by racism, crime, and finally illness, Charlie’s roots grounded him and showed the rest of us the anchored life. As Dad stood at the end of his days, the mundane sloshed away, and his roots pointed to the Source. And Evie’s life—running deeper than her circumstances—tapped into the Living Water, and she stood firm.

He is like a tree

planted by streams of water

that yields its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither.

*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.