Travel stories: France (part 3)

The train whisked me away from my French family and back to Paris where I stood in the lobby of the Résidence Bastille, a youth hostel, along with thirteen other American students from colleges across the United States.

“Welcome to Paris,” said Janc, a French professor from Mankato State and our trip chaperone. He briefed us on our upcoming twelve days in The City of Light and then distributed handouts of our itinerary, architectural terms, and other vocabulary. “Have fun, but remember: you’ll be tested on what we see together.”

The jetlagged group around me nodded and yawned. Later that night, while the others slept off their disorientation from the time change and new surroundings, I rested in the bottom bunk in a room with five other girls and listened to the sounds of distant traffic, the foreign sirens, and the cooing of the pigeons that floated through the open window.

The next morning in the hostel’s dining room, Janc paced with his clipboard. We had a tight schedule to keep, and so we gulped down our bread with jam and tossed back our lattés. Then we set out to conquer Paris.

We made our first sightseeing stop at La Sainte-Trinité. Janc spoke of naves and chancels, but nausea rolled through me, forcing my thoughts away from the church’s structure. I tried to take notes, but next came the dizziness, and I grabbed onto a pillar. My vision tunneled to pinpricks, and our chaperone’s voice faded. What if I got ill in this pristine place? I shuffled toward the back door. Would I faint right here? Pain stabbed my stomach, and nothing else mattered. So much for the lesson—and the test to come—about the ancient building. I lowered to my hands and knees on the stone floor and pressed my cheek against its coolness.

A man helped me outside for fresh air. I didn’t understand his words, but kindness sounds the same in any language. Another student came out to check on me as I sat, woozy, on the front steps. I had just met my traveling companions, and here I was: The Sick One. 

The next several days were equal parts architectural grandeur and gut-knifing agony. What had I eaten? I couldn’t imagine what had backfired, since the sandwich I had purchased from a street vendor had looked benign.

I made my legs walk along with the group. La Place Vendôme, Le Jardin des Tuileries, Les Champs-Élysées, L’Arc de Triomphe, and Le Tour Eiffel washed by me. I prayed the stabbing misery would ease off. I slogged through the day and consumed a little bread and bottled water that night before balling up, listless, in my bed at the hostel.  

Still unwell the next day, I rallied anyway, refusing to miss a single outing. The smell of urine and adventure tinged the air at Montmartre near the innumerable steps to Le Sacré-Cœur, and the nearby Place de Tertre brimmed with aspiring artists selling their vibrant work. We visited the Père Lachaise Cemetery, its tombs the size of phone booths just large enough for a mourner to step inside, pray, and leave some flowers. Then we ambled by the final resting places of many famous people—Oscar Wilde, Molière, Edith Piaf, and more—and followed the spray-painted arrows which led us to Jim Morrison’s grave, the seeming pinnacle, if graffiti were any indication of a cemetery’s highlights.

The following day at the luxurious castle of Versailles, I was well enough to eat another sandwich, and I rejoiced with every bite. But somewhere between one of the countless gilded balconies and a marble bust of a notable person who would undoubtedly be on the final exam, pain again ripped through my stomach. What was wrong with me? My world shrank once more, and I longed to shove past the stanchions that cordoned off the king’s private chambers and curl up on his opulent bed.

Architectural terms like voûte d’ogive, voûte d’arête, and œil-de-bœuf blended with my malady, scarring my first five days in Paris. Once I recovered from my mal au cœur, though, the precarious wonders of foreign travel fused five of us students—Leeza, Kate, Mel, Amie, and me—and we snatched any free time we could to explore together. We tripped through the cobblestone city in impractical shoes. We shared fruit tartes, delicious dinners, and carafes de vin. We bought inexpensive jewelry and cheap t-shirts, blew through art museums in record time, and with our limited language skills, explained to a stylist at a salon how Leeza wanted her hair cut.

Soon, our twelve days in Paris ended. We would spend our next six weeks studying at l'Institut d'Etudes Françaises in La Rochelle. But first, we boarded a tour bus and set out for the Mont Saint-Michel, an island village built on a rock in Normandy. Janc told us stories about the famous ancient fortress surrounded by water while we trekked up the winding paths like the commoners who, centuries earlier, had made the same pilgrimage to the abbey on the hill.

But all good things end in a trip to the restroom, and so my friends and I visited les toilettes, a communal set-up with men’s stalls on one side and women’s on the other. As I washed my hands, I glanced at my watch. It was time to board the bus again, and our chaperone had urged us to be punctual. With only minutes to spare, we scrambled out to purchase the obligatory postcard or two and then hustled to meet up with the rest of the group.

I dropped into a seat toward the back of the bus while Janc took a headcount, bobbing his finger in the air like an orchestra conductor.

“We’re missing someone,” he said.

I darted a look around me. Leeza, Kate, Mel—but where was Amie? She had been in the restroom with us, but then what? Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t remembered seeing her in the postcard shop. Worry—and then guilt—needled me. How could I have rushed off to the bus without her?

I peered through the bus windows, hoping to spy my friend somewhere in the crowd of tourists that poured from the famous attraction. And then minutes later, she appeared. She bounded up the bus steps, made her way down the aisle, and plopped down next to me.

“Hey, where were you?” I said.

Winded, Amie laughed. “You’re never gonna believe what just happened in the bathroom.”

 *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.

Travel stories: France (part 2)

The man pulled a wooden peel from the fire, extracting the loaves—round and crusty with floury tops.

My host mother Paulette nudged me, her eyes shining. “It’s just how they made it in the old country.”

The special trip for bread to the tiny neighboring village had been worth it. I contemplated le pain, every meal’s companion and the daily sustenance that moved the French world. Bread was a clock too; when I ventured out, I could tell by the number of people scurrying about for it—none of it wrapped in cellophane like the loaves in the United States—if mealtime was near.

I spied a man walking down the sidewalk, a baguette tucked under one arm. He saw another man—likely a good friend—and his face lit up. He bopped his buddy over the head with the bread, and they laughed and talked. A woman pedaled by on her bike, a baguette strapped to the front of it. And Paulette chucked loaves into the back seat of her car with as much care as one would toss a sweater.

But le pain wasn’t my only fascination; food, in general, held the keys to the culture, and I would learn more by eating anything I was offered.

“Somehow when students come, they suddenly turn into vegetarians,” my father Jean said with a chuckle one night at dinner. Like Paulette, he only spoke French, and whenever he turned to me, his eyes grew large, and he cranked up his volume, forming words slowly for my learning ear. “But you would make a good French person; you like all the foods and cheeses.”

One day, Madame Andrée Pinot, a family friend, came for afternoon tea. The spring day was cool, but the table on the patio basked in a pool of sunlight, so Paulette and I entertained our guest outdoors. The three of us nibbled on pieces of apple tarte as the chickens meandered in the grassy distance. Daisy Belle, the family dog, curled into a donut at Paulette’s feet.

Paulette told her friend about our trip to the poissonnerie for fresh fish that morning, which sparked something in Madame Andrée’s eyes, and she recounted her own story. Since the word pêcheur meant both fisherman and sinner, she said, as a child she had thought confession to the priest was only for the men who caught the fish. She tittered, a hand splayed on her chest, and Paulette let out a chortle.

Just then, Daisy Belle zipped out from under the table and lunged at one of the chickens. Paulette flew from her chair, trilling and whooping and clapping her hands at the animal who had zeroed in on one of her beloved birds. I had thought my French mother’s tongue was lightning fast before, but this time her words streaked through the atmosphere in one long unintelligible trail. In the end, some feathers were lost, but the chicken lived, and Daisy Belle got a stern reprimand.   

That evening at dinner, Paulette told the family about the dog’s afternoon escapade. Jean, who used dinnertime to teach me new words, asked if I knew the meaning of the dog’s name. I had always wondered why they had chosen an English name, so I repeated it—Daisy Belle—saying it was a type of pretty flower.

“No, it means a degree of loudness,” he said. Then as usual, his eyes widened as he watched me try to digest the new definition.

I furrowed my brow and shook my head. He grew a grin, and I thought harder. What was I missing?

Then revelation struck: The dog’s name wasn’t Daisy Belle, but Décibel—like the English word decibel. I spelled it aloud to be sure I had it right.

“You’re easier to understand than the English when they speak French,” he said, serving me a portion of approval even more delicious than the Coquilles Saint-Jacques on my plate.

At the basilica in the town of Josselin on one of our day jaunts, Paulette showed me a fountain where people came to drink the water and be healed. She didn’t mind that I reached for the communal cup that dangled from a chain near the statue of Mary and the Christ Child, dipped in, and drank, but that was unusual; she normally fussed over my health. If I opened a window in my bedroom, she worried I’d catch a flu, and she feared I’d become sick from eating mussels. I padded through her house barefoot, but she said her stone floors were too cold for that. The day she took me to the family’s second home in Carnac—nestled beside the Gulf of Morbihan—she said I could enjoy the beach if I covered up.

“Vous aurez un coup du soleil!” she said, holding a finger in the air and frowning.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t get sunburned.”

But permutations of the same conversation speckled the warm afternoon. I was too fair for the sun, she said. I would suffer a sunstroke if I wasn’t careful, she said. What if I became ill from too much exposure? she said. Finally, I ambled off to the water’s edge, but in deference to ma mère, I toted the beach umbrella with me.

Shops, markets, restaurants, and museums—scenes straight out of my French textbooks, minus the vocabulary labels—filled my three weeks in Brittany. Soon, I would catch the train back to Paris to connect with other American students with whom I would share the next two months. I would miss my French mother’s art and history lessons, along with her ooh-la-las, ho-la-las, or ho-dee-dos, which marked our outings. My new family had embraced me with lavish generosity and open arms, but my time with them was nearing its end.

“C’est dommage!” Paulette said, waving away talk of my departure. “It’s too bad!”

My sister Anne and I headed upstairs to our bedrooms on my last night in their home. But first, we paused in the living room to say goodnight to her father.

“Bonne nuit, mon père,” she said.

Then he replied in his loud, slow French, so I could understand too. “Bonne nuit, my daughters.”

*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.

Travel stories: France (part 1)

Passing through the doors of an airplane that day in 1994, I entered a hybrid world. The signs showed me I was in Newark, but French and English floated in the air amongst the passengers, evidence that I instead hovered somewhere between two countries.

A woman settled into the seat next to mine, and I learned she was a sixty-six-year-old retired French teacher of Russian and Hungarian heritage who had studied in France in 1950.

“You remind me of myself forty-five years ago,” she said, nostalgia warming her features. She spent the next minutes scribbling sentences onto a piece of paper, then tore it from her notebook and pressed it into my hand. “A poem. Just for you.”

She had described me, a young university student on my first French adventure, and herself too, having lived out her own, decades earlier. I thanked her and folded the poem into a small square I slipped into my purse.

A world later, we disembarked at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I was alone, and I tugged my two years of college French around me like a windbreaker in a blizzard. I collected my luggage and flagged down a taxi.

“The Montparnasse train station,” I said in French to the cab driver. He nodded and tossed my suitcase into the trunk. I crawled into the back seat and frowned. I had forgotten to tack s'il vous plaît onto my request, so I would make up for it later by thanking him twice.

Even though it was rush hour, the driver mashed his foot on the accelerator, and I clutched the seat, my thoughts racing as fast as the vehicle. Motorcyclists zipped in and out of traffic. I held my breath for the sounds of grating metal I was sure would follow. Would I die on this ride to the train station? In case I didn’t, I would do well to freshen up on my verbs, and what was the conditional tense’s third person singular for être again?

At La Gare Montparnasse, I wended my way through all the people—their small dogs attached to them like accessories—then bumbled onto the TGV, France’s intercity high-speed train, and traveled three hours to St. Brieuc where my host family welcomed me. In a flurry of hospitality and maternal concern, my French mother Paulette insisted I drink an orange juice at a nearby café, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer—or at least that’s what I thought she had said in her fast French. Minutes later, she bought me a jus d’orange, and then we were off to her home in Loudéac.

After dinner that evening, my French father Jean, Paulette, and my new siblings Phillipe and Anne gathered in the living room and opened the gifts I had brought them: a Native American dream-catcher and a bag of wild rice. They took turns holding the dream-catcher and examining it from all angles, pronouncing it a treasure.

Each day, Jean worked at his dental practice, Phillipe went to his own job elsewhere, Anne attended classes in her final year of high school, and Paulette spent her time with me. As a retired teacher, all moments were teaching opportunities with my French mother. Every day, she drove me somewhere, but since it was difficult to understand her descriptions of our destinations, I hopped into the car like an unsuspecting pet being taken to the vet. Instead of encountering shots or blood draws, however, she treated me to castles or rock formations, lace shops or boulangeries, beaches or lunches at cafés.

Paulette buzzed around the house each day too, assigning me small tasks in her rapid-fire French. She plunked a bowl of apricots in front of me and told me to tear them in half—or had me prepare other seasonal fruits—while she mixed up pastry crusts. And then we would pause for tea and fresh tartes together in the afternoons, and she would entertain me by telling me stories, rattling off snippets of Italian, or crooning Brettonne songs.

Paulette eyed me during meals, and her face lit up when I raved over certain dishes. I accompanied her to the store for each day’s shopping, and I noticed the foods I most loved had found their way back onto the grocery list. She handed me a wicker basket and half the list, ordering me to fetch the items while she gathered the rest. Sometimes at the boucherie, she’d ask me to point out a cut or kind of meat I’d never tried before, and she would buy it and prepare it that evening with homemade sauces and herbs from her garden.

One morning, Paulette stood in front of the mirror in the foyer, knotted a silk scarf at her throat, and swiped on some lipstick. She slipped into a jacket and turned to me. Apparently, we were going out again.

“Débranchez le fer,” she said. She waggled two fingers like little legs and then pointed to the stairs. I furrowed my brow, and she repeated the command. She wanted me to run upstairs and do something. When she said le fer, she moved her fist back and forth in the air. Was she making the motion of turning a steering wheel with one hand? I said the word for drive, affixing a question mark to my tone.

“Non, non, non,” she said. Then she plucked at her clothing and made the fist motion again, and I remembered. Le fer meant 'the iron'. She wanted me to run upstairs for her and do something with the iron. But what? 

She held a finger in the air, then walked toward a wall, bent down, and acted out a new gesture. Because of her lack of English, there was no danger of her spoiling our game of charades by giving me the right answer. I was eager to do her bidding, if only I could decipher it…

Finally, she led me up the stairs. In the first room on the second floor stood an ironing board and an iron—still plugged into the wall.

“Débrancher le fer,” she said and unplugged it to demonstrate the action.

My eyes grew wide, and I bobbed my head. I had just gained a verb I would never forget. And I could unplug the iron in two languages now.

*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 twins: Part 2

By Sunday night, my sleep deficit was mounting like a stack of unpaid bills. Was somebody waking up every twenty minutes, or did it only feel that way? I ticked off the list. New diapers? Check. Fresh bottles? Check. Good burps? Check. Pleasant room temperature and blankets in place? Check.

The babies’ new routine with us strangers—and without their mama—in a foreign environment had disrupted them. And we might have ruined them for self-soothing by dazzling them with too many daytime delights. Hopefully, their life of leisure at our place wouldn’t make life harder for their mom when they returned home. As usual, she texted the next morning.

How are the babies?

I thumbed a message back. Happy and smiley. They’re up a lot at night, though.

Are they fussy during the day too?

Not at all. Probably because they’re held all the time. Sorry to spoil them for you.

No, that’s perfectly fine. Lol

On Monday, I began to notice that while I maintained both my gross and fine motor skills, my brain was mushy at the edges.

I interrupted the story I was telling my family at the dinner table that evening.

“Wait. What was I saying?” I pursed my lips and frowned. My girls fed me snippets of what I had just said, but I shook my head. “Nope, it’s gone.”

Monday night arrived like the end of a glorious vacation. The reality was stark: I was at the mercy of six-month-olds, and there was nothing I could do about it. Would they sleep at all tonight? Or was the party about to start?

At ten o’clock, Husband and I sat in the dimly lit living room, each of us feeding a baby.

“Say the mom decided to give them up,” he whispered to me as Minnie drifted off in his arms. “We could take these two.”

“You sound like Dicka.” At the sound of my voice, Mitsy switched her eyelids open, then fluttered them shut again.

We tucked the infants into their beds and crept from the room. Maybe tonight they’d sleep for a few hours at the same time. Then the ensuing silence sang me a lullaby, and the stillness rocked me to sleep.

But the night shift began at eleven-thirty. This time, Mitsy’s arched back and caterwauling announced her disdain for her bed, in case I had forgotten. I picked her up and ran through the list again. Bottle, diaper, burp, blanket. All complete. Then I pressed my lips to her forehead. No fever. Teething? Her mother had included a tube of numbing gel with the girls’ things, so I rubbed some on her gums. I cuddled her until she dozed off, returned her to her bed, and tiptoed out.

Fifteen minutes later, a wail sliced through the quiet. This time, Minnie. I repeated the process I had just finished with her sister. Then I swayed her in my arms until her eyelids floated shut, and the truth hit me: A couple of six-month-olds were holding me hostage. If I had been a POW, I would’ve told the babies all the secrets by now. And on top of it, I suffered from Stockholm syndrome; my heart brimmed with affection for the most adorable captors in the world.

On Tuesday morning, my shift over, I shuffled the babies off to my girls and stumbled into the kitchen. I slapped around on the counter until I hit the coffeemaker, sprinkled some coffee grounds into the old filter from the day before, realized my mistake, dumped it, and started again. New filter, fresh grounds, start button. Oops. Forgot to add the water. Soon, though, I settled into a chair with a steaming cup of joe. I can do this thing, I told myself as the caffeine coursed through my body. It’s just a week.

I had cleared away work commitments and extra activities, and as I had done years earlier with my own infants, I set the bar low.

“I’ve got nothing to do but hold babies,” I had told their mother the day they came home with us. And it was still true. But as the daily concerns that usually claimed my mental space evaporated, so did my vocabulary.

“The guy who works with pipes in the bathroom called back today,” I told Husband when he returned from work.

He chuckled. “The plumber?”

“Yeah.” I passed a baby to him. “His number’s on the counter.” But by accident, I had scrawled only six digits on the scrap of paper.

Later, the little ones’ mother texted. I’m missing the babies too much. I’m going to get the rest of my business done today, so I can get them back tomorrow.

Tuesday night washed by in a blur of bottles and diapers and beauties in blankets. I might have stayed up all night—or I might have slept for an hour as the sun hovered on the eastern horizon.

On Wednesday morning, I loaded the car and drove our little house guests back home. I slurped their cheeks one last time and then deposited them into their mother’s arms.

Back at our place, the girls and I bustled about the house. We folded up the pack-n-plays, started a load of laundry, lugged out the garbage, and stowed our stash of baby toys. Then I sank into a chair and scrolled through pictures on my cell phone. Toothless smiles and matching dresses with tutus. Mitsy clutching Minnie’s hand during tummy time. And every combination of people in my house—visitors too—grinning while holding the infants. My heart squeezed.

For now, the babies were gone. But give me a good night—or two—of sleep, and I’d happily do it again.

*To learn more about Safe Families for Children, click here.

*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 twins: Part 1

“What’s this on the schedule for tomorrow at one?” Husband asked, scrolling through his phone.

The unusualness of our lives struck me again. Not everyone’s calendar had Pick up babies plugged into it on just any old Thursday.

“Yeah, I meant to tell you. We’re getting babies.” I swiveled the chair away from the computer to face him. “Six-month-old twin girls.”

“Huh.” He nodded a whaddayaknow? as if I had just said I put milk on the grocery list. “Sounds good. For how long?”

“A week?” I always punctuated our Safe Families placement timelines with a question mark. Life happens, after all, and sometimes the moms needed more days.

My mind spun back to the five-month-old twins we had hosted for one night in 2012. We had been raw from lack of sleep the next morning and foggy on who had gotten up in the night with whom and at what time. And that was just one night. But this placement might be different. Maybe these babies would sleep through the night. Or now that our own girls were older and it was still summer vacation, maybe they’d volunteer for a shift or two during the wee hours.

I announced our upcoming placement to Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka. Even at age twelve, Dicka squealed and clapped her hands over her mouth like I had given her a hundred bucks for no reason. The other two smiled and nodded at the mention of twins.

The next day, I picked up the babies. Their mom teared up when she talked of letting them go, but she needed to, she said. She had applications to fill out and lines to wait in that would be too difficult to tackle with “all the babies.” So, we signed the papers that granted us joint custody of the little ones while they were in our care, and she briefed me on their needs and habits.

The babies, Mitsy and Minnie, locked eyes with me, broke out in smiles, and pumped their chubby legs. Once I got them home, the girls scooped them from their car seats, commencing what would turn into a six-day holding fest.

The babies kicked off Thursday night—their first night in our home—with some squawks, but by midnight both were snoozing in separate pack-n-plays—something their mom had requested. “If they sleep together, they’ll just wake each other,” she had said. Minnie woke up once in the night, but Mitsy didn’t make a peep until six. This wouldn’t be so bad, I told myself as I smooched their cheeks on Friday morning and dressed them.

By Friday’s bedtime, however, the babies’ mewling showed me they preferred snuggling in my arms to sleeping alone. And as the hours passed, they seemed to decide some extra snacks in the night would be a fun idea too. But I could feed them until they dozed again and then transfer them to their beds while they slept. And since their schedules were staggered, I could handle them both without calling in reinforcements.

The next day, Dicka held Mitsy and kissed her repeatedly on the nose. “If their mom decides she doesn’t want them, could we adopt them?” she asked me between pecks. 

“She does want them." I moved Minnie up to my shoulder and patted her bottom. “But okay, yeah. Of course we’d adopt them.”

While the rest of my family snored on Saturday night, I got up with one or the other of the babies every forty-five minutes. Husband would agree to help if I woke him, but what was the point? He could sleep through the crying, and I couldn’t. If I nudged him awake, I’d stay awake too, so the extra hands would accomplish nothing.

With the endless night hours stretched out in front of me, I reflected on our time with the babies: their kitchen sink baths that produced mini tsumanis, their smiles and wiggles when the girls reached for them, and Minnie’s relaxed nature contrasted with Mitsy’s spunky personality.

When I got off the night shift the next morning, I clambered for the coffee pot. After a few gulps of the fresh brew, I felt pretty good. I could do this thing for a week. The mother of the babies had kept up the grueling pace for six months. No doubt about it, she was Superwoman, and I intended to tell her so.

On our way out the door on Sunday, one of the little ones spit up on Husband’s white linen shirt. Since his arms were full of babies, I dashed for a clean rag and dabbed at the soaked fabric.

He bunched his lips to one side. “Maybe I should change.”

“You’re fine now,” I said when I had finished.

But I didn’t tell him that for the rest of the day he smelled like a pickle. Because he probably already knew it.

*The pictures below are posted with permission from the babies' mom.

Dicka and the cuties

Husband watching the Olympics

*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.

Infinity

She stood proud, bringing comfort to those she lived to shelter. She intently watched the passersby each day. And like the rest of us, she grew older, but in her world, she was lauded for her age—considered more valuable because of it. Then the infection set in and began to gnaw its way through her system. At first, her sickness wasn’t visible, and her condition worsened without any outward signs. Soon enough, though, her cancer showed, and no doctor in the city could cure her.

One day, men drove up to her house where she stood, now weakened, and performed the dreaded act: They sprayed a belt of orange paint around her, marking her for death.

Efay Imani gazed out the windows of her home, her heart heavy. The jarring orange that circled her friend in the front yard meant only one thing: The grand elm tree must go.

“Do I have to take it all the way down?” she asked the city workers.

Her question was answered with furrowed brows and shrugs. But she didn’t take the death certificate as the final word. Instead, she hired someone to cut the tree mostly down and strip it of its diseased bark. A city worker returned, inspected the tall remaining stump, and pronounced it satisfactory.

Efay longed to inspire the neighborhood by turning the remains of the tree into a sculpture. But of what? A dove? A lotus flower? No, it should be something else. She sat down with pen and paper and drew a new future for her once glorious tree. She shared the plans with her grandson, a graphic designer. He produced a six-foot design, and soon her tree trimmer and his team went to work. During the carving days, neighbors would saunter by, trying to guess what the piece would one day be.

“No, don’t tell me,” said one woman. “I want to be surprised.”

The wood carvers followed Efay’s desires and created an infinity symbol with its graceful curves and movement. When they had finished, they sanded and sealed their work. A gift for the neighborhood. A new purpose after illness. Beauty from brokenness.

One day, I sat at Efay’s table—along with our friend and neighbor Monica—and listened to Efay tell her stories. But her life wasn’t all about the tree—now a sculpture—in her front yard. Eighteen years earlier, Efay had suffered a brain stem stroke, which left her right side numb and her left side weakened. The doctors said a nursing home was her only option. “Whatever is restored to you in one year is all you’ll get,” they had said of her condition.

Her resolve had bolstered her, but life back at home highlighted her limitations; even her garden reminded her of what she couldn’t do anymore. She mourned the person she had been and surrendered her past capabilities. And then one night, the dreams started.

Efay dreamed that someone was massaging her foot, but in a different way than she had ever known. The next day, she hurried to work—where she had practiced massage therapy for the previous six years—and told one of her staff members about her dream. He began massaging her foot using the technique she described. After three days, sensation returned to her foot. She dreamed of the technique again, but this time used on her calf. The dreams continued. In her waking hours, Efay employed the new method until each area of her body numbed by the stroke had regained feeling. Three months later, she could work again, and within three years, she had reclaimed even more use of her body—something the doctors had said was impossible.

Efay used her new technique to help others avoid surgical procedures and heal. And even though some of her clients had been told they would have to live with pain, under her care, she helped put them back together.

“I have an issue with people discarding things because they’re old or have problems.” Efay patted her chest and chuckled. “Because I’m old.”

A life of service after a stroke. A new purpose from something broken. Beauty from a tree stump.

Here is Efay Imani’s website for her therapeutic massage business: www.inside3hands.com

She lives at 4145 James Avenue North in Minneapolis and invites you to visit her sculpture sometime when you’re in the neighborhood. She doesn’t like posing for pictures, though, so here's a photo of our friend Monica with the sculpture instead.

Monica with Efay's sculpture

*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.

Mother of Millions

I first met Becky, an avid gardener, through a north Minneapolis Facebook page. She had enjoyed reading my blog and told me so. And she had lived in the neighborhood her whole life.

“God planted us here too,” she wrote me in a post, and her choice of verb wasn’t lost on me.

Over the following months, Becky sprinkled my Facebook page with encouragement, and I counted her as my friend. She invited me to help myself to her perennials whenever I wanted. I hadn’t met her in person, though, until I showed up unannounced on her front steps one June day in 2015. She came to the screen door, and I introduced myself.  

“Come,” she said, pulling on a floppy hat that paired well with her overalls. “Let’s walk through the garden.”

First, she showed me her husband Ron’s project, an aquaponic garden built with the help of the neighborhood kids. Then we strolled through the flower beds in her back yard. After that, she pointed out two tall poles, spaced about ten feet apart in front of an expanse of grass.

“We string up a painters tarp between them for a screen,” she said, “and then we invite the neighborhood over to watch movies.”

At the end of our visit, Becky sent me off with gifts: peppers, heirloom tomatoes, hostas. When I returned home, I thought about my friend as I patted my plants into the soil of their new home.

Over the next year, Becky’s greetings were often filled with the promise of green things: the news of a plant giveaway in the neighborhood, an invitation to the verdant leftovers after the community gardens had been sated, and offers of beauty from her own back yard paradise. When the bullets flew in the early summer of 2016 and claimed more innocent lives in the neighborhood, my bright outlook wilted. But my friend knew just what to say.

“Come over and get some flowers.”

I always returned from my treks to Becky’s with living things, this time with phlox, obedient plant, columbine, and centaurea montana. Her words echoed in my mind: “Give them a good haircut. All the energy will go to the roots that way.” Grimacing, I did as she had instructed and hacked off the healthy tops of the plants before I sank them into the dirt.

As I watched my plantings flourish, I thought of Becky. Questions about the life she shared with her husband on the Northside cropped up like weeds after a soaking rain. The neighborhood kids played a big part in their lives, and I wanted to know more.

On my next visit, the couple walked me around their property. Ron stopped in front of the aquaponic garden.

“This was built by neighborhood kids,” he said. “And maintained by them too. They come every week to measure the growth of the plants.” He indicated the reservoir’s water. “Thirty koi and sixty rainbow trout fertilize the plants.”

Grapes, cucumbers, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, and other vegetables grew from the structure. He plucked a small plant to show me its roots, then plugged it back into its bed of clay pellets. He pinched off a leaf from the spicy oregano for me to sample.

I learned that Ron worked with students at North High, teaching them aquaponics there too. And because he and Becky worked in urban youth ministries through Youth Resources, I wasn’t the only one who had just showed up on their front steps. They were used to frequent drop-ins.

We meandered into the back yard. The soil was ripped up in one spot, evidence of a building project underway.

“When the north Minneapolis tornado came through, destroying so much, I heard the verse, ‘He prunes those He loves’,” Ron said, and I thought I heard a catch in his voice. “We lost a huge pine tree that used to stand right there. Now we’re building a prayer gazebo in its place. It’ll be for anyone in the neighborhood.”

The summer day was sticky and the temperature, climbing. Before we entered the house, Ron nodded toward a teenage boy, perched on their front porch and writing in a notebook. “He’s measuring the plants right now.”

Inside, we sat around the dining room table, and I listened to their stories. Soon, the boy from the porch entered through the side door and settled into a chair by us. Becky offered him cookies. She and Ron had raised four kids of their own, but how many others had sat at their table over the years? And like the plants they tended so well, how many kids had they nurtured through life?

At the end of our visit, I thanked them and headed toward the door.

“Wait.” Becky motioned for me to follow her. “I can’t let you go empty-handed.” From her kitchen window sill she lifted a small potted plant, its leaves edged with what looked like tiny green flowers. “Have you seen these before?”

I shook my head. “Is it a cactus of some kind?”

“It’s a succulent.” She touched one of the small flowers. “These fall off and plant themselves. It’s called Mother of Millions because of all the babies it drops, I suppose.” She tapped some of the “babies” into a Ziploc bag for me. Each plantlet had roots as thin as hair. “Just put them in a little dirt, and they’ll grow.”

On the drive home, I glanced at the Ziploc bag on the front seat next to me. I had seen pictures of Becky with her children, grandchildren, and kids from the neighborhood. Mother of Millions. The name was perfect for her too.

*Youth Resources exists for the advancement of urban youth and organizations that serve them to reduce illiteracy, poverty, crime, and fatherlessness. You can find information about Ron and Becky McConico’s ministry on Facebook at Youth Resources MN and updates about their prayer gazebo at North MPLS Prayer Gazebo.

*The next neighborhood outdoor movie is “Where Hope Grows”, showing on Sunday, August 7, 2016, 8:00-11:00 p.m., at 2114 Queen Ave. N., Minneapolis. All are welcome.

Becky and Ron McConico

Mother of Millions

*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.

Plums and lasagna

Last year, I wrote about Kay G Wilson’s life: Bullies: Part 1, Bullies: Part 2, and Bullies: Part 3. Here’s the story that came before…

“What should I do for the blog this week?” I plopped onto the bed on August 25, 2015, eyeing Husband as he packed for a work trip. “I want to write about someone in the neighborhood, someone living a life of service.”

He folded a shirt and layered it into his suitcase. “What about Kay G Wilson?”

I thought of the man whose face often peppered the local newspapers. A friend of the police and the black community. A force of good in the midst of violence and tragedy. A peace activist with a bullhorn.

“You’re brilliant.” I headed for my computer, but my optimism was already losing steam. Kay G Wilson was a busy man; it would be a miracle if I could pin him down for an interview.

Through Facebook, I found him. I sent him an introduction and a request to meet. If he could tell me about his work, I said, I’d be grateful. But I understood the life of a peace activist was a busy one. Especially these days, in this neighborhood.

Kay G responded within minutes. An hour later, we met on the northside’s Broadway Pizza, snapping up a corner booth big enough to hold all his stories. Hopefully the server would let us travel some winding roads while keeping our cups filled with hot coffee.

“I’ll tell you the details,” Kay G said, “so your reader can feel the same things, see the same things.”

As he had suggested, I positioned some tissues on the table, just in case. And then he started from the beginning.

The man’s narrative whisked me back to late 1960s Chicago. I followed him through the decades—from foster care into gang life, drugs into homelessness, and darkness into light. He illustrated his stories with laminated newspaper clippings of his work and borrowed a tissue from my pile as he spoke.

Then his eyes lit on a police officer entering the restaurant. “Well, look who’s here.” Beaming, he signaled to the man. “It’s my best friend. I want you to meet him.”

Kay G slid out of the booth and stood as the officer approached our table. They shook hands and then clapped each other on the back. I had seen Detective Friestleben with Kay G in the news at peace events and awards ceremonies. The men chatted for a few minutes, then the officer left us to return to Kay G’s stories of navigating life through bullies and bullets, darkness and danger, with only the Light to guide him.

“‘A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand. But it will not come near you’.” He took a sip of coffee. “That’s my theme verse.”

“It’s a favorite of mine too.” I jotted the reference on my notepad and then sat back for a moment. “Thank you for letting me write your story. Me, a white woman and all that.”

He tilted his head, then looked me straight in the eye. “C’mon, sister. You and me? We share the same color blood.”

The view of Kay G sitting across the table from me blurred. I plucked a tissue from the stack, so I could see again.

His cell phone rang. He picked up and soon a frown clouded his face.

“Okay, I’ll be right there.” He ended the call and looked at me. “Do you want to see what I do every day?”

“Of course.”

“Follow me.” He chugged the rest of his coffee and motioned to our server. “We’re going to my friend Londa’s place.”

We settled our bill, and on our way out of the restaurant, Kay G relayed the details of the phone call to Officer Friestleben who sat in a nearby booth eating his lunch. The man scribbled down the address and said he’d meet up with us soon.

I climbed into my Honda and followed Kay G’s SUV into a north Minneapolis neighborhood not far from my own. We parked in front of a tidy house on a corner. Londa stood on the grass, staring at her home. The sun warmed the day, but she rubbed her arms as if staving off a chill.

“This time, they threw a brick through the window,” she said. She drew a deep breath and pointed at the splintered glass. Then she looked at me. “It wasn’t even a year ago that they shot up the house. Seventeen bullets.”

In August of 2014, Londa’s pregnant daughter’s boyfriend had been accused of playing a part in the murder of another man’s brother. Londa’s house was targeted, the man spraying the house with bullets in the hopes of avenging his brother’s death. But instead of hitting the guy he was after, the bullets blasted through the house and struck Londa’s pregnant daughter, wounding her and the unborn child.

“Now they’re at it again.” The woman paced, her hands on her hips. Her chest stayed high—as if she still held the breath she had taken earlier. “My daughter isn’t even living here anymore. Her boyfriend isn’t either. But they don’t care.”

“So your daughter and her baby—?” I said, fearing the answer.

“They’re okay, thankfully. But now I wanna move.”

Kay G surveyed the house and shook his head. “And this after you got the siding all replaced.”

Londa bit her lip and nodded. She held up a finger for us to stay, then she disappeared inside her home. I expected her to return with photos of the damage or the bill from her new siding, but instead, she came back holding fresh, cold plums. She handed one to Kay G and one to me, the grace of hospitality shining through her hard day. We ate the fruit as she described her fears at night, her worries for her family.

A car stopped in front of Londa’s place, and a woman climbed out. Kay G waved at her, then he turned to me, his voice low. “I’ll tell you her story sometime. It’s really something.”

The new visitor sauntered over and Kay G wrapped her in a hug. She made a joke about lasagna.

He patted his middle. “You’re gonna make me fat if you keep having me over.”

Then a car pulled up to the stop sign on the corner, and the driver nodded to us.

“I can’t believe it.” Kay G nudged me, smiling. “Look at the guy in that car.”

The guy parked his vehicle, slid out, and strode over to us. Kay G shook the man’s hand. I recognized him from one of Kay G’s newspaper clippings. In the picture, the two of them had stood together, grinning. Redemption captured in black and white.

Kay G looped his arm around the young man’s shoulders and introduced us. “This is Marco. He knocked off a convenience store last year. But he did his time, and now he walks with God.”

Marco’s face split into a wide smile. “Yeah, it’s true.”

On that sidewalk in north Minneapolis, the five of us talked. Finally, I glanced at the time. Decades and cities had passed by in one afternoon. And in this new world I had entered within my own neighborhood, everyone knew Kay G Wilson. But the mystery of a peace activist’s life was stripped down to the simple things: old stories and fresh beginnings, a broken window and a shaken friend, and plums and lasagna.

*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.

Firsts

North Minneapolis. Friday, July 8, 11:27 a.m.

A black Chevy Impala pulled up to the intersection of Penn and Lowry. Just then, Melvonte Peterson rolled up in his minivan, two kids inside. The driver of the Impala fired two shots at Peterson’s vehicle—one bullet grazing fifteen-month-old Melia’s leg and the other striking two-year-old Le’Vonte in the chest. Peterson returned fire, hitting the nearby hardware store before he sped off to North Memorial Medical Center.

As I drove east on I-94 on Friday morning, July 15, I remembered the chilling details from the news the week before and gripped the steering wheel like it was one more life slipping away. I watched for the Snelling exit, tension claiming the space between my eyes.

It would be a day of firsts for me: the first funeral I would attend for a stranger, the first for someone who had been murdered, the first for a child.

I arrived at Bethel Christian Fellowship in Saint Paul too easily. I should have circled the block numerous times, at last snagging a parking spot a mile away. Instead, I parked only feet from the front door. A packed sanctuary should have forced me to stand in the back, straining to hear the preacher’s words about the little one. Instead, I had my choice of any seat in the house.

The previous day, three-thousand people had attended the funeral for Philando Castile, a man killed by a police officer on July 6 at a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. But at the service I attended on Friday for Le’Vonte Jones, the two-year-old gunned down on July 8 in north Minneapolis, not even three-hundred mourners made an appearance. I gritted my teeth at the unequal treatment of two humans, now gone.

Did the public consider this an issue of age? Was Le’Vonte worth less because he had enjoyed fewer trips around the sun than Philando? Or did the credentials of a shooter determine the value of a victim’s life? I frowned and clung to my belief that all black lives equally matter.

I made my way down the aisle to the front of the church. A tiny white casket cradled the toddler, stuffed toys propped at his feet. I gazed at the child’s body—so similar to the little boys who had stayed in our home—and wept at violence snatching yet another life from my neighborhood.

To the right of the coffin stood a woman holding a box of tissues. She looked at me, her mouth curving up at the corners. A question mark lit her eyes.

I’m no one, I felt like saying. I’m just here to cry too.

“Bless you,” she whispered as she wrapped me in a hug. “Bless you. Bless you.”

Then I turned toward LeShae, the boy’s mother, who toted fifteen-month-old Melia on her hip. Serene and thin, she spoke to the person ahead of me, her voice a gentle breeze. My gaze drifted to a wound on the baby’s leg—evidence of the other bullet that had ripped through the minivan that day.

“I’m from north Minneapolis.” I said when it was my turn. “I’m so sorry.” My words, backed by gold, sounded like tin.

“Thank you.” She circled an arm around me, and I hugged her back, taking care not to crush her. 

I left the grieving mother to the next mourner and strode toward the back of the church to find a seat. A woman I had met at Birdell Beeks’ vigil a month earlier settled into the chair next to mine.

She pointed her chin toward LeShae. “She had another baby—a girl—just one week before Le’Vonte died.”

I blew out a breath. One week, life; the next week, death. “Where’s the dad?” I asked.

The woman extracted a tissue from her purse. “He was arrested this morning in connection with the shooting.”

The sun shone through the church windows, and I shivered. Instead of filling the sanctuary with warmth, the light exposed everything: dead toddler, injured baby, arrested father, hurting mother.

Hopelessness crept up my throat.

The service began. A soloist sang “Soon and Very Soon”, and I clapped along with the congregation, because I wanted to feel it too. Two women circulated the sanctuary with boxes of tissues. Then the preacher stood and delivered a message. He spoke of the boy, stolen away by the violence that too often raged through the streets of north Minneapolis.

Then he held out his own past for all of us to see.

“I was a shooter too. But God transformed me.” The pastor thumped his chest with a fist. “You see, He gave me a new heart.”

My friend leaned toward me. “He shot a cop,” she whispered. Then she clutched my arm, her eyes shining. “But the cop forgave him.”

In the days following Le’Vonte’s funeral, I sifted through the details, recalling the meager number of mourners gathered for a horrid reason. Was there any good in any of it? But then I remembered the story of a man—once a shooter—now forgiven, redeemed, transformed.

And a stream of light pierced the darkness of our times. Hope had broken through 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.

Enough

One man killed at a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. Five men slain in Dallas. One toddler murdered in north Minneapolis.

And even more losses lit up the map. The nation’s sadness wasn’t monochromatic; it came in every color. An abundance of voices on the news, in social media, and on the streets poured into the confusion, deafening the country. The heaviness—the division—roiled my stomach. What could be done?

What could I do?

I stumbled on some internet articles addressing the racial issues of the day. The writers said the situation was complex, and since I was white and privileged, I would do well to contemplate social constructs and my place within them, because my deference toward people of other races was too short to span the divide.

Discouragement draped itself around my shoulders.

Later in the week, Husband told me about an article he had read.

“When the Bible says in the future it will be ‘nation against nation’, the original language for ‘nation’ is ‘ethnos’. It’s where we get the word ‘ethnic’. So, it really means ‘ethnicity against ethnicity’. Just like we see happening right now.”

“That’s the reality.” I chewed my lip.

“Yeah.”

“But we’re still called to love and live at peace with everyone, no matter what.”

Husband nodded, his eyes filling.

On Sunday, Pastor addressed the fissures in our nation.

“When the tribe of Benjamin was suffering, the other tribes gathered and asked, ‘What shall we do?’ That has to be our question too. We need to abandon ourselves and rise up when one of our tribes is hurting.”

I jotted notes. His points brimmed with grace, truth. A humble word in turbulent times.

But how did all this translate to our lives? What exactly could we do? And would it be enough?

The next day on my return home from errands, I pulled the car into our driveway and hopped out. But before Flicka and I could shut the vehicle's doors, two of the neighbors’ pit bulls bumbled about our feet, wagging their whole bodies. One of them jumped into the front seat.

“She’s so cute I can’t stand it,” Flicka said, shooing the animal out of our car.

The dogs’ tails whipped my shins; exuberance wrapped in fur. “Let’s get these two back into their yard.” I pointed to the place across the alley.

“I’m dying here, they’re so adorable,” my girl said. “Just a hypothetical: If the owners don’t want them, could we keep these guys?”

I smiled, shaking my head. “I wish.”

We wrangled the wiggly ones back onto their property. I assessed the fence, but couldn’t find their exit point.

A woman emerged from the back door of the house. “They’re escape artists, those two. Sorry about that.”

I laughed. “They’re sweet.”

“Too sweet.” The woman chuckled. “I’m scared they’ll get themselves stolen. They’d go with anyone.”  

We exchanged names, and I learned Tiana had moved in ten months earlier.

“I can’t believe I haven’t met you before this,” I said.

“I work all the time.” Tiana stepped from her yard into the alley, clasping the gate behind her. Her dogs were two blurs as they chased each other around the yard. We chatted about the neighborhood. She voiced her concerns about the alley kids—the ones who had frequented our driveway to play basketball. She had reached out to them one day and beaded five-year-old Laya’s hair. The little girl had soaked in the attention as if her life depended on it.

“She didn’t know her birthday,” the woman said, her eyebrows coming together.

I sighed. “I feel for those kids.”

Then Tiana mentioned her own children—almost all grown up. “My boys are good, quiet—not messed up in drugs or gangs—but they better watch themselves, I tell them, because they look the part.”

“I’m sorry it’s like that.”

As we visited, I thought again about the discouraging articles I had read earlier in the week. In theory, maybe they were true. But the writers had left out the flesh and blood part—the heartbeat of connection and the pulsing warmth of interactions with neighbors just across the alley.  

And right then I knew that by ourselves, we didn’t have the power to make a sweeping difference for our own or any other race. But we could do the simple, small things in front of us—herding pit bulls or beading hair—and with love, it was enough to get started.

*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 storm

“Whoa, it’s really coming down out there,” I said to my friend Angel who sat across the table from me at a Caribou in New Hope. I nodded toward the window. The skies had released a torrent that July day, and the winds battered the coffee shop’s windows.

She turned around in her seat to look. “Oh no! I left my car windows open!”

Angel zipped outside to rescue her auto upholstery. That rain… I frowned and checked my cell phone. 5:45 p.m. We had already whiled away a nice slice of time together. In just under three caffeinated hours, we had determined which way our country should go, pinpointed the problems with teenagers today, and discussed solutions for it all. We had even carved out enough time for some vanity, bemoaning the evidence of the years on our faces.

As I watched Angel swaying in the wind and struggling to open her car door, I remembered I had children and that they needed things from me—and how bad would this storm get anyway?—so I bolted from the coffee shop, hacking twenty minutes off our Minnesota goodbye.

“I gotta go!” I hollered to Angel through the squall.

My friend may have answered me, but the driving rain and gale-force winds swallowed her response. Head down, I plunged through the elements, pointed toward my car. I unlocked it, jumped inside, and wrestled the wind for possession of the door. After I won the match, I caught my breath and checked my phone. Weather alerts lit up the screen: 60-80 mph winds. Tornado watch. Flash flood warning.

First, I called Flicka who was hanging out with a friend in Columbia Heights. The two girls had just finished thrift shopping and were riding back on a bus to her friend’s place. It was raining, but no big deal, she assured me. “Get yourself there and stay,” I said.

Next, I phoned Ricka. Home alone, she hadn’t noticed the weather until I called. But now that I had mentioned it, it looked to her like the wind had ripped a piece of the house’s trim loose, and it dangled from the eaves. Oh, and the sky was green too. “Hightail it to the basement,” I said.

Finally, I texted Dicka’s chauffeur for the day, her friend’s mom, who responded with a picture of the girls in front of the Snoopy fountain at Valley Fair, grey skies in the background. But soon after, she sent another text: “Crazy winds!! Heading out now!”

More weather alerts bleeped on my phone. The gusts rocked the car and whipped the watery surface of the parking lot into waves. I called Angel. She answered, breathless.

“You’re not driving in this, are you, Tam-Tam?”

“I’m still in the parking lot, waiting it out in the car.” The wind pummeled the vehicle. What would it take to blow over a parked SUV? “Where are you?”

“In Caribou again, soaked to the bone. Come back inside. They’re giving out towels and free coffee now.”

I braced myself for the downpour. “On my way.”

The rain bested my bathroom shower at home in both volume and pressure. And on my dash back to the coffee shop, I hydroplaned on my flip-flops. Skidding to the door, I pulled the handle, but it was locked. Within a second, an employee let me in. Angel huddled nearby, her teeth chattering and her hair limp from the deluge.

“They locked the door?” I asked, plucking my wet shirt away from my skin. The air conditioning blasted me, and I started shaking.

“They had to.” Angel offered me a towel. “The wind was ripping it open.”

An employee handed me a coffee. “On the house.”

Angel raised her cup in the air and scanned the room. “Wet t-shirt contest anyone?”

I snickered. “I can just picture us middle-aged ladies now.”

Fake flames danced in the electric fireplace in the center of the room. Angel and I grabbed chairs and pulled close to the warmth. Just then, one of the employees sprinted outside and chased after the wrought iron tables and chairs that tumbled across the parking lot all the way to Walgreens, which was as black as the complimentary brew in my cup. All the other businesses around the Caribou were dark too, along with the traffic lights.

“At least the electricity didn’t go out here,” I said.

“That’s good, but what’s not good is this.” Angel pointed to her hair. “It’s a frizz fest. There goes the vanity.”

Toasting our fronts and backs by the fireplace, Angel and I texted our people. We couldn’t get home to them yet, but they would make it without us. We had more coffee to drink and bigger world problems to solve.

*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 calling: Part 2

During a weeding session one day, the truth came to me, vivid as the astilbe in my garden, fully magenta now and shooting its brilliant arrows. Like the flower, it was striking, bold. The revelation? The calling had its costs—for everyone.

I already knew the calling, the basketball hoop for the neighborhood kids, had cost our family. Young ones were drawn to our hoop, and their play often unraveled into small acts of vandalism on our property. I had filed it away as part of the inner-city price for doing a good thing. But for the first time, I thought of the expense for those around us.

Dallas had mentioned the basketballs that flew into his yard. He understood; he’d been young once. Passing in through his back gate, the neighborhood kids had retrieved them, bulldozed through his flowers, catapulted over our shared cinder block wall, buzzed through our back yard, and exited through our gate to resume their game. Dallas had stated the facts without complaining, and I had absorbed them without judgment.

Glenda had talked about the balls zinging into her yard too. No problem, she had said. She only wished the kids would remember to shut the gate. And move aside when they saw her trying to pull her car into her garage. She had shrugged—no complaining—and I had listened without drawing a conclusion.

But in our determination to do the right thing—for better or worse—we had made life more difficult for the adults around us. Husband and I agreed to put our home’s magnet up for sale. From Craig’s List it came, to Craig’s List it shall return, I thought.

“We’re going to let the basketball hoop go,” I told the neighbors. “It’s gotten out of hand.”

They wouldn’t have suggested the ousting of The Main Attraction on the Block, but they admitted they were relieved. “That first group of kids was the best. Maybe the hoop was meant for them,” one of them said.

I recalled the good years. Neighborhood teenagers doing layups on hot summer nights, Husband and I strolling outside to ask their names if they were new. When they trusted us, the teens told us about their lives—about getting jobs or being fired; about what positions they played in certain sports or about how they had been suspended from school. We had listened to them, and they had listened back.

After we had decided the hoop would leave our family but before it was gone, a new kid showed up at our door. His name was Marvell, he said, and could one of our girls come outside?

“The other kids won’t play with me.” The little boy’s face drooped.

I motioned to Ricka, the first of my girls to enter my field of vision. She tilted her head and mouthed Mo-om!, but I widened my eyes, so she followed the kid to the driveway.

From the kitchen window, I watched them play. A fourteen-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy. I nibbled my lower lip, and my heart twisted.

A day later, a man from the suburbs came to buy our basketball hoop. After he drove away, I ignored the bare spot on our driveway, my stomach jumping, wondering if we had done the right thing after all.

Later that evening came a knock at the front door. Marvell.

“Where’d the hoop go?” he asked.

Husband explained. The kid’s expression sagged. That lonely, hangdog look again. He turned away and slumped down the front steps. Minutes later, we saw him ripping around our front yard, barreling through our hostas, tossing his ball into the air and smacking it against the house.

Husband and I sauntered outside to watch him.

“Where are your parents, Marvell?” Husband said.

“In Chicago.” The boy shot his basketball into our rain barrel. “I’m staying with Granny.”

My man rested his forearms on our front steps’ railing. “What do they do in Chicago?”

“My dad makes toys. My mom exercises.” He unrolled our garden hose, whipped it over his head like a lasso, and then cranked the spigot on.

Husband showed Marvell how to turn it off and coil up the hose again, but the kid ran away.

The next day, I sat on our porch, sipping tea and thinking about the first group of kids we had met six years earlier because of the hoop: Keyondra, Peanut, Armani, Antoine. I always grinned when I thought of Keyondra, her smile never far from the surface even though she tried to hide it.

Just then, an SUV pulled up in front of our house. A woman emerged and made her way to my front steps. Donna, Keyondra’s mother, from down the alley. What were the chances?

I didn’t tell her I had just been thinking about her kid—and the others—who were never far from my mind. Instead, I gave her a hug.

“I see you got rid of the basketball hoop,” she said.

“Yeah, it had gotten hard.” I underscored my statement with a nod.

“It’s good you let it go.” She plugged her hands into her hips and bobbed her head. “Those kids came from all over. Got into all kinds of trouble in the alley on their way to your place.”

“Oh no.”

She told me about some of our basketball players vandalizing the bus she drove for work, which was parked in her driveway. They had broken into it numerous times, messed with all the knobs inside, and then finally rammed a steel rod through one of its wheels.

“I’m sorry to hear this.” I frowned at the big picture. I had only watched the show on the stage—not what was going on behind the curtains. “I wish you had said something.”

“No, no.” She waved away my statement like a pesky fly. Then came that smile that belonged more to her eyes than her mouth. “We saw what you were trying to do for those kids.”

The acts of mischief on our property and in the alley disappeared along with the basketball hoop, but the blank space on the driveway hadn’t changed anything inside of us. The needs around us hadn’t changed either. I opened my ears to The Next Thing, a new calling.

And in our neighborhood, it would surely come.

Marvell and Ricka.

*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 calling: Part 1

“Do you have gum?” Five-year-old Laya hooked her fingers on our chain-link gate.

“No, I don’t.” I hauled a bag of garbage past her and the rest of the kids—nine of them in all—playing basketball on our driveway. I dropped the trash into its bin in the alley and then passed back through the group again, asking them about their lives during the wintry months that had separated us.

Laya caught my hand and tugged it. “Do you have gum?”

I chuckled. “I still don’t, hon.”

“Oh.” She dropped my hand and patted her belly, poking out from under her too-small shirt. She gazed at the basketball game again.

The early spring sunshine had melted the snow from our driveway and also driven the coats off the kids, but they still clumped around in winter boots.

I retreated into the house, but thoughts of the alley kids snagged my focus away from work. How had the little ones filled their time all winter? What did they do when they couldn’t play basketball?

Spring break soon arrived, and the alley kids lived on our driveway. The basketball games held their fascination for a while, but soon I saw piles of garbage, abandoned toys and clothing, and broken bricks strewn everywhere. I put away my work and headed outside with some books.

I dragged a lawn chair to the driveway. “Why are the bricks broken?”

“It wasn’t us,” said the ten-year-old boy. “Some other kids did it.”

“Let’s pick them up. The garbage too.” The littlest ones scurried to do what I had said. “Do you know why littering is bad?”

A few of the kids stared at me, mouths agape, and shook their heads. One little girl waved her hand in the air. “I know!”

I pointed at her. “Go ahead.”

“It kills the animals.”

I gave her a verbal gold star and explained how littering is unkind to nature, ourselves, and others. But while I talked, the kids’ eyes glazed over, and I imagined I was tucking my message inside a tiny bottle and tossing it into a tsunami.

When the trash was gone and the bricks were piled up again, I sat in the lawn chair, opened a book, and began to read aloud. A few of the boys paused from their game to listen, then they resumed shooting baskets. Two of the girls—ages seven and nine—pressed in against my legs.

“Can I read now?” the nine-year-old asked.

Even though a speech impediment clouded her delivery, she breezed through the stories of a very hungry caterpillar, a mouse’s craving for milk with his cookie, and Noah’s nautical adventures.

“That last one makes me think of water,” said the seven-year-old. “In a glass.”

I held in a smile. “Are you thirsty?”

She nodded, so I went inside the house and returned with a pitcher and some Dixie cups.

I handed out the usual pick-up-the-garbage reminder, but it fluttered away on the wind. When the kids were satisfied, they crumpled their cups, dropped them on the ground, and scampered home.

Months passed—months filled with deserted items of clothing and toys, garbage, and more broken landscaping blocks in our driveway. We reminded the kids they were welcome to play at our place if they were considerate, Husband mentioned the problem to the adults in the rental property, the grown-ups yelled at their children, we oversaw the clean-up, and the cycle repeated.

“I really miss the group of kids who’d come to play when we first got the hoop,” I told Husband one day.

“Yeah. They were always respectful.”

I sighed. “So, what do we do about this bunch?”

“Keep doing what we’re doing, I guess.” He shrugged. “Eventually, they’ll learn.”

One day, we returned home by way of the alley. The usual nine kids played at our place, but as we neared our garage, they scattered. Our driveway, speckled with shards of broken mirror, glittered in the sunlight.

“Oh no,” I said. “This is bad.”

I hopped out of the car and assessed the damage. The pavement was a sea of shattered glass. Glenda’s driveway was littered with splinters too, and so was the alley—in both directions. Blood was smeared along the side of our garage. Then I saw the source: a couple of houses away, someone had propped two large mirrors against a garage for garbage day. One of them was broken in half.

Husband strode over to the rental property. I pulled out several brooms. Soon, he was back, followed by a woman I had never seen before. The pack of kids trailed her.

“Look at this mess!” she screamed at them. “Are you kidding me?”

Without a word, the kids watched her sweep debris into a dustpan. Husband handed the oldest boy our big shop broom, and the kid shoved it around with one hand. After a few minutes, the woman disappeared with the little ones. The boy stayed behind with us.

“You know we want you guys to play here,” Husband said to him. “But you can’t be doing stuff like this.”

The boy nodded and dragged his feet and the broom back and forth, missing large swaths of glass. Husband swept too, and I scrubbed away the blood.

I thought of the basketball hoop and all the good it had delivered before the hard years began. I missed the original four—Keyondra, Antoine, Armani, and Peanut—all done with high school now, except for Peanut.

For the first time in years, questions formed: Was the basketball hoop making a difference anymore? Or had our outreach tool grown obsolete?

The next day, I mentioned my thoughts to Flicka and Ricka, but the words caught in my throat like a piece of apple too big to swallow.

“Maybe it was only meant for that first group of kids, Mom,” Flicka said.

“Maybe it’s time to be done,” said Ricka.

How could we impact the lives of the little ones in the neighborhood without the basketball hoop? I had believed it was our calling—our gift to the kids around us. But did it mean more to me than to them now?

A good thing at the beginning isn’t always a good thing forever. I needed to talk with Husband and the neighbors. Maybe it was time to surrender.

*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 car ride

Fourteen years ago, when episodes of “Veggie Tales”, sippy cups of apple juice, orchestrated naps, and jaunts to the park defined our days, I shook up the summer schedule and planned a visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Back then, we only had Flicka and Ricka, and they were both in diapers, but Husband would join me on the trip this time, and the thought of the extra help eased the tension from my neck.

When my man returned home from work the day of our departure, we buckled the babies into their car seats and set out on the six-hour trek to northern Minnesota. But only three hours in, the girls started fussing.

“I think they’re getting tired of sitting,” I said.

Husband adjusted the radio and wrinkled his nose. “Smells like someone needs a new diaper.”

I glanced into the back and sniffed. “I think you’re right. Let’s stop soon.”

The car gobbled up the miles as we scanned the landscape for a rest stop. The stench increased, and the girls’ squawks became strident. I reached back to play with their toes, but when Ricka pumped her legs, I saw something dark seep from her diaper.

I gasped and turned to Husband. “You’ve gotta pull over right now.”

He shot me a look. “Why?”

“Apparently she’s not feeling well.” I described the scene.

He flipped on the blinker and swerved onto an exit for Fergus Falls. After surveying the options just off the ramp, he careened into the parking lot of a Walmart.  

As soon as Husband threw the vehicle into park, I bailed and yanked open the back door on Ricka’s side. He turned off the ignition, hopped out, and opened the other door to check on Flicka. I unclasped Ricka and lifted her out, holding her at arm’s length. Her car seat was a soupy mess.  

“Uh oh.” The sight triggered my gag reflex. “I’m gonna need some help.”

Husband peeked into Flicka’s diaper. “Whoa. Same thing here.” He unbuckled her, and his face contorted. “It’s bad.”

As he pulled her out, sickness poured from her diaper too.

Frantic, I darted a look around the car, taking inventory. An old bath towel, some wet wipes, a battered roll of paper towels shoved under a seat—a pittance when what we really needed was a bathtub. Or a garden hose.

“Where to start?” I looked from the car seats to the girls—and back again.

Husband bunched his lips to one side. “Let’s lay them on the ground and clean them up.”

“Okay.”

With Ricka in one arm, I tossed the diaper bag onto the pavement and then grabbed the towel and spread it on the parking lot’s asphalt. Only a few cars were parked nearby, so thankfully, we wouldn’t perform for a big audience. Daylight flirted with the encroaching darkness, though; dusk was upon us, so we would need to make quick work of the mess while we could still see.  

I set Ricka on the towel, and Husband planted Flicka next to her. The girls tried to squirm away. Then I noticed Husband’s shirt, smeared from the rescue effort, and I gagged again.

“Come on.” He cocked his head and skewered me with a look. “Pull it together.”

I coughed and bit my lip. “I’m trying.”

I flipped open the lid of wet wipes and jerked out a string of seven. Was that all we had left? I let out a bitter laugh; our battle appeared as fruitful as sopping up the sea with a Kleenex.

Husband lapsed into commander mode. “You go in and buy more wipes. I’ll try to keep these two from rolling around in it. Go.”

I nodded, jumping to my feet. Stumbling into the store, I forced myself to think about the Twinkies on display inside the front door instead of the hopeless filth I had just deserted. I took a deep breath, jogged to the baby department, scooped up a load of wipes and some hand sanitizer, and hurtled through the checkout line, tossing my debit card at the cashier.

In the dim light outside, Husband and I hurried to wipe down the girls. I rifled through their bags for clean clothes and new diapers in a race against time and muck.  

An older woman approached. Her face twisted into a smile, and she snorted. “Been there, done that,” she said as she clipped by us. I heard one more chuckle before she disappeared inside the store.

Husband and I looked at each other. He shook his head.

“Real nice, lady,” I muttered.

At last we climbed back into the car and chugged onward. The hours passed, the little ones slept, and the long miles smoothed away our parking lot trauma. And as soon as we arrived at our destination, I made a beeline for the laundry room. Husband accompanied me to lend a hand, and together—in the bag of yuck—we found what we had been missing earlier.

Wadded up in that ball of soiled laundry were our senses of humor, and we were happy to see them 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.

Birdell and Bruce: Part 2

*Last week, Birdell’s name was spelled two different ways in various places online. This week, I have corrected the spelling to match what’s stated in her obituary.

Five days after Birdell Beeks was killed, Husband and I attended her vigil. We gathered with many others at the corner of 21st and Penn—the location of the woman’s death. One by one, residents of the neighborhood strode up to the microphone.

“They used to be throwing footballs,” one man said. “Now they’re throwing bullets, and you can’t take that back.”

“We’re going to put the ‘neighbor’ back in the ‘hood’,” said another man. The crowd cheered.

A marching band and dancers—all kids from the neighborhood—performed for us. The range of instruments reminded me of our music teacher Bruce Jackson, gone just the day before. He had played piano, guitar, mandolin, accordion, harmonica, banjo, and dobro, and they had all been his favorites—just like the Northside kids he had served.

We clasped hands with neighbors we hadn’t met before and formed a circle big enough to hold all our colors, ages, and backgrounds. Then more people wandered into our assembly and broke through the ring to grab onto our hands too, making us even stronger. And we prayed.

The recent shootings in our part of town—and Birdell Beeks’ and Bruce Jackson’s deaths—had blown up my positivity, blasting the bits—along with the shell casings—into the streets. But the vigil dispelled the dark cloud dangling over me.

Some days later, I heard a woman had been shot in the head as she sat in a beauty salon on Broadway. Then a guy on a north Minneapolis Facebook page wrote about a new incident: More gunshots… at least three. This neighborhood is a cocktail of awesome mixed with random terror. And on a different day, I learned four more people were injured when a fight erupted in gunfire.

The summer was shaping up to be the bloodiest we had known in all our years on the Northside. Would the violence ever end? Should we pack up our belongings and move away? My desire to raise our girls among diversity and poverty hadn’t changed, though, so I again preached the old three-part sermon to myself: We’re not too good for north Minneapolis; it’s okay to be uncomfortable; this life isn’t about us.

But one night, as gunshots rang out, my thoughts again tried to own me. Once more, I took the slimy things captive, wrangling them back into their box. And in those dark hours, I knew The Great Realtor who had chosen our home for us fourteen years earlier hadn’t made a mistake.  

A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you.

Was it true? Would we live in safety if we stayed? Had my self-preservation stomped out my trust in the One who had moved us there in the first place?

The next day, I received messages from several women who knew our Realtor too.

“I see His hand of protection lying over your family.” “He’s placed you there, and He’ll protect you.” “Although He may not ask you to stay, you don’t want to leave until He says so.” “You are loved, and you are covered.”

This time, I held onto the truth with everything in me. It didn’t matter how it appeared on the news or the way it sounded when explosions split the night air. We lived in the safest place in the world, and no human could make us go.

North Minneapolis peace activist (and friend) Kay G Wilson and me at Birdell Beeks' vigil.

*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.