Twenty-One Things from Twenty Years

I started to type up how we began homeschooling, which started me on how we ended up with a family with a higher-than-average number of children, which took me down the path of finding my faith and trusting God with my marriage and children.

All of that took me far away from the list I started out to make when I began this piece—I am such a nerd for a good list—so I’ve reigned myself in to focus on just the list.

The storyteller in me wants to weave it all into one, and there may be some of that—okay, maybe a lot of that—but I’ll save the story behind the “Why” we started on the wild and crazy road of homeschooling for another evening of writing, maybe to remind myself when I am old and foggy in the memories. It is beautiful. And I suspect your reasons for homeschooling may be too, because after all, why else would we even consider homeschooling if it weren’t for children? Children are indeed beautiful, and a life’s work all on their own.

I have been a homeschooling mom for twenty years, beginning with my firstborn in preschool, scheduling my days with him rigidly and to the 15-minute mark, (with a two-year old and an infant in the house, mind you) expecting him to read at the age of four, if not five, and I enrolled him as a Kindergarten homeschooler just as soon as I could, at the age of five.

I ended my homeschooling mom era last Friday, wrapping up with my fourth-born, who somehow, I realized last fall, was a senior, and who I don’t think I ever really officially taught how to read. I am positive I never taught him the multiplication tables, this kid who spent the majority of his childhood barefoot (and until the age of six, bare-bottomed) out in the woods, playing with tools and building things with sticks and watching movies and reading books I never would have let the firstborn take in at his age. Ironically, he’s my most well-read, most history-based, scientifically inclined kid out of all four, even those I thought I was educating “by the book.”

See the swing there? That’s because:

1-Homeschooling teaches the teacher as much as it teaches the student. When I learned how to relax, (truthfully, it was out of necessity for me rather than any one epiphany) I learned the JOY in just letting my kids be kids and learn from things like building and working and spending time away from workbooks, learning fractions by baking cookies and using a tape measure, and learning from each other. I wish that when the baby exits the mom’s body this lesson would come along, right after the umbilical cord and placenta. This was the biggest lesson for me: I learn from teaching them just as much as they learn from me teaching them. And as I learn, I relax and am more confident, I let the sibling relationships develop, I let them explore with their minds the things that ignite their passions…all of which helps bring out their best.

2-Everything is a lesson, even when it’s not in the lesson plan. A dear friend of mine, a mama just a few steps ahead on the homeschooling sidewalk asked me once when I was worried about making sure my students got their 180 days of education in each year:

“Do they quit learning on Saturdays?”

I never forgot that, and I began looking for the lessons they learned as we stacked three layers of 15 bales of hay on an 8×12 flatbed trailer in July, and how many bales we could add if we brought an extra pickup and horse trailer along. We had it down to a science, including the bucking and stacking and ratchet-strap part of tying them down for the hour-long trip home, and imagine what it did to our math when a friend offered up their huge flatbed trailer that could easily haul 200 bales!

How many bales for a whole winter did we need for a pony, two miniature horses, and a small herd of goats? And one farther, what was the winter going to be like this year and how many cold snaps do we need to plan for to get us through until next July? How many more bales will we need now that little sister’s flock of sheep has been added to the farm?

See how that math comes into play? All in the middle of July.

They didn’t quit learning on Saturdays, or in June, or July, or August, or when we’d opt to take a day off to read Black Beauty around the campfire because the snow was finally melting and after a long Alaska winter we just wanted to be outside, and the book was so engrossing we just ended our school year on April 24th so we could finish the story and learn how to build fires and break down trees that had fallen in the windstorm back in November, and so we just burned the brush and read the book, and did you know that Black Beauty is one of the best-selling novels of all time and that Anna Sewell wrote it from her bed where she spent her last years, and that she died just five months after it was published? Or that it was written from the perspective of a horse who dealt with abuse and ways of training no longer in use today because that book highlighted ways of animal treatment that were wrong, and that horsemanship has been changed because of it and also that writing from an animal’s perspective while using human feelings and emotions is called anthropomorphism?

Those are the lessons you all learn when you’re not worried about being tied to the lesson plan.

And I have four adults now who know how to buck the hay and load the trailer and tie it all down and haul it back to the farm or through the mountains, and all I ever had to do was drive the truck slowly through the hayfield and read to them and make sure good music was on loud and the lemonade was cold, and that everyone had at least one glove to keep both their hands from getting blistered.

They know a good book when they read one, and they can write from an animal’s perspective, but more importantly, they know what their animals need because they fed them and cared for them and read books about them and used their hands over the course of each of those animal’s lives, and their deaths too.

Those lessons happened on school days, and Saturdays, and summer days, and all the days in between. The lessons are there, no matter what day it is, and when we let the lessons happen and talk about it a bit and build it into their lives, you may not be able to write it down on paper, but you’re teaching them. Rather, I should say, they’re learning. And those are, in my opinion, the most important lessons they’ll ever have.

3-Make a schedule but be prepared to pivot. For all of the above reasons, I have learned that a schedule is a sketch of what you’d like it to look like. I tried the 15-minute break down, then very soon after tried half-hour-segments, then finally realized what worked for us was Bible and Chapter Book over breakfast while their mouths were busy and their ears were open. After we cleared the table, we followed with Math and Language Arts, and then a little read time for History and Science, which led to lunch, followed by maybe another quick chapter, then a quiet time of independent reading or listening to an audio book, with afternoons going to an art project or science experiment or cooking and cleaning before dinner.

That was what fit for us. I learned to make a sketch of a schedule and I’d try to follow the flow each day, but I learned quickly to not be a slave to it, and to be prepared to pivot because there might be bigger learning than the lesson I had planned, like when a farm friend calls because she’s out of town and her neighbor called, telling her one of her cows had hooves of a calf hanging out, and you have your whole crew packed up in seconds, and five minutes later, your pre-teen is pulling a healthy calf, making sure mom and baby are bonded, and you’re watching it all unfold and you’ll never forget that moment because everything your boy learned from books he did with his hands, and if you’d made your family a slave to the schedule, you would have missed that test.

Your schedule is the rough draft, always demanding additions, deletions, editing, and sometimes even, a whole new direction. Be okay pivoting; in fact, embrace the pivot, it’s all part of the big picture!

4-Learn how to outsource. Years back when sharing with an acquaintance how I hated math and barely passed it in high school, preferring language and writing the entirety of my schooling years, I’ll never forget how she scoffed and asked how I considered myself a homeschooling mother. I was far enough down the homeschooling road then to know that even though her comment pricked my insecurities and made me doubt myself momentarily, a degree or specialized area of study—or even being adept at math— wasn’t necessary for me to be a successful homeschool mom. That is one of those misconceptions that falls into the category of the socialization discussion (don’t get me started on socialization, and don’t you worry about it either!). Homeschool parents don’t have to be teachers or experts in order to teach their children.

Had I thought of it then, or should she ask me now, I’d respond by reminding her that starting in junior high, I had seven different teachers over the course of each day, one for each subject. And that in elementary school, we were walked off to different classrooms for music, PE, and even art.

Homeschooling is no different. Homeschool parents are just the ones facilitating the lessons and where they’d like their students to learn. The beauty of homeschool is that this outsourcing can look a million different ways. Local co-ops, tutors, art shops, college classes, 4-H clubs, scouting groups, youth groups, local sports teams or musical groups, work studies, clubs at the library…the list goes on as to where a homeschool parent can obtain lessons and skills (and socialization!) outside of the instruction that happens at home.

Our outside lessons came from scouts, 4-H, youth group at church, online programs for homeschoolers, classes at a local private school, music lessons, and eventually, dual enrollment in classes at the local community college. I taught my children the basics of math, refreshing my own skills right along with them, and over the years, book math was supplemented with uncountable mathematical life lessons like baking, counting actual money, giving them dollars and a budget and a shopping list, teaching them how to write checks and maintain a bank account, how to run a tape measure, scales, and calculate mileage on maps, in vehicles, in planes, and on and on. Their Algebra began in 9th grade when I outsourced it to a local math teacher, and it continued on into college when they started classes there in 11th grade. I didn’t need to be adept at it. I just knew where to find a class for them to learn it.

I am proud to have been a homeschool mom, even though I didn’t know it all, and even though I’m not good at math. As a homeschool parent, we don’t have to know it all, we just have to learn where to find it. Practice saying this: “I outsource!”

5-Use your partner! If you have a partner in homeschooling, use him/her to their greatest strength! My husband left logistics and details of the homeschool to me, but he was very much involved, more than he realizes, I’m sure. While at first, his role was to worry—worry when one of them placed low on standardized testing in math in the early years even as they placed high in reading and science; worry when his wife decided to end the school year on April 24 one year, saying she was tired and burnt out and so were the kids and they were just going to sit around the campfire and read Black Beauty for the rest of the spring; worry when I’d get stressed or overwhelmed; or when we’d approach a season in which I felt like it was all crashing in on me.

As a couple, we were learning too, and it didn’t take long before I realized it didn’t all fall on my shoulders, even as the parent who stayed home with the kids. We were in it together, and my husband had amazing skill to bring to the table when it came to the education of our kids, and that it wasn’t a far reach at all for it to be part of our homeschool, because it was what he was already teaching them as their daddy.

Building projects were Daddy’s wheelhouse. Nature and outdoor survival…that was all on Dad. Lifting huge weights and learning how to use your body to move mountains? Dad’s on it. Driver’s Ed? You KNOW Dad’s got more patience and you’ll live longer with him in the passenger seat than you ever would with Mom over there.

Those are some very concrete lesson areas where our family KNEW Dad would be taking the wheel. But there are so many other hundreds of ways in which I relied on my husband to be the heavy hitter in teaching our kids, even as he worked 84-hour weeks in the oilfield. There were so many micro-lessons too, that raised them into the adults they are, too many to list, really: how to buck hay with a strong back and stack it neatly and safely on a trailer, securing it all and driving it across miles to unload it into the barn in a way that’d allow it to dry without combusting and starting a fire. Or how to check the oil on a vehicle, or diagnose engine troubles, or when doing a rebuild, how to pull an engine, do an overhaul, and replace it in order to have a rig that purrs like a kitten. Or how to find the best deal for the dollar you’ve worked so hard for. Or how to fell trees or start a fire or cook a meal that will fill a table full of hungry kids when their mama is too exhausted to think of what to feed them.

My husband taught our children so many life skills I never could have, all squished around the hours I had with them around the table and desks and couches. I wouldn’t bother to list out the weights on paper, but if we ever did, I know it’d be a close run on which of our lessons were most valuable. I taught them how to count and how to read and how vinegar and baking soda makes a volcano, and how to recognize good literature and write it too, but he taught them how to be a hard worker and how to give a proper handshake and how to love a woman in all seasons of life and how to provide for your family and how to serve with your strength, even when you don’t feel like it.

Your partner brings skills to your homeschool that the two of you may not even realize they are bringing; it is up to you to rely on those strengths and utilize them to the highest degree, because those are the lessons that will echo loudly throughout your student’s whole life.

6-It’ll be okay. I promise, it’ll be okay. Everything you think you’re doing wrong…if you’re homeschooling for the right reasons, and not wanting to lock your kids away from the world and keep them in a closet and away from civilization…(we hear about those families, and I’m trusting that those who are reading this aren’t those families) it’s going to be okay. If you are homeschooling, I’m guessing it’s because you want to provide them with the kind of education that will best teach them the values and ethics you believe will give them the best leg-up in this world and help them grow into productive members of society.

Teach them to read: good books and poems and the news. Teach them how to do math in real-world scenarios. Teach them to love music and art and how to make it, or at least how to listen to it and see it and see the value in all of it. Teach them HISTORY. Of the world, of our country, of their family. Teach them how to think critically and not follow the crowd and how to form an opinion of their own. Teach them how to write. Strong sentences, strong paragraphs, strong papers…how to express their feelings on paper and back it up with sources they’ve found from research.

As for the rest, if you don’t get to it, I promise you, it’ll be okay. You’ll make mistakes and you’ll lose your temper and maybe even sometimes your mind. Show your kids grace. Show them what forgiveness looks like during those times when you get frustrated or overwhelmed and you mess it all up. You’ll doubt yourself so often, and you’ll wonder if maybe they wouldn’t be better off if you let someone else do it. I can’t count how many times I threatened to call the public school, and my youngest still remembers the time I DID. Hug them, love them, apologize when you’ve messed up the day, or the mood, or their heart, show them how to apologize and make it right when they’ve wronged another, show them what it looks like to live real life in real relationships, and how to handle pressure and problems and hard times along with all the good times. Pray with them and pray for them. Lay your head down at night and start the next day fresh. They are learning how to do life while you’re teaching them how to read and write and do math. It WILL be okay.

7-Read aloud to your children. Have a dedicated time in which you read aloud to your children. We always had a chapter book going of good, quality literature. The classics, good series, anything that had a story line we could discuss and characters we could get to know. I read to my children as babies and all the way into high school. When we’d go on road trips, we’d listen to audio books. It gets more challenging to have a time to read together when they are in their high school years, but even now as adults, we’ll still discuss the books we read as a family, and they still love it when Mama reads aloud.

There are precious life lessons in literature, and there is power in reading books together and learning as a family. Most times our history lessons would center around a book we’d read aloud, then we’d study that era and geography, but we always had a separate chapter book going too that I’d read to them just for the sake of a good story. Reading out loud was a huge part of our homeschool and I miss that time terribly. Make time for it, there is high value in it.

8-Make reading for enjoyment a thing. Somewhere along the way, back in the 80s I think, programs popped up that awarded students for reading. Prizes of pizza and ice cream cones, and when my kids were young, there were similar programs. One year our local library had a reading program, “The One Hundred Club” or something like that; the kids could get a check mark for every 20 minutes spent reading, and by the end of the month they could get a prize if they had one hundred minutes.

Not everyone likes to read. But why is that? Could it be they’ve never been introduced to reading for enjoyment? Or they’ve never been allowed to read just for fun? Or, if they have trouble reading words on the page that they’ve never been taught tricks to make reading easier, or how to listen to a book being read aloud or on audio? Stories are amazing, whether we read them on paper or listen to them out loud, and the enjoyment of them shouldn’t be a chore or something to check off a list. My kids are all voracious readers, and that is because I taught them to love to read. We did the checklist reading program one time, and they had their hundred minutes checked off on the monthly sheet in a matter of two days. Make reading together and individually a priority. Build time into your days for reading. Make it enjoyable for your students and you won’t ever have to worry that they’re reading enough.

9-Utilize the library. From a very young age, my kids were familiar and comfortable at the library. We had regular library days and they got library cards when they were young. For one of our early years when they were all still under the age of 12, their English lessons were based solely on library books. I’d have them choose a topic to write on, let them collect as many books on that topic at the library as they wanted, and they’d study their topic and write a one-page essay on it. While that sounds very simple, what was happening during this easy time of no-curriculum was: they learned the Dewey Decimal System; they learned how to formulate an essay (my older students), or a paragraph (my younger students); and they learned how to share with clarity information they had learned. The library is a magical and powerful tool in your homeschool and in the minds of your children.

10-Make them play outside. This came naturally since we had a farm and my kids loved to play outside with their animals, their friends, with one another…but I know that things have changed in the last decade. Phones and iPads are more prevalent for kids today and much of homeschooling curriculum is screen-based. We were never a no-tech family, and my kids love streaming or a good movie, but there is nothing like playing outside to grow a well-rounded kid.

Let them build forts or mudpies or hang a hammock in the woods where they go read or do their schoolwork. One of my favorite memories is my girls lying on the roof of the chicken coop, working on their math workbooks. Kids need sunshine and mud puddles and green grass and stretches of time to explore. The outdoors is one of the main ingredients to growing a kid.

11-Let them be bored. Life isn’t always a party and it’s good to know how to entertain yourself. Math isn’t always fun. Writing a paper isn’t always a trip to the zoo. Every lesson or every day or every trip to the grocery store won’t always be wild and entertaining. Sometimes you’ll be bored, and sometimes they will be too. That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong, that just means they’re learning how life comes with an ample dose of the mundane and you don’t need to be entertained every second of every day.

We live in a world of constant brain-candy by way of our phones and snippets and texts and reels, to where we might think a little down time or an afternoon of chores will bore our kids to death. Let them be bored. And if they complain about being bored, tell them you’ll find them something to do. That will get them outside playing and using their imaginations. Sometimes it’s the boring times that lead to the most exciting: curling up in the hammock with a good book, building a fort out in the side yard, or, one of my favorite boredom busters, the “Remedy Stand” my kids made out in the woods using two stumps for stools and an old downed tree for a countertop where they mixed up remedies using mud and leaves and sticks and rocks…any kind of remedy you’d need, some for the animals, some for mom and dad, some for one another, some for the world. It was where they thought of all the problems imaginable and worked to fix them, and I have no idea where the concept came from other than they must’ve been bored one afternoon. Boredom isn’t a bad thing.

12-Get them an animal. We had a little farm that started with guinea pigs, then a couple rabbits, then a few chickens, which eventually led to miniature horses, a couple goats to keep the minis company, then a pony, and of course, always dogs and a cat or two. That eventually led to them raising animals in 4-H for show and for market, and we’ve had lambs, ewes, rams, sows, gilts, barrows, turkeys, pheasants, and even a steer one year.

Not everyone can or wants to go that route. We’re at the season of downsizing now that the kids are grown, and I can’t imagine ever having as many animals now that we once did. I don’t want to work that hard. But I can say with one hundred percent certainty that my children were enriched in ways they would otherwise not have been had they not been caretakers of animals. There is something about caring for another being that develops responsibility, confidence, and empathy in a kiddo. They have to look outside of themselves and be responsible for the care and health of another living creature. There is no other lesson like it. Whether it be a goldfish, a guinea pig, a rabbit, a parakeet…it is my firm belief that every kiddo should have an animal to care for.

The caveat to that is don’t just bring your kiddo an animal and expect them to know how to care for it. Have them research. Breeds. Feeds. Equipment they’ll need. How the animal’s digestive system operates and how their vision works. Its anatomy. How they reproduce. What kind of environment is best for that animal to thrive. Whether a single is okay or if they do better in pairs. Foods they enjoy and foods they absolutely can’t have. Basic health care and when to take their animal to the veterinarian. Having your child learn all of these things will give them a sense of stewardship and commitment for their animal and will foster bonding while growing your child’s sense of responsibility and expertise. There are no book lessons that compare to the real-life lessons of animal husbandry.

13-High school isn’t as scary as it sounds. When all my kids were young, all four nestled between the ages between six and ten, I thought I’d found my sweet spot and that I’d finally gotten the hang of homeschooling. During those years, high school was far off, looming in the distance and something I didn’t allow myself to think about too much lest I chicken out.

Then, when eventually it came, I’d been homeschooling nine years and maybe I was numb and nothing fazed me anymore, or maybe I was just naive, but I just took it in stride like I did everything else as a mother (we have to, right?). I went to the orientations and I researched what fit my kid, and I took out my pencil (ALWAYS a pencil when it comes to high school planning!) and he and I scratched something out and we got to it.

It sounds simple, but really, it’s not as scary as it seems, and now, after graduating four, I can confidently say they each received a well-rounded high school education in which we utilized the local community college for the heavy academics I needed a little help with, and they honed their independence during those years, building on their foundation from earlier years to develop a knowledge base and skill set they’ll use forever on their adult paths. It’s not as scary as it seems.

14-Build a quiet time into your day. 2-4 pm at our house every day was Quiet Time. It evolved from when my first two were really young and I was really pregnant. We’d all go snuggle up on Mom’s bed with a stack of books and I’d read to them until I dozed off. They’d rest there with me while I took a catnap and they read their picture books. Later, when I had toddlers and young students, we’d all have lunch, and I’d read to them from our chapter book while they were eating, and then we all took Quiet Time. I used this time for me, but it ended up being so valuable for them, too. When they were young, they’d nap, but as they got older, they’d read or listen to audio books or Adventures in Odyssey or Your Story Hour CDs, and it was just a time for everybody’s bodies and minds to rest. I clung to Quiet Time religiously, and even as they got older, once school was finished, before we shifted into dinner prep and evening tasks, we’d always have an independent time where they knew that was their time. Make sure you have quiet times build into your schedule! It benefits everyone!

15-Teach life skills. In hindsight, life skills were always gold standard for anything we did. We had a joke around the house anytime we’d get distracted from book studies to handle something on the farm or at the house; we’d all chime in with the line I’d come to use to offset the aggravation of getting waylaid from the routine yet again: “Life Skills!”

Truly though, now, having four adult children, I look back and see that while there was such deep value in the books we read, the discipline of math problems, and the creativity unfurled during writing and art projects, it’s the life lessons that carried them into adulthood. Things like learning how to do chores (household and farm); automotive basics; writing checks; how compounded interest works; keeping a bank ledger; counting back change; backing up trailers; how to use hand tools and machinery; the basics of electrical work; cooking; how to budget and grocery shop; finding the best deal for your money; and my kids will even tease me about how I taught them how to play poker, calling it a life skill. All those times the routine-freak in me thought we were blowing off book work, but really, we were teaching them how to function in life and take care of themselves and their future families. Life Skills is where homeschooling really shines.

16-Teach them about Jesus. I know not everyone will agree with this one, but as a Christ follower, I would be remiss to not talk about Jesus and the high role He had in our homeschool. My husband and I were fairly new Christians when we made the decision to try homeschooling during the season in which we were growing our family. I am not sure I will ever be able to fully express how much my faith and trust in Jesus guided and sustained me as I raised my children and tried to teach them all they’d need to know to survive in this world, and how to be part of the one beyond.

We read the Bible together. We’d call our sweet, wise Pastor Robert when we’d stumble on a chapter or verse I didn’t know how to explain, and I won’t ever forget setting the phone down on speaker in the middle of the table and having a Bible lesson right there after breakfast with my kids and Robert. Some of the deepest discussions and lessons in life came as a result of us reading through the Bible together. We’d spend time on all of it: war and the dark side of mankind; rape and incest; family lines; creation and history and science of the natural world; the miracle of life; what forgiveness looks like; good versus evil; grace…what I didn’t understand or what they didn’t understand, we’d learn together.

We explored what different religions believe, what historical experts say about Biblical places and events, what science says about life and its origins, what it means to follow Jesus…our faith dovetailed with our homeschool perfectly and I taught them to read, to question, to ask God, to pay close attention to science, and to measure it all with the yardstick they’d been given from their maker and their learning.

Not every homeschooling parent is a Christian, and that’s okay. I’m not here to convince you to be, although I’d love it if you were, because as I read Scripture about what it means to be a Jesus follower, it means we are all family. I won’t say teach your kids about faith in A, B, or C god either, because I believe Jesus IS the One to have faith in. I’ve read the whole book through enough times and studied it and the history of that time enough to know that the Jesus of my childhood —that old story I thought was just another fairy tale—that He really did walk this earth and that His story is true and that it brings us directly to the face of God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. Of that, through my studies, I am convinced.

I tried to weave that into days and our homeschool the best that I could, and while that will look differently for everyone, and while you may have no desire to teach your children about Jesus, He has sustained me in ways I will try to express through my writing for all my days, but as it pertains to motherhood and my little homeschool, what was etched on my heart came from the book of Isaiah, chapter forty, verse eleven, the second part: “He gently leads those who have young.”

I clung to that and trusted in that, and I taught my children about Jesus and good and evil and how He overcame it all with giving His life for humankind and that God was a father even stronger than their Daddy and that He was gentle and kind and that He cared about them and their lives and that they have a purpose and a plan and a way to live every day that they are on this earth. I love Jesus, and I taught my children how to learn about Him, how to weigh the facts and the history, and how to listen to the Lord when He calls. It is my hope that they will always hear Him and listen to Him, and that all parents would teach their children the same.

The final items on my list are feedback from my four students.

On the weekend after the final day of my last student’s high school career, all the kids were home, my graduates from 2020 through 2024. I asked them to help me retire our homeschool, more for me than for them; finishing one of the very best chapters of my life requires a bit of ceremony and a turning-of-the-page. We all enjoyed Graduation Sunday at church, we had library day after lunch and it was delightful; I even gave them homework and told them they could check out as many books as they wanted as long as they got their homework done. 🙂

It was a beautiful day. We had a Veggie Tales marathon and took a million homeschool-retirement photos and had fun artwork time in which I had them sign a framed photo collage of all of us and recreate an old mural we made when they were little. They were into it more than I thought they would be, and maybe it was because they love their mama so, or maybe it was because they really did love our little homeschool, but it was precious to see my adult children working together on the artwork, checking out stacks of library books, and coming together for the last of them graduating. I won’t ever forget that day, and I am thankful for their memories and articulation of their homeschooling years.

Rankin Ranch Center for Higher Learnin’: A Reflection

17-(1) What are some of your favorite memories as a student in our little homeschool?

Reading books
History dinners
Field trips to museums and all the other places
Math in the kitchen (Whoah!)
Fair trips to our fair and state fair
4-H nationals trips
Jumping on the trampoline
Reading and drawing at the table
Pancake breakfasts
Morning chores with everyone
Quiet time
Multiplication tables on the trampoline

18-(2) What are some of the things you have carried into your adult life as a homeschooler?

Self-motivation and discipline
Time management to get the lame stuff out of the way
Not spelling lol
Grocery math skills
Writing skills
How to understand the Dewey Decimal system
How to operate a small-scale farm
The fives multiplication song
Adaptability
Respect and integrity
Hard work and teamwork
Sense of family and sharing

19-(3) What book/s did we read most stand out in your memories?

Hank the Cowdog
The Bible
The Winter Pony
Richard Peck books
Robert Service
Chronicles of Narnia
The Great Gracie Chase
Where the Wild Things Are
Long Way From Chicago
Snow Child
Annie Spruce
You Are All My Favorites
All Gary Paulsen stories
Little Britches
Fancy Nancy stories

20-(4) What advice would you have for a brand-new homeschooling parent?

Make learning fun and challenging.
Learn how your kid learns and go from there.
Outsource if needed, there’s no shame in not knowing things.
Don’t overthink it, make a plan, revise plan, and try again.
Go at your child’s pace.
Be patient and go with the flow!
Learn with your kids and have fun!

21-(5) What advice would you have for a brand-new homeschooling youth?

Stay focused.
Get your school done then do things outside.
Don’t avoid subjects you don’t like, it’ll pile up and then you’ll have even more work to do.
Find out what you like and explore it; it can become an opportunity for future careers.
Listen to your mom!
Do your homework and learn all you can.

Afterwards, I had a glass of wine and read their homework and cried a little bit. But mostly I smiled, because now that they are all grown and my homeschooling years are over, I could see by their answers that homeschooling was one of the very best things we could have ever done as a family.

I am proud of them. I am proud of me, too.

And I am so very thankful for twenty years of being able to help shape and grow my children while I watched them grow into the capable, hardworking, and smart young adults they are today.

Thank you, Rankin Crew, for twenty of the very best years. It has been the joy of my life to learn, read, sing, dance, play, work, and create with you. I am so proud of the adults you have grown into, and it delights my heart knowing where and how it all started. -Mama

Dear Mama

2 Replies

Dear Mama,

How has it been a year now since you’ve been gone when it seems like just yesterday you left?

Your baby, that stoic youngest granddaughter, she worked so hard to keep you here with us, and you know how she never cries really, but when they told us you’d gone and that she’d done a damn good job and honored her grandmother, she choked on her tears and wiped her eyes, and all her adrenaline and love for you showed on her beautiful face as she shook the hands of the paramedics and the troopers and she hugged your dear friend who was there with her and with you…for every step and every breath.

Mama, you know how we don’t have many exciting days here on the farm except for those days that all of a sudden bring BIG excitement—remember that time we all were out the door and packed up in the truck before you even knew what was going on and then five minutes later, your grandson was pulling a stuck calf out of a tired cow and you and I held hands and cried a little at the miracle of life there at our feet and you were so proud? Or all those times when lambs were sick and the whole household shifted from low-action to rallying-around and you got to hold the baby while your baby granddaughter made warm bottles and took temperatures? Mama, you leaving us was one of the highest activity days we’ve ever had here at the ranch, and when they took you away, we all did what we knew to do and went to lunch at your favorite pizza place up the road and we sat around the table and we debriefed, and we were together, and we couldn’t believe you were gone.

We had things to do, Mama, you and I. You and us. We had bonfires and family holidays and game nights…and so many hugs. Your baby boy had just gotten here from all those miles away, over four thousand by road was what kept your little family—our little trio— apart all this time. One week was all we had, us three together, and I’m not mad, Mama, but I thought you’d live out your days with both your babies in the same time zone, and we’d laugh around the fire for many years, all the years left of our lives.

But it was just one week and your precious friend, she told me when they took you away that you were the happiest she’d ever known you to be that week. Having both your children here, being safe and warm in your precious little cabin…she told me you were at such peace.

And I know that, Mama. But it doesn’t stop me from missing you.

Mama I’m not gonna lie. It was a rough road watching your mind slide away. And you know me, Mama, I am a tough cookie and I always made you be tough too, so you wouldn’t forget how strong you were, because I always knew your insecurities would overwhelm and make you forget all you’d overcome. So I’d tell you, “Mama, you have to push back. Mama, you have to fight. Mama, you can do it. Mama, YOU are the boss.” And your chest would get big and you’d remember that you ARE strong. You’d remember that you ARE the boss. You’d remember that you CAN do it.

And sometimes I wish I would have been gentler with you. Oh, I know you’d tell me I was gentle. You would brush it off if you ever heard me say that I was too rigid. You’d tell me it was just what you needed and that I am your Daniel and that you just needed a swift kick in the rump to help you remember who you are and what you’re made of. But sometimes I wish I would have just given you more hugs and been sweeter and softer and called you Mommy like I do now that you’re gone. You would have liked that. You loved all the names I ever had for you…Ma, Mama, Mother, The Mom, Poppy, Mamisan…I never called you Mommy though, you would have loved that.

Because you were a mother above all else, Mama. So much of your life was thrown at you, shitty and ugly and horrible and things that never should have happened to a woman let alone a child. But you had these two people born out of your body and everything you did after that was for them. For us. Every decision you made, every change you pursued, it was to better you, in order to be better for us. You were good to us, Mama. You gave us everything you had.

Mama, when your body started to take your mind…Mama I did everything I knew to do. The doctors’ appointments, the tests, the hospital trips…Mama we talked about Mayo, that place that saved our Matthew…and when you wanted to stay close to home, this new home where you felt so safe, we made that work. Sometimes I wish I’d pushed harder, Mama. You might still be here now.

But is that fair of me to think, to wish?

Would I want you here still as your mind continued to slip away, keep you here over knowing you now walk in peace and wholeness, completely safe and pain free with no tears of past hurts and no fear of what is to come?

I am grateful. Every time I’ve thought of you this past year, Mama, which has been every single day, I have thought of the goodness of God to bring my sweet, strong, fragile shell of a hurt mama right on up off the road she had ahead and just take her straight from her warm bed in her blessed little cabin she loved so, straight to the place she so wanted to be…Heaven. Mama, as much as I miss you, I only have joy knowing that you are exactly where you wanted to be.

Remember, Mama, when you told Jesus you were His way back when you were a girl? And how hard you tried to teach us, even as you got messed up messages from the world and the people who should have taught you true? Remember how you and I talked and when we went over your wishes for the remainder of your life and I asked where you wanted to go when you left this world and I was thinking of your body and wanted to honor you with laying you to rest wherever you wanted, you told me, “Well, honey, I want to go to Heaven.”

Mama, thank you for that lesson. You were a teacher during your career, but Mama, you were a teacher to your family and those who loved you, too.

How you loved Jesus. And how that love grew as your years went on, to the point that all that mattered was that love for Him and the people He gave you, and the little creature comforts in life like a cozy bed and a cozy cabin and favorite foods around a table with your favorite people.

Mama, this world has gone crazy since you left, and while most days I would give every penny I had just to be going on a coffee run with you or scanning our next vacation house on that favorite island we love, there is another part of me that is thankful you are not here to see all of this. The hate. The division. The ugliness that has taken over, and even though I know you were beginning to see it too, I am glad you don’t have to see how bad it has gotten.

I will never forget the day you came out of your room on that sleepy Saturday afternoon, when like so many other afternoons, you watched the news on your phone as you played puzzle games on your iPad, and you woke me gently as I dozed in the recliner, and your face, so troubled, you said hesitantly, “Cassy?” When I startled awake and asked what was wrong, your brow furrowed and tears came and you told me quietly, “President Trump has been shot.” We turned on the television then and realized that he was okay, but that the world had shifted even farther off-kilter, and I know that troubled you, Mama.

Even worse was the time we were in front of the television yet again, watching a church service this time, a Sunday morning when we just weren’t able to pull it together to get all of us to town, so you and I sat in my living room, hot coffee steaming in our mugs, and I let you use my old study Bible while I used the new, large-print version I was breaking in. We tuned into the church app on the TV and our Bibles were opened, and I looked over at you, and you were crying silently and holding onto the photo that I’d had tucked into the middle of my old Bible, that one of our whole family the last time we were all together years before. When you were able to speak you told me, “I miss my Daddy. I miss my brother.” And I cried too, because your daddy was gone a decade by then, and your brother had decided during the pandemic that he was no longer speaking to his family. Mama, you held that photo and you cried, and we did watch church, but I promise you after that I tried everything I knew how to do to get your brother to call you, and Mama, I can only hope that the love you felt from all of us here was enough to make up for the love you were missing. I’m so sorry, Mama. I wish it weren’t that way. In families or in this world.

And that is why I am glad for you that you don’t have to be here now.

As much as I miss you here now.

How you would tell me I’m doing a good job, even if you didn’t understand exactly what job it is I am doing. How you would always offer to help me in my work and do your best when I gave you papers to fold or ribbons to write on. How that made you feel needed and important and useful.

How you would listen to everything I ever wrote and tell me how good it is.

How you would beam at your grandchildren and love every last thing they’d do and be so proud.

How you’d tuck in between all of us at church and stand as long as you could for songs, handing me cough drops from your pocket as we sat and snuggled during the sermon.

Mama, I miss you, but I’m glad you don’t have to be here for all of this.

Your ashes still sit in their fancy box on the bar in my kitchen, but I know where your spirit is. I took a little baggie full of your body’s remains over to our favorite place and Mama, you would have loved to have been in on the quest that it was to pinch out little pieces of you all over the island at all your favorite places, and you would have cried with me when I put the last of the dust from our little Kauai urn at the base of a big old tree at that beach you and I loved to sink our toes into. It was my last day there this winter, Mama, and I didn’t know how much it’d twist up my heart leaving little bits of you in that place you’d come to love. And then leaving. Mama, you know me, I’ll go back…am already planning the next time over, but that was the last time you and I would go there together, and I know it was just your dust, but that’s all I have left here with me, and sometimes Mama when we’re left here on this mean old planet that is being ugly and fighting, being with our mama is just what we need. When she leaves us, it makes the world even uglier and emptier somehow, and even if just your dust, I get to carry it with me and remember.

Mama, dementia is an ugly robber, and all the people I follow on social media who are walking the desolate path of it, they’ve said goodbye to their parents now too, or some of them are still watching their loved ones decline. They helped me understand while I had you here with me, and now, I try to help them understand what it’s like when a parent leaves.

We had a beautiful memorial for you, Mama, and oh, you would have loved it; all your favorite hymns and some island music too…your friends came out and all those who love us, and because they love us, they loved you too. I thought the whole day through how much you would have loved that, sandwiches and root beer floats that your granddaughter rounded up, handling the kitchen like we always loved to watch her do. You and I would have made a day of that, just like we did at Nettie’s when we were so touched to be amongst her family and her memories. Lisa came all the way up here to be with me, and she stayed in your sweet cabin and loved feeling you there, laying her head where you always did. We sat in the sun and put together a puzzle of poppies, and it was beautiful, and the only thing missing over morning mimosas was you, laughing and delighting in the just sitting together, loving together…you did that so well, Mama. We did it well, too, in honor of you.

And now, it’s been a whole year since you left, and I don’t remember another single year of my life that’s changed me as much, and here I am writing you a letter, just like I learned how to do in this class I’m finishing up. You would’ve loved this class, and we would have had so much fun with it; I always felt like you were my classmate, always listening to my assignments and stories, thinking long with me about words and sentences, listening to books with me in the truck as we drove around watching birds and drinking our tropical Lotuses.

This author we’re studying, she tells us when we don’t know what to write, to just write a letter to one of our loved ones. You would really like her; she’s become a friend to me. I read her book and I think of all the books you read me when I was little, and all the books you read to your students all those years, and all the books you and I listened to on our little road trips. How many books have we read, Mama?

And now I am writing them. Well, at least this one now, twelve years after that first one you were so much a part of. I write sometimes and think how you’d laugh and laugh over this one, maybe even cry too, because there is so much of you in there, so much of me, so much of so many people we’ve loved all these years. I promise I’ll write our cheesecake book, too. I still have our shared-notes file on my iPhone, that one we started that year we celebrated your birthday over steaks and cheesecake, not just one day, but two. I’ve added some scribbles since then, but it’s not the same writing them without you, so I’ll save it for later when my heart isn’t so tender missing you.

Your grandson still fishes and hauls them out of the sea and when we cook his catch I remember how much you loved the fish so fresh. Your oldest grandbaby, he came to see me this winter, well, to see his dad really, but he and auntie spent a lot of time together here in this little shack they all built me last fall, this place where our tallest baby, that youngest grandson, hung your favorite painting above the door for me here where I stare out at the weather each morning and think of what it must be like for you in Heaven now. Are there mornings there? It’s a funny thing when your mama leaves, because even though you’re gone from here, I know you’re there…and you’re living a life separate from the one we live here, but somehow, we are still connected like some sort of spiritual umbilical cord. Was it like that for you too, when your mama left earth?

You were so brave, Mama, and so strong. I have thought since you left about how much you had to overcome, and how sweet and determined you were as you faced the path ahead of your mind going haywire right along with your body.

Mama, I won’t tell you it was easy or that it was my pleasure or that I was ready.

There were a lot of times it was frustrating and difficult, and I wasn’t ready for the season that came on all of a sudden and in a surprise. But Mama, it WAS my pleasure. And it took you leaving for me to realize how much of a pleasure it was. An honor. How I got to know you in ways I never did before. How your vulnerability and trust in me revealed how much you really did love me all the years of my life. How your peacefulness and comfort amongst your grandchildren and my husband, and your complete trust in their abilities and confidence in their care for you showed me what you really thought of them, of me. How your joy in having your two children in the same place at the same time brought you such joy and assurance that you had complete peace when Jesus called you home.

He and I will go get a Lotus today, Mama, your favorite kind, all tropical and coconutty, and we’ll talk of you, just like we have done on so many days since you left. This one is different though, because now Mama, I’ve finished one whole year on this earth without you, the first year of the rest of my life without my mama in this world, loving me. It’s a strange and disorienting feeling, Mama, when your mama leaves this life and starts the next one, and while I won’t ever be sad that you are where you always wanted to be, I won’t ever stop missing you being here with us.

I don’t know what a year feels like in Heaven, Mama, or if there are birthdays there or anniversaries or celebrations of how much time you’ve been there, but a year ago today, you got there, and Mama, I hope, I know really though, it was the best year of your life.

I so look forward to seeing you and until then, I’ll miss you terribly, and will always, always love you and be grateful God made you to be my mama.

I love you,

Your daughter

Dancing in the Kitchen

2 Replies

We started the farm and a lot of things changed. I got busy. Busier than I’d been with trying to learn how to homeschool and raise toddlers and keep the house clean and dinner on the table.

I took the job and a lot of things changed. I got busy. Busier than I’d been with keeping our homeschool flowing and teaching everyone how to write and how to do math and reading them good books and tending the house and the farm.

We moved to a bigger farm and a lot of things changed. I got busy. Busier than I’d been with keeping everyone in their projects and in their skill set and in their studies and their interests, and keeping my job one that was relevant and thriving and that served those I served well, while keeping a good level eye on my boundaries and balancing all I had to give.

They moved to their next season and a lot of things changed. I got busy. Busier than I’d been with keeping everyone’s schedule and balancing weeks with Daddy on-shift versus Daddy off-shift to them having their own work schedules and college class times and homework; to everyone coming and going and lambs being born while we all watched the sheep-shed camera throughout the day from all our various places.

It’s the next season and a lot of things have changed. I’ve gotten busy. Busier than I was when I was the face they saw every morning, the voice that read to them at every breakfast, the chauffeur that drove them to every event.

They are grown. And our season has changed. It’s been gradual and it’s been abrupt.

My baby graduates out of our little homeschool in just a mere matter of weeks, and in my bones, I feel like it was literally just a month ago that I was teaching him how to read and count change and do the chores and sit quietly when it was time to listen.

In the flurry of raising them, of teaching them, I didn’t know how fast it would all go. I was growing up with them; I know that now.

I wish I would have laughed more.

I wish I would have taken more things in stride and not been so serious when it came to the things I didn’t know it was okay to not be serious about.

And I wish I would have been more serious about the things I now know I should have been more serious about.

I wish I would have laughed more.

But we danced in the kitchen.

A lot.

To the point where, when we sold the only house they’d ever known, —on that last night before we moved the last of our things, ratchet-strapping down Mama and Daddy’s mattress to the bed of the pickup and driving it the quarter-mile up the road to the newly built place on the newly purchased land that would offer them more elbow room for their animals and us a homestead to leave them one day—that eldest daughter, my little mirror since she was born, she grabbed my hand after we’d finished our little goodbye pizza party there in our little kitchen tiled with counter tops my husband and I had installed ourselves, almost divorcing after that weekend do-it-yourself-clearance-sale project—she said, “You owe me a dance.”

And we danced there in that tiny little kitchen, cramped and filling up the space, and while my sweet girl and I spun awkwardly around, I thought of all the times I’d carried her on my chest, wrapped tight in the blue Snuggli buckled around me, her newborn hair poking up between my breasts, me patting her behind, tucked so securely there on my belly as the little countertop Bose stereo I’d bought my husband for Christmas the year before played out No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems by Kenny Chesney, that song that played nonstop the summer she was born, and that is still, to this day, our song.

I’d danced with all of my newborns in that kitchen. Three of them in the same navy blue Snugli, the last in the chocolate brown Mobi Wrap I wish we’d have discovered when we first started having babies. So comfortable and no buckles to contend with. That last born made me realize how much more natural things could be.

We baked a lot of bread together in that kitchen, and made a lot of cookies together in that kitchen, and did a lot of dishes together in that kitchen, and isn’t that sometimes the dancing of life?

How many experiments had we’d done in that kitchen? How many dishes had fallen out of awkward-child hands and broken on the ceramic tiles, the pieces to be swept up together in that kitchen, lessons learned on how fragile things can be, but how mistakes happen in that kitchen? How many dance parties and pancake Thursdays and pots of coffee made in that kitchen? How many sinks of dishes hand rinsed by small children with little legs standing on stools and conversations as the plates dripped dry in the dishrack?

We danced in the kitchen that last night, her and I, and then, after we moved up the road into this new kitchen, they got their mama a sign for over the sink that reads In this kitchen we dance.

And in this new kitchen, this kitchen that has become THE kitchen, we’ve baked a lot of bread together, and made cookies together, and have done dishes together, and have prepared so many family feasts and parties together. We’ve clasped hands and prayed together, and mixed up endless bottles for farm animals together, and I’ve yelled at muddy boots left by farm kids that worked hard together, and now they cook together and prepare together and my husband even saved a life there in that kitchen where I make him dance with me sometimes after he’s had a long week of twelve-hour shifts in the oilfield and I kiss his ear so he’ll feel young again and not so tired.

I laugh a lot more now than I did back then, because isn’t all of this all dancing, too?

This season when everyone is moving and going and flying with wings that somehow—in that way God gives—us Mamas helped grow?

I hope they know I was happy. That they made me laugh. Then, and even more so, now.

It sometimes takes a while. To realize that being busy isn’t all there is to life. That being busy doesn’t have to be stressful. It doesn’t have to be serious.

That the being busy in the life of raising kids and raising critters and growing them both…that it is fun. That it is the beauty of life and what we are here to do and that it will go fast.

So very fast.

I hope they know that getting through the day wasn’t my job.

I hope they know that getting them equipped to get through THEIR life was my mission.

I hope they know that dancing in the kitchen meant more to me than I ever said out loud.

It wasn’t the busy, every day things that drove me.

It was the way they are when they are together.

It was their laughter.

And now, now that their busy days of growing are done, I resolve to embrace this season with even more determination. To remember my place in their lives. To remember what really matters.

I resolve to dance in the kitchen.

I resolve to laugh even more.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” -Psalm 126:2

Snowbirding and A hui hou…Until We Meet Again

Pieces of Poppy and Alaska is on the Island Tonight

A Place of Your Own

4 Replies

I spent years working away at my kitchen table, steering the ship of my job and house while homeschooling my bouncy bunch of four bright-minded students, letting my laptop slip into sleep as I’d answer math questions or teach how to count out change or correct grammar on book reports, all through the late mornings after we’d read from the Bible and our current chapter book while their mouths were busy eating breakfast.

We’d curl up later after lunch with yet another stack of books, full of history and astronomy and earth science and how babies are born. The littlest of them would play with K’Nex on his reading blanket and our time would draw out as we’d learn and learn, and then they’d have a quiet time in their rooms where they’d listen to good stories and classical music on CD’s, played on their very own little portable stereo that reminded me of the boom box I used to carry around back in fourth grade. Minus the CD player, of course.

Sometimes I’d rest too, but most times I’d work some more on the laptop, or I’d write before it was time to start thinking of dinner.

We shared our days.

Every day.

I wouldn’t change those years or that time for all of the money in the world.

For twenty years my space was their space, and that was my life mission without me even realizing it. I was their lifeline and they were mine, and those years make up our family history and legacy and are the etchings of who I am and who they are.

Before them, I used to share space with a shift full of men and women in gun belts and turnout gear. I’d send them on calls where their life was in danger, or a citizen was under threat, and I’d answer routine phone traffic mixed in with a 911 here and there, and I’d keep track of where each and every one of them were, who they were with, and what the danger level was, the status of the house fire, or had the traffic stop yet cleared…all while intermittently typing up a report before I clocked out. And I’d do it all while running background checks and gun permit info and driver’s license statuses and maybe microwaving up a late lunch before the next call came in or putting on a pot of fresh coffee before the lieutenant rolled up to the station for day shift. If I had an issue in my space, I’d hit the big red button and gun belts would jangle urgently up the hall and the fire department door would fly open, and my family-of-that-season would come running to my rescue. They were my lifeline like I was theirs and those years are part of my legacy and are etchings of who I am and who they are.

Since 1993 I’ve shared space with my beloved and it’s been an upstairs apartment with slanted ceilings and floors, and then the space we yearned to buy, a single-wide trailer-house on a quarter acre on the ghetto side of a swanky lake community where we thought we’d arrived; man I loved that place…and then the wide-open space of this Alaska, this land where there’s a place and a space for all who dream to put a stake in the cold, dark ground… and that space was shared with me and with him, and all those who’ve come around us protectively in love, and they were our lifeline and I like to think, I hope to think, that in some way, we’ve been theirs too because oh, how we love them. They are part of the legacy of the two of us and they are etched on our hearts and on who we are.

Our Alaska spaces and places have been friends’ houses, our first rented house, the beaches, the tundra, the first house we ever owned —that one we busted open a bottle of champagne upon, right there on the corner of the concrete block foundation– this smaller one now that looks fancier but that had us cashing in part of our retirement fund in order to secure the land it sits on so that our children would have a countrified, free-range life…this place that maybe we’ll die on and leave to them someday…

…and then there’s Kodiak Island where he spent so much time working and I used to take the ferry over when our first two were babies and I was swollen with our third…we’d walk the beaches and oh, don’t I still have jars full of beach treasurers…and then almost twenty years later I took the kids and their friends, and that one I carried in my belly those earlier trips walked beside me as a near-on adult and it was precious…

…Denali National Park where we’ve driven our band of family and friends through four times now across that wild terrain…big field trips for our little homeschool and I’d read out loud for hours and hours while he drove us safely through the frost heaves and alien landscape…

…Captain Cook State Park where we’ve dreamed of children —and maybe even conceived one all those years ago— and it’s been the close place that seems faraway, where we can escape up the road for a few days or an afternoon, flying kites and camping and building fires and finding agates and ourselves again…

…all the many beautiful lakes, rivers, islands, inlands, glaciers, campgrounds, forests, and backroads of this land that swallowed us whole and made us her own…

…The farm our kids dragged us into…

…The place family comes to ooh and ahh over and sometimes comes back more than once or sometimes even comes to settle because we are here…

Alaska places and spaces have been our lifeline—where we found the LORD…or maybe where He found us—and it will be part of our legacy; it is etched deeply—so deeply—on our hearts and is such a big and beautiful part of who we are.

It’s funny how when you get older places become engraved on us —our memories and our hearts—and get right down into the cells of us.

Mayo Clinic where they saved my husband’s life and gave him back to me; I can hear my shoes squeaking on their immaculate floors as I walk to his room and I can feel on my palm the smooth and delicate strong grip of the heart surgeon, an angel on earth who held my husband’s heart with his two miraculous hands that day, then hours later held my two trembling hands and told me my man was strong.

My soul sister’s kitchen table polished in tears and a couple red wine stains from when we use laughter to add to the warm, worn patina of her tabletop, that meeting place that draws us all to the center of her home and her heart.

Those church chairs, stackable and mauve, chosen carefully by good stewards to hold the growing body of bodies; I always smile when I find one with a little rip that’s been carefully stitched together, and how many times have my people gathered in them, all six or eight or ten of us, singing and listening and opening our Bibles and learning and lighting candles on Christmas Eve?

That faraway island we’ve come to love, come to run to when the bones get cold and the wanderlust gets loud…that place where we celebrated a life still with us, and now many trips later, where we’ll mourn one gone from us…

All the other places that are tied up in our work, some of it decades long, and all of it swirling our family and our schedules and when we celebrate holidays and when Daddy’s off, and when Mom has to spend a day away from her home desk and be at the office desk…all this work our hands have nourished, and the livelihood he’s provided that allowed me to be right here with them all these years, feeding and teaching and being as productive as I could as I pecked away at my littler job, —the paycheck part, not the raising kids part, we both know what a high-value position I held, even as I was still learning it— this job that nourishes kids and clubs and communities while we grew ours up right along with all of the extra workload.

The electric man and the 4-H lady…these jobs have been our places for many years, and they are etched on us and our family forever, and even those will one day be part of our legacy.

I could go on and on, and I have probably…but if you’re with me still yet, where is your place?

Where have you built stories and legacies and what places are etched on your life and your history and your heart?

It used to be I wasn’t as attached to places as I am now that I’m over the crest of the hill of my life, but even as a younger woman there were a few places that molded me…my granny’s house…the beach of my childhood…the little white church where Matt and I were married…

But really, it only came about as I aged a bit that places began to etch their significance upon my heart.

And that I learned that the lesson is, that it usually isn’t even the place so much, but the people with whom you share it that makes a place so precious.

The days and the hours and the years and the minutes…the work and the love and the sweet talks and the hard discussions…the tears, the growing, the learning, the laughter…

…but mostly just the time.

Those are my favorite places.

The places where I’ve spent the time.

And in a world so rife with troubles right now, so much division, so much ugliness, so much uncertainty…don’t we all need a place?

Is that a state? A friend’s table? Your church family? A lake or a library? The four walls in which you dwell?

I hope my friend, that you have a place you love and feel loved.

Where the work of your hands and the love in your heart is safe, and honored, and something you are proud of.

Where you are someone’s lifeline like they are yours.

Where your time there becomes etched on your heart and the history of who you are.

My hope is that you have a place where your heart is heard, and that the heartbeat of your creator is felt.

He has a place for you, and I hope He is welcome and embraced in your place.

I hope you are loved, and I hope that every place you are blessed to be in touches you in ways known only to you and the LORD and your people, and that always, it is etched on your heart and becomes part of your legacy.

This piece is dedicated to my mama. I miss her so during this changing of the seasons, and I am so thankful for the time and the places I shared with her. They are etched forever on my heart and my history. I love you, Mommy.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Abraham Lincoln

Building

2 Replies

The table came from dear friends of ours who needed a place to leave it when they moved to the lower states and it had cost them thousands they said, but they’d love for us to have it and see it put to good use.

It’s been a workbench, then our kitchen table when we moved to the new house, then our picnic table, then the shooting bench.

It has seen family meals, game nights and parties, held the artillery of my family as we’ve target practiced in our back woods, been sawn into shape just perfect by my husband, and sanded smooth by my own two hands.

On the underneath is written, “to the best friends we’ve ever had,” and now it’s where I’ll spend my days working for kids I love and writing more books.

We love you so, and have treasured this table well, Jim and Shelia.

My son and my husband moved it into my little shack today, and of all the things I’ve seen come together in this tiny space my beloved has carved out for me, this table was one of the most precious.

I can’t say it’s the most precious though, because how could I choose?

The windows, these ancient, second-hand massive panes given to me by a sweet kind man our family loves, left to him by another sweet kind man our family loved just as much…those windows remind me of the friendship we shared and how he loved his daughter and was building a little palace for her complete with a library and a loft and windows that overlooked their beautiful little pond before she left this world all too soon, and then, less than a year later, he left us too.

I miss you, Joe.

Or the floor, remnants of our Joe too, but a bit more bittersweet as it was blessed to me by his widow, my dear sister-of-the-heart. Fancy and bamboo, my boys loaded it up, and my baby, that tall, broad-shouldered one now that Joe loved, teaching him when he was smaller how to work with wood and measure and cut and make something out of the mind that came from a tree…when my boy set up his saw to lay down my new floor and ended up doing it all so adeptly that Saturday afternoon like he’d been doing it all his life, so efficiently that all I had to do as his helper was hand him a board now and then and keep his path clear of tools and the folding chair I sat on drinking my Diet Coke…we’d come across the occasional board that had a saw cut or a nail hole, and my boy knew that his mentor and old friend had had his hands on it. We were quiet for those ones, and it was special when one of those cut boards would fit perfectly into the space waiting, as if Joe knew my boy would need that cut, that piece.

My boy loved you, Joe.

Or the silly green chalkboard walls, gathered up by my husband and I on one of his days off after one of my sweet, sweet friends texted me a picture of them from the local thrift store for builders. She thought maybe someone in my homeschool circles could put them to good use. I saw the size of them, 4×8, the exact same as a sheet of plywood, and knowing my husband was using his special savings account to fund my shack, their five-dollar price tag drove me to take a long lunch break with him across towns to the shop and convince him that I always wanted chalkboard walls. There were just enough there for what my walls needed with a pair left over to leave for the second gal in line, who only needed two.

I saved almost one hundred dollars on plywood with that purchase, but more than that, I got a trip with my husband where we were on a mission together to gather materials for this project that he set out to build brand-new, while I had tried to convince him I just needed something basic built with recycled junk. It was a compromise of our styles, and he was happy with the price tag, while I am thrilled that my babies have already left their mark in chalk, and I’ve fallen in love with the deep green and its peace.

Thank you, Amy.

Or the lights I found on Facebook Marketplace, trying to save my husband even more dollars from his fund he tries to keep untouched as an extra retirement stream…those glass globes my big boy went to fetch for me on his days off. Upon digging them out after he’d gone back to work, I found them tucked up carefully in a box, with baseball caps bearing my boy’s work logos all in between them, used to safely wrap up his mama’s light source so they wouldn’t break on the wild ride in the backseat of his truck.

Colton, you are so good to your mama.

I dragged out my mama’s rocking chair today, and last month, when Matt told me to start figuring out where I wanted outlets and light switches placed and where I was going to put the things I needed in my little 12×8 box, I drew a little sketch on my iPad and left a corner open for a chair. Somewhere to sit and read, or a welcoming spot for my kids or husband when they traversed across the backyard to come say hi.

My mama would have loved that spot and she would have delighted in me having my own little space probably as much if not more than she delighted in having her own little space in her precious little cabin on our property. She would have been here with me all the time, and this week I celebrated a birthday that was so full and busy that it wasn’t until the morning after that I realized never in my whole life have I ever had a birthday without talking to my mama, and that she is the only one who’s been part of me for every single one of my birthdays…and isn’t it an odd, empty feeling to know that when your mom is gone, there will never be another one for which your day of birth means as much?

I brought out the massive poppy painting today (another Marketplace find) and I had my boy help me hang it on my chalkboard walls over her bentwood rocking chair she so loved. I would have loved her to be my compadre and my company and my motivation here in my little space, and I will imagine the conversations we’d have and the quiet moments together, and even as my heart misses her so, I will smile.

I miss you, Mama.

All these little memories…these precious, precious touches within that surround me with love and warmth and remembrances of who I’ve loved and how I’m loved…but this whole thing, this whole need for this little place, this shack, this quiet place of my own…it’s all girded from the heart of the man who’d do anything to see his woman happy and have what she needs, and not only what she needs, what she wants.

When he saw that I was serious about needing a place of my own to work in the quiet, separate from the ever-changing pace of this home we’ve built, one that has adult children coming and going and days changing on a dime, and every-other week adjusting to the oilfield schedule…that distractions are something his wife’s ever-sharp brain used to be able to roll with and thrive in but now leave her frazzled and frustrated and just pining to get her work done…when he understood that me packing up to work in another room or at my nearby friend’s quiet kitchen table didn’t mean I didn’t want to be around family but just needed to be able to concentrate…when he finally got it that his work-from-home lady was contemplating uprising their whole family life and homeschool and farm to begin a daily commute to an office building forty minutes away or else quit the job she’s poured her life and their family into for the past eight years just so she could have some peace in her brain and in her days…when he heard that she was looking into how much it would cost to have a little she-shed built outside their back door so she could maintain some peace in her brain and have a quiet place to settle and get some work done and do the writing that her heart longed to do…

He got to work.

He was at Home Depot the next day and now, less than two months later, he’s given his beloved a sweet little spot in the woods where it is quiet and where she can step away from the place she loves most but that makes her perimenopausal brain a spaghetti mess of noise and distractions when it is time for her to focus.

He’s given his beloved a peaceful place.

For the past two months, he has given our family a focus, a goal, a common-minded push, and whether he realizes it or not, it was what we needed after the tumultuousness of the push of building for my mama, and the push of getting through the shock and grief of her passing, and the long haul of this parenting young adult children who are steadily going out into their young adult lives while their parents live in the precipice, navigating this new season while still working and loving and holding down the daily routines that make up life that is ever-changing…around us and them and this world.

He didn’t know in his simple gesture of buying lumber that he was really doing something more.

He thought what he was doing what he knows to do, what he has done since the early 1990s, what is in his drive to do: to make his woman happy, safe, comfortable, and loved.

But what he really did was provide.

Provide a place in a season of increased distractions and interruptions where his woman can continue to focus daily on the work of the job she loves while still being available to her farm and her family and their cyclic oilfield schedule, all while remaining on a routine she’s carved out with a high rate of success for eight years.

Provide a refuge where she can pour out the writings of her heart safely and quietly, away from noise and inhibition. (He knows well his wife’s writing time often comes with loud praise music, prayer, out-loud editing, and snot-flying tears.)

Provide a shelter that will be only hers for the days of now but for all the days to come, knowing that a writer’s studio was always a retirement dream of his sweetheart.

Just over a year and a half ago he set down the plans to build the most beautiful interior of my mama’s cabin shell, then put his back and his brain into it, making her the happiest mother-in-law on the planet.

“I’m an electrician, not a builder.” So many times I heard that during his struggle to put my mama’s cabin together.

And now, before he’s probably even recovered, he’s put together this little shack for me so that I’ll be happy and peaceful and can continue on the very best I can in this season doing what he knows I live to do: to work and to write.

He may be an electrician stumbling his way through a builder’s life, but whether he knows it or not, he’s a builder.

He’s built a career with his back and his brain and his hands and his hard work.

He’s built a faith with his trust and his surrender and his listening to the LORD.

And he’s built a family with his love and his faithfulness and his devotion from day one and every single day after.

He’s provided a space and provided a place.

He’s a builder.

And now, he’s built me a writer’s shack.

When you make something for someone you love, aren’t you then a builder?

Builder: a person who constructs something by putting parts or material together.

My sweetheart is a builder.

He’s provided a place and a space.

You are a builder.

What are you constructing with parts or materials or words or actions?

What love or memories or people or character have you added to your daily endeavors?

I am thankful, so thankful, as I step into this little 96 square feet space I never knew I’d need, that I am surrounded by the love and the memories and the character and the effort and the might and the heart of those I’ve been blessed to know and who I hold close and carry with me.

Having that love with me inspires me to love more. To make this world a better place.

To build.

Having this work, these gifts, these memories surround me…

I want to provide a space and provide a place.

It makes me want to be a builder.

The Lemons and Me and This Season

1 Reply

I found a patch of fireweed last week that was in full fuzz, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

How are we here so quickly?

How are we six weeks out from winter now, with the Sockeye gone and the Coho here, and with those Silvers running, the feeling of frost each morning has rushed in too, and the need for a reset each night lingers?

Oh, it’s been a year. And it’s just August.

I think every single person close to me feels the same.

It’s been a year.

It was supposed to be the year when we all finally…FINALLY threw off the bad memories of the pandemic…when we all had a fresh start…when it was just going to be a page-turner and a chapter-changer.

But man, it’s been a year.

And this time of year, this particular season, it always has me yearning for a new planner.

A fresh start.

College classes start back up, a fresh new year begins in my job, my babies crank up their schooling…

It’s a natural start to new beginnings, and some years are happy and others are reflective…

but this one…this one has been a little sad.

Oh I still want a new planner. I’ve chosen my 2026 version, I’ve got the stickers ordered, I’ve got a PLAN for the planner.

That’s just because I’m looking to rein some things in, though.

Looking for some sense in the sadness…some methodical for the melancholy.

Because the older I get, the harder it comes, this changing-of-the-seasons.

And as I take stock in the state of things here in this bottom quarter of 2025, I feel the weight of it all.

This season that has a nation divided. Once again, here we are divided, this time uglier somehow.

This season that has me facing the rest of my life without my mama by my side.

This season that has our family walking the line of being empty-nesters while still having children living at home.

This season that has our farm downsizing as the kids grow up and out of their childhoods, and the animals begin to age out and leave us.

This season that has my body saying her child-bearing years are through, and it’s time to transition into menopause.

This season that is seeing friendships change and morph and fall off or grow deeper.

This season that has me wondering what I’m going to do with the remainder of the years that I have left on this earth.

This season…

Man, this season.

They don’t tell you when the babies are young that THIS season will be the hardest one yet.

That this season will grow you, flex you, bend you, break you, form you, mold you…in ways you never knew you’d be stretched or forced into before.

This season that has graves dug and cremains sitting on the bar in a fancy box, and thyroid medication-refill calls on speed dial, and the last year of high school plans saved in .pdf format after decades of making them.

That this season will have you on the brink of divorce one moment, to clinging in the next to your spouse like he’s the last person on the planet.

Hysterical and heartbreaking.

All at once.

That’s this season.

They don’t tell you that part.

They don’t tell you that your heart will break and you will be angry on a whim and that your bullshit threshold will be so thin that you can barely deal with people anymore.

They don’t tell you that you will feel all the years of your life that have passed and that you will just sit on your porch and ponder how many decades are to come and that you’ll reconsider all of your life’s decisions while holding so fast and tightly to all the ones you’ve made because they’ve all, every one, formed you into a person you wish you’d known when you were a younger woman.

They don’t tell you that the friendships you have will be lifelines or that your spouse who’s loved you almost two-thirds of your life will be the most cherished possession you’ve ever held, or that you’ll marvel when the adults who look like you and who were delivered out of your body will all-of-a-sudden become your closest confidants and that there is no greater joy than having them all together within the same walls you’ve all worn down together with dirt and blood and hearts and handprints.

This season.

They don’t tell you that you’ll care for aging parents and that once you finally, finally get used to that shock of an adjustment, you’ll be too soon saying goodbye and finding yourself an orphan even as you sit there mature and grown and feeling like a twelve-year-old searching.

They don’t tell you that your siblings, that bloodline, that will suddenly become something precious and opposite of what was once disregarded and taken for granted because it was something you were thrown into by chance.

They don’t tell you that friends won’t always be loyal and that what you thought was solid might just be flimsy, or that we live in a time when believing differently from someone might just be the reason they write you off as not-worthy.

They don’t tell you that others may just cling to you like their old age depends upon it, and that one day you’ll realize they’re right, and you’ll cling to them too and look forward to those grey years of laughing and love, and that you’ll hold onto them like a precious jewel because that’s what they are.

They don’t tell you that your faith will change.

That your friends will change.

That your family will change.

And that through it all, you’ll still be expected to be the same.

This season.

I sit on my porch and I work and I think and I ponder it all…

and sometimes I read my Bible, and I remember the fig tree and how it withered, and I cry because I don’t want to wither.

I don’t want to be without fruit.

I don’t want Him to look at me and say I’ve just spent all this time withering and have Him cast me away.

Because I’m not.

I’m not worthless.

I’m not withering.

I’m growing.

I’m budding.

I’m trying.

I’m striving for the Son and I’m trying to grow fruit, and just like my five lemon plants, those precious babies of mine forced to grow in this cold, cold land even though they’d much prefer the warm, tropical home we hijacked them from…

I reach.

My leaves curl, and sometimes they even die and fall off.

But I keep reaching for the Son just like they keep reaching for my windows, and slowly, ever slowly…they grow, and even though it’s not always seen until the sun shines again, I think maybe I am too.

That one, oh, he’s so crooked and curled and lopsided, and isn’t that just like me in this season?

LORD, isn’t that just like me?

Trying. Reaching. I hate this season, I can’t stand this climate, I yearn for the warmer times…

I long for when they were babies and I wish for when things weren’t so politically divisive, and I crave for times when they were simpler…

But I’m gonna keep growing through.

I’m gonna keep reaching.

I’m gonna keep stretching out my limbs and praising and looking for the sun in the dark, dark seasons…

When the hormones make it miserable, or when I’m stuck between peace and the plan, or when the bureauracy of the job hits hard, or when days change so fast I have to turn on a dime, or when the weight of the way forward needs more energy than what I have to bring, or when You may have to install a grow light to help me get through the days when all I see is the darkness…

I will keep growing.

I will remember grace. And mercy. And lessons.

The family I’ve borne and all the years we’ve been given.

The husband who has loved me faithfully and would give his breath to see me happy and safe.

The people who have given their lives so that I may have freedom.

The friendships that are threads in the quilt of my life.

I will remember goodness and love.

Like my lemons, I will reach through the chill of the changing of seasons and the darkness that lingers more and more each day.

I won’t succumb to the cold or the bleak or the uncertainty of what is to come.

I will grow.

I will remember there was One who gave up everything He had so that I might live this life He gave.

I will remember that every day here is a blessing and a gift.

I will remember that not everyone knows yet the freedom I have, the salvation that’s been laid out for all to find.

I will remember.

And on the days I forget, I will cling to the hope and the reminders that are there in the everyday blessings of this life…these ones given to me, those friends and family…those words in the ancient writings that continue to etch their truths into my heart.

I will remember.

And I will grow.

Cheesecake and Dying

1 Reply

I came across an old journal today as I was hunting for a new planner for the upcoming season —Autumn always makes my planner side jittery and searching for something fresh— and it took me two reads of the page to realize the scrawl I saw was my mama’s and not mine.

She’s been gone now three and a half months, but sometimes it still feels like she’s here, and when I realized the chicken scratching was her writing —done in my book from that weekend in the passenger seat where she took notes while I drove—it stopped me in my tracks for a moment because I remembered when she wrote that, and it seemed like just last week.

It was her sixty-ninth birthday, and I’d taken her away to my favorite getaway, “our” cabin in nearby Homer, the place my husband and I have taken our kids and ourselves for over twenty years of getaways.

So many breaks: celebrating mid-winter with the February birthday of our firstborn; taking an annual anniversary break in October or whenever we could squeeze it in, just me and Matt; taking family down when they came in from out of state…somehow, my mama and I had never been, just the two of us.

So that year, that year before she began her serious decline, but after she’d begun to rely upon me more by becoming an Alaskan and my neighbor, I took my mama to my favorite getaway. We splurged on a birthday dinner at the best steakhouse in Alaska, and we took in the hot tub, and we started a book that someday I may just write.

“Cheesecake Conisseurs: The Story of a Mother, a Daughter, and their Quest for the Perfect Cheesecake.”

It started at the steakhouse on Day One (Cheesecake #1) and ended at the pizza joint on Day Two (Cheesecake #2).

It sounds trivial, this cheesecake quest, but you have to understand, at this point in our relationship, my mama had had a stroke and was well on her way into full-blown dementia, me on my way into full-blown caregiving.

We just didn’t know it then…what was to come.

Because then, she was still in her apartment, just three miles from me around the corner, and driving herself to her doctor’s appointments —fully independent but no denying the fact that she’d sold her precious home four thousand miles away to relocate to be near to me where she remained on a waitlist at our nearby senior center to live out the rest of her life.

We had all come to terms with that change of seasons.

But in the cheesecake season, she was cooking, cleaning, driving herself, tracking her appointments and coming over for dinners, enjoying her visits from grandbabies, Sunday church time, outings with friends, and all her field trips for my job…giving all the help and love where she knew how to give it and fitting into the life here in her new state just like a glove.

At that point, it was just us who had to adjust. And I say that selfishly because she sure made her adjustments, too. She had sold up her precious little house in the woods that she loved so much and she said goodbye to best friends and neighbors she knew well, and she plopped herself into a state where she had to establish residency and find new doctors and a new church family…and her self-reliance took a backseat to depending on the family she knew well and loved to be part of, but who she also knew was busy and active and spinning in circles where she knew she’d have to become part of the orbit.

She was brave.

Even in her dependence upon me, upon us, she was brave.

So I tried to make her birthday special because even though our family may celebrate birthdays sporadically or when the oilfield shifts allow, a mama only turns 69 once in her life, and my mama didn’t always know special.

And those two slices of cheesecake the waitress brought out (on the house) made my mama feel like a princess.

She ooh’d and she ahh’d, and you would have thought it was the best cheesecake in the whole wide world.

Because it was.

We talked about how creamy it was.

We delighted in how delectable it was.

We talked about how it literally was the best cheesecake either of us had ever had in our whole lives.

And then the next day, on our way out of town, we hit the fancy pizza joint and enjoyed lunch, and of course, we ordered cheesecake for dessert, because it was a birthday weekend after all, and birthdays in our family are always meant to be extended.

The waitress at the pizza joint also happened to work weekends at the steakhouse, and when we told her about THE most delicious cheesecake we’d ever had, she mused that the cheesecake at her other place of employment was just cheesecake shipped in from Costco and accentuated with strawberry sauce made fresh at the restaurant.

Because don’t you know that Costco has the best cheesecake in the whole state of Alaska?

She thought everyone knew that.

My mama and I didn’t know that —not being Costco cardholders, how would we?—and as we slowly enjoyed that Day Two slice of mango cheesecake at the pizza joint on our day two of her birthday celebration, we mused about how ironic it was that a nationwide wholesale company was in the business of producing the best cheesecake in the state, and what does it take to be THE best cheesecake in the whole nation?

The creaminess of the mango at the pizza place and the subtle tropical flavor made a stiff comparison to the denseness of the New York style we’d enjoyed the night before.

Day Two Cheesecake wasn’t as thick, wasn’t as traditional, but it brought a freshness and a newness to cheesecake that Day One Cheesecake didn’t have, and what about that crust?

We were soon on our way, mid-afternoon, mid-January in Alaska, growing dark with an hour and a half of drive time ahead, and there we were, on the highway in my SUV, still comparing cheesecakes and their denseness and creaminess and richness and what it would take to be declared the best cheesecake in the country.

We could write it down, Mom!

YES!

We could travel around and compare cheesecakes and be just like the fancy restaurant critics, but just for cheesecakes!

YES!

Everywhere we go, we could order the cheesecake and write up a review, and then we could write a book about it and include recipes and photos…and squished into all of it, we could talk about it all from the perspective of an aging mother and her adult daughter.

YES!

Write it down, Mom.

And she fished out of my bag the planner-journal book I haul around everywhere I go, and even though it always made her carsick to read or write in a moving vehicle, and even though in her generation it was a cardinal sin to turn on the dome light when someone was driving, she did both, and she scrawled it out in my book and later that night after I’d dropped her off, I started a shared file with her for our iPhone Notes app, and we’d add to that list over the next few days, ideas of our little book to-be, The Cheesecake Connoisseurs.

And I didn’t think anything more of it until I went flipping through the pages of that planner today, two years old now, my mama gone from me now almost four months.

The scrawl of my mama…it could have been mistaken for mine, just spread out sloppy on the page…but as I came to those two pages while flipping through my books, I remembered that weekend and, looking twice, I snapped a photo of that spread and set that book aside.

Because how precious was that weekend?

And how many weekends since had I watched my mama decline, losing more and more of her memory and her function, having more and more medical issues creep into her life until she had to give up living independently, moving into her precious cabin on our property, until one day she just slipped away to leave this earth and be with Jesus?

I didn’t know on our cheesecake weekend that I would very soon become my mama’s lifeline.

I didn’t know how quickly old age and underlying medical issues and dementia would take over a body and age a person so fast that the doctors could only chase down what was happening on any given day.

I didn’t know that we’d never have the chance to compare more cheesecake.

I didn’t know that less than two years after our cheesecake weekend she’d be gone.

It’s easy to take the cheesecake story and think the message is to just eat the cheesecake.

That is part of the sentiment, yes.

But what isn’t there is the journey between the cheesecake weekend and my mama leaving us.

How we celebrated her next birthday —her seventieth— on Kauai, her favorite place other than Alaska, with just her, me, and her granddaughters, one of whom was turning eighteen.

How that trip was so very special for her, for us all, and how she soaked up the sun on the island she’d come to love because of traveling with her Alaska family that she held so very precious.

Or how she came to immerse herself into a church family, feeling a sense of belonging she’d never felt in all her life amongst believers in Christ. She spoke of them as she spoke of family, remembering their names when sometimes she couldn’t even remember common words.

Or how she delighted in the fact that she was finally going to see her lifelong dream come true, owning her very own cabin in the woods…only it wasn’t going to be in the woods of Tennessee like she’d always imagined; it was going to be even better, her cabin in the woods was going to be in Alaska.

Or how she still got to work with children, her lifelong mission…serving as a volunteer, side-by-side with her family in the local 4-H program, altering her involvement each year to her capabilities, still always useful and helpful and always, always with a servant’s heart.

Or how she was brave and made new friends, even through her insecurities and anxieties, traveling by driver when she could no longer drive herself to the local senior center, forging bonds with her drivers and those she shared lunches and crafty afternoons with.

Or how our family adjusted our orbit to bring her into its swirling, always-going, fast-circling movement, and how she just rolled with it all, only asking for a strong elbow to walk her across the driveway in the dark to her abode 300 feet away.

There was so much in between.

So, yes.

Order the cheesecake.

Eat the cheesecake.

But write a book about it.

Write a book about the days and the weekends and the months and the years of you and your loved ones…and especially your mama.

Because one day, you’ll find her writing and you’ll smile.

You’ll remember what she once was.

When you were young, but when she was old.

You’ll remember.

You’ll remember her voice.

You’ll remember her writing.

You’ll remember the times you had with her.

The good, the bad, the hard, the challenging, the precious, the frustrating, the beautiful, the growing-up years, the growing-old years…

You’ll remember.

And you’ll miss her.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:16

When Your Mama Loves Your Writing…

3 Replies

It’s a weird thing, this writing your mama’s obituary.

It’s not the writing it part that’s odd…the older I get, the more obituaries I’ve been honored to write. It always went without saying that I’d write hers too.

The writing it part was easy.

What’s strange is that her obituary is the first big thing I’ve written that she won’t read.

Aside from the volume of letters to my husband, and those embarrassing junior high journals that have long since gone up in ash, in my fifty-one years, my mother has read almost every single word I have written, and smiled and said, “I like that, honey.”

Because don’t our mamas love our words?

She taught me to talk, she taught me to wrap my chubby little fingers around a pencil and scratch out my letters, and then she taught me how to make those same letters into sounds and how to follow those sounds across a page and grow into someone who loves words and books and reading and stringing sentences together…

She always loved what I wrote.

In school, I’d ask her to review my research papers.

Once it became evident English and writing were going to be my jam, she’d have ME look over HER research papers as she pursued her teaching degree, and she loved the little comments and notations I’d scribble in the margins of her handwritten pages before she’d type it all up and print if off on our old dot matrix printer.

During my college classes, I’d read my pieces to her over the phone, and she’d offer suggestions and tidbits on what worked and what might be changed.

When my kids were young, I kept a family blog about our farm adventures and the growing up years.

She loved that little blog.

She’d tell her teacher friends about it and they’d follow our shenanigans, and she’d post sweet little comments on my page, even adopting one of my taglines: “It’s always an adventure!”

She’d pull our page up on her old computer in her classroom and let our soundtrack play on…those songs became her favorite.

We had a book we were going to write together: The Cheesecake Connoisseurs. We developed that plan on her 69th birthday, traveling to our favorite cabin and eating dinner at our favorite steakhouse where they served her up a complimentary slice of cheesecake with a birthday card, and we determined it was the best cheesecake we’d ever had as we gave it a restaurant-critic infused review, marveling at its creaminess and perfect amount of richness. We changed our tune the next day though, when lunch brought another slice of cheesecake, and we determined that that one might indeed be the best slice of cheesecake we’d ever enjoyed. On the two-hour trip home, we had the outline of our book hammered out in our shared iPhone notes, and a plan to travel around the country and do reviews of all the cheesecake we’d sample.

I might still write that one. We sure did love us some cheesecake.

She adored my book, Annie Spruce, not only because she and her dog Ribsy were such central figures in Annie’s story, but because that book gave her the opportunity to tell everyone she knew that ya knowwww, my daughter is a published author. She carried my little author cards around in her wallet, and one day I caught her passing one across the fabric cutting table to the nice lady at JoAnn Fabrics.

My mama was my biggest fan.

My mama believed in me and was proud of everything I did.

Well, maybe not always…we had some bumpy years along the way, but the thing about my mama is she never let the bumps ruin the ride.

She let the bumps be part of the journey and sometimes, oftentimes, we’d relive them and laugh.

Like the time we drove from Michigan to Alaska together, way back when her only daughter was moving four thousand miles away from her. We had one big fight, we almost killed my dog accidentally with his sedatives, we narrowly averted a tornado, and we nearly dropped the suspension on my Olds Achieva by not knowing how to navigate the frost heaves between Tok and Glennallen. She was miserable in all those moments and I’m sure she may have regretted her decision many times those six days to come along for the ride.

But do you know that over the next two and a half decades, every time we’d talk about that trip, we’d marvel at how HUGE the Canadian Rockies were to a couple flatlanders like us; how it was other worldly to encounter large game right alongside the highways; and we’d always, every single time, laugh about all those bumps and tears and frost heaves.

We were both better for having had that adventure.

These past several years have been full of bumps and heaves and some rocky road too, but to my mama, it was just part of her journey.

She smiled, she laughed, she may not have liked the road sometimes, but she was always along for the ride.

And always, she loved to read what I wrote.

As daughters, don’t the words of our mothers always linger in our ears and on our hearts?

Her eyes would tear up and she’d smile and say, “Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot, honey.”

So I read her obituary one more time this morning after it was published, drinking coffee from one of her favorite mugs, and I sat outside and told the LORD that I am thankful He is taking care of her now. That I am thankful her streets are no longer riddled with potholes but are gleaming and golden.

That I have so much peace she got to bypass all of the congested and ugly traffic jams she knew were just up the road and instead just had an easy exit and was Home.

And that even though she wouldn’t read what I had written about her this last time, that I hoped my words, and my life, and my time with her —bumps and all, that I hoped she knew that I was glad that all these years, I got to be along for the ride.

*

“Someday when the pages of my life end, I know that you will be one of the most beautiful chapters.” —Unknown

“This is the day that the LORD has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24
In honor of Poppy. 1954 – 2025

Cassandra Rankin

Life is Messy and Things Aren't Always Little on this Crazy Little Farm

Twenty-One Things from Twenty Years

Dear Mama

Dancing in the Kitchen

Snowbirding and A hui hou…Until We Meet Again

Pieces of Poppy and Alaska is on the Island Tonight

A Place of Your Own

Building

The Lemons and Me and This Season

Cheesecake and Dying

When Your Mama Loves Your Writing…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: