Angels and bananas

Last night, I ate soup from a bowl my former neighbor, Marie, gave me. I’ve been thinking about her and the old neighborhood a lot these days.

Here’s a sweet little something from 2018 to go with your coffee this morning. Enjoy!

*****

“I drive around the block every night before I head to work,” Edward says, forearms resting on his back gate. “I check on your house too. Make sure everything’s okay over there.”

I try to think of what we did to deserve our own nightshift-working guardian angel who happens to live down the alley and monitors our block while we sleep, but I come up empty.

“I appreciate it,” Husband says, his head bobbing.

“What would we do without you?” And this time when I say it, it’s not a rhetorical question.

Edward’s eyes glow, and the back door of his house swings open. His wife Marie steps out and saunters toward us, a smile splashed on her face.

I exchange a hug with the woman who gave me her grandmother’s ceramic bowls—and warm memories of her whenever I eat soup from them. Before those dishes, though, she gave us something even better: her daughter, whose presence improved our basketball court out back. For years, the sight of that kid’s pump fakes and dribble drives, as she played with at least six other teenagers on our driveway, made my heart clench. In those days, Marie gave all the neighborhood kids stern warnings about practicing manners while they shot hoops at our place too. And my heart squeezes even now.

But we have to leave.

“We’ll have you guys over for pizza,” Husband says for the umpteenth time, even though jobs usually trample our intentions when we pull out our calendars. But hope and pizza live together in our neighborhood, so here we go again.

One summer day, Marie calls, telling me she’s got something for me. She drops off the present—a black garbage bag filled with overripe bananas—on my porch. She rescued the fruit, destined for the dumpster, from her workplace, because why should it all go to waste? I peel, slice, and zip the bananas into freezer bags for their cold sleep. In the winter, I’ll do some baking with Marie’s gift and think of Edward and his watchful rounds night after night. And of course I’ll think of her too, always finding ways to make our lives sweeter than banana bread.

We fire up the outdoor pizza oven on a rainy Monday, but Edward and Marie are working and can’t make it over for a slice this time either.

“Why don’t you put in your order?” I tell Marie. “We’ll make you a couple for after work. I don’t care how late it is.”

She laughs. “Okay. Sausage, green pepper, and mushrooms for me. Just meat—or whatever you’ve got—for Edward.”

Around ten o’clock that night, she pulls her car up to the curb in front of our house. I head outside, balancing one pizza pan on each palm. She jumps from her vehicle, meets me on the sidewalk, and hugs my middle because my hands are full.

“I would’ve delivered to your house, you know,” I say.

She laughs again. She’s appreciative, she says, but I think I feel it more. While pizzas are nice, I’ll take angels and bananas any day.

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


Lessons from the kitchen: Part 3

I eye my grocery list again. Mustard seeds, it says in Husband’s handwriting.

I think of what they call “a tiny seed with a lot of spunk” and gaze at my man, planted on the couch next to me.

“Tell me about the mustard seeds you put on the grocery list,” I say, hoping he’ll deliver something profound I can use for the blog.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I use them in pickles.”

And maybe his simple response holds the same plucky spirit as the seeds.

I dig deeper. When ingested, the seeds—rich in minerals and antioxidants—increase blood circulation, treat inflammation, and protect the body from cancer. When planted, the mustard seed will grow anywhere, the experts say. It’s prolific, rarely bothered by pests, and its roots grow down deep, adding nutrients back to the soil around it.

If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, the Great Gardener says, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.

If the mustard seed is one to two millimeters in diameter, what’s the size of my faith?

I tried it at the Black Hills and nothing happened. But I also used it when the ultrasounds showed my baby in utero had a hole in her heart, the Volvo’s brakes failed in 42nd Avenue’s heavy traffic, we smelled gas in the house, and our empty fuel tank threatened to stall us out in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert.

So, was my faith big enough? Dicka was born with a healthy heart, I drove that Swedish car home safely, a tech from the utility company patched the leak in time, and our vehicle propelled us—on fumes—to a gas station on the other side of the desert. It was also big enough all the times I didn’t get what I wanted, and it grew—especially then—from a seed into a tree.

Like canning and grocery lists, kitchen lessons are endless, but I'm sticking with this last one and grabbing onto a meme I spotted this morning: I have a mustard seed, and I'm not afraid to use it!

Let's move some mountains.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

Lessons from the kitchen: Part 2

I don’t care which way a person installs a new roll of toilet paper. I change it so it’s rolling off the top, but it’s not a big deal. I’m not judging.

I don’t care if people desert their damp towels on the bathroom floor. I scoop them up and toss them into the laundry. Not much thought goes into it.

I don’t care if a pan is left encrusted with food. I soak it and tackle the scrubbing later. My mind is already onto the next thing.

I do care about The List, though. It’s only a simple Post-it Note on the kitchen counter, but its contents—or lack thereof—mean something to me.

“People,” I say to the inhabitants of the house, “if you see we’re out of something or running low on anything, put it on the list.”

They all nod like they love me enough to do my bidding, and 79% of the time, they do. But then I don’t have cream for my coffee or butter for my popcorn, and if my life were a comic strip, a dark scribble would appear in my thought bubble.

It’s not like you have to buy the item, I tell everybody all the time. Just make a note of it, please. Did anybody hear me? You did? Okay, good. Then do it. Thank you.

The List is a medium for communication, and the household members like to rattle my spelling cage when they use it: oitmilk, bagles, crem chez, toona, qwasonts. And they abbreviate things too: bluebs and strawbs, shred ched, spark wat.

A long-term house guest once heard me chiding the others about The List, and not fully apprised of the rules, she added her request: Sheep’s milk cheese from Whole Foods

One time, next to the sandwich meat, The List contained anonymous chastisement: You all have baditudes, every last one. And another time, between the spinach and Coleman's mustard, it declared endearment: I love you, Mom

The List shows me Husband’s canning passions of late, and sometimes I don’t even know what I’m buying. Or he can do the shopping to ensure accuracy, is what I might say.

I went on a hunt for mustard seeds—they were on The List one canning day—and they were an elusive commodity in all the stores I checked. So, I thought a lot about mustard seeds, which led me to contemplate faith and mountains. If you know, you know.

And I guess that’s where the lesson resides: in what some claim to be the tiniest seed on the planet. But this is going long for today, so that can be a point for next time.

‘K, bye.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

Lessons from the kitchen: Part 1

Husband’s up to his delicious tricks again, and the Google family calendar entices me with what lies ahead on various dates: Taste the new pickles, Pickled eggs ready, 6 weeks from production of sauerkraut, and so on.

Life in the new house has brought out the man’s inner food scientist, and he dabbles in pickling, canning, and fermenting, tinkering with timing, ingredients, and crisping agents.

Also, we have jars upon jars—all sizes of jars, if you were wondering. (This blog installment could’ve been called Jars.)

“Do we have enough jars yet?” I ask.

“Not really,” Husband says.

Eggplant antipasto, pineapple-turmeric sauerkraut, pickled cauliflower, and pepper jelly have found their spots in our kitchen in recent months, and my man's not even close to done.

The two of us click around on our phones in the evenings. I search for full-body workouts that span mere minutes or watch that knitted toad on Instagram as he flits through his stop-motion life. The guy next to me? He’s researching how to take on a massive epoxy/wood table build or dry age beef at home.

I see a theme. Husband embraces delayed gratification and quality results. I, on the other hand, like the quick way to almost everything. I don't recommend limp pickles, though, so don't copy me. Be like Husband and wait.

The more I consider this blog post, the more I think it's a personal lesson for me I didn't have to drag you through on your Thursday, so carry on with your day.

(But come back next week if you're curious about what else I've learned in the kitchen that likely only applies to me.)

Husband and a few of his jars.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)


Thoughts on the farm: Part 2

“We could play another round tonight,” Mom says, “but maybe you’re too tired to lose again.”

If there’s more trash-talking somewhere in the world over a game of Bananagrams, I don't know about it.

As I sit at my 81-year-old mother's diningroom table, flipping letter tiles to prepare for the competition's opening “Split!”, I think of her recent misadventure on the farm and how, on August 30, 2023, her three-legged dog and riding companion on her EZ-Go mashed his furry body on the accelerator and sent the golf cart crashing into her house, the impact ramming the steering wheel into her ribs and catapulting her out of the driver's seat and into her garden.

They call it an accident because it's unexpected, undesirable, unintended, and not directly caused by humans—or so says Wikipedia. That last part makes me think the internet knew all about Mom's mainly Australian Shepherd/Sheepdog/Blue Heeler mix.

After The Accident, Mom heated up a bowl of tomato soup for her lunch. A thought nagged her, though, and she could almost hear the words of my nurse-sister: “Get it checked out.”

She drove herself to the ER in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and won a bed and overnight stay in the hospital. The doctors, after viewing the results of her liver scan (don't mess around with internal bleeding, people), sent her by helicopter to Fargo, North Dakota, where she found her next bed—this one in the ICU.

After Mom's release six days later, we four sisters staggered our visits, each of us spending a handful of days on the farm to oversee her transition back to life as she knew it. Healing, like life, takes a whole lot of farmhands.

I form words from the little tiles in front of me. Because of Mom's recent accident, I could restrain myself from a Bananagram victory today, but I don’t. Why go easy on this woman who can hold her masterful own in this world of words? I assemble something creative.

“No, dear,” Mom says, eyeing my string of characters. “That's not a word.”

Busted.

“Husband's looking for zucchini for a recipe,” I say, changing the subject. “Got any you want to get rid of?”

“No, but I'll check with Bernie.” Mom texts her mailman like it's the most normal thing in the world.

His answer comes faster than I can spell joist (which is fast because I already had all the letters on hand.)

“He says he can get some zucchini from so-and-so,” and Mom mentions the name of a lady in town who has the summer squash Husband wants.

“Seriously?” I think about Mom's mailman now, rolling up to her rural mailbox in his vehicle, deploying his Super Soaker on her two dogs when they trot too close to his tires but also bringing them deer legs for treats when they're lucky.

Days earlier, Bernie texted her: Broken rib medicine in garage

Mom found potatoes, onions, cabbage, leeks, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and a bouquet of sunflowers. Another day during her convalescence, Bernie brought her old Reader's Digests. Today, he dropped off an old peanut jar “vase” filled with his homegrown gladiolas—to go with her mail.

This mail delivery arrangement seems heavy on the gifts, but Mom says she once loaned Bernie her chicken plucker so maybe it all comes out even.

Mom cleans up at Bananagrams while I imagine her life in the country, replete with love, mail, humor, and all the garden veggies required to heal a broken rib and hematoma on her liver.

It's not a bad gig, this visiting a recuperating patient on the farm. Not a bad gig at all.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

Thoughts on the farm: Part 1

I strode around Mom’s property in northern Minnesota—a piece of land closer to Canada than to Iowa—on Monday, September 18, 2023, the seventeenth anniversary of Dad’s passing.

The day was in the low eighties, an unusual temperature for a place known for the possibility of frost in September. A lover of summer, I thrill to a warm fall, certain I feel God’s love most in the heat.

I rounded the southwest corner of the yard and entered “the wedding aisle,” a term someone had once used for the neat row of trees back there. A stroll down the aisle always feels like a triumphal procession; nature watches me, and I smile back. And so it went that day too.

Just beyond the midpoint of the path, I stopped. Turning, I gazed back to the start and snapped a picture of my past.

Like my life, I thought. Over halfway there.

I aimed my steps forward again and clicked a photo of my future. I moved into it. A freshly-shorn field, post white-unto-harvest, loomed ahead. My destination.

Mom’s dogs—the three-legged one and his younger friend—bounded next to me, sometimes stealing seconds to sniff the trees, other times ripping toward new fascinations.

I came to the end of the aisle and captured another picture. The work done; the harvest gathered in.

Life is golden.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

Happy 9th birthday, My Blonde Life!

“The blog is turning nine on September 18,” I tell Husband. “I’m not a poet, but maybe I could write a mad haiku for it.”

He laughs. “Yeah, do that.”

Husband contributes to My Blonde Life's birthday celebration by making dessert: puffed pastry filled with fresh peaches and raspberries, bleu cheese and Mike’s Hot Honey. Trust me; it’s a delicious combo.

I plant myself and write three haikus:

Once my baby blog

but like a fourth grader now.

Look how much you’ve grown!

You’re tiring me out

with your nine-year-old antics.

Time to take a nap.

Each week I’m alive

brings a chance to write your life.

You’re a gift for me.

Thank you for reading—some of you for nine whole years! May the inspiration continue…

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

The best season: your responses

Last week, I asked you readers to tell me about your favorite season. Thank you for your responses! Here's what you said:

*****

We spent years living on the edge of the tropics as missionaries. We missed crunching autumn leaves underfoot and the smell of bonfires. Now that we are retired in NW Wisconsin, it is sunshine on snow that sends my heart soaring; the long blue shadows of naked tree trunks in the woods; mornings when every twig is etched in white against the bluest of blue skies; the sound of falling water behind the fairy castle formations of a frozen waterfall. I love propelling my body on two strips of wood along a groomed trail or tromping across a frozen lake with snowshoes and breathing in cold, crisp air. Deer bed down near where our geo-thermal system spills a stream of warm water all winter. And don’t get me started on hot soup, candlelight dinners, and Christmas lights.

LeAnne, NW Wisconsin

*****

Summer is the best season because of the sunbathing after half a year of snow and going outside without being in pain from the cold. I love that the sun stays out till 9pm, road trips with the windows down, swimming all the time, late night ice cream trips, bonfires, sleeping outside, etc. The hot days are like heaven but for just the perfect amount of time. If summer were too long I don’t think I’d appreciate it as much as I do.

Tanya, Minneapolis, Minnesota

*****

I like summer because I adore being drenched in everything I wear and almost passing out every time I move.

Gail, Palm Springs, California

*****

Fall. Because it’s crispy; it’s not humid. You can wear a sweater, jacket, shorts, and flip-flops. It’s beautiful sitting outside by the fire at night.

Seamus, Angle Inlet, Minnesota

*****

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)


The best season

Today, I want to hear from you. What’s your favorite season? Why?

I’ll get us started.

Whirring fans. Oiled-up skin on a beach towel. Boomboxes on the beach. Orange push-up ice cream. Galilee Bible Camp. Sleepovers in a tent in the backyard. Bike rides to Young’s General Store. Strawberry Shasta and video rentals. Road trips in the station wagon. A fresh-cut lawn.

I loved summer then; I love it now. And it hurts my heart when it leaves me.

Now it’s your turn.

If you’d like to share your favorite season with us (and why you like it), click HERE to send me a message, and I’ll publish your writing in next week’s blog (along with your first name, city, and state.) Subscribers, simply hit reply to this email.

I can’t wait to hear from you!

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)


Broken

I spy broken glass on the floor in the furnace room. The pane I slid behind some boxes and planned to repurpose for a future artistic endeavor is now lost to me. I also recall the outdoor clock by the pool I hung a handful of weeks ago. I positioned it on its nail and jumped into the water. The CRASH! onto the cement seconds later showed me a person really can kill time.

I follow a social media page about weird and wonderful secondhand finds, and recently, someone posted a photo of a broken bit of pottery they found while combing a beach on South Korea's East Sea. A transfer-printed cobalt blue tree marked the white fragment. The finder hoped to turn the piece into jewelry and asked the followers for suggestions on how to preserve it well.

I think of glass; I think of humanity.

“Why are there so many prickly people, so many sharp edges on them?” I ask myself one day.

Because they’re broken.

The answer, landing in my spirit, was a reminder. Navigating my own shards of life and everybody else’s too, I get it. I think of human brokenness now, and examples prick me.

One training requirement of my day job as an employment consultant is to listen to a mental health podcast monthly, and an episode I heard last week was on small t traumas. The word trauma is used on social media—spent on things like messed-up coffee orders, texting mistakes, wardrobe malfunctions (and more)—its true weight brushed away. But here we are with traumas of all sizes. Why? Because life has many edges for us to bump against as we walk through it. And some edges hit us.

Now an ancient story springs to mind, retold by so many cultures no one knows its true author.

An old man had two large pots, one hung on each end of the pole he carried across his neck. One pot was perfect, holding the full amount of water each day. The other was cracked, only able to carry half the water on the long walk home. The perfect pot was proud of itself; the broken pot was sad.

After years of failure, the cracked one spoke to the man. “I'm ashamed because I leak water each day on the way back home.”

“Did you notice the flowers only on your side of the path?” the man said. “I planted seeds, and every day you watered them.”

I've never seen a pane of glass, a clock, a piece of pottery, or a pot heal itself. And I know this much is true: the same goes for me.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

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

The family holiday

This past week, a faithful reader of my blog (whom I’ve never met) emailed me. She said she loved the story of our family’s 2012 holiday visit to northern Minnesota, and would I send it so she could read it again? I was happy to oblige, but in the process, I reread it. My stomach did a little flip. Maybe it’s still too soon.

Dear reader who just contacted me this past week: this one’s dedicated to you. (Thank you for reading all these years!)

*****

“And we’re off.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, he threw up.”

“Poor thing,” said Mom.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh no.” Coco bolted from the room.

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

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

“Yeah.” I smirked, eyeing his nearly bald head. “All your luscious, flowing hair.”

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

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

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

Sobbing, Dicka ran off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I headed back into the kitchen for an update.

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

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

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

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

“We know she doesn’t.” I snorted.

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

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

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

Flo wrinkled her brow. “Really?”

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

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

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

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

“You might be okay.”

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)

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

Stress

With Husband’s help, I lugged my snake plant outside in late May when the weather assured me it would be safe from winter’s death grip. My plant sits next to the front door, and its presence brightens my entry every time. How did it feel going from an indoor climate of a constant seventy degrees, though, to outside temperatures ranging from the high sixties to low nineties? I marvel at its robust health despite the fluctuations.

Soon, I notice a green shoot springing from my plant’s base. Then another. And a few more. Buds form on the new stalks.

“In the years we’ve had this thing,” I say to Husband, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s about to bloom.”

And so it does.

Vanilla and jasmine scents issue from the blossoms, and pride swells my chest. I must’ve done something right, I think, which is a fresh idea for me when contemplating plants.

I run some online searches to learn more about what my snake plant is doing. The flowering is extremely rare, I read. People try hard to coax the elusive flowers to come, but it’s often impossible. One must create the right environment for this to happen. As I read, I smile—until I go deeper.

If you want to get a snake plant to flower and bloom, one article says, it’s going to take some calculated neglect. The challenge is to create the right amount of stress without going overboard.

Stress? I feel a little sick now. I take no pleasure from hurting either flora or fauna. My poor plant, standing so faithfully (but under duress) at my front door while I selfishly go about my day content! How dare I? I learn more online. It could be root-bound, too warm or cold, or under-watered.

Now the flowers look like silent cries to me, and I don’t know what to do.

I think about stress, though. The internet brims with quotes about coal under pressure too. Flowers (at least my snake plant's) and diamonds—both painfully obtained.

Maybe there's a lesson in it for us all. No, of course there is.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

If you have any good snake plant tips for me, I'm listening. But for now, I'll try to enjoy the flowers.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)


The depths: Part 3

“‘There’s no pit so deep God’s love is not deeper still,’” I read, my voice coming out jagged.

“Mama, are you okay?” Flicka said. My girl was probably nine years old at the time.

I felt like saying, “Not really,” but instead I nodded as I remembered scenes from The Hiding Place, a 1975 movie I saw as a kid about the Holocaust. The words I read to my girls were Betsie Ten Boom’s, and the truth she uttered couldn’t be destroyed by the hatred that put her in Ravensbrück for loving the Jewish people.

I think about depths these days, and everything I read nudges me closer to their edges to peer into them. Some depths crave children, and they make me nauseous; there aren’t enough millstones in the world for all the necks that deserve them. Some depths sweep my breath away; there’s no getting to the bottom of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. Some depths put me on my face; his compassion is too much for me as he hurls our sin into the depths of the sea.

Now a kids’ song plays in my head, and if you grew up in the Sunday School culture, oh, let’s say forever ago, you’ll hear it too (and probably do the actions that go with it):

Deep and wide, Deep and wide,

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.

Deep and wide, Deep and wide,

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.

In one of the next verses of the song, the reverse happens, and the speed ratchets up with its actions–Wide and deep, Wide and deep, and so on–and all hilarity ensues because kids love a chance to wiggle and act crazy in church.

On our epic family road trip in 2019, I stood alongside the family at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim and said, “That’s a big hole.” I needed better words to convey the vastness of that over-a-mile-deep river valley, but in its presence, I lost them.

And so it is today. I glimpse the wild depths of God, but I still don’t fully understand. I need the strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

I know this much, though: it’s worth peering over the edge to look.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)



The depths: Part 2

The fish in my house distract me from the fish in my blog.

No, we don’t own any of the real creatures anymore; my best efforts around those watery pets years ago were dismal. I intend to write about the more recent discovery, though, of entire biologic communities thriving in extreme darkness under the crushing pressures of the deep sea. It’s an interesting romp, reading about the newly identified fluffy sponge crab, the bioluminescent sea worms that emit bluish-violet light, and the rose-veiled fairy wrasse–a reef fish that comes in a stunning pink–but soon, I stall out.

I pad into the kitchen to see what Husband is cooking up for the family reunion this weekend. He shoves a savory snack mix around on hot baking sheets with a silicone turner. Oyster and Ritz varieties turn golden, and because I’m thinking of sea life today, of course there are goldfish crackers in the recipe too.

I gaze around the house. Our girls each wear three permanent fish drawings on their skin–matching sister markings. The trout represents Flicka, the tuna is Ricka, and the anchovy’s for Dicka, which makes me recall the day a few months ago when somebody I gave birth to asked what my sign was. In our house, we’re clueless about such things.

“I’m a Pisces,” I said because I only know that much–and that it’s a fish.

Ricka’s eyes widened. “Oh, I thought it was pronounced Piskiss.”

Somehow it leads me to think of the French word, pécheur, and how it means both sinner and fisherman. And I think of Jesus calling his followers to him–how they were both those things at the very beginning.

I have the calling on me too, and I’m not so different from my ancient brothers and sisters, minus the fishing part. And there’s that familiar undercurrent, pulling me now.

I open the Book. My bookmark, made from a photo of koi Flicka snapped at Como Zoo, holds my spot. “You’re the shiniest fish in the ocean!” she wrote on the back for me, but I care more about the crashing waves opening to me in the pages on my lap. No more disjointed thoughts about aquatic creatures; no more distractions over crackers or tattoos or the world’s signs.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

And I swim down as far as I possibly can.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)


The depths: Part 1

In this world, Husband fears one thing: swimming in the middle of the ocean at night.

“You never know what could be out there.”

And I shudder when I imagine it too.

Like most of the country, the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible on June 18, 2023, on its way down to view the wreckage of the Titanic snapped me to attention. In the following days, I viewed chilling 3D animation videos demonstrating the depth of the ocean through a virtual underwater seascape by using global landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and many of the world’s seas for perspective. Even the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, located in the United Arab Emirates, would descend only 2,717 feet–far short of reaching the Titanic's remains which rest 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The ocean liner’s grave is shallow, though, compared with the Mariana Trench, living in the Pacific Ocean 35,000 feet below the sea’s surface. I shiver thinking of what’s down there in the darkness. And the knowledge of it all is too much for me.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Deeper than our waters, higher than our universe, broader than our everything. A formidable presence, fervid grace, fearsome love.

Yes, He is.

*Has My Blonde Life inspired or entertained you? If you wish to toss a tip into my writerly coffers, here's how you can do it: @Tamara-Schierkolk (Venmo) or $TamaraSchierkolk (Cash App)