Five senses

“The touch of a voice, the taste of a smile, the scent of a skin. See like a blind man and hear what lives within.” Unknown

Today, I want to hear from you.

If you could choose only one, which of the five senses would you want to keep for the rest of your life?

Send me your thoughts (along with your first name, city, and state) HERE, and I’ll publish them in next week’s blog installment. Subscribers, simply hit reply to this message. 

I’m thankful I can smell fresh laundry, taste wasabi, feel the cowhide rug under my bare feet, hear the bossa nova music playing right now, and see the future in my grown-up girls. But if I had to choose only one of my senses for the rest of my life? Hmmm…

What about 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)

*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.

Farnsworth and Jarvis

When I first spied the beast waddling through our backyard trees, I grimaced. Zooming in my phone’s camera, I grabbed a shot, catching the subject’s white face and brindle body. Weekly on our property, we witnessed turkeys, ducks, deer, and squirrels—even a hawk once—but this was a new one.

I texted the picture to Husband. Ew, look what’s in our yard!

He responded inside of a minute. He’s good for bugs and maybe mice, I think. We shall call him Farnsworth.

My man texted me a screenshot of a source extolling the creature’s virtues: “Opossums are scavengers. They move from place to place in search of good food sources and a comfy place to sleep and are beneficial for helping to control the overpopulation of snakes, rodents, and insects. Opossums act like little vacuum cleaners when it comes to ticks, including those that spread Lyme disease.”

Oh, I take back my ew, I texted.

They’re the janitors of the backyard. Maybe security guards against the rodent riffraff? Husband wrote.

My initial reaction was turned on its head. Obviously, we needed more Farnsworths.

Five days later, while the girls basked outside, offering up winter skin as a gift to the sun, Dicka alerted me by text of a new mammal at large in the yard. I hurried outdoors to witness him, but the masked one had vanished.

“Raccoons are the worst,” I said.

“He disappeared under that pile of wood,” she said.

“Just great.”

Did raccoons have any skills and talents to share with our family? They were scavengers too, but these guys were willing to polish off carcasses and sift through trash. “Urban survivors,” National Geographic called them. Gross.

The new critter emerged—like he knew we were talking about him—and clawed up a spot in the grass with tremendous speed, flicking dirt behind him.

“Jarvis!” Dicka hollered. So, this one already had a name too. He halted his excavation and lasered his gaze at her. “Stop it!” And for a moment, he did.

Days later, Farnsworth flashed his Sasquatch-like presence again, and I imagined him performing his vacuumly duties in our trees. I smiled. We learned his yard mate, Jarvis, however, had helped himself the previous night to a garbage bag someone had left outside our bin. I scowled.

I typed a partial question into the search bar, and Google filled in the rest: “Do raccoons and opossums get along?” A common question, it seemed. The best online answer was they had to be good at sharing since they enjoyed the same scrounging habits. Sometimes, though, they could snap and swipe at each other.

I sighed. It might be a very long summer.

*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.

Dandelion

A sunny blog from yesteryear for your Thursday… Here’s to the darling little intruder!

*****

Yellow dots the lawn. I take a hard look at those common intruders again, shining like mini suns in the spring green.

The blooms are so perfect it’s startling. As a kid, I collected handfuls, delighting in the abundance of beauty in my fist, the stems staining my palms.

Thanks to Husband’s grandma and great-aunt, I tasted the homemade wine once. The women served it in tiny glasses—the kind dried beef was sold in once upon a time—and tossed the yellow liquid back like it was nothing. I took a slower pace, sipping the bitterness and wondering if the aging vintners harvested the flowers directly from their back yard or what.

In a big jar on the counter, I store tea of all kinds, but one of my favorites is made from the roasted root of the rejected plant. The Pest of the Lawn warms my cup and stomach, and I know my organs love me more and more with each swallow.

The taproots support our livers, the leaves make an earthy salad, and the blossoms are a hue that cheers us. It spreads throughout our grass, this perennial herb, giving us more benefits than the sod on its own ever could, but we’re taught to detest it. Why?

No one is born despising dandelions; we’re groomed to loathe them. And I wonder what else—or who else—we’ve been told to hate this whole time.

The subject runs as deep as the turf’s usurper (or is it a usurper?), and I need some refreshment to go with my thoughts.

Heading for the tea jar now…

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family 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.

Streams

“True faith drops its letter in the post office box and lets it go. Distrust holds on to a corner of it and wonders that the answer never comes.”

That line in Streams in the Desert plunged me into deeper thoughts on faith, and the word streams in the book’s title inspired me at 9:39 last night into the kind of writing that mimics human thought. Ah, stream of consciousness writing! How very early 20th-century Modernist movement of me.

I would’ve given author James Joyce—a master of the writing style—more thought, but I’ve been consumed with practical matters this week, scheming about how to stretch our family’s dollars. This morning during a team meeting at work that started with the icebreaker question, “What made you smile this week?”, I felt like a commercial.

“I found out we can save hundreds a month by switching our auto insurance to Progressive.”

My smile-inducing (for me) statement didn’t induce smiles in anyone else. Flat affects all around.

Lest you think most of my job is made up of icebreakers, it kind of is. And I wonder where the term icebreaker came from in the first place, but I’m too tired to look it up. I will, however, look up the video Flicka sent our family a few days ago with footage from the start of the Sea-Ice Marathon of 2024 in Luleå (No, she didn’t go to Sweden. She just shared the clip with us from her cushy spot in the living room.) I watched it again and noted the glare ice under the runners’ feet. Scary and cold. So cold. Like those ice baths everyone but me is taking these days.

And now I’m back in the arena in Thief River Falls where I took skating lessons as a kid. I glided out onto the rink one day way back when, but the pride I felt at first swish evaporated. My feet slid around under me like nothing I ever knew. No precision, no control. What was wrong with my skates? Or was something amiss in me? Half-way across the rink, I finally looked at my feet. My skate guards still clung to my blades. Just an oversight. No big deal. Only the end of the world because everyone else saw it too.

But enough icy thoughts. It’s spring.

A few in our neighborhood adhere to No Mow May and have the signs (and long grass) in their yards to prove it. They let the grass and weeds grow for the month to provide food and shelter for essential pollinators, but I heard somewhere those creatures will likely get shredded up during the first mow of the season.

And now I wonder when our 14-year-old neighbor—I guess he’s probably fifteen by now—will come over to get our in-ground sprinklers going again. He proffered his services last year, claiming he could get the system, which we didn’t know we had, repaired and running and plant the proper grass seed to eradicate our pesky bare spots out front. He delivered, dazzling us with irrigation talents we learned he picked up through YouTube when he was ten.

Last year, this young businessman—with multiple clients in the neighborhood—assessed our bleak-at-first lawn situation with a quiet authority. Then he pedaled off on his bike to buy supplies at Menards, keeping his work at our place to daylight hours, since his mom didn’t let him go out after dark, even to diagnose why geysers shot out of our lawn once during the night back at the beginning. His daytime customer service was impeccable, though, and when Dicka crushed a sprinkler head with her car while backing out of the driveway, he responded to my text for help in six minutes and had the head replaced in twenty.

This might be the point in the narrative when a traditional writer would say, “But I digress,” but that’s exactly my goal today. And it’s so breezy, this meandering way of writing, I might practice it more often to your chagrin. Or delight. You can choose.

*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 book fair

A meticulous volunteer had fanned out the books on tables, auditorium seating, and rotating racks, the paperbacks like wordy peacocks splashing their bright colors for attention. Cheery signs poked up from displays, marking genres and reader levels. On massive walls, posters bloomed—those were for sale too—and there by the cash register sprawled the table of tchotchkes: light-up pens, metallic pencils, sparkly rubber balls, iridescent rulers, beaded bracelets, neon slinkies, and more.

In minutes, the kids—one classroom at a time—would bluster into the auditorium and rip through the oh-so-neat arrangements of early childhood literature. Within seconds, those little readers would touch every last thing—I could guarantee it, or I wasn’t a parent of a few of them myself. We all knew at their ages they saw with their hands and not with their eyes.

Three of us parents took a quick cash register lesson from a capable member of the Parent Council, a book fair volunteer just like us, before the next wave of shoppers entered. We learned enough to get us through our shift; fingers crossed I wouldn’t have to do a return or make change from a $100 bill as fifteen squirrely ones dropped rubber balls and freed slinkies while waiting in line to give me their parents’ money.

The next class entered the auditorium in a more orderly manner than I expected, the train of them bookended by the main classroom teacher and an assistant. The primary leader dispensed reminders and instructions, and off they went. Some of the little consumers would be avid readers one day, gulping down New York Times bestsellers faster than water. Others, not so much. But these were the days of memories anyway, when the smell of new stories mingled with notable illustrations to carve forever notches in the brain.

But I was about to gather my own indelible memory of spoken words—not written ones like the kids were chasing that day—that would live more than a decade and a half in vivid color in my own mind.

I guided a kid or two to books they wanted, pointed to where they could check out, and returned displaced merchandise to its rightful spot. Another volunteer mom, seemingly charmed by the flurry, leaned into me.

“I can’t imagine sending a blank check with my kid to school,” she said, “but some parents do it.” Her eyes glinted with the same joie de vivre the kids carried, and I imagined her heart dancing with her first library card or trip to the bookmobile back in the day. Her smile eased off, though, and she slipped into mom mode. “Hold on.” She hustled a few steps away to a little boy poised at the trinket table, a bill of some denomination clutched in his fist, his gaze drinking in the inventory.

The woman spoke Arabic to the boy, telling him he shouldn’t spend his money on the junk he was eyeing. His mama wouldn’t be very happy about it if he brought home anything like that instead of a book, she said, and whatever he got would most likely end up breaking and going right in the trash.

The kid’s mouth flatlined, and he sauntered away from the table, empty-handed. The woman returned to me.

“I just told him he shouldn’t spend his money on the junk on that table. His mama wouldn’t be very happy about him coming home with those things instead of a book. Plus, any of that plastic stuff will break and end up in the garbage,” she said, translating the interaction for me.

“Oh,” I said, but I had understood her every word the first time—no translation needed. And I didn’t know Arabic.

I think the woman spoke with me about the next school-related topic, I likely used the cash register to ring up purchases, and we probably tidied up after that classroom’s visit, but I couldn’t focus. I hadn’t just made a good guess at the woman’s words to the boy; I had understood Arabic when I knew nothing of it.

My mind scrolled through possible reasons for that singular moment when I knew a language I didn’t. I recalled reading a story about a young man in a remote village in Africa suddenly speaking perfect English, a language he had never learned. Another story came to mind about a global worker who had witnessed a terrible accident involving children who were bleeding and struggling to live. She instantly spoke flawless Haitian Creole, an unknown language to her, to tell them she would help. And then there was the story in the second chapter of Acts where the people spontaneously broke out in new-to-them languages so others could hear their message.

No Rosetta Stone, Super Duolingo, Busuu, or Memrise. No language institutes, no semesters of classroom instruction, no lengthy tutoring sessions. Just sudden language acquisition because of dire circumstances. But my situation was far from dire. There was nothing urgent in an elementary school book fair and nothing of importance in talking about cheap knickknacks.

What happened that day in the school’s auditorium never happened again. So, what was the point of it?

What do you think?

*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.

Boring?

When Facebook offered me the Dull Women’s Club page as something that might appeal, I wasn’t offended. I was curious, though, and clicked through its members’ introductions and newsy sharings until I was hooked. I joined the group to read the contributors’ posts more often.

“I’m as old as my tongue and a tad older than my teeth,” somebody wrote. And more facts from many others: “I’m one of the dullest dullards you’ll ever meet.” “I like spending time alone at the tiny thrift store in town. If anything is odd or I don’t know what it is, I’ll buy it.” “I filled my pill organizer today, and now I’m charging my phone.” “I led a big, loud life prior to meeting the love of my life. His arrival heralded the start of peace, and now I find solace in dullness.” “I like the sound of the refrigerator humming.” “I love knitting things I never finish.” “I think I might just dump my whole junk drawer in the garbage instead of organizing it, but that would be too exciting.” “Boring is safe. Safe is nice.” “I tried the rivel soup in a diner in Michigan once. It was pretty good.” “I picked the hair out of my brush today.” “The puzzle’s done, the laundry isn’t.” “My toes are permanently splayed from wearing Birkenstocks all the time.”

I logged off, calmed by the blandness, and joined a team meeting for work.

“Here’s the icebreaker for today,” my supervisor said. “Tell us three boring facts about you.”

Maybe it was my “quality time” with the Dull Women of Facebook or maybe it was my recent embracing of the mundane, but I instantly knew what to share.

“My shoe size is 9 or 9 ½,” I said, “I prefer almond flavoring to vanilla, and I’m only mildly concerned about the yogurt in my fridge that expired two weeks ago that I still plan to eat.”

Was admitting my normalcy really this easy? When pressed, I was authentic about being average, but this could be a new default for me. I could—and probably should—more often share the commonplace to bring rest to my listener.

It wasn’t as though I was striving for adventure, fame, or the big story—but wait. Maybe I was—or I at least pressured myself in that direction. When I released thoughts of achievement, I felt a rush of peace and contentment.

I enjoy checking the mail, cleaning lint from the dryer, escaping visitors to go to bed (hey, I still love you all!), wearing sneakers without socks, and doing countless other bland activities that don’t necessitate a mention. Or, to inspire others to embrace the beautifully dull life too, do they?

*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.

Magic-- er, illusion

I saw a jackknife on social media this week, and that’s all it took. Funny how something so small could whisk me back to the 1970s. And there I stood again—just another kid in the crowd—watching too.

“Now look at this,” Dad said in his thick Norwegian accent. “I can swallow a knife and bring it back up.”

He sat in the middle of the gathering, children circling his chair. He waved his small pocketknife around for the group to see. Cupping it in two hands so it was no longer visible, he tipped back his head and raised his hands to his mouth in a showy display. The knife dropped to the floor near his foot. “Oopsy daisy,” he said and snatched it up, tucking it behind his bent knee. He resumed the cupped-hands position, the kids never the wiser for the part his knee played in the illusion. “Let’s try this again.” He lifted his hands to his mouth once more, made a gulping sound, and flashed his open and empty palms for all to see. “All gone.” He shot a toothy smile at his audience.

A kid hollered, “Bring it back up!” and Dad was happy to oblige. He made all the contortions necessary to show he was working the object back up his throat. He leaned over his lap and gagged at the same moment he released his bent knee, and the pocketknife fell to the ground. The kids gasped and giggled. He scooped up the knife, swiped it across a nearby kid’s shirt to clean it off, and returned it to his pocket.

“Now don’t try this at home, okay?” he said, doling out the safety advisory that probably should have come at the beginning.

Dad kept a rubber coin pouch, filled with quarters, in his pocket. He would place one coin over a closed eye, rub it into his head, and make it come out the back of his neck. He plucked quarters from kids’ ears, made coins jump from one of his hands to the other, and changed the color of pocketknives with the flick of his wrist. I witnessed his impromptu magic shows countless times as a kid, but I could never unravel all the mysteries. How did he do it?

Life got fancier in the 1980s when Dad took his show on the road. By show, I mean he performed an hour’s worth of bigger tricks to wider audiences—schools, churches, community centers—and by road, I mean he traveled to a handful of neighboring towns to deliver the fun. And I sat in the bleachers or pews or folding chairs to witness the same tricks over and over, ever amused by his audiences’ reactions.

Mom and Dad discussed what to label his form of entertainment. It better not be called magic because that implied he dabbled in the dark arts. No, it should be referred to as illusion, and if Dad showcased his talents to congregations, he should call it gospel illusion, weaving Bible stories in with his sleight of hand to create a nifty object lesson one wouldn't soon forget.

“See this pitcher?” Dad held up his trick silver water vessel for the whole church’s viewing. “My great-great-grandfather gave it to my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather gave it to my grandfather. My grandfather gave it to my father. And my father sold it to me.”

He told the story of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath—how the drought in the land drove the prophet to stay in the little town with the widow and her son.

“‘Would you bring me a little water in a jar, so I may have a drink? And bring me a piece of bread too?’ Elijah asked. But the woman said, ‘I only have a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I'm gathering some sticks to make a meal for my son and me to eat—and then we'll die.’ Elijah comforted her. ‘Don't be afraid. Do as you said and make the meal and make me a small loaf too because God says the jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run out until He sends rain on the land again.’”

“The widow did just as Elijah said,” Dad said, pouring the water from the silver pitcher into a bowl until it was gone. He righted it. “And the next day and the next day and the next week,” and he emptied his magic pitcher again, “and the next week and the next week and the next month,” and he once again poured all the liquid from the container. “And the oil never ran out.”

Kids in the audience tapped their parents’ arms. “How did he do it?” they whispered. But Dad had moved on to the lesson of the story.

“And God will take care of you too,” he said.

The fun was endless, watching Dad’s tricks: the sword through a volunteer’s neck, the lengthening ropes, the changing colors of metal rabbits, and more. And Dad’s delivery was everything; his jokes were hokey, his timing clunky, and his level of amusement likely topped ours. We have the DVD to prove it, in case you were wondering.

I think of Dad now, and I imagine he entertains the angels with his brand of smalltown showmanship. Only God knows what all goes on up there. But there’s laughing. I'm sure of that part.

Clouds of night

Dusk moves in, but it hasn’t given up the sky yet, so I look up. It feels like stolen time, this walk on an early April night—a luxury I’ve snatched for myself once again because I can. And I still see the clouds.

I gather my steps with our girls, waves of air nudging us one way, then buffeting us at the next turn. The roiling winds of a temperate evening, warning of things to come.

“The clouds look like gray cotton candy,” Dicka says, and I laugh.

I haven’t seen pewter spun sugar before, and I don’t think I want to, but this is nice.

Rushing winds, rushing words. Because life with girls is like that—at least mine. I listen more for cadence than meaning. The punctuation falls off and blows away.

and doesn’t walking feel awkward like what do you do with your hands what do you mean you swing your arms it could be fall but the air doesn’t feel like Halloween like the Halloween in 90s movies which is exciting and full of expectation how was it spring in February this year and winter in March and if I were a bird I’d have to be a bird of prey so I choose an eagle when I think of birds of prey I think of vultures but ew they only feed on the dead and it’s weird to think of clouds at night I know they’re there but hidden I think of the pillar of cloud by day the pillar of fire by night and what if God guided us like that now can you even imagine and there’s expectation in this wind don’t you feel it too

The conversation ambles on and blows us home, and I still think of clouds, once here, now enshrouded by darkness. I settle into the gold chair, and wouldn’t you know it, Streams in the Desert speaks in its old-timey yet relevant way of the very thing I think:

“Get into the habit of looking for the silver lining of the cloud and when you have found it, continue to look at it, rather than at the leaden gray in the middle… At first you may not be conscious of this, still as you resolutely and uncompromisingly snub every tendency toward doubt and depression that assails you, you will soon be made aware that the powers of darkness are falling back… Keep the skyward look, my soul! Keep the skyward look!”

Oh, I plan to.

*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.

Finished

In 2017, a local publication, The Lutheran Ambassador, asked me to write a story about the women of Easter, based on the account in the Gospel of Mark. I wrote the following piece, and they published it in their April 2017 issue.

I post it again today because does this story ever get old? It’s only our everything.

*****

Jesus shifted on the iron spikes, and his head drooped. From a distance, my friends and I watched—and prayed. That morning, soldiers had shredded my Lord with their whips and strung him up on a cross to die, but now they laughed as if sharing a joke at the market instead of in this place where hell touched earth. My stomach roiled, and I took a deep breath to quell the nausea.

Salome looped her arm around mine. “But he was going to be king.” Her features twisted, and she searched my face. “He can’t die, Mary. He can’t.”

Another Mary, the mother of James and Joses, peered at me, and her chin wobbled.

“Maybe we didn’t understand,” I said. “Maybe he knew something we didn’t. And it was better.” But my heart clenched like a fist, refusing to let go.

The one who is forgiven much loves much.

Years earlier, I had loved nothing. My broken body had housed a shattered mind. Illnesses, accidents, and compulsions battered me. Once, I even thrashed into the flames of my cooking fire. Afterward, I writhed in the dirt in blistered skin; my hours melted into blackness.

But then came Jesus. He rested his hand on me, calling out the seven demons that had tormented me.

“Mary Magdalene,” he said. And for the first time, my name had sounded like beauty. “It is finished.”

And it was.

The crowds at the cross scattered, exposing us women, huddled far from where the masses had jeered or sobbed. Many of Jesus’ followers had vanished too. But my heart anchored me to the soil. How could I leave my Lord to his pain when he had saved me from mine?

Jesus struggled against his nails and scanned the meager gathering. Then his gaze rested on me. Those eyes that had once seen through my affliction still saw me.

“It is finished,” he cried out.

The same words that had made me new.

His muscles twitched; his head slumped. The sky darkened, and although only mid-afternoon, shadows draped the body of my Savior. Jesus was gone.

A rich man named Joseph carried Jesus’ body to a tomb in his garden. Mary and I trailed him and hid behind a tree as we watched the man spread ointment and spices onto fresh linens. And then he wrapped our friend. The burial complete, Joseph heaved a stone into place to seal the entrance to the grave. Dusk was approaching; the Sabbath was near. And I had work to do.

I scurried home and scooped sweet spices into a bowl, my hands trembling. I thumbed away tears as I stirred. The day before, I had prepared the meal for Jesus’ supper in the upper room with his followers. If only I were mixing oil into the flour for bread tonight instead of oil with perfumes to anoint my friend’s body. If only I were roasting the lamb with thyme and rosemary instead of blending my tears with myrrh and aloes. If only I had known then what was to come.

On the first day of the week, I squinted at the early rays of light that sliced through the darkness of my house. The start of a new week without my Jesus. How would I live without him?

A knock at the door. I unlatched it. Mary and Salome stood outside, each holding a bowl. Grief had stripped their faces of color and rimmed their eyes with purple.

“I’m ready,” I said, my own bowl of spices cradled in one arm.

Gravel crunched under our sandals, and dew drenched the hems of our tunics as we trudged to the garden.

“Oh no,” said Salome. “How will we anoint his body? Remember the stone? It’s too big for us.” A sob jostled her words. “Who will move it?”

I inhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”

Mary gripped her bowl in both hands. She stared into the distance, her mouth a straight line.

In the garden, the crocuses exploded in yellow and the hyacinths in pink. White narcissus curled around our path. Where were these flowers two days ago? Or had our sadness hidden them? They bloomed now—the bougainvillea as profuse as forgiveness and the lilies as fragrant as hope.

We neared the grave. But what was that up ahead?

I gasped. “The stone’s already been moved.”

I hurried into the tomb, and my friends followed. A young man, in a robe whiter than light, sat inside. Salome shrieked. My heart hammered, and my bowl clattered onto the stone floor, spilling the spices. Terror clawed its way up my throat. Mary splayed a hand over her mouth.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the young man. “You’re looking for Jesus who was crucified. But he’s not here. He’s risen.” He stood and gestured toward the door. “Go and tell his disciples.”

My friends and I clambered from the tomb and scrambled back onto the path. We clutched the fabric of our skirts and ran. Blinded by joy, we forgot all about our tear-soaked beds, our morning’s task at the tomb, and the spices we had abandoned somewhere along the way.

Because it didn’t matter anymore.

*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.

Sudden blizzard

A sudden blizzard is coming.

The words hit me on January 9, 2024, in the stillness of early morning. I grabbed a pen and recorded them in my journal. I sat, examining the sentence from all angles. What does it mean? I asked. And Jesus overturned the tables in the temple.

I shared the words with a friend—the vision too. A beat of silence before her response, and I imagined her filing it away in her heart for later.

On February 14, I walked with Husband through the neighborhood. The dry, sunny day spun away, color drained from the late-afternoon sky, and snow zinged us. Where had the tiny storm come from so fast? Sudden blizzard. But it was foreshadowing and not the real one—this time.

On the night of March 16, I had a dream. Hundreds of people gathered on craggy red rocks, the uneven terrain circling a lovely swimming area hundreds of feet below us. Twisting paths descended to aqua waters, and hikers threaded their way down to swim. Laughter, picnics, outdoor games. I sat on a ledge at the top near a mama with her toddler. She dangled her legs over the precipice, and her baby squirmed in her arms, trying to free himself. She laughed, loosening her hold on him, and my stomach dropped.

“He could fall over the edge,” I said, “and if he does, he’ll die.”

My sharp response surprised me, but I spoke the truth.

The wind whipped into a frenzy, the temperature plummeted, and I spied a person, dressed in winter gear and encrusted in snow, trudging over the now hardened aqua waters people had splashed in minutes earlier. Icicles hung from his body in a slant, the winds having frozen them sideways.

The ice would break under the man’s weight—I just knew it. Not the amount of time needed to freeze the lake solid enough to walk on. But even as I worried, I somehow knew the ice was at least a foot thick, and no one would crash through it. My dream ended.

The next day, I told the nighttime story to my friend.

“So, a sudden blizzard?” she said.

She had remembered the words from January, and now I did too.

Weather reports say we should expect snow tonight. After the mildest, driest Minnesota winter I can remember, the forecast interests me. But that’s not the sudden blizzard I know is coming.

Many of us have lived through blizzards. The Halloween Blizzard of ‘91, September 11, the pandemic of 2020, and personal storms that threatened to rip us to pieces. Before each of those, we sat on the rocky edge, swinging our legs, the aqua waters far below tempting us to swim.

A sudden blizzard is coming.

We can’t see, but we can perceive—and prepare.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.

*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 Block

It’s 6:38 a.m. this Thursday morning, and I still don’t know. The Wall—more stubborn creature than inanimate object—sprawls in front of me, and I drink my coffee like it'll move in a minute so I can get through.

The block irks me. Uh, excuse me. I just need to get by you. Did you hear me? Move, please. Move. Now.

But it doesn’t.

I double-click on my blog idea file. At this point, every topic will take too long. I pad to the bookcase, roving my gaze over the spines of writing books. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird peeps back at me. I bet it would unleash funny and inspiring ideas, but I instead extract Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and lift its cover. My cousin’s handwriting decorates the inside. She’s written a date, November 2000, and has it really been that long? She says she’s sending the book “all the way to Arizona in a burst of exuberance,” and I’m free to keep it or pass it on. Turns out I’m keeping it. The family can pass it on when I pass on.

I could’ve put the proverbial pen to paper one day this week when the temp was sixty-two. Instead, I walked 16,000 steps with Husband because I heard 15,000 steps a day will drop a person’s risk of heart disease to exactly zero. The no chance whatsoever of heart issues for that one particular day moved me more than the writing did.

Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka—the youngest freshly home from Panama, and if you can say the name of that place without belting out Van Halen’s hit song from 1984, then you’re likely not a Gen Xer—distract me with the loveliness of their very existence and talk of wearing sandals today when it’s in the low forties.

And now it’s 7:47 a.m., and I have to go to work.

Next week, maybe I’ll write about Dad’s magic trick shows or understanding Arabic at a school book sale or suffering tribulations in the world of passwords.

For now, this is what you get. I love you.

Yep.

*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.

This is what it's come to

All I know for sure is that the big event on February 17, 2024, wasn’t on either Trixie’s or my bucket list. Our men had everything to do with it, so don’t be looking at me funny.

Todd, Trixie’s husband, drove the Jeep while Husband rode shotgun on the way to Ridgeland, Wisconsin, for the occasion. While the vehicle swallowed up the miles, Trixie and I sat in the back seat chatting about adult children and ergodic literature.

The first time I heard about the annual chicken toss in Ridgeland, Wisconsin, I assumed the mayor of the town flung packages of meat (maybe even frozen—ouch!) into the crowd, and the lucky recipients saved money on their grocery bill that week. Husband soon corrected my misunderstanding.

A bleak sun shone as Todd parked on a street in Ridgeland, and we tugged more insulation around our bodies to meet the twenty-five-degree day. Snow pants, check. Extra jacket, check. Hats and scarves, check. Hand warmers in our mittens, check.

We strode toward the growing crowd. This western Wisconsin town’s inhabitants shared the style of those in the northern Minnesota place in which I was raised: Polaris jackets, wraparound sunglasses, camouflage, snowmobile boots, cans of Coors Light.

“You can cut the tension with a knife,” Todd said. And maybe there was a certain anticipation under wraps (read thermals).

At noon, three sturdy men appeared on the one-story flat roof of Rural Mutual, each holding a chicken, and the tossing began.

The men extracted chickens from their cages, one by one, and released them over the crowd. I cringed, thinking of what the townspeople would do if they caught one. Trixie raised her arms with each toss, and I already knew what she’d do if a feathered one ended up in her care. She’d build a lovely coop, and that bird would live a charmed life with a cute name, the healthiest of feed, and her daily crooning.

“Just because you don’t catch a chicken doesn’t make you a loser,” Todd said to me like I was worried about it.

Now and then, a bird flew away, escaping all the extended arms, and the villagers cheered as if they hoped, like I did, the fowl would evade their clutches. I said a little prayer for the chickens flapping over the crowd, feeling conflicted. The criticism from animal rights groups was real; I hated unkindness toward creatures too, but I ate chicken, so who was I to comment? Also, was this unkind? A guy near us tucked his feathered gift inside his coat for warmth, letting its head poke out to gaze around.

Another bird flew away and perched on the Drunk’n Monkey Bar & Hotel, a place that looked more like a saloon from the Old West than an establishment of today. The crowd applauded its freedom.

“What’re you gonna do with it, if you catch one?” I said to a man next to me.

“I already have a chicken coop full of chickens at home,” he said, so I didn’t get an answer.

Each time we thought the show was done, the roof men magically produced another crate. About forty minutes and one-hundred birds later, the cages emptied, and we left the smalltown scene, chickenless.

“Maybe we protest it next year,” Todd said. “You know, mix it up.”

“Or maybe we don’t come back,” I meant to say, but I don’t recall if I did, although I believe our group’s consensus was that the bucket list item had a solid check mark next to it.

Every adventure with Trixie and Todd is delightful, and it’s okay by me if our future excursions don’t involve avian antics of any kind. But wait. I hear Abang Yoli, a new restaurant with Korean fried chicken, is amazing, so maybe next time we do that.

*A big shout-out to Trixie for this blog installment's title. It truly has come to this.

*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)

Flicka and the wedding quilt: Part 1

“I’m supposed to start making my wedding quilt,” Flicka says one day in November.

She spends time in the secret place each day and learns new things there. This is definitely one of them.

I consider two realities missing from my twenty four year old’s life: impending nuptials and a current boyfriend. But I know how callings and faith work: solid ground always rises to meet each step into seeming nothingness.

“You better get to it then,” I say.

She comes into agreement, calling what is not as though it were, and orders wool roving from Amazon. This won’t be a fabric-squares-stitched-together type of blanket but a felted wool covering meant to hang first from the altar on their day before God and man, then come to rest on their bed (or wall of their first apartment.)

Excitement mounts. Will my firstborn’s husband enter her life as soon as the quilt is complete? Is this an “if you build it, they will come” scenario? And more importantly, is Flicka even aware of that movie reference?

The holidays happen, distractions beckon, and my girl appears to forget her assignment. Santa remembers, though, and she finds a gift card from Knit & Bolt in her stocking on Christmas morning. Still, no more movement on the quilt.

“Look, do you want me to keep you accountable?” I say as 2023 ends. “Because I will.”

She says something about the new year, about the strategy she forms even now for The Quilt.

One Saturday in early January, I swirl my toilet brush around the insides of porcelain bowls in the house, and maybe my activity ignites productivity because Flicka lugs bags of supplies into the living room. She draws out yarn on spectrums of cream and gray.

“Oh, good,” I say, touching the dark gray wool. “This is accurate. Like the storm clouds of marriage.”

She lays out a swath of bubble wrap, layers the wool roving on it so the fibers are perpendicular and alternating, sprays hot soapy water onto the wool, and overlays it with mesh netting. She rubs the surface, agitating it, then rolls it in the bubble wrap and mesh, squeezing and peeking now and then to see if the fibers have bonded.

But this is tedious work—much harder than she expects. She decides a boiled wool product is preferable to wet felting and relaxes into a chair with her knitting needles.

In mid-January, a family friend—unaware of Flicka’s project and in the thick of Swedish Death Cleaning—messages my girl to say she has lots of yarn, and would she like to have it?

This is a divine you’ll-need-more-yarn-than-you’ve-got contribution to the project, and our knitter drives to Hudson, Wisconsin, in mid-February to fetch the donated skeins. If one zooms out far enough to see the picture from heaven’s vantage point, one soon sees that our friend purchased the material specifically for Flicka. And it’s perfect.

During the “knit one, purl two” of her days, my girl and I talk about the man coming behind the quilt. The whole family discusses how this might go. We throw out some names. We consider options that seem plausible, some more exciting than others. I feel like Mrs. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, a tiresome and gossipy character consumed by the desire to see her daughters married. Yikes. I pull back and choose to trust instead.

After all, if she knits it, he will come.

*****

Curious about Part 2? So am I. Come back at some point in the future to discover the ending of this story; it won’t be next week.

"The storm clouds of marriage" in wet felting. I want to pick off that little piece, but it's part of the fabric.

The knitted start of what will be boiled wool.

In the beginning...

Doesn't this look like the distaff from Proverbs 31?

*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.

A book and a cookie

I read Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See aloud to Flicka, delivering the final chapters as she mixes and rolls cookies. I think of all the paragraphs filled with the young, blind French girl navigating war-torn Saint-Malo, guided by the miniature replica of the city her father built her. Can my soul ever go on? How many heart-slicing books have I read in my life, convinced I’ll never heal from them? I always do and surrender to fresh woundings with each new story. When the words run out of this one, though, I sit at our kitchen island under the crushing weight of it.

“I cut back on the sugar,” Flicka says, “but I kept the same amount of butter.”

“Well, that’s good,” I say, not really caring one way or the other about baked goods when I know what became of young Werner.

I committed more reading than writing this week, so come back next Thursday for a hopefully better, longer story. For now, help yourself to a cookie.

Here are some photos of Flicka’s treats. (No photographic evidence available of my literature-broken heart.)

Love and foxes

I’m writing this on the evening of Valentine’s Day, so maybe you expect love to fill my story, but no. It’s all about foxes.

First, let me take you back several years to one Sunday at church.

Before the music played that morning, our pastor approached Husband and asked to meet him for coffee. Could it even work that week, he said? He didn’t know my man well and didn’t give a reason for the sudden need to talk. I speculated.

“He’s going to ask you to be a mentor to someone,” I whispered to Husband during the service. “Maybe even to him.”

“Who knows?” he whispered back.

Later that week, Husband returned from the coffee meeting. “You were partially right.”

“I was?”

“He asked if the two of us would be marriage mentors.”

“Oh,” I said, “that’s kind of big.”

We flipped the idea around for a day or two and soon said yes. We were no experts, but why not try to help?

On each couple we mentored—all engaged couples, preparing for marriage—we sprinkled advice of one kind or another to go with the six-week curriculum. After each session, though, I zoomed in on us and our relationship. How were we doing?

The great lyric poem, The Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs)—that blush-inducing book that somehow made it into Holy Writ—answered my question.

Nestled among the lovesick murmurings on couches resplendent with figs and caresses comes a startling imperative: “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.”

The spotlight illuminates the relationship-destroyers, and it isn’t the big stuff that undoes marriages—at least not at first. The bickerings over the timing of oil changes or saving money by shopping at Aldi instead of Lunds or forgetting to reschedule the dental appointment or saying yes to a friend date over a family commitment—these are the little foxes gnawing at the healthy vines, the creatures digging holes in our well-watered soil. The clumps of snow on the wood floor, the parking ticket, the need for yet another Centerpoint repair, the disagreeing on the details of a memory. The invitations are endless.

Humility and resolve rush in. Admission is everything, isn’t it?

Now I read this writing to Husband, and he’s eyeing the landscape for foxes, and I believe he wants to invite one in. Who even cares if I took the truck last night instead of the car? The car’s gas gauge loomed over E, and I didn’t have time to fill the tank before my meeting. And there I go, holding the gate open for that furry intruder too.

But we can do something about those pesky intimacy-ruiners, and that’s what we choose today.

Husband, let’s go set some traps.

*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)