The moment I can’t escape, that our family farm story must start with, took place on a quiet summer evening in my rural Iowa hometown in the mid 1980s when I was 18.

As was common in those days, I heard a knock at the kitchen door at the back of the house. At our house friends knew to come to the kitchen door. I opened the door to the county sheriff. We all knew him, of course. He had gone to high school with my parents, and his children went to school with my brother and me. He didn’t ask for my parents or even ask if I was officially an adult. He just handed me a folded up packet of papers and had me sign something.

As he walked away, I opened the thick pages. FORECLOSURE. I could see that this was a foreclosure notice on one of our properties. In a moment’s notice the world completely changed but it was an utterly ordinary interaction, one that resembled so many others at our back door. I didn’t really know what it all meant. I handed the papers to my dad in another room, knowing that he would know what to do. Dad always knew how to make everything okay for us. He grumbled and said something like, “I talked to the bank about this. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” My mom was at work, and I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him to tell my mom about this. The next day while talking to my boyfriend on the phone, I could hear his mother saying something in the background. The boyfriend relayed this to me, words I will never forget: “Did Angie see that their house was foreclosed on? I saw it in the paper.” If I could have crawled through the phone to strangle the woman I would have. What possesses an adult to say something like that to a teenager? I suppose she couldn’t have known (but she should have guessed having been a native of the area) of the years of struggle and debt and family inheritances and ineffective farm policies and bad corn prices and broken down combines and everything else that can kill a farm.

As I later learned, the world of a farmer rarely changes in just one moment, unless it’s an act of Mother Nature like a hail storm or early freeze. This foreclosure was only one in a whole series of events that takes place over months and years. I also would learn that our family was hardly alone in this crisis. Thousands of farmers were losing their land and their livelihoods. Some lost their lives to suicide or in shootings like that of Dale Burr in Johnson County, Iowa in 1986. Burr killed three people before killing himself after months of struggle on his farm. Years later I learned from my dad that on two separate occasions, individual farmers had come to him, gun in hand, ready to walk into a bank and enact some justice of their own. Both of these men were my dad’s friends but they weren’t especially close. Somehow they both knew that my dad was the one who could talk them out of hurting others or themselves, and indeed he did.

Farm Aid Rally 1986

This one family story can’t be told in one blog post, or twenty, but pieces of it are worth telling. My family came out okay in the end, better than okay. My parents were well educated and resilient, and they had an opportunity to thrive in another city. However, we were all so busy doing different things, my parents preparing to start over, me going to college and then getting married, my brother going to college, my sister changing schools from our hometown to the much bigger school in Council Bluffs . . . that we didn’t stop to grieve or process what this all meant.

My dad was a fourth generation Iowa farmer and raised corn, soybeans, cattle, hogs, and kids on land that had belonged to our Swedish ancestors. My parents had intended for the farms to be their retirement. They had expected us kids to go to college, but I’m sure my brother, sister, and I would have had to decide whether to take up the family business if it had continued. And even though our family was among the lucky ones who moved on successfully, the transition was painful. Other families in our small community, most of whom were being threatened with the same fate, backed away. It was as if those victims of the farm crisis had a contagious disease, and others feared getting too close lest they catch it as well. Fear drove so many behaviors and relationships during that time.

Sometimes I feel like someone died and we didn’t have a funeral. We didn’t even acknowledge that anything died. We didn’t have the time or the emotional capacity to do so. Survival is exhausting that way. My dad told me years later that he didn’t miss farming, but as my brother said in his eulogy for my dad at his funeral, he remained a farmer all his life. He loved the land. He was independent and invested in the well being of something bigger than himself. When I divorced I finally figured out what the sadness was about. My marriage and my parents’ farm life had dreams attached to them. We had visions for our future that wouldn’t materialize. In both the marriage and the farm, their loss meant something better for all of us. But still, it meant that a dream and vision of the future had died and we all had to develop new ones.

This idea of having been a part of a farm family is so powerful to those of us who lived it even when we are separated from it by many years. It’s not necessarily a romantic idyll we indulge in because much of that way of life isn’t terribly romantic, and we know it. There is just something about being part of a long line of people who engage in the same struggles and joys on pretty much the same pieces of land year after year. And your own long line of people are neighbors to other long lines of people who have done the same. There is a rootedness in that way of life that seeps into our DNA.

I started this blog three years ago as a way to explore all of this, but I can still barely talk about the loss of the farms. When I read the newspaper articles about the shootings and farm foreclosures of those years I tear up and ache for those families all over again. I will persist, however, from the story of losing ground to gaining ground, both in our family and in American agriculture. This is a story worth telling.

Image of Farm Aid Rally from http://historyrat.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/farm_aid_rally1.jpg.

Are you tired of spending hours hiding Easter eggs only to have the kids find them in a few minutes? Have you run out of creative ways to deceive your children and frustrate their fun on Easter morning?

Your troubles are now over! Just in time for your family Easter celebration comes the most exciting Easter innovation since colored plastic grass.

Camouflage Easter eggs.

This generation of children have been coddled and self-esteemed to the point that they expect egg hunting to be easy. Well, no more! Parents who are ready to really challenge their children will use camouflage eggs and keep their kids hunting for eggs in the wild for hours. Finding a well hidden, camouflaged egg will give your children a sense of accomplishment as well as sharpen their vision and prepare them for hunting nature’s bounty later in life. To sharpen children’s other senses, parents may want to consider filling these plastic wonders with herring or raw fish (to sharpen the olfactory system) or even BBs or micro-grenades (to sharpen the auditory system and reflexes). Coating the filled egg in honey will not only engage a child’s taste buds (for those kids who still can’t keep anything out of their mouths) but will also draw all kinds of insects and offer children a chance to observe flies, ticks, and mites up close.

Parents looking for ways to challenge their more gifted youngsters have another option as well. Camouflage Easter baskets!

The days of the cute Easter Bunny enhancing the high holy days of Christendom are now over. Camouflage Easter eggs and baskets make it possible for parents to use the holiday as an opportunity to expand their children’s intellectual acuity and competency in hunting. You’ll never hear the words “Easter egg hunt” in the same way again!

Watch this website for more exciting news in mid-summer when we roll out a line of camouflage fireworks sure to thrill your whole family . . . if you can find them.

*Camouflage Easter egg photo taken from https://armyfitness.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/37_586.jpg. The Easter basket photo was taken by the author at a local dollar store. Seriously.

A couple of years ago I wrote about the picture my family had received of my dad on the last day of his life. Today marks the 11th anniversary of his death. It seems fitting to share this post again. I think about and miss my dad every single day, but my thoughts about him are all happy ones.

Grief is a funny thing, though. Like a quiet cat slinking around the dark corners of a room, grief quietly purrs in the shadows, barely audible, and then will then take you by surprise and pounce on you when you didn’t even know it was nearby. I think you have to let it sit there with you for a while, heavy on your chest. It eventually finds its way out and life resumes. Sort of.

His Last Day

I thought I’d be okay with this. I thought I’d been encouraging my child’s independence his whole life in part to prepare him for life as a productive adult but also to prepare me for his launch into adulthood. I’ve heard all about the Empty Nest Syndrome, all about the benefits and sense of loss for parents when their babies fly the coop. What I have heard NO ONE say is that many teenagers leave, for all practical purposes, years before they go to college or leave home at 18.

I have had moments when I have been more than ready for my 16-year-old to move out, like when I think I no longer have the patience to sit waiting in a parking lot for him to be the last to leave the locker room, or when I find five damp towels on the floor of his room, or the entire stack of clean and folded clothes I put on his bed has been thrown into the dirty clothes pile (if indeed he bothers to make a pile).

Today I’m not feeling that way at all. I’ve got the whole Empty Nest thing going on right now and my son is still a  junior in high school. This year he got his own car–yeah for independence and saving on my own gas! He also recently got a job. He’s very social and likes to spend time with his friends when he can. His time is also divided between my house and his dad’s. I encourage all of this. Every bit of this is important to his growth and maturity.

But today is different. Today I was hit with the overwhelming feeling of what it means to have him truly out of the house. With all that he has going on, and his own damn willfulness (he’s obviously inherited the stubborn Swede genetics from my family), I see him very little. I have made dinner for him twice in the last two weeks, both of which he ate while standing in the kitchen because he was on his way somewhere else. We sat down to dinner together when we ate out last Tuesday night.

I nearly bawled all the way through church this morning. He had to work and our usual Sunday routine has come to a screeching halt. We’ve gone to church on Sunday mornings and then out to lunch since he was a toddler. All around me were sweet little ones, like my god daughter sitting next to me, and the sweet twin babies behind me in the back row. And the sweet baby to the left with the family who is fostering her. And the sweet Dilday kids a few rows ahead of me, only a bit younger than my own. All of these kids served as reminders of my own sweet baby who is now no longer a baby, though he’s still sweet. Sometimes. To other people.

It got me thinking about all those things we feel so certain we’ll always remember about our little ones, but fair warning, fellow parents, you won’t. I just wish I had known about all the last times:

I bounced him up and down while getting him to sleep when he was a baby and I sang every single song I’ve ever known (lots of Beatles, gospel, and Christmas carols) with his soft baby head resting on my shoulder and his little bottom perched on my arm

I pushed him on the swing or took him to the park to play

I laid down with him at night to read him a book and fell asleep in his bed with him

The last time he connived his way into sleeping with me

I sang him “You Are My Sunshine”

We sang “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” together

We went to a movie and he sat on my lap

I would say as he went to bed, “How much do I love you?” and he would always answer, “Whole wide world”

He leaned against me in the church pew and rested his head on my shoulder

We played trivia games with mostly questions about Sponge Bob while on a road trip

He wore the Batman cape I made him out of black satin fabric

He wore those tennis shoes with the lights in the soles

He fell asleep on my chest

He skipped as he left school and made his way to my car

He clapped and danced to his favorite Elmo video

This could go on forever. I won’t feel so melancholy and nostalgic tomorrow. I know that we have plenty of good times ahead and some very exciting things for him in the next year. For today, though, this premature empty nest hurts my heart a little bit, and I miss my bouncy little boy who wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed me too hard.

I think I get what this grandparent thing is all about. It’s some sort of weird craving to have these little ones in your life. Fortunately I have very young nieces and a nephew, as well as a toddler god daughter who lives nearby, and you can bet I’ll be finagling ways to get my hands on them whenever possible, partly because I love all of them dearly, but also so I can relive in a very small way what it meant to have my own in my house.

All characters appearing in this work are not fictitious but the author wishes they were. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely intentional.

Special Agent Mom, the overworked single mother, went in search of dirty laundry in her teenage son’s room. None of his clothes were in any laundry basket that she could find, and he wasn’t at home to nag about it, so once again she was left to take care of his hygiene needs on her own.

As she entered his room she immediately noticed on her son’s bed a red Sharpie, a roll of Scotch tape, scissors, and the leftovers of index cards that had clearly been cut into. Her heart leaped momentarily. Christmas was in a couple of days and maybe her teenager had made her a card! Memories of his days as a little sprout making her cards for Mother’s Day, Christmas, her birthday, all of them saying “I love you, Mommy,” flashed by and for a brief second she missed her baby terribly.

She then shook her head as if to awaken herself. She knew who she was dealing with. More likely than a card project was some sort of crime in the making. The savvy mother knew to start her investigation on the floor of her son’s room. Most things of his ended up there, so it was simply playing the odds to look there. She kicked jeans and hoodies out of the way. She gingerly lifted damp towels from the floor, careful not to contaminate any potential evidence. Her discoveries included half-full plastic cups of water, a bottle of Gatorade under the bed, and a grocery sack full of unidentifiable detritus.

Finding nothing on the floor, she moved her search to eye level. The room was small so only the closet and dresser top were left to mine. The closet yielded nothing (except for her resolution to cull the too-small shoes and box full of ties sometime in the future, but she also knew herself well enough to know it would be in the very distant future, if ever).

Then she spotted it. On top of the boy’s dresser was her great grandmother’s antique Depression-glass pitcher with something in it.

She said aloud to no one, “What in the . . . ?” As she approached the dresser with the incriminating evidence, she noted the words written in red Sharpie on the card taped to the pitcher, “Money for Florida trip.” Mystery solved.

Now the work of the prosecution took over. The mother was both a bit pleased with her son for wanting to save money for a spring break trip he was paying for himself but also exasperated that an antique glass pitcher was used for the Savings & Loan endeavor. She bagged the evidence and took it to the kitchen to piece together the sequence of events in the crime.

The son had to have taken the pitcher from the top of the refrigerator. Granted, for him the top of the fridge was practically eye level, but so were all of the giant cups they had collected from their local college football and basketball games that were on the counter. Why did he choose the fancy pitcher?

The son returned home to a surprise interrogation. Under this close scrutiny the suspect allocuted to the crime but when his motive for choosing the antique artifact for his criminal enterprise was questioned he simply shrugged and said, “Because it was there.” The son looked at the mother quizzically.

He said, “It’s a container. I wanted something to put my money in to save for Florida. What’s the big deal? Are you completely crazy?”

The mother shook her head again. She realized that as this was a nearly full grown man he actually had not said anything. She inferred it from the entirely blank look on her son’s face.

Special Agent Mom reclaimed the pitcher from the evidence locker and restored it to its rightful place on top of the refrigerator. The son spent the next few hours watching his mother out of the corner of his eye, uncertain of what else she might know.

Once the mystery had been solved and the criminal accepted the plea agreement, it occurred to Special Agent Mom to call her own mother and apologize for having used the valuable Ruby Red Depression Glass serving bowl as a pet food bowl on the concrete patio, and apologize especially for its having been broken in this act of compassion for the family pets. She decided against it, however, as this crime was entirely different and she knew she had probably apologized upon being caught so many years ago. “No need to be burdened by history,” she mumbled to herself.

I’m lousy at resolutions. I make them every year but I break them every year. However, I LOVE the idea of fresh starts, marking time, and tracking progress, which is why I really love celebrating the new year and why I always want to make New Years’ resolutions. When my friend Jackie alerted me to Ali Edwards’ online project, One Little Word 2013, I was intrigued. I am very good at understanding a mission and thinking about how parts of an organization or project fit a mission. I might not be able to make resolutions, but I bet I can follow a one-word mission.

It was easy to choose what my 2013 word would be. 2012 was what coaches call a “rebuilding year.” I managed to stay standing, have some fun, take care of my son . . . sort of. It was a year of transition where I learned a great deal about what I should absolutely be doing with my life and what I should absolutely not be doing with my life. I discovered how many wonderful friends I have; what a loving family I have; what it means to surround myself with positive, supportive, fun people who want to see me be happy. A few things came up missing as well.

So 2013 will be all about building on that knowledge. As opportunities and challenges come at me I will be measuring them by this yardstick: does this opportunity build relationships with my son and family? Does it build my career or add to my experiences positively? Does it help me build a development and marketing program at the Garden? Is this an opportunity to build up a friend or colleague? Will this build community and enhance relationships?

I’ll also have to work pretty hard on some things that have been missing. I used to be very domestic and my inner Martha Stewart has been in hiding for so many years that I don’t know if she even exists. But I’d like to find out. As Blaise prepares to leave home, I want his last year of high school to feel solid, warm, and, well, like home. This also applies to my health. When I think about my food and activity choices, I will have to ask myself if those choices build a healthy body and healthy life.

I’ve also spent so much time in education and nonprofit organizations that I haven’t done enough to build up my own financial security and well being. This year I will build my freelance business and ask to be paid what I’m worth. I will be building a portfolio of work that I can be proud of but that will also add to my financial bottom line (so I can send it off to college with Blaise in 2014!).

Finally, I will continue to work to build the community I live in by serving Northside Rotary, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Feed Communities, the city’s Environmental Action Committee, and Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Northwest Arkansas, all of them worthy causes that I’m passionate about.

The great cathedrals of Europe and the pyramids of Egypt weren’t built in a year, and it’s possible “build” will be my word for 2014 and 2015 also. That’s okay. I have a great foundation to build on.

What is YOUR one word for 2013? What do you hope to build this year?

The title is a vast overstatement, but it got your attention, didn’t it?

One of the great joys of my blogging life is the many new friends I’ve made and relationships I’ve cultivated with a diverse group of writers and bloggers. The largest force locally for creating a supportive group is the Arkansas Women Bloggers (AWB). The women behind this effort to create a state-wide circle of support for women bloggers–Stephanie, Julie, Beth, and Fawn–are innovative, kind, and deeply interested in all of its members’ success. One of their coolest ideas has been to feature a different blogger each month on their site.

I got my turn to be Blogger of the Month for AWB this past November. It was so much fun! The links to the three posts I did especially for their site are listed and described below.

I invite readers to not only check out my posts (obviously, right?) but to stick around on the site and listen to some of the charming, smart, funny, and endearing voices of Arkansas women.

Miss November, 2012 – Angie Albright was published on November 1 and is the obligatory “introduce yourself” post. It is here, though, that I confess to some of my lesser parenting skills and mention for the 9,000th time my trek across Spain.

The Thanks I Get: In Honor of Thanksgiving is the post I had in my head for many months. My time as a director of a women’s shelter and as a teacher were profound in many ways, but finding out what you mean to the people you serve is a profound experience. Thanks giving is perhaps the most significant act in making connections to other people.

Blogging IS Real Writing is another post that stems from a little rant I’ve had running in my head for a long time. I’m dedicating this to all of those people, bloggers and everyone else, who love words and are brave enough to put their words in front of other people. I name many of my favorite bloggers and people in this post and made a SERIOUS error in leaving out my friend Lyndi at NWAFoodie. Lyndi is one of the kindest, most supportive people I know and was an early “fan” of A Growing Season before I even knew if I would be able to stay with this writing thing. She also has a great food and food-oriented blog. Go check her out!

Other posts I’ve shared on Arkansas Women Bloggers over the last couple of years:

Babies in Academia

Listen to Your Mother

Top Ten Reasons to Attend Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged 2012

I made a road trip of 425 miles last night, so I had plenty of time to put together a list of things I’m just randomly thankful for. I wrote something much wiser and nicer for the Arkansas Women Bloggers entitled “The Thanks I Get: In Honor of Thanksgiving.” For the in-depth, thoughtful take on gratitude, go read that. If you want to consider the random things we might be thankful for, read on.

I am thankful for . . .

Family Guy

My son Blaise’s sense of humor and quick wit

My brother’s and sister’s ability to make me laugh until I cry

Pizza

Hugs from my adorable nephew, nieces and goddaughter

Beaver Lake

Mad Men

My “branch office,” the West Mountain Brewing Company

Northside Rotary of Fayetteville

My blogging cohorts at AWB, BWA, and everywhere else I’ve found them

My gray hair (well, I’m not at all grateful for that but I know I’m supposed to be because it represents the wisdom I’ve earned, blah, blah, blah)

Blaise’s genuine kindness with small children and old people

The relationships our high school kids have at Good Shepherd Lutheran

Bacon

Jody and Mark’s deck

Ryan Gosling

Love Actually

80′s bands who have NOT chosen to do reunion tours

Peanut butter

Air conditioning

Cheese

Law & Order’s refusal to die

My church family at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

The Friday coffee group

Women who will let me be catty sometimes and still believe I’m generally a good person

My red Ariat boots

George Clooney

Walt Whitman, especially Song of Myself

Mumford & Sons

English professors

Beer

Fleece

My mom’s having taught me how to be calm in a crisis

Essex High School Class of 1985

F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

Texting

WordPress

Cooper’s fire pit and table under the pergola

My Fayetteville family and their willingness to share their boats with me

Martin Luther

Netflix

Sephora

Scads of friends who hold me up, make me laugh, believe in me, and look after me in so many ways

Botanical Garden of the Ozarks

Arkansas Razorbacks, regardless of W-L record

This week I’m participating in another great Arkansas Women Bloggers challenge, “ThanksBlogging“. This week is all related to the things we are thankful for in preparation for my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. Today I am thankful for the opportunity to experience things like Pamplona, Spain during its annual fiesta.

Today the challenge was to take a picture of something we’re thankful for and then use the free online photo editing tool PicMonkey to edit it (PicMonkey rocks, by the way!).

I veered a bit from the task by choosing four photos I took in 2005 along the Camino de Santiago. It was pure luck that I managed to be in Pamplona, Spain on the first day of the encierro (the annual ritual we call The Running of the Bulls during the Festival of San Fermin that lasts each year from July 8 to July 14). A new friend I had made from the Netherlands and I had walked about 5km into the city that morning and got a spot right up at the fence close to the finish line, which is essentially the entrance to the bullring, made famous in Death in the Afternoon and The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. In his honor there is a statue of him and the street outside the bullring is named after him.

The encierro was over in a few short seconds, but that day in Pamplona is one of the most incredible days of my life. The singing, the chocolate and churros, the parades, the whole town in red and white . . .

I am so very thankful for the many, many wonderful experiences I’ve had in my life, and the Running of the Bulls ranks right at the top.

The view from behind the fence in Pamplona

Veterans Day has always been sort of an abstract concept for me. I do believe in celebrating the people who have served our country, and I deeply appreciate that service and the families who sacrifice for that service. However, no one in my immediate family has been in the military. Our service has always taken different forms, so the holiday hasn’t ever touched me in the way it does others. This year is different.

Just this last week we learned that my nephew (by way of my ex-husband) and my son Blaise’s cousin, Brandon Buttry, was killed in Afghanistan while manning a watch tower. He was 19, just a couple of years older than my own son. I know this boy. I hadn’t seen him in several years but my son and he were always fast buddies when our families gathered, and Blaise and Brandon had used Facebook to stay connected. Brandon had the sweetest of hearts and such a kind and gentle spirit.

Brandon was adopted by his parents when he was 3 years old, and I remember his arrival well. He took to his family as if they had always been together. He was one of 14 children, and each child has known nothing but a loving upbringing, and Brandon was blessed with 16 years of being adored and cared for. My heart has ached every day this past week for the family. I can’t begin to know the kind of sacrifice they have given. I can’t begin to imagine the pain of losing a child.

On the same day we learned of Brandon’s death, I learned of the death of the mother of a close family friend. Fanny Martin was 98 years old when she left this world and had something like 64 great grandchildren. She was a devoted servant of the local Catholic church and a loving mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

When I was in high school, Fanny hired me to play the pipe organ at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Imogene, Iowa. I did that for a couple of years and did a few funerals there as well. I found out after my stint there that the $10 I was paid every week came from her own pocket, not the church itself. She quietly did that without ever saying a word, and no one in the church must have known it either.

Because I heard about the loss of these two people on the same day, my brain keeps trying to connect them somehow. But there is nothing logical about one person getting only 19 years and someone else getting 98. We could say it’s “God’s plan,” but that doesn’t explain the vast difference between 19 and 98. A few years ago I attended a very sad funeral for a young man who was the brother of a friend of mine. The pastor reminded us that we all get a lifetime. I guess that’s really the only answer: we just get what we get, short or long.

I can’t reconcile in my mind the injustice of the death of a teenager, and I am so sad to think of Fanny no longer with her family. All I can do is appreciate these two people and the sacrifices they made to make the world, be it close to home or as far away as Afghanistan, a better place.