on the track at 4:45am

All I have to say is that it is fall, and I cannot step outside right now without instantly believing that all—ALL—is possible.

This morning I ran in a long-sleeve shirt and shorts, which is my favorite running outfit combination. I took that first deep breath of air that has a snap to it, and as I do every year, I thought of freshly sharpened pencils and folders.

Those school supply dreams would have to wait; later, I told myself this morning, when you get to the office, you can sharpen some pencils and file something away in a folder. For now, it's running time.

Speedwork time was more like it. It was 4:45, and I was on the track at Wheaton College, ready to do some 4x200s and some 2x800s, all in the hopes of breaking my best half-marathon time when I run my next race in October. If I can get my legs used to moving fast, they'll just keep up that pace for 13.1 miles, right?

I had expected to have the track all to myself. Did I mention yet that it was 4:45?!? And that I was at a college?!? No college student should be awake at that time, but I saw, out on the far straightaway, someone else running.

This was all I needed to kick my competitive spirit into overdrive.

You beat me here, person who is nothing but a dull blob out on the track? Then I will beat you running.

I took off down the straightaway, trying to remember the last time I was on a track.

I ran track in middle school for the Horace Mann Yellow Jackets. Our uniforms were maroon and gold, and my most lasting memory of that is almost dropping the baton in a relay once. The girl I was passing off to told everyone on the team that she'd heard me say a bad word at the almost-missed-handoff moment. I was—and still am—enough of a goody-two-shoes that this was major news/gossip to all the other 7th graders, and I spent the rest of the track season saying, "I did NOT say that word! Stop trying to make me say it now! I'm going to go read on the in-field until my race!"

Channeling middle school me wasn't going to help me run faster, so I moved on in my head to other memories of tracks: In high school, we had to run the mile every year, and my senior year, I ran it on the same day I was named to the Homecoming Court. And I ran it really, really slowly with a growing pain in my side.

On about lap 3, I thought: Well, it turns out that being on the Homecoming Court does not automatically make your life better and easier, contrary to what many Disney movies would like us to believe.

Just before the end of the mile, I must admit {although I'm not proud of it}, I thought: Should I really be forced to do this? I'm basically royalty in this school, and I need to stay at my best for my very full schedule of Court-duties over the next week. There's a cake walk to preside over and a bonfire to attend, not to mention planning how my hair will be done with that tiara in it. If I were real royalty, people would be running this mile for me, and all I would have to do would be clap from the royal box while drinking lemonade.

Almost-the-Homecoming-Queen me was obviously not into running, so I stopped thinking about her.

Besides, I was gaining on the guy, just by being my 31-year-old self who likes to get up early to workout and who will not allow other people to beat her at 4:45am.

As I flew past the guy—turns out he was not a college student but a middle-aged man—I sang out a quick, "Good morning!"

And even though I was 3 lanes over from the guy and even though I'm sure he had to have heard me coming {what with my heavy reminiscing about the Homecoming Court and how I don't swear}, he jumped about 2 feet in the air when I came by. I had become a creepy runner who scares people, when all I was trying to do was enjoy the cool fall morning—and beat that guy.

You know, when I say it like that, it kind of makes sense that he was taken aback by me.

But I beat him. Let's focus on that. As I came around the straightaway in front of the stands, I raised my arms in triumph and bowed to the crowd.

if I could drink this light {a poem}

Reflected in the pond were electrical wires
I'd rather pretend were not there,
focusing all my attention instead on
the late afternoon summer light
that suffuses the world (and me) with nostalgia,
even as I'm firmly planted in the present.

If I could drink the light,
I would choose a tall glass of this.
Golden and sweet,
an elixir of the gods—
for surely, if anyone has the power to
change light into liquid,
it would be them.

Zeus and Hera,
Aphrodite and Demeter,
and all the rest of them up on Olympus,
deigning to glance down at our little world
as we scurry about in the shadows:
our light is a muted pallor in the glory-filled brightness
they get to live in
as they go about their normal day.

If I am dreaming of Greek gods,
perhaps I am not as firmly planted in the present as I thought.

But that is what this light does to me.

I am by a pond in Iowa.
Just over the hill are enough cornfields to feed a nation,
but this light—
merely by sitting in this light,
my mind strays from practical details
like what to eat for dinner
and how the family farm will survive.

In this light,
I start thinking of eternity and heavens
and of how, if only I could drink this light,
I could see eternity in every moment.

a train commuter!

I've had this dream since I was little about being a train commuter. How a little girl from a medium-sized town in Iowa comes up with this dream is the same way she comes up with a love for France: because it is so entirely other than her normal life.

Being a train commuter seemed so exotic and urban {which, when you're from Iowa and surrounded by corn fields, are synonymous}. The trains that went through my town when I was little were mostly ordinary and obvious and good for the economy: they were freight trains full of coal and grain and whatever else needed to be shipped.

Trains caused delays when you were stuck at the crossings: this was my familiarity with trains and their function within the community.

You learned that as you drove closer to downtown and the tracks that you needed to listen for the whistle; you needed to keep an eye on the train bridge crossing the Mississippi. Was there a train coming? Could you make it across before the gates came down at Main? Or should you swing west, up the river bluff and towards the bridge crossing the tracks?

By the time I learned to drive at 14, this gauging of train location was practically second nature, and I just knew when I should head up the bluff.

Later, after I'd learned to drive a stick but wasn't yet confident in it, the sight and sound of a train slowly chugging along the track would cause a sharp intake of breath—a sharp realization of fear. Halfway up the steep hill of the river bluff, on the way to bridge across the tracks, there was a stop sign.

If no one was behind me, I'd be fine; I wouldn't have to worry about running into them as I tried to do the delicate balance of the clutch and gas, trying to keep the car from rolling too far back, trying to keep it from bucking and dying on a hill. That hill, it was my Waterloo, and I did what Napoleon should've done: I avoided it.

I would sit at the train crossing as freight trains lumbered by, moving at the speed of molasses in January, as my mother likes to say. I would wait and avoid hyperventilating, and I told myself that slowing down and taking a break in the middle of the day just to admire my town and its excellent train crossings was well worth it.

I could listen to the click-click-click of the train wheels and to the whistle, and I could avoid hitting anyone. A win-win.

The sound of those train whistles and the click-clacking wheels—not to mention the cascading boom when train cars were coupled in the freight yard—that is the soundtrack of home.

Even now, I live near the railroad tracks in Glen Ellyn, and some people have asked, “But doesn't the train noise keep you up at night?”

No—it's practically a lullaby to me.

I always tell them that, and then tack on that I sleep like the dead, barely moving all night after I fall asleep almost instantly. A lot of people focus on that and ignore that I love the sound of trains so much, I might have been a Boxcar Child in another life. {Please tell me you've read The Boxcar Children books. They're charming in that way that being an orphan during the Depression always seems idyllic in retrospect.}

Trains where I come from are on the journey for the long-haul. Even the Amtrak trains that pass through Burlington are on their way to or from California, the people on them curled up with a pillow they brought on board so the train would feel more like home for 3 days.

The passengers wander into the dining car at their scheduled dinner time, hoping that this time it will feel more like that scene in White Christmas where Bing Crosby leads a four-part harmony about snow.

It rarely does feel like that, although you do feel that you've stepped back in time to when the train was the way to get places. When you're on the Amtrak, it's hard not to think about how astounding it must've been to get on a train for the first time back when it was new, unsure of this new technology—and then immediately become entranced with the ability to eat dinner in comfort while the cornfields flew by.

Now, though, I ride the train every day, and the scenery flying by is very suburban: restaurants, cupcake shops, bookstores, dry cleaners.

At one point, we cross over one of Chicago's expressways, and I always look down on it with a little smile {perhaps even bordering on a smirk}, thinking: I'd rather be here, doing my crossword puzzle, than trying to merge onto you any day.

I'm a train commuter! Like a real grown-up!

When any of your “when I grow up” dreams comes true, you instantly feel a mix of your younger self {complete with thick glasses, bangs, and a Care Bears t-shirt, in my case}, and the person you've become. “We did it,” you want to tell your little self.

“We dreamed big of joining the throngs heading to work on the train, and we did it! Now, what other, perhaps more ambitious dreams, did we have? Have we achieved those yet? What's that you say—become an Olympic gymnast like Mary Lou Retton? Umm, sorry, girly, but we better give up on that one.”

And then you give your little self a high-five of reassurance and get on the train. To work! Like a real grown-up!

5 things that prove I love Garrison Keillor

My love of Garrison Keillor has finally paid off, in the way only an English major raised on a steady intake of A Prairie Home Companion would consider a pay off:

As a promotion for his new CD, My Little Town, he's doing a "submit your favorite story about your little town" contest, and he picked this thing I wrote to publish on his site. {I'll tell you more about the thing in a minute.}

  Note several things:

• I keep saying "he," as if Garrison is there coding the submission form. {You can see it for yourself and admire his handiwork. Such a renaissance man, he is.}
• Or as if he's staying up past his bedtime reading submissions from people around the country who are trying to make their town sound like Lake Wobegon.
• I mean, I realize that Garrison probably didn't actually read my poem, but I'm going to pretend. After years of listening to him him spin tales about a town that seemed so familiar and home-like to me, I'm going to pretend that he read about my little town—out loud, obviously, in that deep, nostalgia-creating voice of his—and thought to himself, 'Well, oh my, I'd like to go to this town this Kamiah girl is from. Maybe the next time I'm doing my show at Ravinia, I'll pop out to Glen Ellyn and visit her. We'd get along like gangbusters.' I just know he'd use the word gangbusters.

Yes, I'm going to pretend that my poem has now become one of Garrison Keillor's favorites.

In my mind, he's going to read it on that Writer's Almanac podcast of his someday {which I just wrote about yesterday. Garrison and I are already displaying best-friends-who-think-alike behavior}.

Please don't take my fantasy away from me, but give an NPR nerd her moment in the pale Minnesota sun that's shining down on Lake Wobegon right now.

A Little More about This Thing I Wrote

All you had to do was tell a story about your hometown, and I, in a rare moment of turning my back on Iowa, submitted a poem about Glen Ellyn that I wrote about two years ago. The carnival comes to town every year, and there is nothing like the smell of corndogs to put me in a poetry mood. {That's just the kind of statement Garrison would relate to.}

You can read the poem here on my blog.

Or, if you'd like to see it in its Prairie Home Companion glory, you can see it here. {You, sadly, have to scroll down to the bottom. I need to call Garry and get him to put my poem on the top.}

So, there you have it: Garrison Keillor is, I'm sure, going to visit Glen Ellyn soon in order to meet me. If he comes during the carnival, I would most definitely buy him a funnel cake.

The following list may help really convince him that he should come.

5 Things that Prove I Love Garrison Keillor

1. I own this t-shirt:
   
   It is, for those of you who don't know {I scoff at you}, the shirt for the Professional Organization of English Majors, this group that Garrison made up and sometimes does sketches about. If it were real, you know I'd belong.
   
   If you're an English major and you'd like a shirt, too, you should order one from Garrison.
2. I once met him—at Tanglewood. My family, we're kind of Garrison groupies, and we went out to western Massachusetts to see him do his show live one summer. Afterwards, we stood in line to meet him. When he heard my name, he said, "Kamiah. Kamiah. That sounds like a name that belongs in a limerick," which is not something I've ever had said to me before, nor is it the conversation I envisioned having with him, but that is all right.
3. When I was in middle school, someone asked what I liked to listen to on the radio. I said, "A Prairie Home Companion," before I realized that I should've said, "Really awesome music that kids my age would know."
   
   That experience mirrors the time in elementary school when we were asked our favorite band, and I said, "Peter, Paul, and Mary."
4. My parents go on the Prairie Home Companion cruises almost every summer. I realize this doesn't really prove why I love Garrison, but it clearly shows that it's in the blood.
5. Someone once told me, "Your stories sound like something Garrison Keillor would tell. You're like a 30something girl version of him." I had just recently met the person, and I wanted to hug them. That is the 3rd best compliment I've ever received.

how do we ever get used to this?

Last weekend in Seattle, I couldn't stop looking at the water.  It's what always happens when I get near the ocean, perhaps because of my landlocked Midwestern sensibilities.  Even though I grew up on the Mississippi {or, more correctly, on the river bluff above it:  I was not Huckleberry Finn, floating down the Muddy Mississippi and hoping for a better life around the bend} and therefore saw water every day, it simply is not the same as seeing so much blue stretch in front of you.

From my parents' house, I could see Illinois and more farmfields...with a ribbon of a brown river in the foreground.  And though I knew that that river fed the farmfields and had inspired stories and songs, it was also just the thing I saw every morning when I ate breakfast.  

But the ocean... 

I drove to my bed & breakfast in the dark and so it wasn't until the next morning on my run that I saw the water.  The town I was staying in, Port Gamble, was tiny and had about four main streets, one of which was called NE Walker St.  Of course I interpreted that as a sign that I was in the right place.

I had to make about seven loops around the town, running up and down every street over and over, in order to get in my 31 minutes.  {Several years ago, I decided that the minimum time I could run would be my age.  This plan will, at some point, backfire, but for right now, it's working well.}

On my fourth lap past the espresso stand {this is the Seattle-area, after all}, the woman working waved at me and laughed.

I stopped by afterwards and said, in that way that lone travelers have, too much too quickly, as if I was concerned that this espresso woman would be the only person I'd talk to all day:  "I live in Illinois, so I'm really excited to be able to run outside and not have to worry about slipping on the snow and ice.  Look at me!  I'm in shorts! I also can't stop looking at the water and smell that!  It smells so fresh and clean here, like industry and inspiration are just waiting for you.  But the water:  Do you ever get used to seeing it?"

More than anything--more than the babbling and the talking of my shorts--that last line betrayed me as a foreigner.  I suppose it would be like someone asking me, "But the Mississippi: Do you ever get used to seeing it?"

And of course I did.  It was just there with barges going up and down it every day.  

Sometimes it smelled like rotting fish.  

The Mississippi mud can hide clams that slice your toe before you even know you've stepped on anything.

When we read Huck Finn our sophomore year of high school, no one once stopped a discussion to say, "But did you ever think that this river that seems so mythical and magical is literally two miles from this classroom with no windows?" 

The Mississippi was just there, just like for that espresso woman in Port Gamble, the Hood Canal is just there.  It's amazing what we can get used to.

But I'm still convinced that I would never get used to seeing so much water every day.  I would never get used to breathing in deeply and feeling like I was taking in life itself, which I suppose I do every day anyway, but it's hard to remember that when you're in the suburbs of Chicago.

Whoever you are and wherever you live, I think we all need a Port Gamble-like place to escape to when our normal lives and normal view start to feel like drudge and sludge.

We need to see something else for a few days, and then, most importantly, come back to where we started and say:  Here is good, too.  

What is it about being away that makes you see the beauty of here?  I don't know, but I'm willing to spend years figuring that out.  It means, after all, more trips to more Port Gambles.

i've got plenty to be thankful for

If I could, I would make a quilt out of tradition and sit under it all winter.

This plan is dependent on me being able to quilt, which I can't do, and it's also dependent on being able to take intangible but comforting things and make them into fabric, which sounds like something Rumpelstiltskin would be peddling.

Of course I'm thinking about tradition as we approach Thanksgiving, that very traditional holiday where most of us eat the same thing at the same time, a feat that doesn't happen on many other days.

With other holidays, there's leeway in the menu: some people eat ham at Christmas, for example, while others might go for Christmas goose. My family has never done that, but doesn't it sound like something that would happen in Little Women—if, I guess, they hadn't been so poor and given away their scant Christmas dinner to an even-poorer family so that the girls {and their readers for generations to come} could learn generosity?

The Fourth of July might involve hot dogs or hamburgers or, if you're in Morning Sun, Iowa, with me, pulled pork sandwiches and a lot of potato salad.

Thanksgiving, though: it's hard to mess with Thanksgiving, as evidenced by this conversation with my mom.

Me, the Ever-helpful Daughter: Hey, do you want me to make anything for Thanksgiving this year? I could bring home my recipe book.

Mama, She Who Has Hosted Thanksgiving Forever: No, I think we're all set. Just so you know, though, we aren't having the creamed corn this year.

Me, the Rooted-in-Tradition Daughter: [Long, long pause] What do you mean? I don't understand. We're from Iowa. Isn't there a law that says we have to eat corn?

Mama, Who Probably Should've Mentioned This to Me Earlier: Your aunt wants to bring cauliflower gratin.

Me, the Doubter: Is this because of the drought affecting the corn crop? I just watched that new Ken Burns documentary on PBS about the Dust Bowl, and so I'm in tune with these agricultural disasters. Is there not enough corn to feed us all?

Mama, Who, After Almost 31 Years Should've Figured Out I'm Not Good with Last Minute Change: Of course there's enough corn. We just thought we'd try something new.

Me, Trying to Change the Subject: Speaking of things that are new, FDR's New Deal brought in a lot of change that helped mitigate the effects of the Dust Bowl. Can we talk about major government programs now instead of how you want to step on the face of Thanksgiving tradition? That's like stepping on the face of a pilgrim, fyi.

Oh, I do like my tradition, but the thing is, I also like cauliflower gratin. The Barefoot Contessa has a very good recipe for it that I've made several times, and hey, it involves cheese. Most things are better with either cheese, bacon, or chocolate added to it—sometimes all three {but certainly not in the case of cauliflower}.

This corn-less Thanksgiving will still be Thanksgiving, I know, and I do have plenty to be thankful for—a phrase that makes me think of Bing Crosby and Holiday Inn and another Thanksgiving tradition.

When I was in high school, my friends and I would march {oh, yes, we were band nerds} in the Lighted Holiday Parade on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I have many pictures of me in a band uniform {with very square shoulders: the shoulder pads in that thing were impressive}, wearing a Santa Claus hat, holding my flugle, and getting ready to step off down Jefferson Street playing a jazzy {yet marchable} version of "The Little Drummer Boy."

{And no, I don't plan on going to the work of scanning any of those pictures and then posting them. No need for that to be seen.}

Afterwards, we'd all eat Christmas cookies and watch Holiday Inn at my friend Sara's house. It was the beginning of Christmas, as we'd warm up with hot cocoa and sing along with Bing. It was normal and cozy and the kind of Saturday night activity that band nerds are prone to do.

Perhaps to get over the lack of corn, I should watch Holiday Inn this year. At the very least, I should watch the "I've Got Plenty to Be Thanksful For" clip from the Thanksgiving part of the movie.

You should watch it, too: here's a link.

---------------

And bonus connection to talking about FDR and the New Deal earlier in an attempt to change the subject with my mother {it's below the line so you're not required to read this history fact if you don't want to learn something awesome}: You'll see at the beginning of this clip, there's a little cartoon turkey who moves back and forth between two Thursdays in November.

That's because in 1939, FDR moved Thanksgiving to the second-to-last Thursday in November—not the last Thursday as it had been since Abraham Lincoln set it. And as we all know, you do not mess with anything Abraham Lincoln did.

He did it to give more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas—the country was still pulling out of the Depression, you know, and the more time for shopping, the better. Incidentally, that phrase was also in the running to replace the E Pluribus Unum slogan for America: The more time for shopping, the better.

People got upset. Really upset. That FDR, he thought he could do anything, even change holidays. What was next? Christmas in July?

Since the states also have some power in these United States of ours, some states decided to reject FDR's Thanksgiving Proclamation and can you imagine the confusion? When do you get off work? What if your family was in a different state? What would the pilgrims think?

Seriously, this was a serious issue, and it went on for a couple of years—until Congress passed a law that Thanksgiving would always be the fourth Thursday in November.

I know that our current Congress has really important things to be doing {STOP holding press conferences about how you're looking forward to a bipartisan solution to the fiscal cliff and fix the dang cliff}, but I would appreciate it if they would, at some point soon, pass a law saying that creamed corn will always be served at Iowa Thanksgivings.

the drought

The cornfields of western Iowa are bone dry. Burnt is the word I want to use as I fly past them at 75mph on I-80, but they aren't burnt: they're thirsty.

This summer's drought has turned the field brown in early August, as if ready for the harvest.

Everywhere you go in the Midwest, the word "drought" is spit from everyone's lips; perhaps the spit will green up the fields.

Around kitchen tables and over thick-handled, coffee-stained mugs at the diner smelling of hashbrowns, grease, and routine—and even in the cities with their climate-controlled malls and chain restaurants—we are all talking about the drought.

"I can't remember when it rained last."

"We had that big storm around the Fourth, but that was more wind and thunder than a good rain."

"Have you ever known it to be so hot?"

Our throats are parched, our grass is prickly, and in our dreams, gray skies pour forth—waves of raine—as if it were autumn in England and we all lived in stone cottages with fat sheep in the back pasture.

We live in a burnt and thirsty land here in the Midwest this summer, but looking out over the cornfields, it is like it's late September already. The harvest is ready, though the overall scene is wrong: the trees are still a brilliant, life-filled green. {Their roots have stretched down through the years, down through the soil and the rocks to where they can almost always find water deep in the earth.}

If it were the harvest, the trees would be oranges and golds. They would be red against the blue autumn sky—a blue so shining, you would forget the washed-out blue skies of July when the heat sucked the color from the world.

They're green now; it is too early for the harvest. With the car window down, I can hear the cicadas singing, and they, too, are a harbinger of autumn.

The world is ready early this year, even if we are all still stuck in thirst for something more from summer.

a wagner matinee: thinking of willa cather in nebraska

Shostakovich's 5th Symphony is on the radio—it's Saturday night and Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is featuring the St. Olaf Orchestra, and that's what they're playing.

Shostakovich. Just saying his name makes you sound like you're in the cultural know, as if you've taken in hundreds of concerts in hundreds of gold-edged halls from London to St. Petersburg and you can remember each of them with clarity that rivals the tone coming from the St. Olaf first-chair flute.

Shostakovich. I say it aloud in the car. I'm out on the edge of the prairie—Garrison Keillor reference there, don't know if you caught it—and heading east on I-80. I'm in Iowa but thinking of Nebraska and Willa Cather.

It must be the classical music: she wrote a short story called "A Wagner Matinee," and it's hard now for me to look at the prairie and not think of its main character—an old woman who years before gave up the music and culture and dances and high teas of Boston for a Nebraska farm and the man she loved. She returns to Boston in the story—leathery, work-worn hands, eyes that have squinted in the sun for too long, having heard no music since she left the East but splayed notes coming from an out-of-tune piano. Her nephew takes her to a Wagner concert, and it's no longer the prairie she hears and sees but the life she could've had.

The music crescendoes in the story, and I've always wanted to be sitting next to that old woman—no, more than that. Willa Cather makes you feel that you are that old woman: living and thankful for a life on the prairie that has its own richness, songs, color, and crescendoes, but at the same time, yearning {secretly, quietly} for the clash of the city, the hush of the concerts, and the beguiling knowledge that you're in the center of it all.

The concert ends. The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser are over, but Aunt Georgiana doesn't want to leave. Her nephew thinks, "I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs; the tall, unpainted house, with weather-curled boards; naked as a tower, the crook-backed ash seeldings where the dish-cloths hung to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up the refuse about the kitchen door."

Out on I-80, I understood, too: with Shostakovich strains filling the car and abandoned barns and windmills, cows in their pasture, and dried out fields of corn {oh, the drought} filling the landscape, I understood.

The 5th Symphony became just the right soundtrack for that moment on the road. The swelling stings matched the swell of the hills, and I thought about what gumption, what daring, it must've taken to move out to the prairie and try to make a life here, as Aunt Georgiana did in the story and as my family did generations before me.

The piece ended and the audience at A Prairie Home Companion clapped. Wild applause for the orchestra, and I pretended it was a round of applause for all those who made the prairie a home so that years later, I could drive across it on a freeway and marvel at the orderly beauty of agriculture and hard work.

on the blog today {the great weaver migration}

I've seen this on other blogs—much more famous blogs, I should add. Blogs where the writers get asked to contribute to other blogs, and so they link to that other post by saying something like:

See today's thoughts over here on the Second Greatest Blog Ever, After Mine.

Or:

I'm writing over here today.

I could try that, but I don't think I'm famous enough. So instead, I'll say:

I'm driving across the country with my sister and her husband, and we have a blog called The Great Weaver Migration '12. {Weaver being their last name.}

We're on our way from Los Angeles to Rochester, NY {my gosh, we live in SUCH a big country}, and today we arrived in Iowa.

Home.

Where we come from.

The Great State.

And I couldn't do my "coming home to Iowa rituals" and I blame my brother-in-law for that. He's always getting in the way of my rituals.

And so I wrote about that in a post called "{missed} fields of opportunity," a title that only improves if you know what the Welcome to Iowa sign says. So you should go read that, over there on that other blog I was asked to write for because I'm so famous/because my sister set it up.

in which i eat a dime and have a grand adventure {part 3}

Part 3 of a story about the time I ate a dime while my family was on RAGBRAI.

Don't know what RAGBRAI is? You should probably read Part 2, which explains it.

Want to hear the beginning? You should probably read Part 1, which is, obviously, the beginning.

---------

It was late July, and my sister Oesa and I needed a purpose.

On RAGBRAI, everyone else in our family had a purpose: either bike 60ish miles a day through the cornfields, or drive the car to the next town and set up camp so that when the rest of the family got in town—hot, sweaty, unable to feel their legs—the tents were already up for them to lay down in after showering.

But since Oesa and I were only 5 and 3, there wasn't much expected of us. Oh, I'm sure we helped choose our campsite {proximity to a playground is worth 10 points on the Campsite Selection Scale}, and maybe we even helped pitch the tents. Perhaps my chubby toddler fingers were put to work grasping a chubby toddler hammer to drive the stakes in.

Mostly, though, Oesa and I were along for the ride. Literally, on some days; our mom would pull us in a buggy behind her bike.

Being a demanding and ornery child, I spent my time in the buggy in two ways: telling my mom to go faster up those rolling Iowa hills, and pinching my sister.

It was hot and sticky in that buggy, and why admire scenes of the heartland {or, as they are called in Iowa's slogan, Fields of Opportunity} when you can annoy your sister?

A couple of days into RAGBRAI, a plan formed to give Oesa and me a purpose: we would run a Kool-Aid stand.

I don't know who came up with this plan.

Was it my mom, eager to be away from a 3-year-old who thought she was a Roman centurion riding in a chariot?

This is how I envisioned myself when I was riding in the buggy behind my mom's bike. Please note: I don't think my mom is a horse. Mostly, I just thought I was in charge.

Was it my dad, eager to get his daughters interested in business early?

Or was it my sister and me, eager to contribute to the family's bottom line, thereby enabling us to buy more pork tenderloin sandwiches? {You can read more about those pork tenderloin sandwiches here.}

Whoever came up with this Kool-Aid plan, it was genius.

Who, on a hot day in the midst of a bike ride across Iowa, wouldn't want to stop to get a refreshing glass of Kool-Aid being hawked by a chubby Roman centurion 3-year-old and her big sister who didn't like to be pinched?

People who hate the first flowers of spring and Bambi: those are the only people who would be able to resist this Kool-Aid.

I mean, this was quality Kool-Aid. I probably mixed it up by swishing my fingers in it—fingers that until two seconds before had been, most likely, grabbing handfuls of dirt to eat.

I loved dirt, by the way. I even once ate some red rock out in Utah because I liked how, if you sucked on a piece long enough, it would crumble in your mouth, much like an Everlasting Gobstopper but tasting of dirt.

{And by once, I mean many, many times. What? I went to Utah a lot as a kid. You have to find some way to entertain yourself out in the desert, and there's only so long you and your sister can play "Create Your Own Steeplechase Course and Pretend to Be Horses."}

Oesa and I set up our Kool-Aid stand on the edge of the campground and began our attempt to drain all the money from all the riders on RAGBRAI, one nickel at a time.

Yes, our Kool-Aid was a nickel. It was 1985; things were a lot cheaper back then. In the good ol' days, you know.

{I think I might've just become the blog equivalent of an old-timey person sitting on the porch in her rocking chair, gray hair uncombed, chin hairs untweezed, looking caustically out at the drought-plagued fields and cackling out, "Back in my day..."}

Here in Glen Ellyn, by the way, I went by a lemonade stand the other day where the little girl was selling one glass for a dollar. I almost balked at buying it until I remembered that it's a dollar, and I spend that on approximately 1.27 sips of a double espresso.

That day on RAGBRAI, Oesa and I made, in 3-year-old interpretation of money, a bazillion dollars.

In reality, it was probably just enough to cover the cost of the Kool-Aid packets {a business cost underwritten by our dad}, and we had no real sense of "overhead" costs. But we were in business, and learned important lessons such as:

• Charge more than a nickel.
• Yelling at people to come drink your Kool-Aid is not considered an effective form of advertising.
• When you lose interest in the Kool-Aid stand after about seven minutes because you're 3 years old, you'll still have to stick around and work. And then help clean up. This is all so you can learn "responsibility" and so that many years in the future when you have a real job and it's really pretty out but you're stuck behind a computer, you'll remember the lesson of the Kool-Aid stand: stick with it, and you can have as much sugary drink as you want.

The most important lesson of the Kool-Aid stand didn't come until the next day, and this lesson was aimed directly at my sister. It's not a universal lesson at all, so don't expect to pick up any life tips here.

The Most Important Kool-Aid Lesson: Do not come between a 3-year-old and the Kool-Aid profits she deserves.

The next morning, Oesa and I were in the back seat of the family car, divvying up our proceeds while our dad ran into a gas station to buy us candy so that we'd be well-behaved that day.

Oh, there's a universal lesson for you: candy bribery does work for small children, and it should be used in extreme situations, such as halfway through RAGBRAI when you're not sure you and the children will make it all the way across the state of Iowa without you throwing them into a corn field to become children of the corn.

"A nickel for you, a nickel for me. A nickel for you, a nickel for me." Oesa, being the big sister, was in charge of profit disbursement. I watched her hands fly over those nickels and dreamed of the My Little Ponies I could buy with all that money.

"Oh, there's just a dime left," Oesa said, looking up at me and then sliding the dime to her side. "I'll take that because I'm older."

Okay, I may have thought that my $1.25 of nickels could buy me Starshine or Fairy Rainbow Princess, or whatever My Little Ponies were named back in the early 80s.

I may have been slightly confused about how far money would go, but I was not confused on this point: a dime is worth more than a nickel, and "It's mine because I'm older" is an illogical argument big sisters have been trying to pull on little sisters for millennia.

She wasn't going to get away with this one.

My little hands may have been chubby, but I had quick movements, honed by minutes of stirring Kool-Aid with my fingers. While Oesa was still looking at me, I reached across the seat, scooped up the dime, and swallowed it.

Victory was mine!

I had beaten my big sister!

I was rich and could now buy all the My Little Ponies!

Except: I couldn't talk.

I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong, but when my dad, having just returned to the car with his candy bribes of M&Ms and Twizzlers, put his finger down my throat to get me to—to put it politely—bring that dime back up, I knew that my plan had not gone well and that I wasn't going to be eating any of that candy any time soon.

With that dime firmly lodged above my voice box—keeping me silent for once—we rushed to the hospital.


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Coming soon: Do I still have a dime somewhere in my body, or did the doctors get it out?

in which i eat a dime and have a grand adventure {part 2}

This is Part 2 of a story about the time I ate a dime when I was 3. {I love money so much, I eat it!} You might want to read Part 1, if you're one of those "tell me stories chronologically" people.

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We were on RAGBRAI: Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. Every July, thousands of people bike from the western edge to the eastern edge—over the rolling hills that Iowa does indeed have, contrary to what many people think.

See? That is a hill—in Iowa, as proven by that field of corn. And in this particular instance, that row of bikers also helps prove that this is Iowa and RAGBRAI; it sure as heck isn't the Tour de France. If it were France, that would be a vineyard and the people would have baguettes attached to their bikes, just in case they got snackish.

RAGBRAI takes a week, and you bike past corn fields {see above}, soy bean fields, wheat fields, and pigs.

Along the way, you go through tiny towns that show off the best of Iowa: hospitality and food. One town—with American flags hanging from every light post and a hand-painted banner strung across Main Street that says "Welcome, Bikers!"—might offer a pancake breakfast.

Another town further down the road might have pork tenderloin sandwiches, that Iowa specialty of breaded goodness.

This is an Iowa specialty because well, it's made of pork. Even people who know nothing about Iowa know that we have lots of pigs. Unless they're confusing us with Idaho and think we have lots of potatoes. I realize that people from the coasts tend to blur on what's in-between, say, Las Vegas and Philadelphia, but I think it should be a high school graduation requirement to know the difference between Iowa and Idaho. This isn't asking much; it's not like asking people to explain why the League of Nations never caught on and how it led to the United Nations. It's just about pork and potatoes. That's all.

The best part of a pork tenderloin sandwich is that it's bigger than your head. Meat bigger than your head! Although in this picture, your head would need to be rather oddly oblong, much like Bert's head from Sesame Street, and I hope you're not a puppet. But I hope that one day you get to eat a pork tenderloin sandwich in Iowa, maybe even on RAGBRAI. When you bike past a pig farm, you can say, "Little piggy, I'm going to eat you later!" if you're the type to talk to your food.

You bike about 70 miles a day on RAGBRAI, and every night you camp in another little town. Those thousands of sweaty, tired, over-fed people take over parks and school grounds and front yards.

I realize this all sounds like an incredible recipe for a party—like a cycling Woodstock but with fewer musical acts and {you would hope} fewer drugs. But keep in mind that no matter how hard you party the night before, you still have to get on a bike the next day. Have you ever tried balancing on two wheels while hungover? I certainly have not, but it sounds impossibly challenging.

Also, sometimes after biking/eating/making adoring noises about the cute towns in Iowa, your body is tired.

Your legs don't bend right.

You never want to see another bike.

You don't think you'll ever be able to sit down again.

That is not the ideal attitude for going to an all-night party—at least I don't think it is. My ideal all-night party involves pink pajama pants and reading historical non-fiction or Jane Austen in bed, so I'm probably not the best judge of who should be partying and when.

Parties aside, RAGBRAI was made for my family:

1. We like camping.
2. We like biking.
3. We like eating pork tenderloins.
4. We like Iowa and understand that it has hills.

In the early 80s, my parents and my brothers—Patrick and Eric, who are 13 and 14 years older than me {and technically half-brothers, leading me, a confused-in-math child anyway to think I had one whole brother}—went on a biking trip in Colorado. There were mountains involved, as there often are in Colorado, and my parents and the boys went up and over them.

If someone were to publish a collection of stories about my family's vacations, it would be called Every Other Kid You Know Went to Disney World on Vacation and They Were Bored. Now Get on the Bike: And Other Lies I Was Told.

In that book would be a story about Patrick and Eric, stopping with my parents at a gas station in Colorado before heading up a particularly daunting hill, the kind that might be called a "Rocky" and that would make Rocky himself cry.

A woman looked at them, their spindly teenage legs, their helmets that looked to be left over from World War 2, their bikes that were heavier than they were, and said: "You're going to make those boys go over that hill on those bikes?"

And my father, who would probably contest the fact that he lied to us about our vacations, said, "You better believe it! Let's go, boys!"

You can see why RAGBRAI was made for us. Or made for my father, who brought the rest of us along and said that we'd have fun.

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I know what you're thinking: THERE ARE NO DIMES IN THIS SECTION. Why aren't you eating more money? I mean, I love this thing about biking across Iowa and your crazy and demanding family vacations, but get back to the dime.

Coming up next: I get back to the dime.

on a treasure hunt {part 4}

The date did not go well, as you read in part 3. You can cancel your plans to start saving for a trip to Iowa for my wedding, in other words.

Treasure House Man talked and talked and asked very few questions about me, which left me, 90 minutes later, with many quotes from him. Peruse below, if you'd like, and try to imagine how you'd respond. Keep in mind that your contributions to the conversation will be limited to about one sentence at a time, so try to make it count.

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A Small Treasure of Quotes

I Am Not Miss Muffet
Treasure House Man did ask a few things about me, but he mostly used my answers as jumping off points for either telling a story about himself or for making the kind of comment it's hard to know how to respond to.

He asked, for example, "What's your favorite meal?

It's meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans, and my mama makes it for me whenever I go home to Iowa.

His response: "Do you use homogenized milk in your mashed potatoes?"

Well. Yes. I buy my milk from the store and do not keep a cow on the balcony to milk.

I am not Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet eating her curds and whey.

The Downfall of Language and Society: Carrots
After accusing me of using corporate-speak, Treasure House Man went on a tirade about people who use verbs as nouns and how that bothers him because shifting meaning leads to the downfall of language. And as language goes, so goes society.

He said, "You see, words are what give us meaning. Without those, I could point at this" [holds up umbrella] "and call it a carrot."

And then he awkwardly laughed, looked at me expectantly, and then proceeded, throughout the rest of the night, to randomly pick up his umbrella and say, "CARROT!"

No, Really, I'm a Grown-up
He lives with his parents right now, but, as he pointed out, "I totally have my own space. I always make sure to have at least two closed doors between me and them."

He's 38, by the way, and with the two closed doors rule, I can only imagine that he's hiding out in his bedroom closet.

All Teachers Have IQs of 110
He's a certified K-12 teacher but currently unemployed. He's hoping to get back into education, but certainly will not be teaching elementary school or middle school ever again because "all the teachers there have IQs of about 110. They're idiots who don't know the systems and ideology behind what they're doing, which I do."

I would like to apologize to all my teacher friends now on his behalf. I don't think you're idiots.

May the Force Be with You
I asked him about his work at the University of New Mexico, and he said, "Have you ever been to Albuquerque? It's a wasteland. I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and that place is the earth equivalent of Mos Eisley. [Insert LOOOOOOONG quote from Star Wars here.] You know?"

And the thing is, I do know: my sister and one of my brothers are huge Star Wars fans, so like the good little sister I am, I watched it a lot with them. I can picture Mos Eisley. I can get that buzz of nostalgia when I see a scene from any of the original movies.

But that doesn't mean I want to hear a chunk of the movie quoted at me, although I suppose this served as just another example of this: He is not the man I'm looking for. {Raise your hand if you got that Star Wars reference. And yes, I know I'm revealing my inner nerd.}

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Was I disappointed?

Was I hoping that this date would lead to a second date and then to a third date and then to too many dates to count—until we had a wedding date?

No.

On a rainy Saturday, this came out of the blue. He came out of the blue, complimenting me even though I wasn't feeling very pretty and reminding me that you never, ever know what will happen when you step out your front door in the morning.

You could end up with a new springform pan, a date, and a story—and all that sounds like a good day to me.

waking up before the sun

I saw my sister a couple of weeks ago on a business trip to Palm Springs, California.

I was there to make a video series with some doctors, which is a part of my job I never envisioned.

Actually, when you have a degree in British literature and you've spent your college days reading Wordsworth and Katherine Mansfield and TS Eliot, you rarely envision your job involving studio lights and a two-camera set-up and making decisions on what color the backdrop should be.

A degree in British literature makes you think you'll spend your days writing in a cottage in Devon. You'll have a wooden desk that's been used as a place to set Deep True Things down on paper for so long that it will have a patina of literary zeal. Of course the desk will be next to an open window, and there will be sheer curtains that flutter in the breeze.

But Palm Springs is not like Devon at all, and a couple of weeks ago, I was not next to an open window but in a windowless conference room that had become a makeshift studio.

To get over the slight road bump that I had very little idea of what I was doing, I pretended to be Mary Richards.

That statement makes sense if:

• You've seen The Mary Tyler Moore Show and know that Mary Richards is MTM's character and that she's the associate producer of a news program in Minneapolis.
• You buy into the concept of "Fake it till you make it."

I was pretending to be Mary Richards, charming producer in a newsroom full of men, a sweet 30-something who knows she's going to make it after all.

This little clip may help you relate to me in Palm Springs:


It did not hurt that I was wearing an outfit that always makes me feel like Mary Richards: pencil skirt, silk shirt, and heels.

Let's ignore for a moment that the heels were causing a blister as I scurried after the hotel banquet manager to make sure our lunch arrived on time and as I stood making polite small talk with the doctors who were waiting for the shoot to begin and as I offered condfident-sounding opinions on what portions of the video needed to be re-shot.

For the day, which began long before the sun came up, I was Mary Richards, and that worked very well for me.

But the next day when my sister arrived—she lives in LA, so it was just a two-hour jaunt out of the smog and into the desert—I got to be just Kami, my little sister self.

I don't mean to imply that I have this split version of myself: fracturing away into who I am with my family, who I am at work {and how I pretend to be Mary Richards sometimes at work}, who I am with my friends.

But I think most everyone can agree with this: there is something about being with your family, with these people who have known you since you couldn't talk, that makes you realize you don't always have to talk to be understood.

Now, of course sometimes with family, you have to talk more to be understood; family dynamics tend to get etched in the heart before you even get to your first day of school, so we spend part of our lives reminding these people we used to eat dinner with every night that we are not still the tattletale or the spoiled princess or the self-absorbed kid who spent too much time in her room.

That dynamic, though, is not what I want to talk about: I want to talk about how when you're with your family, especially siblings, you can quickly dip into the family shorthand of experience.

happy caucus day

Iowans are special, and just typing that made me think of that scene in The Help when Aiblileen the maid/nanny/self-esteem-instiller tells little Mae Mobley:

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Iowans, often overlooked {or flown-over} as we are, may need to chant a version of this to themselves in the years in between presidential elections.

Every four years, we are important come a cold night in January, and then every presidential hopeful and political analyst and journalist flies in—not over, for once—and tries to connect with the Iowa voter {and explain them to the rest of the nation}.

But in between those bouts of importance, Iowans may need to chant:

You is kind. You is smart. You is FIRST IN THE NATION: take that, New Hampshire!

Not that Iowans would be so combative, and actually, I'm doubting that many Iowans would see the need to chant this little self-esteem builder in non-election years.

We're not too concerned with puffing up our own importance; there are bigger things to think about than how other people see you.

I should get home now, not that I have a caucus to rush off to tonight. I live in Illinois now, in a state that doesn't caucus and is far from the first in the nation, but my Iowa roots run deep—so deep that I still use that inclusive "we" when talking about Iowans.

We're special, even in the years we aren't leading the charge into the presidential election season.

To honor Iowans and my inclusive "we," here's a video of the song "All I Owe Ioway" from State Fair. {Also to honor Iowa today, I'm wearing one of my Iowa shirts, but posting of picture of me in it is boring when compared to this technicolor wonder of singing about being Iowa corn-fed.}