Hold tight

There were wet afternoons when she would grab a plastic bucket from her sandbox and trace the curb. Occasionally, she would stop, set her bucket on the spring grass and bend low. In time she would return, and in the bucket would be fat purple night crawlers and pale earthworms as thin as spaghetti. It resembled a squirming ball of grey string – viscous and foul – and I would look at her, and she would smile.

I sometimes wonder where that little girl went. Or I wonder if I might have imagined it all. But then I will stumble across photographs of her – or photographs of her and me – and I know she was no figment or fancy.

We look to tomorrow and so miss today. It is a tragic fault of ours – one the poets have long noted and one I did not escape. Too often my thoughts were elsewhere: on money and bills and work. Rather than burn each moment she and I shared into memory, rather than observe her every detail from the slightest grain to the smallest thread, I let the fog of ambition and self-interest sweep between us.

There were other errors as well.

Frequently, I failed to say what should have been said or – worse – said what I shouldn't have. When life hurt her – as life will do – and the moment called for consoling the punished, I condemned the punishers instead. When achievements were accomplished, my praise contained caveats to keep it up or to do even better.

Poison is no remedy.

Words of congratulation should carry no qualifiers.

At times I was a poor host. I dismissed the notion of boyfriends without the courtesy of much explanation. I mumbled something about there being a time and place for everything. Boys, of course, still showed up at my door like some wide-eyed stray. I let them in though I welcomed them like I would a flat tire.

Or I made my worries hers. When I saw her at night, I did not always drop the weights of the world I had picked up during the day. Childhood is brief and should be forever brilliant. It was my job to keep the clouds away. Instead, I brought them home and let their shadows darken places where light had been.

So now when she and I cross paths and I observe her deep compassion for the less fortunate or hear her frequent laugh at something someone says or watch as she assiduously attends to each moment that each day brings, I breathe a sigh of relief. My disadvantages are not hers. She is a better person than I am, and I am glad.

On those days when it fell to me to pick her up from kindergarten and take her to the babysitter, I would reach over the seat once she had scrambled into the back of the two-door Pontiac I owned, and together we would hold each other's hand. Tomorrow, she graduates from high school, and in three months she will be on her own.

Even if it meant making the same mistakes, if I could do it again, if I could relive the past 18 years, I would and without question.

But I cannot. Yet my hand will always be there.

Say it ain't snow

I can only imagine what the neighbors are saying. But in my defense I want you to know it wasn't my idea. You also need to know I've shoveled more snow than half the inhabitants of Siberia.

It is uncanny. Every driveway of every house I've owned has been cursed. It might snow an inch across city and county and state. In my driveway there will be a foot. I'll walk outside after a storm and the neighbors will be sweeping the snow away. My driveway will look like our Lord and Snowmaker has spent the night sifting flour on my house. Before long kids from up and down the block will emerge, snowboards tucked under their arms, and start ripping sick half-pipes off the garage. Trailing behind the little buggers will be entire teams of St. Bernards and behind them Swiss yodelers and Sherpas.

I have scooped snow, pushed snow, carried snow and carted it. I have hauled snow, heaved snow, hoisted snow and lugged it. For almost a decade I lived in Grand Forks, N.D., and for almost all of that time I lived in a house that had a driveway so long, it is visible from the moon.

A piece of advice: If you ever find yourself living in Grand Forks, N.D., do not buy a house that has a long driveway. In fact, find a house that doesn't have a driveway at all. In Grand Forks, you see, it doesn't even have to snow for drifts to stretch across your driveway big enough to swallow caravans of vacationing Canadians. All it takes is wind, and in Grand Forks, if the wind isn't blowing, you should see a doctor. You're probably dead.

Shoveling that driveway was my own personal Green Mile. There were years I would start in October and not finish until June. I despised that driveway, and when I sold that house and moved to another, I didn't sneer and stick up a certain finger from the moving van window. But I should have.

The driveway at the next house I owned was considerably shorter – and categorically worse. You might have seen the driveway on TV. It was the site of the 1996 Winter Olympics. Even the Sherpas stayed home that winter.

What I did to deserve this penance, I do not know. There is so much to choose from. But a driveway deep in snow is my cross. I've come to accept that. Heaven forbid I should end up in the catacombs of Hell someday, but if I do, I am certain 10-foot snowdrifts and a teaspoon await me.

I could get a snow blower. The thought has crossed my mind. But after all these years, frankly, it has become a test of wills, this struggle between snow and me. Perhaps all this shoveling has frosted my brain, but I feel like I'm in an epic battle between man and nature. If I buy a snow blower, I'll be surrendering. I'll be raising a white flag, which, if waved from my driveway, no one would see anyway, so what good would it do.

Plus I'm cheap.

So when I walked into the kitchen Monday morning and found my wife wearing snow boots and mittens and my driveway clean of that night's slushy heap, I had mixed emotions. A part of me – an extremely small part, minute, imperceptible to the naked eye – thought: "I am pathetic." The rest of me thought: "Heck yes!"

Let me reiterate. I did not know she was out there shoveling while I slept. My wife sets her alarm clock for 5 a.m. For the past 25 years that clock has screeched at that infernal hour. If she wants to get up when only dairy farmers and the dead are stirring, that's her business. But there is no way I am rolling out of the rack at that time unless there is a fishing boat or a duck blind in my immediate future.

My wife has given birth to three children. So what's a little snow to her? Still, it must have been quite a sight: All the neighbor men maneuvering their snow blowers in the early-morning gloom, their muffled churning collecting in the crisp March air, and there in front of the Okerlund house, a solitary shoveler, slight in frame, her cream-colored scarf tight against her neck, toiling mightily.

To be completely honest, it wasn't the first time this woman has shoveled in my stead this winter. She tells me she doesn't mind. It is good exercise, she tells me.

What's there for me to say? Except thanks.

Dog days

Most people rake in the fall. I rake in the spring.

The reason I rake in the spring is because every year at this time my yard looks like it has giant liver spots.

The reason every year at this time my yard looks like it has giant liver spots is because I have a dog that pees napalm.

The reason I've had a dog for the past 12 years (and, as fortune would have it, one that pees napalm) is a story I've told here before, but I'd rather not tell it again today because, though I usually find some humor in it, I'm positive I'll find none at the moment.

And the reason for that is simple: I hate to rake.

There is a scientific explanation why dog urine kills grass. I've had people who know their bluegrass from their tall fescue explain it all to me – something about ammonia and excess nitrogen and pH balance and whatnot.

But science never has been a strong suit of mine, and somewhere out there is a retired high school chemistry teacher who'll freely admit to that. All I know is that every winter when the dog does its business, it does a number on my yard.

I've already raked out the dead spots once this spring. I'll need to rake them out three or four more times before grass will grow in them again.

Round one of the raking took place on a recent Saturday morning. Like she does every spring, the dog lay in the yard – a patch, coincidentally, she hadn't scorched this winter – and watched. Like it does every spring, the scene went something like this:

Rake. Stop. Wheeze.

Rake. Stop. Wheeze.

Raking isn't quantitative physics. Scratching requires more thought. So it gives one ample time to ponder other things, and more often than not my mind will drift to a certain yellow Labrador looking at me while I lean on a rake gasping like a beached sea creature.

"You know," I'll mutter, "I should put an ad in the paper. I know just what it would say, too: 'For sale. One dog. Goes by Angel. Don't let the name fool you.' "

Her tail will wag. "You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. That's just what it would say. Of course, who would be crazy enough to want you? You have more tumors than a cancer ward. Your breath could strip paint. But you know what you're biggest flaw is? You have an exaggerated self-image."

As if on cue, she'll turn her head and bark at some lap dog scuttling next to its owner down the block and across the street – a distance of at least 50 yards. And then for good measure she'll growl. The sound is like rocks in a blender.

"You see. That's what I'm talking about. Do you think that woman and that dog are interested in your opinion? I've got news for you. They're not. On top of that, now they'll think you've got a bad attitude even though we both know the only thing you care to sink your teeth into is a chocolate chip cookie."

Because I'm looking at her, she'll slowly stand up, steady herself, hobble over and plop down beside me. "You have got to be kidding," I'll grunt. "You ruin my yard, and now you want me to pet you? Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm not. You can sit there all day. You will get no pets from me."

My arms feel like they've come loose from my body. Tomorrow when I wake up, I'll think someone has inserted razorblades into my spine. And even though I'm wearing gloves, I can tell I have blisters forming the size of bowling balls.

Before people do something they can't – or at least ought not to – undo like get married or have a family, they might want to get a dog. What they'll probably discover, if they haven't already, is how much give they have to go with their take.

Because when someone finds muddy paw prints on the top of her antique mahogany table or his best pair of ostrich-skin boots chewed to shreds or the pantry door open and that 10-pound bag of rice that had been full is now empty, they learn quick how much tolerance they have for imperfection and how much capacity they have for sacrifice. If what they find is that they don't have much of either, they might want to rethink getting that engagement ring or swapping the den for a nursery.

Every dog I've ever known is part friend, part frustration, but I haven't met a single person yet whose flaws are fewer or one who can be trained.

In time I'll look at the dog looking at me. She has always had as much white in her coat as yellow, so it is hard to see how grey her face has become. To get into and out of the bed of my truck now, I have to lift her (which I think she secretly enjoys). Seldom do I catch her chasing butterflies anymore. Instead, she sleeps for hours at a stretch – even during the day.

How many more springs of liver spots will there be, I'll wonder as I drop the rake, ease onto the grass and take off my gloves.

IMASUKR

After seeing in this newspaper the list of clever vanity license plates some South Dakotans have, I've decided to get one myself.

Torn between IH8BRAN and SNOWSUX, I asked my wife what she thought. She suggested HORRIBLYFLAWED.

Funny woman I married.

When I told her that vanity plates cannot be longer than seven letters, she closed the book she was reading, pursed her lips and studied me like I was a museum exhibit. "OK," she said. "How about BIGDUME? That's seven letters exactly."

Sensing in the woman a sharp disinterest in the conversation we were having, I hopped out of bed and e-mailed my oldest son in northern Minnesota to get his opinion. Knowing he despises shoveling snow even more than I do, I had a hunch which of the two expressions he would pick.

His response popped up seconds later. "Got a better idea," the message said. "DRILSGT."

Failing to find the humor in that, I e-mailed his younger brother in Nebraska. His reply arrived even quicker: "HARD*SS."

I was tempted to send both this suggestion in case they ever get vanity plates themselves: DISOWND. Instead, at church the next day as he and I were shaking hands after the service, I told the pastor about my plan to get a set of vanity plates and asked what he would recommend.

"PRAY4ME," he said.

The man must have noticed the color draining from my face. "Lying is a sin," he shrugged. "What choice did I have?"

I didn't like the direction this was going. Still, when I went to the doctor a couple days later, I decided to seek her advice. The woman took an oath to care for my well-being. I figured she had to suggest something helpful.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I know just what you should put on your license plates," she said at the end of my appointment. "I'll write it on the back of this prescription for cholesterol medication." Outside, I looked at what she wrote: "OVRWAIT."

Frustrated, I began asking everyone I met what they thought should be stamped on my plates.

I asked my mechanic as he handed me the keys to my truck. "IMASUKR," he grinned, fingering his Rolex and nodding at my bill.

I asked some subscribers to this newspaper as they had coffee at a local cafe. "WINDBAG," they crowed.

I asked my students as I was teaching them the difference between gerund and participle phrases: "ZZZZZZZ," they yawned.

I asked a kid at my door after I told him I wasn't interested in buying the popcorn he was selling. "TITEWAD," he muttered.

I asked my high school basketball coach. "Who is this again?" he barked into the phone. I repeated my name and reminded him of the year I played for him: 1981. There was a short pause. "4GETABL," he growled and hung up.

I asked the teller at the bank as I deposited my paycheck. "UNDRPAD," she answered through the intercom.

I asked my dentist after he stuck a series of sharp metal objects in my mouth. "GUMDZEZ," he scolded.

I asked my brothers while we were out hunting. "That's easy," they smiled. "MISFIRE."

About to give up, I turned to the one person I've always been able to count on to sing my praises. "Of course I'll help you," my mom said as I sat down at her kitchen table. "Let's see. What do you think of this one? 2BZE2CAL."

I thought about telling her it was one letter too long.

But I didn't.

I think I'll just keep the plates I got.

First class

I never had her as a teacher. Occasionally, though, I would walk past her classroom, and whenever I did, I would look in.

She was always doing something, always helping someone. It was clear from the look on her face she liked it and liked them. But what always struck me most – and what I still remember best all these years later – was the look on their faces.

They admired her.

Fifteen years of teaching have taught me this: Being steeped in knowledge will earn a teacher the respect and appreciation of students. So will being prepared and demanding and current and decent. But admiration takes something more.

To earn that takes empathy.

And empathy isn't easy.

Get past the piercings and the purple highlights and I suspect young people today are not much different than young people have ever been. That, of course, is not the prevailing sentiment. Public opinion – or at least Hollywood producers and YouTube videos – will have us believe if young people nowadays aren't out shooting up, they're out getting knocked up or beaten up or worse.

It is an ugly fabrication. And an unfair one.

Yes, young people today have problems. Yes, some of their problems are enormous and tragic and sad. And like they have always done and will always do, they carry their problems wherever they go. School included.

When I started teaching, I had a couple of college degrees and had spent the better part of a decade as a journalist. I couldn't have been less prepared. Nowhere in the job description does it say teachers are required to help students carry their problems. Yet it might be the greatest obligation a teacher has.

She understood this.

To her they shared their problems. They did, I suspect, because they trusted her and because something told them she, too, had felt pain.

Young people are reluctant to let us shoulder the load unless we have shouldered one ourselves. I suppose they want some proof that we are up to the task. It seems to be a prerequisite before they will confide in us their confidences.

So besides reading them poetry and teaching them prepositions, whenever the need arose, she permitted them to unpack their troubles.

Year.

After year.

After year.

Where she gathered the strength is a wonder to me. What, after all, weighs more than woe? It wears like the wind.

But she never said a word, never entered a complaint, never begged relief. Which made what she did all the more remarkable.

Some claim there are no teachers like her anymore. That, too, is a myth. I still walk past classrooms and, occasionally, I still look in. Often, I see the same look on the faces of those students as I saw on the faces of hers. Or just as often a student will suddenly turn to me and ask – unexpectedly, out of the blue – if I happen to know a certain teacher, and when I say I do, at that moment – right then – admiration will appear.

No, she was no teacher of mine. I was even more fortunate.

She was a mother.

The great divide

The folks at NASA go to great lengths to get photos of barren and lifeless places. They should know they don't need to send a rover all the way to Mars for that. Instead, they should just stop by and photograph the walls at la casa de los Okerlund.

Curious what these walls look like? Close your eyes. See that? That's them.

In one month I will have lived in the same house for 10 years. In that time I have bought one picture to put on the walls.

I'm no ascetic. I like art. I like landscapes. I like portraits. I like French impressionists and Watertown native Terry Redlin. I even like those pictures of dogs playing poker. You know the ones – where the bulldog is smoking a cigar while slipping the ace of spades under the table to his bulldog buddy.

Hilarious.

Even Mona Lisa cracked up at that, I bet.

Maple sugar is the color of my living room walls. So says the lid of the paint can that now sits in the basement. Honestly, I don't mind the color, but stare at the walls long enough and you start to feel like you're floating in a gravy boat.

The walls definitely need more pictures, and I'd definitely like to purchase more pictures. But I don't have the money. So I can't – and so I don't.

Four Sioux Falls City Council members voted 12 days ago to increase the city sales tax to raise money to build roads. Four voted against the increase. Mayor Dave Munson had to break the tie.

He voted in favor of the higher tax.

It is the slightest of increases: an additional eight cents on every $100 spent on goods in the city. Yet the heat it drew was red-hot. Granted, there are people who will oppose a tax increase no matter the reason and no matter how small. Years ago these people were called good conservatives. But the protesters of this tax increase possessed a different motivation. They appeared to be of two kinds: Either they were struggling to make ends meet. Or they knew someone who was.

For them their opposition was personal as opposed to philosophical, and their vehemence suggests something important about the fortunes of a significant number of people in this community – and in this country as well.

It is hard to know how our fellow citizens are faring. Seldom are we privy to their true feelings. Even more rare is to be mindful of their supply of – and demand for – money. The content of our checkbooks almost never enters a conversation.

So we often are left to assume how they are doing, and like we often do when we find ourselves making assumptions about the lives of others, we tend to think our experience probably is their experience, too.

I have enough food to eat, we reason, they must have enough food to eat, too.

I can pay my light bill, we reason, they must be able to pay their light bill, too.

I can afford more taxes, we reason, they must be able to afford more taxes, too.

If someone does not have enough food to eat or cannot pay the light bill or is unable to afford more taxes, we often assume there is fault, and the fault is theirs.

They are not working hard enough.

They are frittering away their money.

They are caught up in God knows what.

Sometimes that explains it. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is something for which they have not one iota of fault.

In 1979 in America, 55 percent of pre-tax income went to the poor and the middle class. By 2005 – the most recent year available – that share had fallen to 45 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

While the poor and middle class have seen their piece of the economic pie shrink in relative terms, others have watched theirs grow fatter. In 1979 in America, 45 percent of pre-tax income ended up in the hands of the upper middle class and the rich. By 2005 that share had increased to 55 percent.

To those perched on the highest rung of the income ladder, America has been especially generous. In 1979 the top 1 percent of households pocketed 9 percent of all pre-tax income. By 2005 that amount had doubled to 18 percent.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average adjusted pre-tax income for these households ballooned from $518,000 in 1979 to almost $1.6 million in 2005 – a 208 percent increase. That 26-year stretch was far less lucrative for the least affluent among us. The average adjusted pre-tax income for the poorest 20 percent of households in the nation rose a meager 1 percent – from $15,700 to $15,900 – from 1979 to 2005.

The 20 percent of households smack dab in the middle of the income ladder didn't make out much better. In 1979 when a nice three-bedroom home in Sioux Falls could be found for around $50,000, these middle-class Americans earned $51,000 on average. In 2005 when a nice three bedroom home in Sioux Falls cost two, three, four times what it did in 1979, they earned $58,500 on average – only $7,500 more.

There is nothing to suggest the divide in America between those who have much and those who have less has narrowed since 2005. On the contrary, the evidence suggests it has continued to widen.

When the Pew Research Center asked more than 2,400 adults earlier this year to compare their lives today to their lives five years ago, only 41 percent said their lives were better. Never has this percentage been so low in the more than half a century that Americans have been asked this question.

Likewise, when the 2,400 adults were asked to describe their financial condition, almost six of every 10 middle-class respondents and seven of every 10 lower-class respondents said they have just enough money to pay their bills or they said they have enough money and just a little more.

When asked if they had to cut their spending within the past year because money was tight, more than half of the middle-class respondents and three-quarters of the lower-class respondents said yes. Finally, when asked whether it is more difficult or less difficult today for middle-class Americans to maintain their standard of living than it was five years ago, almost 80 percent of all 2,400 respondents answered more.

If ever the tide was rushing in, if ever the boats of all Americans should have been on the rise, it was the past three decades. That span witnessed three of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history. The productivity of American workers during that time marched consistently higher. In addition, American women entered the labor force like never before. Two-thirds of all women in the United States between the ages of 20 and 64 now hold jobs. In more than half of all married households, both the husband and the wife work.

Though it was written in 1967 about a different kind of civil unrest, the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth" captures in its first two lines the sentiment of millions of Americans today: "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear." People are confused. They were promised if they worked hard, they would prosper. Others around them had that promise met. Of this they are certain because everywhere they look are the symbols of fantastic wealth.

Yet it wasn't met for them.

And they are wondering why.

Not being able to afford pictures to put on their walls is not what worries people struggling to make ends meet, of course.

What worries them is not having walls to put pictures on – or money to go to the doctor or to buy gas or to send their children to college.

Those are real concerns of which I have no concept. I know not their weight or their mass. They are outside my experience, and even if I closed my eyes for a thousand years, I could never imagine how monstrous and frightening they must be.

I try not to lose sight of that fact.

True American®

His shirt said: I'M A PATRIOT. ARE YOU?

"Anymore," he said, "you can't tell who is a real McCoy, stars-and-stripes American in this country and who is just a liberal, lefty, light-beer sucking pretender." He pronounced it PREEE-tender, and his upper lip curled when he said it. "But before you can be a True American®, you've got to answer these simple questions I have here in front of me." He tapped the white sheet of paper lying on the table between us. "After each question there are two boxes. One of the boxes says YES. The other says NO. If I check the box that says YES, it means you're a True American®. If I check the box that says NO, it means you're not.

"Got it?" he asked me.

"Crystal clear," I replied.

"OK. Let's get started." There was a yellow pencil next to the sheet of paper. He picked it up. "Are you for or against the Second Amendment?"

"Definitely for," I replied. "I still have the shotgun given to me on my 12th birthday. I was along when my dad bought it at Ace Hardware. Now I'll admit I don't clean the gun as often as I should, and I'm such a crummy shot, PETA has asked me to be a member. But 35 years later, it still works like a charm."

"Spoken like a True American®," he said, taking the pencil and placing a heavy black X in the YES box.

"You bet. Of course," I continued, "the Supreme Court blew it when it overturned the ban on handguns in Chicago. And like any rational person, I am against assault weapons. You'd have to be half nuts to want to own something like that. The only people who should be allowed to bear those arms are cops and members of the military."

There was a long pause during which he cocked his head to one side and then the other. Finally, he erased the X in the YES box and drew an X in the NO box. "You should have quit while you were ahead," he said and gave me kind of a half-smile. "Not to worry, though. You'll do better on this question: Are you for or against illegal immigration?"

"Oh, that's easy," I replied. "I am definitely against illegal immigration. Our southern border is a giant sieve. The wind has a harder time getting across."

"So right you are," he said, marking the YES box.

"Sure enough. Of course," I continued, "it's not like America has a monopoly on smart, hardworking people. If we want to remain the biggest economic power in the world, we'll need all the smart, hardworking, legal immigrants we can get from Mexico and every other corner of the globe. Instead of passing racial-profiling laws, the citizens of Arizona should be figuring out how to do that."

Again, there was a long pause during which he looked at me and softly clucked his tongue. "You know," he eventually said as he erased the X he had made in the YES box before putting an X in the NO box, "just a simple yes or no, for or against, is enough. You don't have to say anything more."

I nodded.

"Good," he said. His voice seemed to brighten. "You're off to a tough start. I got to be honest. But you still have a chance to be a True American® depending on how you answer this question: Are you for or against the War on Terror?"

"This one is in the bag," I replied. "I am definitely for the War on Terror. There are people who want to do us harm. That is a fact. We can't let them."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," he said. The X he placed in the YES box was the biggest he had made yet.

"Heck yes. Of course," I continued, "some people say we can't leave Iraq or Afghanistan until we finish the job. That's bull. Our soldiers finished the job. They defeated al-Qaida. They defeated Saddam. They liberated Iraq and Afghanistan and have helped them to establish democratic governments. That was the job they were sent to do, and that was the job they did. Now it's time for them to come home before any more of them die."

He never bothered to erase the X in the YES box. Instead, he tossed the yellow pencil on the table and slowly folded the sheet of paper and slid it into his shirt pocket. "There are some more questions," he said. "Abortion. Ethanol. The deficit. School prayer. A couple of others. But I see no point in asking them. It's apparent you don't have what it takes to be a True American®. I'm sorry."

I shrugged. "You know," I said, "it's too bad you didn't ask me if I am for or against people who think anyone who doesn't believe what they believe is somehow less of an American than they are and who use patriotism to divide people or to intimidate them or – worst of all – to con them in a shameless effort to make a buck. If you had asked me that question, I am positive I would have gotten it right."

His eyes narrowed. "Are you certain?"

I picked up the pencil. "Definitely."