Tag: Memoir

Fifty years ago, I was eleven years old.

In June of 1976, my family was moving from the towering redwoods of Northern California to the wide-open prairies of South Dakota. My father was a Lutheran pastor, and although we lived in one of the most beautiful places in America, it was also economically depressed. The congregations he served could barely afford his salary. He substitute taught. My mother worked as a nurse for a local doctor in Garberville.

As children, we never knew we were poor.

We lived in Redway among giant redwoods. We built tree forts. We played in moss gardens beneath ancient trees. We had cats, a dog, and a world that felt enchanted. Local hippies occasionally “adopted” our dog without permission, and somehow my father always tracked him down and brought him home.

It was magical.

Then we packed everything we owned into a moving truck and station wagon and headed halfway across the country.

My father and older brother drove the moving van. My mother drove the station wagon with me, my brothers, our cats, and our dog.

Somewhere along the way, we got separated.

This was 1976.

No cell phones. No GPS. No way to text, “Where are you?”

I remember sleeping in the station wagon in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t know where Dad was. We weren’t entirely sure where we were. Money was tight enough that sleeping in the car made sense. The kittens bounced around inside the vehicle during the night, still searching for the mother cat we had lost somewhere along the journey.

Looking back, I realize how frightening that must have been for my mother.

Yet somehow, with paper maps and determination, she found her way.

We arrived in a tiny South Dakota town just days before the Fourth of July—the Bicentennial of the United States.

And suddenly everything changed.

The church members had already gathered. Dad and my brother were unloading the truck. People we had never met were carrying our furniture into a large parsonage with a huge yard, apple trees, a garden, and even playground equipment.

Everyone welcomed us.

Everyone.

The town was preparing for the biggest Fourth of July celebration anyone could remember. It was America’s 200th birthday.

There was a bicycle parade where children decorated their bikes in red, white, and blue. There were baseball games, tractor pulls, a bazaar, fireworks, and a grease pig contest.

I entered the grease pig contest.

At the end, three of us managed to catch the squealing pig. I had my arms around its middle. One boy held the front. Another held the back.

The rules had been clear: whoever held the pig around the middle won.

Then the judge tapped me on the shoulder and told me to stand up.

The two boys would compete for the pig.

Not me.

I remember being confused more than angry.

Was it because I was a girl?

Was it because I was the new pastor’s daughter?

I never knew.

My father simply told me I had done well and that sometimes it was better to let things go and enjoy the day.

So I did.

The fireworks that night were extraordinary. Out on the prairie, spent fragments drifted back to Earth, and children ran through the darkness searching for them like treasure.

My mother gave me a copy of Little House on the Prairie, and suddenly this new landscape became magical too.

My brothers and I explored everything.

An abandoned schoolhouse.

A one-room jail.

A giant pile of polished marble that had fallen from a train years earlier and become our fort.

South Dakota became home.

The people were kind. They were patriotic in a healthy way. They loved their town, their neighbors, and their country.

Most of all, I remember a feeling that Americans were celebrating something together.

Not as Republicans.

Not as Democrats.

As Americans.

For a child, it felt like the entire nation had gathered around one enormous campfire.

But time has a way of revealing things children cannot yet see.

Three years later, my father was driven out of that church.

Not by most members.

Not even close.

By roughly thirty percent.

A vocal minority became angry because Dad believed God was large enough to work through evolution. They didn’t merely disagree. They fought. They disrupted meetings. They made church politics unbearable.

Years later I learned far more about those conflicts.

But one event remains burned into memory.

The town butcher—who was also the mayor and one of the leaders opposing my father—shot our dog.

Soon afterward, we left.

Dad eventually left parish ministry altogether and became a hospital chaplain.

He wanted to help people.

He no longer wanted to fight religious politics.

For years I’ve thought about that thirty percent.

Not because they represented the majority.

Because they didn’t.

Most people in that town were kind.

Most people simply wanted to live their lives.

Yet a determined minority changed everything.

Today, I find myself thinking about that lesson again. And my father who taught me not to let people who disappoint you steal your capacity for wonder. When the church became consumed by conflict, he chose service. When I was tapped on the shoulder after gripping the pig by the middle, he showed me there was still sweetness in the air and many more wonderful things to see and do. He reminded me to keep living and keep finding wonder in the ordinary even though life feels unfair sometimes.

America Turns 250 | 1976 to 2026

Fifty years later, that lesson may matter more than ever.

America’s 250th birthday arrives in 2026.

And once again, it feels as though a determined minority has seized control of the national conversation.

Many historians, political scientists, and psychologists have observed a recurring reality of human societies: highly motivated minorities often exert influence far beyond their numbers. Most people are busy raising families, paying bills, and living their lives. Extremists organize. They attend meetings. They show up repeatedly. They create pressure. They dominate institutions. Over time, they can steer entire communities. Sometimes entire nations.

The question isn’t why thirty percent can take over.

The question is why seventy percent so often assumes someone else will stop them.

Watching the Apple TV series Dickinson, I was struck by scenes set on the eve of the Civil War. The characters feel the nation splitting apart around them. Emily’s sister asks a haunting question:

“Is this the end of America?”

The line lands differently today than it did when the show aired. The writers were portraying the 1860s, but many viewers recognized something contemporary beneath the costume drama—a nation struggling to remember what it is.

I don’t believe America is ending.

But I do believe we are living through one of those moments when the future is being contested.

Meanwhile, another reality has been unfolding quietly since the year before that Bicentennial.

A recent analysis drawing on work from the RAND Corporation estimated that if economic growth since 1975 had been distributed similarly to the decades after World War II, tens of trillions of dollars more would have gone to ordinary Americans rather than concentrating at the top. The cumulative transfer has been estimated at roughly $79 trillion.

Think about that.

An entire lifetime.

My lifetime.

Everyday Kindness Matters | 1976 to 2026

I have never known the America my parents expected.

The America where a single income could support a family.

The America where ordinary workers reliably shared in productivity gains.

The America where retirement seemed attainable.

Research consistently shows that inequality has widened dramatically since the mid-1970s.

My daughter’s generation inherited an even steeper climb.

Higher housing costs.

Higher education costs.

Greater economic insecurity.

More concentrated wealth.

Less certainty that hard work alone will provide stability.

That is not because America lacks resources.

It is because political and economic choices determine who benefits from growth.

Fifty years ago, as fireworks exploded over a tiny South Dakota town, America seemed confident about its future.

Today, many Americans feel anxious about theirs.

Yet when I think back to 1976, what stays with me isn’t the fireworks.

It isn’t the parade.

It isn’t even the pig I should have won.

It is the people.

The neighbors carrying furniture into our new house.

The strangers welcoming us.

The sense that community mattered more than ideology.

The understanding that being American meant belonging to one another.

Perhaps that is the lesson hidden between these two anniversaries.

The future is not determined by the loudest thirty percent.

It is determined by what the other seventy percent decides to do.

America has survived civil war, depression, corruption, and division before.

The question facing us at 250 is the same one facing Emily Dickinson’s generation:

Who are we going to be?

And what kind of country are we willing to build together?

Dad

As I write this, another anniversary approaches.

Eight years ago, around the Fourth of July, I had a persistent feeling that I needed to go see my father. Life was complicated. I was working at a small Lutheran nonprofit run by a leader who demanded loyalty but offered little grace. I was exhausted from standing my ground against behavior I knew was wrong.

I ignored the feeling.

A few weeks later, on July 25, 2018, my father suffered a heart attack.

I rushed to be with him and spent ten precious days at his side. For a brief moment, it looked as though he might recover. Then he was gone.

While I was sitting beside my dying father, the nonprofit’s CEO fired me.

The contrast could not have been sharper.

One life had been spent serving others.

The other seemed consumed by power.

My father had just celebrated fifty-five years in ministry. Not the kind of ministry that makes headlines. The quieter kind. The kind that sits with families in hospital rooms. The kind that listens more than it speaks. The kind that helps people carry grief, fear, and loss.

He spent a lifetime healing people.

Mom

Last October, I lost my mother too, so this is the first year without her here.

She was a healer too–working as a nurse but also through her capacity to notice patterns and see hidden possibilities others missed.

My father taught me how to care for people.

My mother taught me how to see.

She taught me to notice patterns, connections, and possibilities hidden beneath the surface of ordinary life. When circumstances became difficult, she taught me to use imagination not as an escape from reality but as a way to engage it more fully.

It was my mother who handed me Little House on the Prairie when an eleven-year-old girl arrived frightened and homesick on the South Dakota prairie.

With one book, she transformed a place of loss into a place of adventure.

Looking back, I realize she had been doing that all along.

More Healers

Perhaps that is what America needs most as it approaches its 250th birthday.

Not louder voices.

Not stronger tribes.

Not better slogans.

More healers.

More people willing to care for one another.

More people willing to imagine a future larger than their fears.

Fifty years ago, the nation gathered to celebrate its 200th birthday.

Today, we stand at another crossroads.

The question is not whether America can survive.

The question is what kind of Americans we choose to become.

The future is not determined by the loudest thirty percent.

It is determined by what the other seventy percent decides to do.