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Live United by Erin Haag

At Christmas time, my sister pulled me aside. She told me she wanted to gift our mom with a girl’s trip this summer. We’d be bringing our mom and our daughters.

Since we’re trying to focus less on stuff and more on experiences, I of course said that sounded like a great idea. At the time of this writing, my niece and daughter have their noses in their new books in the backseat, and I’m in the middle while my mom and sister chat in the front. We explored Washington Island and then headed northeast. We plan to stay near Macinaw Island and then drive back to Chicago where they’ll catch a plane and my daughter and I will drive home from. Four states, two Great Lakes, two islands.

My hope for this trip is that it would give me a little bit of space to let the creative side flow. I’m at a pivotal moment right now — the moment where I need to lay some paths to follow for the remainder of the year. I have some things I’m mulling over and need to think about. I envisioned sitting by the lake on a cool morning (yep, we timed it just right so I missed the heat wave!). I thought about stretches of time of me walking up and down lavender fields with my camera. I thought about an old Nordic church and a prayer path through the woods. We found all these things of course, but the moment I’d been chasing didn’t hit until later.

My sister and I are eight years apart. She’d tell you she’s 7. If you want to talk semantics, it’s 7 years and 11 months. Now that we’re middle-aged, even across the country from each other and not talking to each other very often, we cut our hair the same, buy the same clothes and have the same reactions to things in life. This trip, we kept laughing as we said the same things at the same time. I told her she was the voice in my head speaking out loud. We found a carpet staple sticking up, and we immediately investigated the house to find the tools to fix it. My mother wondered why we were using the fireplace poker as a makeshift hammer, but it made perfect sense to us. We also mentally reorganized the visitor’s guide to showcase the island better, because we had to look on five different pages to figure out what was on one block. When we drove by Uline headquarters, we both got excited and talked about how much we love using that company for work. Apparently, I get my program development, rule following, organizational skills from her. I’m sure we called each other bossy when we were young.

We’re very different people, but family ties speak loud and clear. She knew that moment I was looking for.

Driving down a two-lane highway on a rainy morning, we saw a sculpture in the woods. Intrigued, we pulled into the parking lot and discovered a gem of Door County.

We figured we’d take a 10-minute break and see a gift shop and a couple of sculptures. It was sprinkling, and everything was fresh and clean. I stepped away from my family and found my path. Hidden from us was a whole sculpture garden, with winding paths through a quiet forest. Beautiful earthenware birdhouses, huge metal sculptures of foxes, rabbits and birds, stone owls and more. The adjoining galleries were curated very well. Best of all — there was silence. You could hear the low murmur of people, but of the most part, you were able to walk through the galleries and the paths through the woods, but it was mostly silence. In those woods, and in that art gallery, I found renewed joy in the beauty of art. The collections appealed to my daughter, too, and she had boundless joy over each new piece she discovered she loved. She found mosaic chickens (of course), hand glass blown snowman and a stone owl that fit her allowance budget and came home with her.

At United Way, we’ve been so focused on filling the basic needs — through our programs, through our Community Impact Grants, through our referrals to other nonprofits. We knew the need for beauty and art as well as the practical nature of these programs. After all, we fill our offices up with plants, and we constantly remind everyone — volunteers and staff alike — to take the moment to breathe. In our pantry, we think about how to display things, the intentional details of displaying food, the wood produce bins and the beauty of fresh, bountiful food itself. As I stood there though, I thought of our big empty walls in our office — in what has become the waiting room for people to come and shop. It’s time to bring beauty and art to the other side, because it fills a need in people’s souls that they don’t always recognize as a need, but they know it when they see it.

I’m coming home, and I’m renewed and reinspired to not only fill the practical, the organizing side of my sister and I, but I’m inspired to bring a reminder of the beauty of art. What does that look like? I’m not sure. Sadly, I don’t have the room or the budget to bring home some of those beautiful pieces. But can we marry practicality with beauty? Our local quilters do this on a daily basis — beautiful handmade quilts that bring joy to many of our shoppers and clients throughout the year. We’ve grown a lot, and I’m hoping that as we move beyond the basic “get up and going,” it’s now time to put the polish on. The house is built, the furniture has been rearranged. Now it’s time to get the art on the walls.

Erin Haag is the executive director of the United Way of Freeborn County.