Guess what, guess what??!! (Did you guess?)
I got a new camera!! It’s a Minolta Maxxum XTsi, which stands for eXtraordinary Technological Superior Intelligence. By the way, what do you think of this fancy type and color?
Well, I think I’ll change back to normal, since I’ll have a lot to edit if I keep playing around with all these fonts and colors.
Larry gave me the camera, and he also gave me a new bag and a zoom lens, 100-300mm. My old camera had gone on the blink--only one week before Keith’s wedding!--and the only way I could get the flash to work was to put it all on manual; and that isn’t so good, because sometimes I choose the wrong aperture. Also, the zoom on my 80-100mm refused to zoom. And it was the lens I used all the time. But I’ll finish that story later.
The deer have been coming out in droves, just a little beyond Keith’s house on Shady Lake Road. One night, Larry and I counted over twenty in one herd, and we watched as, one by one, they jumped a fence and meandered into another cornfield. Deer are so pretty with their big brown eyes and graceful forms; I enjoy watching them.
Keith and Esther spent several evenings last week transporting belongings from their old houses to their new. Finally, everything was in tiptop shape, nothing else left to do. They turned their attention to weather reports and atlases and maps, and Keith, after first deciding to go to Colorado, upon learning that a monumental snowstorm was expected all across the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states, altered his plans......to Yellowstone National Park. . . . .saying that he wanted to see the Tetons with all that snow on them.
I promptly informed him that he wouldn’t be able to travel in the Park until after Memorial Day, unless he rented a snowmobile. Honestly! Don’t kids understand how dangerous driving in bad weather can be?!
(Yes, yes; I realize that Larry and I have often headed off to Timbuktu in inclement weather; and I realize that, by my general actions and attitude, I’ve taught the children to regard thunderstorms and snowstorms alike as grand larks. But, even so!--I know that a small skid on an icy road can turn into a calamity. Don’t the children know that?!)
Keith and Esther had a reservation at the Holiday Inn in Grand Island last night; after that, we don’t know for sure where they are heading. Anyway, Esther’s car is front-wheel drive, and goes well on snow and ice, and Keith is a good driver. And I guess we have to let them start fending for themselves!
But parents worry about their children, no matter how old they are. My mother still worries about my brother when he’s out traveling and bad weather comes along--and he’s almost sixty years old.
Last week I finished Hester’s dress and sewed Victoria’s, too. Then, after discovering that the other bridesmaid’s cancan was quite a bit fuller than Hannah’s, I had to sew two more net ruffles onto Hannah’s. Then, when she tried it on, we noticed that, evidently, her dress had shrunk (they do that, you know, just hanging in the closet), and the cancan hung out a good inch. So I had to take another tuck in the first ruffle. And then I was done.
Tuesday, Teddy got a new bike. It’s a hunter-green Giant, an Iguana, with 21 speeds.
Last Monday or Tuesday, Lawrence and Norma went to Cedar Rapids. They went into a store called ‘Michael’s’, where Norma found a whole volley of twelve-inch jointed bears on sale for two dollars each. She bought six of them, three tan and three white, for Hannah. Last week, Hannah was feverishly working on some white thread pineapple-and-roses, three-dimensional, which she was sewing onto the front of some large dusty-pink fringed couch pillows for Keith and Esther. She finished them Saturday afternoon. Whew!
Today she is trying to complete a large white doily with a pinwheel shape in the center for Norma’s birthday tomorrow. She’s just now putting the edge on it.
The geese and ducks have been arriving in hordes. There are Canadas, snows, speckled-front, . . . all sorts and types and variations. We saw a huge flock of Canadas--with one lonesome snow goose amongst them.
Larry has had a private phone line at his shop for several years, so that, in the event that he transfers his main line elsewhere--to the house or to his cellular phone, for example--I am still able to call him. Well, he had that line routed also to the house, and we hooked our computer onto it. This way, when we are on the Internet, we don’t have our main phone tied up.
Thursday, knowing my camera was on the fritz, I set it on manual, adjusted shutter speed and aperture, and shot a roll of film in order to find out if I would be able to take decent pictures. A fine thing, to have my camera not working properly just before our son’s wedding!! The pictures turned out pretty good, but I was concerned that, if the lighting at church was different from our house--which it is--I wouldn’t be able to get it set right. So I worried on . . . . .
Friday morning, Pablo, Keith’s penpal from Buenos Aires, Argentine, was scheduled to arrive on the 5:15 A.M. Amtrak in Lincoln. Since I was afraid Keith and Larry, who were going to go get him, wouldn’t wake up in time, I stayed up to make sure they didn’t oversleep. At 3:00 A.M., I called the Amtrak station to ask if the train was running on schedule. It was not. In fact, it was an hour late. So I let Larry sleep. Keith had already gotten up, however, and was in no mood to take a nap.
After meeting Pablo and deciding that he was, indeed, just as nice in person as he’d seemed in his letters these last twelve years, we decided to let him sleep at Keith’s house, and Keith slept there with him. He has been carefully saving every dime he can, for he is paying his way through college, and he also helps his folks pay the tuition for his younger brother’s and sister’s schooling.
He doesn’t eat at restaurants, because they are too expensive; rather, he cooks his own food in his room. He told me that although he is used to meals with quite a bit of meat in them, he hasn’t been eating meat, on account of the price. He looked for a roast, but the cheapest one he found was $32. A small steak was $5.
So I made sure that every meal had some type of meat in it. He’d never had pumpkin pie before, so I made some. He laughed about us putting ‘bread’ on our lettuce (croutons), and had never heard of putting cheese on the salad, either. He is used to olive oil or vinegar on it, rather than the variety of dressings we have. And he isn’t used to hot picante sauce at all!
Friday afternoon, I was asking Pablo if he had everything he needed: shampoo? soap? toothpaste? “Yes,” he replied, “I have toothpaste, cream. . . . .” then he paused and started to laugh. “No, no,” he said shaking his head, “I don’t have cream cheese; I have shaving cream!” And he laughed some more. “Cream cheese wouldn’t work very well, would it?”
Since Pablo has a couple of E-mail addresses, I offered him the use of our computer to see if he had any ‘mail’. He did have some--a nice long letter from his sister, describing a wedding they’d attended in the far south of Argentina. Pablo translated some of it for us (it was in Spanish), telling us that his sisters had gone swimming in the sea, and all around them were sea lions and penguins!
Friday afternoon, I decided to take pictures of Keith and Pablo together. I jumped up and trotted into my bedroom to get my camera--but it wasn’t there.
I came back into the living room, puzzling over just where in the world I’d left that big camera case. After all!--I’m the only one who ever moves it! But I always put it in the same spot. Where could it be?
The children all gazed at me blankly--a little too blankly--when I asked them if they’d seen my camera case. But one of the littles, who’d evidently not been told to keep still about such things, said, “It was on the floor by the front door a little while ago when Daddy was here.” Well, it wasn’t there now. Hmmmmm.
A couple of hours later, my camera came back home again. With it came a new camera, and a new lens. And a new bag. Larry had gone to a Minolta camera shop in Fremont, where the owner checked out my camera and lens. He sent the lens off to be repaired, but he said there was nothing wrong with my camera, other than probable dirt on the contacts between flash and camera.
Now, that’s aggravating. I’ll have you know, I’ll have you know!, I know that camera like I know my own hand, and I know it’s misbehaving.
My new camera has all the features of my old one, with a whole lot more added, besides. Oh, isn’t it wonderful! Truly an eXtraordinary camera. Whoop-dee-doo! Now.....do you know of any place where I can buy photo albums cheaper by the gross?
Friday morning, Keith took Pablo to school to introduce him to the teachers and students. That evening we had wedding rehearsal, and Teddy brought Pablo to the church to watch. Keith and Esther had asked me to sing the song “Through Sunshine and Through Sorrow”, the song I sang at Grandma Jackson’s funeral. There are many songs whose words are comforting at a funeral, and, on the other hand, heartening and hopeful at a wedding. That’s because songs that are full of the gospel story are suitable for all occasions, don’t you think?
I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to sing, because ever since Christmas I’ve had one thing after another: cold, flu, cold, sinus infection, cold..... aarrgghh. So I haven’t been able to sing for about a month. It was not until Thursday night that I could actually sing without coughing, and without sounding as if I had a large economy-sized clothespin on my schnoz.
Saturday, Teddy set out to entertain Pablo, since Keith needed to wash and wax Esther’s car, change the oil, and pack his bags. First, Teddy took Pablo bike-riding along the Loup River, Teddy on his new bike, and Pablo on Keith’s, where there are many pretty trails over hills and sand dunes, among trees and shrubs. After that, Teddy took him riding on the four-wheeler, which was a rather novel experience for a boy who doesn’t drive. After coming home for lunch and to warm up, Hannah took them to Wal-Mart, where Pablo bought some gifts for Keith. He got a soft blanket with sunflowers printed all over it, and a little watering can made of thin, woven slats of wood. He also bought several handfuls of flowers, and when they got home, Teddy helped him arrange the flowers--pansies, sunflowers, trailing arbutus, and others--in the watering can. It really was pretty.
Saturday night, Pablo called home. The littles sat in rapt intrigue as he spoke rapidly in Spanish, and Caleb grinned when he caught the sound of his own name. After hanging up, he told us his mother was ‘very pleased’ that he was here at our house.
Keith let Pablo borrow one of his best suits, which fit him nearly perfectly, and a friend of ours loaned him a pair of shoes, since Pablo’s feet were considerably smaller than our well-platformed boys’ feet.
We spent those three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, feeding Pablo as much as he could hold of some of our favorite foods. I don’t imagine it did Pablo any harm, but I daresay some of the rest of us gained an ounce or two!
The one bad thing that happened was that Victoria got sick and wasn’t able to go to church, which made her feel every bit as badly as it did us. Sunday afternoon after she took a nap, I dressed her in her ruffly little dress with the pink roses that matched Hester and Lydia’s, and took her to the church long enough for the photographer to take our family pictures. Then Larry took her home again, while I stayed in order to make good use of my new camera. Also, I would be singing at the beginning of the service.
When Larry started removing Victoria’s pretty dress, she looked up at him with a woebegone expression on her hot little face. She shook her head sadly. “Not go to chooch?”
“No,” Larry replied, giving her a hug, “you’re just too sick! You have a fever and a bad cough, so we’ll have to stay home.”
Victoria smiled at him beseechingly. “Take some medicine, go to chooch?” she pleaded. Poor little dear, she really wanted to go!
After I sang my solo, I came home, and Larry went back to church for the sermon and ceremony. I sat down to type. Every few minutes, Victoria came and leaned on the arm of my desk chair, smiling up at me. “Feelin’ better now?” she told me in her question-statement manner. Then, when the Subtle-Hint method didn’t gain the proper results, she requested, “Me go see Lynette’s puffy, fluffy dress?” (Lynette was the flower girl.)
I told her, “No, baby, you’re just too sick to go to church. But I’ll take lots of pictures, and you can come with me to take them to Walgreens and then to go get them the next day, and you can help me put them into my album, and we’ll look at all the pictures together, and you can see a whole bunch of pictures of Lynette!”
That appeased her, I think, and she seemed to realize that further requests to go to church would be futile, anyway. After Larry ate some lunch at the reception, he came home again, and I returned, camera in hand. I took quite a lot of pictures, but not nearly as many as I had thought I might; mind you, I still have seven rolls of film in my camera bag! Oh, well; Easter is coming, and shortly after that, the wedding of Ann, Esther’s younger sister. So I doubt if I will have any trouble with faded film.
My nephew Robert’s wife Margaret was getting their three little girls ready to go to church Sunday evening. Abigail, age three, was excited. She hopped up and down. “Now I’m gonna get to see the Big White Dress!” she proclaimed.
Upon arriving at the church, she peeked around a corner. . .and then she whispered in loud exuberance, “Ohhhhh! There’s the Big White Dress!!” We all thought this extremely funny, because the Big White Dress has a waist of only about twenty-two inches. haha
After the morning service that day, Ann, Abigail’s four-year-old sister, looked up at her father as they walked to their van. “Keith didn’t get married!” she said in disappointment. (Children often don’t understand the difference between morning and evening.)
Sunday afternoon, Pablo borrowed Keith’s bike and rode uptown, after asking directions from Teddy, who took a city map from an old phone book of ours and gave it to Pablo to carry with him. We were somewhat concerned over whether or not he would be able to find his way around, but he laughed and told us, “Oh, eet’s okay, because here in Columbus they have good sense to put numbers on their streets, instead of whole lot of disordered names, as in Denver.”
But on his way back, he went the wrong way for a few blocks, until he noticed that the peak of the church was behind him.
That afternoon, I made a quadruple batch of Nestle’s Crunch/Heath Brickle cookies, some of which I sent with Keith and Esther, and some of which I sent with Pablo. And a whole lot of which I ate. (As Caleb used to say, “Hoink.”)
My brother, Loren, has been sick, and these last two weeks he’s been plagued with laryngitis. So he wasn’t able to preach Sunday; my nephew Robert Walker preached in the morning; and one of our members who is an ordained minister gave the wedding sermon. Loren then conducted the ceremony, only becoming slightly hoarse during the final prayer.
Pablo was scheduled to catch the Amtrak in Lincoln at 1:45 A.M., so at about eleven o’clock I rushed home to call the main station to see what time the train would arrive. I was hoping it would be running late, since it had begun sleeting hard, and the street and our sidewalks were already getting slick. In fact, our driveway was so slippery, I had a great deal of trouble walking up its slight slope! My feet kept threatening to start sliding back downhill, and by the time I got into the house, my hair had a thick coating of ice crystals. The crystals then melted. I didn’t dare comb it, since I had used quite a bit of hairspray on my hair; for, if I had’ve, my hair would’ve entirely lost its curl. When it dried, it felt exactly like a motorcycle helmet. My goodness, I couldn’t even frown or raise my eyebrows properly, because the sleet, melting and soaking through my hair, had taken enough hairspray with it to glue my scalp firmly in place.
Larry was just hanging up the phone when I came in the door. The train was not running late. Rather, it was running ten minutes ahead of schedule! It was time to get in gear, and fast. I dashed back to church, slipping and sliding in my leather-soled, silver shoes with the big silver chiffon bow, to collect the children home again. Keith and Esther were just leaving. I scurried about, rounding everybody up, snapping last-minute pictures, while Pablo told everybody goodbye.
Home we went. Larry, Pablo, and I dived out of wedding garments and into warm clothes, while the littles donned nightgowns and pajamas. And then we found out what Pablo had traveled uptown to do that afternoon:
Handing me a large bag, he said, “This is a present for all of you. For the whole Jackson family.”
I extracted a present wrapped in shiny mother-of-pearl paper, with a large blue bow affixed to it. Inside was a ceramic Antique Shoppe, with cutouts for windows, and several doors ajar. There was a cord with a bulb, which I fastened into the back of the little building. Joseph plugged the cord in, I arranged it carefully on an end table, and then turned it on. Light glowed prettily from the windows and doors.
“Oh, Pablo, you shouldn’t have!” I exclaimed.
He smiled and nodded his head in disagreement. “Oh, yes,” he replied, meaning, oh, yes, he should have!
I oohed and ahhed over it some more, telling him, “This cost you too much. You didn’t need to do this!”
Again, he nodded, smiling at me. “Oh, yes,” he repeated, meaning, oh, yes, he did.
“I’ve always wanted one of these,” I remarked, gazing at it in admiration.
Pablo grinned. “Well, there you are!”
“I have looked and looked at these little houses, and I’ve always liked them,” I continued.
“Well, there it is!” responded Pablo.
With the gift, he gave us a card, which reads as follows: “I’ll never forget these three days I spent with you. You’re a wonderful family and you made me feel one of yours.
“There are only four words I can say:
“THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
“Pablo.”
Wasn’t that nice?
He stood in the middle of the living room, looking around at us, smiling. He then went from one to the other, shaking the children’s hands. They would not be accompanying us to the depot; only Larry and I were going. By the time Pablo got to the fifth child, he was crying. He shook Caleb’s hand, whom he often said reminded him of his little brother Federico, of whom he is terribly fond, and then reached out and ruffled his hair. “Goodbye,” he said, nearly sobbing, and turned and headed for the door. Teddy, who had developed a great liking for Pablo, was looking decidedly bleary-eyed. I quickly tucked Victoria into her crib, told the littles to head for bed, and then we were off.
It was mighty strange weather; just as we were walking out our front door, a tremendous bolt of lightning came crashing down out of the black sky, lighting up our street like it was daytime. Thunder rolled, hot on its heels. And the sleet pelted down.
Larry drove as if he hadn’t the faintest notion that the roads were slick, although every time we stopped or pulled away from a corner, the pickup spun or skidded. (He was doing that on purpose, to test the mettle of the roads, don’t you know. Or so he said.) (I think he was pretending he was still a teenager; that’s what I think.) He kept the needle at 60 or 65 mph, and we flew over icy hill and dale as though it were summertime. Yi.
I kept quiet (well, pretty quiet) (unusual, for me), partly because I didn’t want to alarm Pablo, and also because I was afraid that if we didn’t drive fast, we’d miss the train. But the Amtrak ran into the same bad weather we were going through, and slowed down enough to put them back on schedule, or even three or four minutes late. We reached the destination with twenty minutes to spare.
When the train arrived, Larry helped Pablo carry his bags to the door of the car he was to ride in. Pablo shook our hands heartily, and then once again he was in tears. “Tell Keith I enjoyed my visit very much. I didn’t have a chance to tell him goodbye,” he added regretfully. One final wave, and he was gone. A few more people stepped aboard, and the train departed. In nine hours, Pablo would be in Denver; two hours and three buses later, he would be back in Frisco.
* * *
(Later Monday evening, Esther’s mother, Sarah, called to tell me Esther had called her. So I continue the story with the following news:)
Meanwhile, Keith and Esther had made it to Grand Island safely, despite the foul weather. Rising early Monday morning, they made a last check of the weather before heading due west to Colorado. The bad weather ended at North Platte, and roads were good from there on.
And just guess who Pablo welcomed this evening at the Receiving Desk of the elegant, six-story Holiday Inn at Frisco, where he works???
That’s right; none other than Keith and Esther. Pablo went into action. Calling the manager, he told him who these newest visitors were, and they suddenly found themselves being waited on hand and foot! A little bellboy carried all their luggage to their room, which was on the fifth floor. Yes; the view is fantastic. Furthermore, the room, which regularly goes for $180.00 a night (you read right; $180.00 a night), was rented to them for--get this--$25.00 (yes, $25.00) a night!! They plan to stay for two nights.
There is deep snow on the mountains, and according to Esther, who told all this to her mother, everything is “absolutely beautiful.” Of course, everything is supposed to be absolutely beautiful on one’s honeymoon; is it not?
P.S.: Here’s another of those nighttime funnies Larry does every now and then:
First I should tell you that, just before bedtime, he’d been using the Internet to download and print out several pictures of wrecked vehicles for some customers to look at. He had gone to bed shortly before me, and, true to form, was sound asleep a few minutes later when I arrived to climb into the feathers. I scooted over to cuddle up, partly because I was cold, and partly because I kinda like my big warm husband, I kinda do.
He pushed on me.
Not one to take such indignations quietly, I indignantly said, “Hey! What are you doing?!”
“I’m surfing the Megasurf,” he informed me with some degree of irritation. (Just for your information, there is no such thing as a ‘Megasurf’.) (So far as I know, that is.)
I decided to try snuggling up again. He shoved on my shoulder. “HEY!” I said, louder. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
And then, suddenly, his eyes popped open, and he stared hard in the vicinity of my left ear. Lifting his head slightly, he cried in alarm, “Look out that you don’t fall off the Internet!”
I think he’d had too much computer for one evening, what do you think?
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