Monday morning before our picnic, Larry thought he had to go to work, as usual, so that, as usual, he was late coming home to get ready for the picnic--and he was supposed to be bringing the groceries with which I was going to make the food we were taking!! But he redeemed himself--when he finally returned--by making the chili/cheese hotdogs--two large broiler-bottoms full. Teddy made the fruit salad, mixing several kinds of Del Monte fruit with coconut cream yogurt. He also made five gallons of pink lemonade.
The reoccurring question of the day was this: Where did somebody put my white sweater with the big black polka dots, the one I was planning to wear with my white skirt with the big black roses all over it? I never did find it, so I had to wear a black- and white- and red-striped sweater with a black knit skirt. Bother.
It was very hot and humid, with the temperature hovering in the nineties. The poor children’s faces were beet red, and we all kept giving them drinks and shepherding them into shady areas, and putting water on them. Victoria was trotting around--sans shoes and socks--with a glass of cold water, alternating between getting a drink, and dipping her hand into the water to wipe it on her face and neck. She accidentally spilled half of it on her dress, and after that, her face wasn’t red at all. Larry came along and picked her up, and, before he knew what she was going to do, she queried, “Daddy really hot?”, quickly dipped her hand into her glass, and swiped it all over his face, making him laugh.
We didn’t stay at the park as long as usual; people were starting to leave after only being there a couple of hours. Upon our arrival home, Larry took up residency in the recliner, while I worked on Daddy’s notes. After a long nap, Larry decided to remove and transplant some bushes in front of the house. He took out an overgrown evergreen, and transplanted a barberry bush.
There are two barberry bushes directly in front of our living room window, and I am particularly fond of them, because not only are they pretty with their dark red leaves and little red berries that stay on all year around, but also the birds really like the berries, especially when there is snow on the ground and other food is hard to come by. Unfortunately, the person who planted them situated them only inches away from the bricks on the side of the house.
As you can imagine, this made them extremely hard to move, especially since they are about six feet tall now, without doing irreparable damage to the root system. But Larry tackled the job fearlessly.
I was glad when I saw that he’d gotten that evergreen--a favorite haunt of an entire family of garter snakes--out of the sector entirely. I grumped a bit about the transplanted barberry bush; it seemed to me that he put the best side rearward. He explained that this was because he planned to put the second barberry bush directly in front of the first, with its best side frontward, in this way, making a perfectly symmetrical bush out of two non-symmetrical bushes.
“But nobody can see the back side anyway,” I grumbled, “and I wanted that other bush in a different place!”
I had nothing to worry about--at least, in regards to rearward versus forward, I didn’t:
It was only two days before I realized that the bush had either been murdered in cold blood, or it had committed suicide, one or the other, as the leaves were ominously curled and brown-tinged.
I conducted a Spanish inquisition: “What did you do to it??!!”
Larry shrugged. “Well, it was too close to the foundation, and I had a hard time getting it out.”
“But it should’ve been okay if you dug up enough dirt with the roots; did you?”
He studied his dinner plate studiously. “Well, uh, I tried.”
“So, what did you do, then?!” I demanded.
Turns out, he couldn’t get it out with all the dirt still intact around its roots; so he just jerked it up dirtless. Furthermore, that isn’t the first time he’s committed mayhem on the flora and fauna around our house. He once upon a time planted a small variegated-color butterfly bush for me, tending to it with as much care as the Biblical fig tree owner of Luke 13. When planting it, he put mulch all around the roots, then poured ‘StartUp’ (a good fertilizer) around it. {Larry always calls it ‘UpRoot’, and then laughs when I get all mixed up and call it ‘UpStart’, or some other strange name.} It grew into a big bush with lavender, pink, and white flower clusters all over it, and the butterflies, evidently knowing exactly what was the purpose of that bush, descended upon it in phalanxes.
And then came the day when Larry noticed a large bramble [unflowered, at that time of the year] that he deemed somewhat in the way of the house painters. You’ll never guess what he did.
That’s right; he pulled it straight up. Mind you, he forgot what that shrub was! Arrgghh. And then he had the audacity to act apologetic, thereby eliminating my justification for all the ranting and raving I wanted to do. Arrgghh again.
On Tuesday, I finished Daddy’s notes! All done! My niece, Margaret, has a few more insertions to make, and then they will print them all out--some 1,000 pages, or so. I can hardly wait for my copy!
That day, we received an email from Aunt Lorraine, telling us that Aunt Lois had fallen and broken her leg. We felt so bad about it.
Later, Norma asked me if I’d be able to look for a Hershey’s recipe for her on the Internet. It was a pie she used to make, Bits o’ Brickle Cream Pie, and the recipe was on the back of the bag of Bits o’ Brickle; but the company replaces their recipes periodically, and she couldn’t find the old recipe. So I found ‘Hershey’s’ on the Internet for her. Boy, oh boy! were there ever a lot of yummy recipes!--but I never did find the exact one she wanted.
After finishing Daddy’s sermon outlines, I began typing all my poems, saving them on the computer and on floppy disks. It took two full days to get them all done. I just counted them: there are 75 poems! I hadn’t the faintest idea I had written so many. Now I must start retyping all my letters, putting them into story form.....past tense, rather than present tense, and not so ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdayish’, if you know what I mean.
But first.....I must wrap the Christmas presents I’ve strewn about the living room floor, and, if somebody will ever finish cleaning the garage, and set up some tables and rods for me, I shall conduct a garage sale.
Dorcas has been cross-stitching on the beautiful Thomas Kinkade picture kit that Norma and Lawrence gave her for her birthday, while Hannah is crocheting ruffly dresses for teddy bears. She’s managed to complete two now, without somebody buying them out from under her before she’s hardly done with it.
My blind friend, one of our school teachers, Penny Golden, came one afternoon to tune my piano. It sounds so pretty now. When she was done, we invited her for supper: turkey/rice/vegetable soup, and just listen to all the spices I put in it: garlic powder, celery salt, celery seed, sage, marjoram, chili powder, cumin, coriander, onion chips, Italian seasoning, parsley, chives, Creole seasoning, Hungarian paprika, lemon pepper, fresh ground pepper, oregano, fennel seed, thyme. Nobody can duplicate it; huh-uh, nosirree, they can’t! {I know this, because *I* cannot duplicate it, *myself*.
We were having so much fun at Jr. Choir that evening (Penny comes, too, and directs the singing while I play the piano and act like the Big Boss), I didn’t notice the time until we were three and a half minutes late. Suddenly I looked up at the clock and exclaimed, “Hey! You kids’ve made me late! What do you think, that I want to spend the entire night here?!” So they gathered up their Bibles and books and departed quickly, giggling all the way.
Afterwards, I went for a walk with Victoria and Hannah. We traveled at the fastest pace we could manage without breaking into a full gallop, and mosquitoes were still catching us. Arrgghh!! They’re awful this year.
Friday I did bookwork all day, finally finishing in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
That afternoon Teddy was helping Gehrings redo some cracked sidewalk around the church. The littles had their noses pressed against windows the entire time, totally enthralled to see their highly-revered brother looking so all-growed-up and industrious.
In the evening, Norma called to tell us that Lawrence was lonesome, and could they bring some ice cream and come to visit. I laughed. “Haha, you always have to bring something, in order to come? You COULD come without anything, and we’d still give you a cup of coffee.....or a glass of water and a toothpick!” Yes, I sure love my mother-in-law.
When they arrived, they brought ice cream, all right: one-and-a-half gallons of it!--plus two store-bought cakes, and a big container of three-berry muffins. As Hester used to say when she was about two, “Hoink.”
Then Keith and Esther arrived with a huge box of apricots and a mulberry crisps, all fruit from the trees in their back yard. {They have apple trees, too.} HOINKKK!!!
Victoria had loads of fun loading Lawrence to the brim with dolls and stuffed animals of all types, as he sat in a big chair in our living room. Then she gave him Caleb’s plastic Fourth-of-July hat--which he promptly donned--and I just as promptly made a beeline for my camera.
When I was going through the last few pages of Daddy’s notes in the Miscellaneous file, I came across the page he’d written when he returned from Trinidad after visiting with Norma for the first time. On it he’d written down the things he’d read to her. I remember him telling the church about it, and reading us the verses and several passages from a book by Richard Wurmbrand (a preacher from Romania who was jailed and tortured by the communists for his beliefs and his preaching). Daddy had a unique way of telling us stories about someone who was planning to come soon, that made us all sympathize and love the person before we ever met them.
I gave Norma a copy of the paper, and was surprised to see how thrilled she was to get it. She told me she’d never been able to find the exact verses and pages Daddy had read to her. Well, now she can! She asked for my poem, Looking Heavenward, that I’d given her and Lyle the Christmas before he died; she wanted to give it to Arthur Jenkinson, who is dying of cancer.
So I printed a couple of them on that computer paper that looks like a scroll, in Lucida handwriting. She was so pleased with them, she got frames and mats for them and gave one to Arthur, and the other to her brother (Arthur’s father) and his wife, Clyde and Joanne.
Saturday, Hannah sliced apricots, and I made a giant pie with my favorite Danish apple bar recipe (using apricots instead of apples), adding almond slices, milk and eggs, and whatever I thought would complement and enhance an already-scrumptious recipe. Mmmmmm!! It turned out absolutely delicious! So I called up Keith and Esther, who were visiting Esther’s parents, and told them they could stop by on their way home, if they would like, to get a couple of pieces for a midnight snack. They would like.
This morning at about 7:00 a.m., Mama called me to tell me she had fallen and couldn’t get up. I ran over there as quickly as I could, but couldn’t help her without hurting her ribs. So I called Larry, who came right away. Using pillows to cushion her sides, he helped her into her chair. She doesn’t think she broke anything, but by this evening she was very sore. Dorcas stayed with her this morning, and Teddy this evening. Hannah is staying the night. She called about 11:30 because Mama couldn’t get out of her water chair. It’s big, and Mama’s so little she just sinks right down into it. Larry rushed over and helped her out, and then got the old wheelchair out for her. It’s wide and heavy (it was my Grandmother Winings’, Mama’s mother), and she needs one of the new, lightweight chairs.
During the song service before Sunday School I broke a string on the piano. It was a lower one than I usually break, and it made a louder noise, too. I felt the concussion through my fingertips; in fact, it felt uncannily similar to getting bitten by a rattlesnake. {I know this, in spite of the fact that I have never been bitten by a rattler.} And then! And then. I, who never jump, jumped clean out of my hide.
And then didn’t I hab a debbil ub a time, trying to avoid that broken string!--a double, on one note. I twiddled around above tree level on the far-right end of the piano (and it didn’t sound at all conservative); then I growled around somewhere near Middle C for a while; and then I accidentally trounced up and down on The Note With The Broken String {a take-off of that old song, “The Bird With The Broken Wing”}, which sounded comparable to a child’s xylophone landing on a metal street grate from about thirty stories up. Yi.
After church, I accused Penny, as she diligently worked to tune up the new string someone had just put in, of loosening the string last night after I left practice, leaving a booby trap. She made faces at me.
Now, in the ending words of a dear aunt who writes to us occasionally, “I don’t know anything else!”
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