Monday, November 26, 2001 - Funerals and Thanksgiving

Monday we attended Malinda’s funeral.  It was a sad, sad day.  Malinda’s father gave us a beautiful chrysanthemum to take home with us.  I hope to plant it next spring; but if it’s an Oriental mum, our harsh Nebraska winters might kill it.  Perhaps I won’t even be able to keep it alive this winter; we shall see.

Tuesday evening, Teddy bought tacos from Taco Bell for us.  After supper, Lydia, Victoria, and I went to Wal-Mart and ordered a pile of wallet-sized pictures of Victoria.  While the pictures were being made, we bought Christmas presents.  For Caleb I got jeans, a set with a miniature football, soccerball, basketball, and smiley-face ball, a package of whistles shaped like those same balls, and a foam disk shooter.  I got a hundred and one pairs of knee socks for Hester and Lydia (or at least it seemed like that many) (but that’s exactly how many they need); an oven roaster for Amy; a shape-sorter for Aaron; a baby doll that slurps, yawns, cries, laughs, breathes, and so forth, for Victoria; and an ammo box with a carving of deer and a drill bit set for Teddy.  Several down, lots more to go.

I went home and wrapped most of the presents.

Wednesday we did not have church, since we would be having a short Thanksgiving service and a dinner on Thursday.  The children had only half a day of school.  Larry and Joseph worked late that night; Larry got in 13 ½ hours, Joseph, 9 ½.

I took Victoria’s doll to Mama’s house to show her, and to put the batteries in and try it out where Victoria wouldn’t hear it.  Ooooh, I can’t wait to give it to her.

Since there were so many presents in our bedroom, and I didn’t want to haul them all downstairs just to lug them all back up again, I decided we should put the tree up.  So Teddy brought the artificial tree in from the garage, and then Hester tried to put it together.  Unsuccessfully, I might add.  But she enlisted a bit of aid from her little brother, and they would have accomplished the feat, except that the silly ring that was supposed to hold the branches kept slipping down the trunk, letting the branches droop onto the floor.  With the branches all squished together the way they are after being stored in their box for three years, it looked quite like a dying weeping willow tree, which was doubtless why it was weeping.

We finally managed to rouse Larry enough that he clambered out of his recliner, went out to the garage, collected a large nail, and stuck it into a hole in the metal ’trunk’, so that the branch-holding ring stayed where it belonged.  He dusted off his hands and returned to his recliner.

We spent a while bending the branches into the proper positions, and more time untangling strands of lights only to discover they didn’t work.  But we finally found some that did work, got them untangled, and put them on the tree.  A big box of decorations and tinsel seemed to be missing.  Hester began putting on some red tinsel.

It was too short.

She took it off and re-draped it.

It was still too short.

She removed it and gave the gold tinsel a shot.

It was too short.

She tried the silver.

Too short.

We decided to use Dorcas’ tinsel and buy her more on Friday.

We no sooner had it on the tree than Larry walked in with the missing box of tinsel.  He’d sneaked out to the garage to get it without us even noticing he was gone.

So we took Dorcas’ tinsel off the tree and started all over again with mine.

Finally it was on, and it looked so pretty, Hester thought the tree was done, although there wasn’t a solitary ornament on the tree, and nobody knew where in the world they were.  Larry claimed there wasn’t another box with Christmas things in it in the entire garage, and I knew for a fact there are none in the house.  My opinion was that he’d closed his eyes when he looked; that was my opinion.

Eventually we did find a few ornaments, although I know there is another box of them, somewhere.  I chose all the old-fashioned ones, and the children put them on the tree.  Now it’s just right; I like it.  I brought the gifts from my room and put them under the tree, and the littles were soon reading name tags and trying hard to imagine what was in those packages.

Our annual Thanksgiving dinner was Thursday, after a short service at 12:30.  Robert had wondered if it was the right thing to have the dinner at all, after having two funerals in the space of less than one week, but decided we should.  I watched Tim’s little children, all dressed up in the pretty clothes Malinda had had ready for them, as they ate and then played and chatted with their friends, and I thought how sad it would have been for them, had they not had this dinner to come to.  And if you think our wonderful old hymns of Thanksgiving are not appropriate for times of mourning, just look at the words.  Even the lively ‘Count Your Blessings’ speaks of the troubles and trials of life:

vs. 1) When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,

when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost;

count your many blessings, name them one by one,

and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

vs. 2) Are you ever burdened with a load of care? 

Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear? 

Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,

and you will be singing as the days go by.

Our young people’s octet sang “Thanks to God”, which has the following words:

vs. 1)  Thanks to God for my Redeemer, thanks for all Thou dost provide,

thanks for times now but a memory, thanks for Jesus by my side. 

Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime, thanks for dark and dreary fall,

thanks for tears by now forgotten, thanks for peace within my soul.

vs. 2)  Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered, thanks for what Thou dost deny,

thanks for storms that I have weathered, thanks for all Thou dost supply.

Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure, thanks for comfort in despair,

thanks for grace that none can measure, thanks for love beyond compare.

vs. 3)  Thanks for roses by the wayside, thanks for thorns their stems contain,

thanks for home and thanks for fireside, thanks for hope, that sweet refrain. 

Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow, thanks for heavenly peace with Thee,

thanks for hope in the tomorrow, thanks through all eternity.

Our gratitude is often quite a paradox, isn’t it?  Funny how so often we don’t give much thought to all we have to be thankful for until we have sorrows.  During the last week, little baby Daniel John has given everyone--especially his family--much to be thankful for.  He has gained a pound in one week, and is doing very well.  He is just beginning to smile in response to people talking to him.  Today Robert reminded the congregation of the story of Jacob, whose beloved wife Rachel died immediately after the birth of her second child.  She named him ‘Benoni’, meaning ‘son of sorrow’; but Jacob named him ‘Benjamin’, meaning ‘son of my right hand’.

We sat by my brother Loren and his wife Janice at the dinner.  As usual, dessert was a choice between pumpkin or pecan pie.  Janice chose pumpkin--and wound up with a flat, dark-colored piece of pie that I called ‘pumpkin jerky’.  She assured me that it tasted just as bad as we had imagined it, and I promptly promised her a piece of good pumpkin pie, just as soon as I made some.

That evening, Caleb was industriously pounding with his little hammer.  I noticed he was having trouble with asthma, so I sent him in the kitchen to take some medicine.

Shortly thereafter, he informed me, “I’m feeling better now.  I think it was just because I was waling away on that piece of wood!”

haha  He has such funny ways of saying things.

Later, Caleb was telling us about playing outside with Mandy, the neighbor’s dog.  She ran in front of him, and, as he put it, “My feet came to a stop, but my head didn’t, so I somersaulted right over the top of her, and Trey (the neighbor’s grandson) laughed so hard he sat down.”

Caleb and Victoria were looking at a magazine full of items that can be personalized.  They were pleased to find many things with names of their siblings and cousins printed on them.

“Listen to this name,” said Caleb.  “O-liv’-er,” he read, pronouncing the first two syllables as his cousin Olivia’s name is pronounced.  “That sounds funny,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

Victoria found her name on a Christmas stocking hanging from a mantle in one of the pictures.  “Oh, look!” she exclaimed.  “Am I a sock?” she giggled.

Friday, in between the sewing and the washing of clothes, I baked two pumpkins and ran them through my blender.  The obstreperous machine kept getting hot, vibrating, and shutting itself off, stupid thing.  I’m quite sure the smoke was trying to escape, and, as I’ve told you before, appliances don’t work a bit well after you’ve let the smoke out.  I think they really run on smoke, and the electrical cord is just attached for a decoy, so that the common folk don’t catch on.  But I’ve let enough smoke out of things to know:  they run on smoke.  Once the smoke is gone, they quit working.

Furthermore, there is no place that I know of where you can buy appliance smoke, nor yet a pump with which to put it back into the device.  I tell you, it’s a moneymaking racket, it sho’ ’nuff is, because they know that if you can’t get the smoke back into a gadget, you will have to buy a new one!

I’ve got their number; they don’t have me hoodwinked, nosiree.

I stubbornly persevered, and finally had a little more than eleven quarts of smooth, mellow pumpkin.  I add more water to it until it tastes similar to squash; that’s why our pumpkin chiffon pie tastes so good, without that strong, bitter taste characteristic of so many pumpkin pies.  I froze ten quarts and put the rest into the refrigerator to cook the next day.

It rained most of the day, and we had 35 mph winds.  Teddy, Amy, Anthony, and Charles, Amy’s twin brothers, went to Lincoln to do some Christmas shopping.  Teddy bought us a lot of food at Sam’s Warehouse--Danishes, bread sticks, Chex mix, waffles, frozen sandwiches, biscuits, Nissan chicken noodle soup, pudding, pistachios, Reese’s Pieces, peanut M&Ms, and more.  The reason?  Well, partly it was our early Christmas present from  him, but mainly it was because he hadn’t eaten anything before he went to the Warehouse, and he was half starved half to death.

That kid.

He got himself a very nice suit for only $10.  The pants needed to be made smaller at the waist, but I didn’t have time Saturday, so Teddy solved the problem with safety pins come Sunday morning.

Since it was raining Friday, Larry did mechanical work most of the day in David’s shop.  When he got home, he worked in the garage.  He made a rack for his fishing poles out of a piece of wall trim, carefully notching it with the router.  It looks neat.  Caleb, out in the garage with Larry, had been playing with some old pieces of wood, mostly pounding the stuffin’s out of them with a hammer.  He was quite proud of his handiwork in compressing the middle of one board to an inch, down from its former two inches or so.  He showed Larry his board, and Larry showed Caleb his fishing pole rack.

“Oooh,” he admired it, “Did you make that with your hammer?” he asked.   

Friday was a big football game against Colorado.  They beat us 62-36, can you believe it?  So much for the National Championship.  Ah, well; everyone needs a little humbling every now and then.

But I think those nasty Colorado Buffaloes greased themselves.

Saturday I made four pumpkin pies.  I took one to Mama’s house, and put it into her refrigerator to set up.  It was especially for Loren and Janice, to take the place of Janice’s  ‘pumpkin jerky’, but I sent enough for Mama to have some of it, too.

Again Saturday, it rained, and the wind blew hard all day.  We got groceries for Sunday’s dinner, and I cut up the onions that we would put with the roast, so I wouldn’t have to bawl and blubber over them the next day.

After supper, Victoria was looking for a place to wash her hands and face.  She trotted down the hall only to discover the big bathroom in use; she went around the corner in the kitchen and found the little bathroom occupied, too.  She waggled her eyebrows at me in a droll manner and started down the stairs to the bathroom down there.

“Here, I’ll help you,” I said, and got a cloth from the drawer near the kitchen sink.  I wet it and wiped her face.

“Well,” commented Victoria, holding out her hands, “At least nobody was in the sink!”

The family all came for dinner Sunday.  We had roast beef, baked potatoes, carrots, onions, buttermilk biscuits, pears on cottage cheese and lettuce with an icky yucky cherry on top, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  Mmmmm…I could eat the whole pie single-handedly, I think; but no one will back away and let me try it, the greedy beggars.

I stayed with Mama Sunday night.  She is doing a little better than last week, when the news about Malinda, I think, just did her all in.  Malinda’s mother, Ann, is one of Mama’s very best friends.

Victoria went outside to play this afternoon.  It was 62° when she went out, but in a little over an hour the temperature had dropped to 35°.

“It might snow tonight,” I told Victoria, helping her off with her mittens and jacket.

“Oh, goody!” she giggled, “Then I can eat it!”  She wriggled her arm out of one sleeve.  “I like wintertime, because I like to eat snow,” she explained.

And now it is suppertime, and the children want to go to the library afterwards.  I hope to finish Lydia’s dress tonight; there are only two more seams to sew, and I’ll be done.

Um, maybe three.

                                                      ..........................  four.