Last Monday was Joseph and Hester’s first day at school. Everyone seemed to be doing their best to make as much noise as possible, whether in getting ready for work or school. What a commotion! Amazingly enough, Victoria slept right through it. Lydia, however, got up and stayed up.
“In order to get used to it,” she told me.
Around noon, Hannah called to tell me she needed to go to the doctor because she was having a good deal of trouble breathing, and baby Aaron’s cold was not getting better. She didn’t feel well enough to drive, so I took her. Hester, Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria came, too. While Hannah went into the clinic, the rest of us stayed across the street at the park.
Before long, Hannah was back outside, asking me to take care of Aaron while she had an X-ray; the doctor was afraid she had pneumonia. It turned out, she didn’t; it was a bad asthma attack. She had a treatment with the nebulizer (a machine that gives out a cloudy mist of concentrated oxygen, and one breathes it in through a fat tube connected to a sort of mask that goes over one’s mouth and nose), and the doctor gave her a new inhaler, too. Getting so much oxygen so suddenly after not having enough for a day or so makes her head and eyes hurt, and her chest burn.
All that took a while. I fed Aaron a little bit of his bottle, then walked around the park until he fell asleep. He weighs almost 22 pounds--and I think he gained about ten just drinking that bottle. He was very interested in the cars and trucks that went by, but presently he could hold his eyes open no longer.
When Hannah finally returned, I informed her that if she wanted me to take care of that baby very often at all, she simply must put him on a diet, right quick-like.
Joseph didn’t have to work that afternoon, so he decided to surprise his father by putting his new grill on his Bronco. He could hardly wait till Larry saw it...but, after work, Larry didn’t even notice! Joseph finally gave up and told him. Larry was pleased.
He also made a plaque with the emblem from the Mustang Larry owned when he was fifteen. It was his first car. Teddy came home from work and spotted the plaque on the table.
“Hey!” he exclaimed. “I was going to do that!”
“Well, looks like you waited too long,” I replied.
Wednesday afternoon, the repairman from Sears came and fixed my dryer. It is now as quiet, and the barrel turns as freely, as it did when I first got it. He put a new light bulb in it, too. I wonder why it needs a light? One can see into it just fine. Perhaps certain individuals like to sit inside the appliance while it is all warm and toasty, and read a novel or two?
That night I finished mending the jeans. I patched approximately 30 pairs. Whew! I could have done lots more, had I wished to patch the sizes nobody wears at the moment. I did not wish to.
Thursday I began mending the pile of dresses, blouses, skirts, and shirts that were lurking in my room. By evening, I was almost done.
After supper we went to Pawnee Park, planning to play tennis. But the courts were all full, so we wound up out at Lake North--fishing.
A full moon had just risen, the sun was setting, and the sky and the water were all lavender and periwinkle and orange and gold and pale blue. Great blue herons stood about in Lake Babcock, tipping their heads this way and that, searching for fishes. Geese flew in and landed, and killdeer ran along the sandy edges of Lake North, their distinctive cries buoyed on the evening breeze. The children climbed down the rocky banks, and soon Lydia was pelting along the water’s brink, sending killdeer darting away from her, up into the evening sky, and skimming swiftly over the shimmering waves.
Larry and Hester each caught a bass, but they weren’t big enough to keep. Yes, yes, I know a good many people fish for the fun of it, and are so environmentally conscious they would never dream of keeping a fish, ever; but we are infinitely more practical. I see not much sense in fishing in the first place, especially since we can’t seem to pull in a decent-sized finned/gilled/scaled creature to save our lives, and I think it would be even more lacking in forethought and intellect if we didn’t put what fish we do snag straight onto the broiler and smother them with green peppers and butter. Maybe our error is in trolling for trout when we should be chumming for chub. (Or is that ‘chubbing for chum’?) (Harling for halibut?)
Did you know that the world record Sauger--eight pounds, five ounces-- was caught in 1961 in Niobrara, Nebraska, by a woman? Not far away, in the Missouri River between Nebraska and South Dakota, a blue catfish weighing 97 pounds was taken in 1959. That was a world record, too.
Louisiana claimed a world record once, too--in 1971: It was in Atchafalaya Basin that someone pulled in a Warmouth (any relation to someone you know?), and it weighed one pound three ounces. Woowoowoo-woo. (That was you, not me.) (And it sounded mighty sarcastic, too.)
Oh, and look! Ontario lays stake to a world record brook trout, caught in 1916, weighing fourteen pounds eight ounces.
More stats: Pend Oreille Lake, Idaho, takes the world record for Dolly Varden, caught in 1949: 32 pounds; while Snake River holds the record (1956) for white Sturgeon--and this is the largest freshwater game fish hauled in with rod and reel: 360 pounds. It was nine feet three inches long.
Now I suppose you want to know the largest saltwater fish caught (any kind of tackle): it was a Man-Eater (or White) Shark, weighing 2,664 pounds, and caught in 1959 off Ceduna, South Australia. The beast was sixteen feet ten inches long.
Now what in the world got me started on all that? Oh, yes. I was telling you we went to Lake North Thursday night, where the fish are few and the waterbugs are bounteous. I took pictures of the sunset with my Minolta, and then I got out the camcorder and took pictures of the children and Larry fishing, silhouetted against the reflected sunset. I was very pleased with the effect, when later we viewed it at home.
I’d been wondering why Lura Kay’s car was at Mama’s house so long that after noon and evening; when I visited Mama, she told me the reason: Lura Kay and some friends were cleaning her house, getting it ready for her to come home. Robert went to Lincoln to buy a new hospital bed and wheelchair some man was selling; the man’s wife had died before she was able to use them. They got a very good deal on it, and planned to set up the bed Saturday.
The doctor wrote out the papers for discharging Mama on Saturday, and she was anxiously looking forward to Monday, when she would come home.
We went to Pawnee Park Friday night--and the tennis courts were empty. The children all want to play tennis with Larry or I, preferably both, so no matter how we escape into the next court (there are four), we are only able to hit a couple of balls before there are three or four players on either side of the net, ‘helping’ us.
I field a wicked ball from Larry, smacking it with all my might and main, and then I carefully lob Victoria’s pink ball back to her, not too hard, just high enough to be within striking distance of her racket, but not high enough to hit her in the head. Larry, in the meanwhile, loping after the ball I’ve hit, is suddenly compelled to circumnavigate one of the girls, who has unwittingly bolted directly into his projected trajectory. He lets my ball bounce twice while he hits theirs back to them, then takes a mighty swing at mine, sending it spinning onto the far side of my court, where there is no chance under the sun for me to hit it. I stand and watch its flight--and then abruptly duck and belatedly cover my head.
“Mama!” Joseph yells a tardy warning.
Yikes! Break out the camcorder; I know a safer occupation.
Friday I began cleaning Teddy’s room. Teddy, upon finding out a couple of days earlier that I was nearly ready to clean his room, said, “Even if I don’t want you to?”
“YES!” I retorted. “Even if you don’t want me to!!”
He made a face quite a bit like he used to make when he was two and I had put a bowl of food in front of him that he didn’t especially like.
Well, Friday evening when he got off work, he walked into his room to find that I had cleared a pathway in which to walk, which was more of a feat that you think it was. And, just as he used to do when he was two, he tried to no avail to keep from grinning.
Saturday Larry worked all day until after 8:00 p.m. putting a spray tank, a generator, and such like on David’s new truck, which is a crewcab. He constructed niches for such implements as shovels and sledge hammers, and did various other things necessary to its employment. They will use the truck for the first time Tuesday.
I continued with the cleaning of Teddy’s room--and I figured out two things: 1) I know why his closet rod broke. 2) I know why Teddy didn’t think he had any dark socks for church, and why he kept ‘borrowing’ his father’s.
Answers: 1) too many shirts. (Rods are not made to hold 34,684,128 shirts.) As for 2): the socks Teddy did not have were scattered about his room, under his bed, under his desk, under his dresser. Unwashed. I washed three loads of socks. Want to help me sort them now? What do you bet all their mates are in the bag of unmatched socks from Joseph and Caleb’s room? The bag I already threw out?
We gathered together a pile of shirts for a friend of ours; now there are only 34,684,104 shirts to hang.
One evening we were watching a video, National Velvet, about a girl and her horse, and the Grand National Championship Horse Race.
I thought...and thought...and suddenly said, “Oh, now I know who the father reminds me of--Johnny Carson!”
Larry studied him and nodded. “Yes, he does a bit,” he agreed.
“Who’s Johnny Carson?” asked Dorcas.
“An old guy who was born in Norfolk,” responded Larry.
That night I made cherry cheesecake for dinner the next day. Well, actually, I made five cherry cheesecakes; that’s how many will fit into my largest cake pan, brim full.
Robert is in Chapter 6 of Joshua now. I love this book...it’s one of my very favorite stories in the Bible. Robert’s explanations and applications are simple and easily understood, and fitting for our everyday life.
Bobby, Hannah, Aaron, and Amy came for dinner. Keith didn’t feel well, and had a headache, so he and Esther stayed home. We had spaghetti and meatballs, cottage cheese, applesauce, lettuce salad, and cherry cheesecake. We left one corner of the cheesecake uncherried especially for Teddy, who prefers not to ruin the cheesecake with such an obtrusive, objectionable thing as a cherry.
Baby Aaron smiles and coos and squeals at us. He’s so dear and precious. He has just begun lifting an arm in response to a ‘bye-bye’ wave, and his little fingers move. I told you he was extraordinarily smart.
Keith and Esther stopped in after church that night, so they landed themselves some spaghetti and meatballs after all. No cheesecake, though. Larry put the last of the cheesecake into the refrigerator, planning to eat it later--but Joseph did the honors for him. Cheesecake, vamooooooose. Bye-bye, all gone.
This morning, John and Lura Kay brought Mama home. Someone will be with her all the time. Dorcas will stay with her Friday night and most of Saturday.
We went to Maskenthine Lake at Stanton today. A friend of ours loaned us his electric-motor boat, and Larry has been taking two at a time for rides all afternoon. And!!!--would you believe!!! We have actually caught fish!!! As of right now, 7:30 p.m., we have caught six fish. I am typing this letter from a picnic bench on a hill above the lake, and I can see Larry, Joseph, Hester, Lydia, and Caleb making their way to the other end of the lake, where the dock is, and where I will drive the Suburban to meet them. Not far away, some people are roasting hot dogs and hamburgers, and earlier somebody was cooking onions on a grill. Mmmmm...it all smells delicious, and I am starving. It looks like they’re having some sort of a reunion. Shall I join the lineup at their food table, and pretend I’m one of the family? Maybe they’d suppose I was one of the third cousins twice removed, the one they hadn’t seen for a decade or two. I’d greet everyone with a huge hug and a syrupy smile and gush, “Ah, delighted, delighted! Why, the last time I saw you, you were in knickers, and had your two front teeth missing!”
I’m almost hungry enough to give it a go.
Almost.
Time to meet the ship, and then we will go rustle up some grub for ourselves.
P.S.: Here we are home again, and everyone is taking their turn in the showers. We found our supper at Arby’s in Norfolk, and ate it as we drove home.
Victoria got full when she was only half done with her roast beef sandwich. “Mama,” she said, “I’m all stuffed up now.”
I, being only two-thirds ‘stuffed up’, obligingly ate it for her.
And then I was all stuffed up.
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