I am typing this letter from Mama’s house tonight. There is a wedding going on over at the church, and Larry is under strict instructions to take lots of pictures. Reckon he will?? He is more of the notion, at wedding receptions and such like, to find a good friend, sit down by him, and chat the evening away. We’ll see...
Last Monday, Hannah was taking Aaron for a walk near her house when a big Golden Lab tethered at a front porch came charging out. The tether was long enough that the dog could easily reach the sidewalk. Hannah shoved Aaron’s stroller into the grass near the street to keep him away from the dog. The beast jumped at her and bit her on the back. Although it didn’t break the skin, it did bruise it.
She went home and called me; I told her to call the police. Two ladies from Animal Control came and asked her all sorts of questions and looked at her back, which had definite marks of a dog bite. They got the dog and took it to Pet Care Specialists to be quarantined for ten days.
Shortly after the women left, the owner of the dog came to Hannah’s house and apologized, finishing by telling her that the dog was a nice dog and really liked children. Uh-huh, sure.
That evening, Joseph bought tacos for us for supper, although we did need to use our leftovers. Guess Joseph didn’t want leftovers that day! After supper, I asked Larry if he wanted to go for a bike ride. He said he did, and wandered out into the garage to get the bikes ready--or so I thought.
Several minutes later, when everyone seemed to have disappeared, I went to see where they’d all gotten themselves to, and there were Caleb and Victoria riding the go-cart in the parking lot north of Mama’s house. Larry was there, too, and the rest of the kids--even Dorcas--were playing basketball behind Mama’s house.
Well, if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em, they say. So I got my video camera and headed across the street to take pictures of the children.
Halfway across the street, I realized there was no videocassette inside the camera. I ran back home and got it.
Halfway across the street the second time, I realized that the eyepiece was missing from the camera. Aaarrrggghhh!! Where in the world had that thing gotten to?! I didn’t even know it could be removed.
I ran back home, and found it inside the camcorder bag. Luckily, it was not broken; it simply had come unscrewed. It attached in the same way a T-bulb fits into its socket--a push and a twist. I reattached it and headed back out.
It was starting to get dark, but my camcorder does an excellent job of filming in low-light situations, and I got some very good pictures of Caleb and Victoria racing around the parking lot, grinning widely at me every time they passed.
But when that little deployment was over, it was dark enough, and chilly enough, that the bike ride had to wait for another day.
Instead, Victoria and I went to the grocery store.
The little house finches have come back and built themselves another nest in our pine tree, the birdbrains, and the cats are highly interested. Both finches worry and fret when I am outside watering flowers or pulling weeds, because I am too close to their nest. (The dumbies don’t know that I am the best protection they have.) Fortunately, the tree is too dense for the cats to climb it; but the evil felines sit patiently at the bottom of the tree, waiting...and waiting...and waiting... ready if one of those little birds lets down his guard for just a minute…
The next afternoon, I took Victoria for a bike ride. My bike works perfectly again, shifting just the way it is supposed to. When we returned from the ride, I pulled weeds and then planted the three bushes I got last week. I’d purchased them all to plant in the front of the house, totally forgetting that azaleas like shade rather than sun. So the azalea went on the north side of the house, and now I need another bush for the front. Maybe two. Maybe even three.
In addition to weeding, I found another use for my new spade: I killed three wasps that were on my peonies. I hate wasps. They sit around and stare at me maliciously, waiting till I turn my back to try to sneak up on me. Why, they can fly without even buzzing if they have a mind to! Horrible, awful things. I hate them.
I used the new clippers Teddy gave me to cut down as much of the unwanted mulberry trees as I could. Mind you, I love mulberries, and the minute the mulberries on our big tree out back are ripe, you can be sure, I will be having mulberries on my Honey Bunches with Almonds. Mmmm… And, when there are enough, I will make mulberry muffins...and, when there are even more, I will make mulberry pie. But I don’t want mulberry trees in my flowers!!
Next, I cut down the poor old dead lilac bush. Rats! I really like lilacs. The bush went to wreck and ruin one snowy winter when an enormous avalanche of snow slid off the roof onto it, bending it clear down to the ground. I didn’t realize it was in such dire straits under all that snow until the snow melted--and there was the bush, totally bedraggled and broken-down and dilapidated. The following spring, it made one feeble attempt to come back to life, with a few sparse leaves and blossoms showing up on one lonesome branch; but by fall, it had withered away entirely.
Anyway, I chopped it down. Then, seeing that the roots were quite loose, I got a good grip on the stump and puuuulllled......
Suddenly, it came shooting out of the ground, showering dirt everywhere, all over my face and the rest of me, and I nearly sat down in the neighbor’s yard on the other side of the alley. So, when I was done weeding, watering, and transplanting a few irises, I took a bath. Ahhhh...
I wasn’t as stiff that night, even after all that planting and pulling of weeds and trees and stumps. Must be getting in better shape, I must!
Dorcas gave me a giant sunflower that can be used for a birdbath, a birdfeeder, a lawn-watering gauge, a decoration, or all of the above. I shall use it only for the last two; the first two would serve merely as a bird trap, I’m sure. She also gave me one of those thin water jugs that sit inside the refrigerator tight against the side, from which one may pour one’s self a drink. Joseph promptly filled it up, and the littles promptly had themselves a drink.
Victoria took a sip of hers.
“It’s not cold!” she said in surprise.
haha The thing had been in the refrigerator a total of about 30 seconds, and not once since it was put in had the door been shut.
Joseph went down the block to help some men who were getting the street ready for diagonal parking in front of the little house where the kindergarten will be held next fall. It is on our side of the street, so Victoria will not have to cross the Avenue.
Caleb had a field trip to the post office. It had been delayed because of the pipe bombs; but after the man who planted them was caught, they were able to reschedule the jaunt. Lydia’s class had a picnic that day, so she took a sack lunch with her to the park.
After stewing and fretting over what she wanted in that lunch (i.e., lunch meat, etc.) as opposed to what she didn’t want (i.e., leftover chicken on her bread, etc.), the silly girl hardly ate any of her lunch. And I’d bought her all sorts of yummy lunch things, special!--things I don’t usually buy: pudding cups, fruit-in-jello cups, granola bars, juice in little cartons--all those sorts of things that cost more than if one makes it from scratch, or buys it in bulk. A ¾-gallon jug of Tropicana orange juice, for example, is a whole lot cheaper than the same amount of Old Maid (Rubber Maid?) juice in those little cardboard cartons. Further, it tastes better, if you ask me.
Well, Lydia generously gave a couple of her things to a friend who, after eating her own lunch, was still hungry. Later that evening, I walked into the kitchen--and found Lydia blissfully spoiling her supper...with all the uneaten things in her lunch.
Larry came home about a quarter after seven, and called the camper place in Norfolk to see if we could pick up our pop-up camper. But it seemed to be impossible for us to ever pick up that camper, because they were not around at any hour Larry would be able to pick it up. I betcha they’d sing a different tune if we were a-buyin' one o’ them there quartah-million dollah motuh homes, eh?
Further, they hadn’t yet fixed the leak they’d found in the pipes from the propane tank. Rats. We were hoping we’d get to use it Saturday.
That night, I fixed mashed potatoes and gravy, with the gravy all full of chicken. Mmmmm, yummy. Even Lydia ate hers like a -- er, well, like a, um, -- mouse.
Later, Larry, Caleb, Victoria, and I went to the library, and then we drove out by the canal, first going through the little cemetery by the old wooden bridge. We read a few of the stones, finding several old ones for children and babies. Don’t you wonder what happened, and what kind of a life they lived, being as it was in the late 1800s? It’s too bad that more pioneers didn’t keep journals, I think; a lot of families’ histories are gone now, gone with the passing away of the only people who would have known.
After a while, it got too dark to read, so we continued on our little excursion. We saw a big raccoon waddling across the road. We slowed and turned toward him to see him better, which seemed to spook him, as I suppose not many vehicles do such things, and after he got across the ditch and into the cornfield, he stood up tall on his back legs to give us a good look, which made Caleb and Victoria laugh.
Wednesday night, we had our usual midweek prayer service. Have you ever noticed that, the older you get, the more likely you are to get pins and needles in your extremities after sitting too long in one position? Well, I have. And I got ’em. Then, when it was time to get back up again, and I wanted to do so as quickly as possible so as not to make a spectacle of myself, I had a problem.
First I should say that we have these loose cushions floating around here and there on the church pews, and people can use them if they like. I was using one.
So anyway, I gave a good solid attempt to sit back down on my cushion, at which point it rose higher and higher the more I backed into it, and the harder I tried to sit on it, the higher it got, until I might have wound up two feet taller than usual, teetering back and forth on a cushion set up on edge, had I not gotten a good grip on it and shoved it down hard, ker-splat, and then sat, regardless of the fact that it was all whoppyjaw, same as my skirt. Help! Help and bother. People over the age of 40 (or maybe 30) need privacy booths for praying in.
And for getting up in.
We went home after church and tucked into several large pizzas, after which Caleb happily greased three breadloaf pans, and I put three frozen loaves into the pans. Happily, I say, because he seems to enjoy getting Crisco here, there, and everywhere, including all the way up his arms to his elbows, and all over his nose and chin.
The bread didn’t finish rising until 12:30 a.m., and so they weren’t done baking until 1:00 a.m., and the only one still awake to share some freshly-baked bread with me was Victoria. We merrily sliced it, buttered it, honeyed it, and ate it. I like the heel, with all that crunch on the outside, and all that warm, soft bread on the inside. Mmmmmm...... But one must be careful when one bites into it, because with the crunchy stuff on the bottom, and the soft stuff on top, if one doesn’t hold tight to one’s slice, it will pop right from one’s fingers, fly up, and smack one in the nose, liberally smearing that same proboscis with butter.
And don’t try to outsmart it, because if you turn the slice upside down and bite into it, be sure it will leap from your fingers, fly down, and wallop you on the chin, spreading copious amounts of butter onto chin and Adam’s apple alike.
One evening, Victoria asked if she could watch one of the videos she’d gotten from the library. I said she could.
“I’m going to watch ‘Pippi Longstocking’,” she decided.
Soon she was back in the kitchen, where Joseph was supposedly working on his schoolwork, and I was...uh, what was I doing? Gnawing away on another piece of pizza, maybe.
“I had to turn that video off,” said Victoria, staring at me with big eyes and then making a face, “because it was” she pulled a disgusted grimace “really icky.” Her face contorted with renewed repugnance, and she continued, “I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t nice!” and she stuck her tongue out and shivered.
Joseph and I kept from laughing with difficulty.
Later, I plugged ‘Pippi Longstocking’ into the VCR to see what in the world was the matter with it, as I had always thought Pippi to be quite harmless.
Turns out, it was the advertisements for other videos, done at the front of the Pippi film, that had so offended Victoria. The video in question was something about a castle, and there were dragons and monsters and knights and ogres of all colors and sizes, most of them roaring frightfully and breathing out fire and brimstone.
No wonder Victoria shut off the awful thing! Good grief.
Fortunately, she had not gotten very far into the nightmare before stopping.
As I had thought, Pippi herself was inoffensive and benign. I left the tape at the proper starting point so that Victoria could see it the next day; she would think it funny, I knew.
Thursday, Joseph helped down the block again. He came home with all sorts of funny stories about the men he was working with. One of the men has named another one ‘Zippy’, which is hilarious, because if there is anything that man is not, it is ‘zippy’. He said that when he got older, he was going to lean on his shovel just like ‘Zippy’ did, but he was going to have a seat on his. Further, it would be a heated seat. haha Everyone was laughing, even ‘Zippy’.
Hannah came visiting, and asked if Victoria would like to come with her to her house to play with Aaron for a while. Victoria would, and Victoria did. Victoria was pleased as punch. (What does that mean, ‘pleased as punch’? Just how pleased is ‘punch’, anyway?)
That afternoon, Dorcas gave Victoria a big slate, metal in the middle, with a wooden frame. On this slate is a picture of an airport. There are little magnetic pieces to put on the slate: airplanes, jets, helicopters, all sorts of airport vehicles, pilots, passengers, luggage, and even some traffic cones and a wind sock. Victoria spent a good long while carefully arranging and rearranging people and planes, concocting a continuing saga the whole time.
One afternoon when Victoria visited my mother, Mama gave her a tiny resin bell on which perched a wee robin. Victoria was thrilled, especially since she has recently taken a special interest in the robins that hop around our lawn, hunting for worms for their babies who are waiting, patiently or otherwise, in their nest in our back yard. She thinks it is so funny when they try to pull up a worm that is almost too big for them. They get a grip on the worm, leeean back, pullllll, and then flap their wings vigorously to give themselves enough oomph to separate worm from ground.
That afternoon, I patched several pairs of jeans, mended a pink chiffon dress for Victoria, and sewed horsehair braid on my big ivory sailor hat. And I washed clothes.
I put Caleb’s tan jeans through the washer three times, dousing the grass-green knees each time with Spray ’N Wash. By the third time, they were finally presentable. Not immaculate, mind you, but presentable. He walks on his knees, that kid, he does. He must.
And then I was finished washing clothes! Yahoo! Well, momentarily, anyway. Two hours after I put the last load in, there was a pile worth at least two loads in the hamper again. Lucky thing I don’t really mind doing clothes, eh?
We had a new kind of Campbell’s soup that night: Spicy Roast Beef and Vegetables (or something on that order). It tasted like roast beef and vegetables, if you ask me. And yes, it was good. Unfortunately, there were only four cans of it at the grocery store where I found it, so the eight of us who were eating had only half a can each. And half a can each is not enough, regardless of what The Campbell’s Soup Corporation thinks a ‘serving’ is. (1/16 of a cup, maybe?)
We each had a carton of yogurt and a granola bar after the soup, but we were still hungry...so I made Cream Cheese Fudgy Brownies with Cream Cheese frosting. Fat City, here we come! Good thing I only made one 8x8 cake and had to cut it eight ways. The hard thing to decide is, do we like the batter better, or the cake? Shall we eat it before, or after I bake it??
Once again, we took a junket to Wal-Mart, this time for a wedding gift for our friends Aaron and Karen. Aaron is Lydia’s Sunday School teacher; and Karen is Caleb’s school teacher and Victoria’s Sunday School teacher.
At Wal-Mart, we saw a tiny little boy, age two or three, with his hair spiked and dyed blue on top. The poor child! His parents ought to be buggy-whipped. Put in the stocks for a fortnight.
We got Aaron and Karen a napkin holder (from Hester and Lydia), salt and pepper shakers (from Caleb and Victoria), and a teapot--all in the shape of roosters.
I enlarged some of my best pictures, and then, since it was a few minutes after 10:00 p.m. when the photo copier finally spit out the last picture, and that’s closing time (a stupid policy), we went to Hy-Vee for the cat food we were in dire need of (that is, the cats were in dire need of), and a present for Lura Kay, whose 62nd birthday was Friday. We got her a pair of duck figurines. I also made her a loaf of bread--but the bottom part stuck to the bread pan and only the top half of the loaf came out of the pan. The Jackson Urchins ate that loaf.
I tried again the next day; Lura Kay got her loaf of bread one day late.
I finally got the gift I’d been wanting to get Dorcas for her birthday ever since they first arrived at the store: a gigantic white teddy bear in a bright blue knitted sweater with a flag knitted into the front of it. The stars are cross-stitched on. On the foot is the date, and on its rump is a small red felt heart that says ‘Friends Forever’ and ‘Cuddly Friends, Incorporated’.
I tucked this huge bear with difficulty into the small child’s cart Victoria was pushing, and then we proceeded to travel through the store with Victoria giggling the entire way, and leaning out to one side to see around that teddy bear’s head.
When we got home, we discovered that we’d forgotten to buy milk, and we were plumb out. Teddy was nice enough to quit with his woodworking and go to the store for us, and Victoria, never tired of going somewhere, went along.
Yes, Teddy is still working on Amy’s hope chest. He put little spiral-type pieces of wood along the bottom edge, having made the spirals painstakingly, one at a time, with one of his wood-working tools. Now he is sanding it smooth. If he ever quits adding curlicues and trim, he just might stain it and varnish it someday!
Some time back, Teddy spilt a can of stain. Of course the spill occurred at such a strategic spot as to coat all sorts of things that did not wish to be coated, including tools and the ping-pong table. But the worst thing was that it got all over the hood of a fuchsia jersey jacket of Lydia’s, which was not the slightest bit good for its general well-being and longevity. For the next two weeks, I sprayed that thing with Spray ’N Wash and then washed it in every last load of clothes I washed. The jacket, I think, is finally wearable, although the hood is still slightly stiffer than the rest of the jacket, and if you should bury your nose in it, you would find that there is a definite odor of stain thereabouts.
When Teddy and Victoria returned from the store, Teddy had another of those big bears, for Amy; and Victoria was carrying a little pair of sunglasses that she thought were Teddy’s--but I could see at one glance that those specs would never fit Teddy. He’d gotten them for her. He followed her in, pulled the price tag off the left lens, and tried them on.
They didn’t fit.
“Oh,” he moaned, perching them far out on the end of his nose and tilting his head back to look through them, “They’re way too small!”
Victoria giggled, but looked a bit concerned.
“Well, they must be for you, then,” he said with a resigned air, and, so saying, he slid them onto his little sister’s nose and tucked the temple thingamajiggers (what are those things called?) around her ears.
“They do fit me!” she exclaimed, giggling more than ever.
She turned and looked up at him suspiciously. “You knew you were getting these for me all along, didn’t you?” she demanded.
Thursday night, Hannah called to tell us that a dear friend of ours had passed away. He was 83. He had had pneumonia for several months, and just couldn’t get over it. It’s sad to lose our beloved old ones, for their wisdom is invaluable to us. Walter was the head deacon at our church even before my father came here to preach in 1954. He sometimes substituted in the pulpit, and he taught the second adult Sunday School class up until the last couple of years, when his son Merlin took the class. About 40 years ago, Walter started a ready-mix company, selling concrete, and later cement blocks. He made it into a very successful business, and employed a lot of men, many of them members of our congregation.
Throughout the years, he’s done untold things for our church, including such things as buying a new organ, donating concrete for building church addition and school, and uncountable hours of work. He put together booklet after booklet on all sorts of subjects, and gave them to Sunday School teachers, preachers--or anybody. We have several of his booklets in our bookcase, some that he gave me when I used to teach Young People’s Class. He made these pamphlets by combining pages on the same subject from all sorts of study books he had in his library, and his endeavors sometimes saved people many hours of searching for the information they needed. Just before he died, he told Robert that he’d made a book on Amos, and he hoped he’d be able to use it.
Friday was Lydia and Caleb’s last day of school; Hester’s will be next Friday.
Victoria went out to play Friday afternoon; shortly, she came back in the garage door, toting her doll’s umbrella stroller.
“I need to wipe this off,” she said, “because my baby wants to go for a ride.”
I picked up a towel, started to toss it to her--and then I saw what was all over the top part of that stroller: stain. Teddy’s spilt stain.
So into the bathroom we went, stroller and I, while Victoria trotted downstairs for the jug of detergent. I ran piping hot water into the tub, poured in a cup of detergent, and let the thing soak. An hour later, I added half a cup of detergent, scrubbed at the stroller’s fabric, and put more hot water into the bathtub. (Our tub leaks.) I think that getting the stain out of that stroller will not be as successful as getting it out of the jersey jacket.
When Larry got home from work Saturday, we all leaped into the Suburban and rushed to Norfolk to collect our camper. Joseph and Caleb had loaded the Suburban with fishing poles, balls, and Frisbees, because this was free State Park day and free fishing day, and we intended to take advantage of it.
The baby killdeers had hatched from their eggs, and we saw one of the babies running along after his mother. Baby killdeers don’t look like babies; they look like miniature adults. They are born with all their feathers, marked like the adults, and their long legs are perfectly capable of running lickety-split after their mother. Or their father. The parents are marked the same; I cannot tell one from the other.
We peered gingerly into the birds’ nests we’d seen the last time we were there, and found--baby birds. In one nest were three little babies, feathers sticking up every which way, obviously having a Bad Feather Day. Their eyes were not opened yet. I bumped my hand by accident against the trailer hitch in which the nest was built, and one little baby sprang upwards like a Jack-in-the-Box, mouth gaping wider than one would ever have thought possible.
In the next nest, we found some babies--we couldn’t tell how many--that must have been only a day or two old. The poor little pink things hadn’t yet sprouted a single feather, and I wondered how such ghastly little critters could ever manage to survive, let alone turn into lovely songbirds someday. Even in that nest of newly-hatched nestlings, my faint rustling caused one bald little pate to shoot straight up and his mouth to open wider than his head. But, being such a new baby, he couldn’t support his head any time at all before he collapsed back onto his siblings.
After taking care of all the necessary paperwork and hitching up, we drove northwest to Willow Creek State Recreation Area. We’d never been there before, and were pleasantly surprised not only at the size of the lake and the whole park, but also at the beauty of the countryside. This area must have been developed quite a long time ago, for the trees and bushes and other landscaping were several years old.
Larry, Joseph, Hester, and Caleb fished for a time, while Lydia and Victoria ran through a couple of large fields, over hill and dale, to get to the playset. After a while, Hester and Caleb gave up with the fishing and headed to the playground, too.
As usual, we didn’t catch any fish, partly because Larry forgot to buy some worms, and partly because we never catch any fish, anyway.
Huge fish were vaulting themselves from the water, but none cared to jump after any of the bait they were offered. Larry, standing on the other side of an arm of the lake, having no luck with the fish, even though big ones were jumping like anything just beyond his hook, could see the Suburban and pop-up camper right in his line of vision every time he looked up. Finally he could bear it no longer; he had to lift it and open it up, the better to see where the cables were broken that lift one side, and how difficult it will be to replace them. He’d bought the special cables for it at the trailer sales, and is itching to get started.
So he and Joseph put away the tackle boxes and fishing poles and hiked back to the camper. Then, with Joseph turning the crank to roll it up, Hester standing ready with props to insert at strategic times and places, and Larry inside the camper lifting it by sheer brute force, they eventually got it up. We were pleased to see in what very good shape it is; perhaps the cables broke early on, and the owners rarely used it? The service man at the camper sales told Larry that, with the cables repaired, we had ourselves a $1,500 camper. The mattresses, cupboards, flooring, refrigerator, stove, and heater look like new; one would never guess it’s about 25 years old.
A large flock of pelicans flew over in a long V. They were soaring more than they were flapping, probably because they were heading into a strong wind. They were so high that we could not make out what they were until they were directly overhead, and then we could see their over-sized orange bills.
There were red-winged blackbirds on nearly every tree and cattail, I think, and there were oodles of robins and mourning doves. I saw a little yellow bird with a black cap that went down his neck and onto his back, and under the black was a wide charcoal-silver eyebrow. It was the size of, and sang like, a warbler; but I can’t find it in my bird book. I saw another bird that I thought was a bobolink, but I can’t find one like it in my book, either, either.
There were many black terns flying over the water, skimming right down into the water to catch minnows and water bugs.
The sun set in a kaleidoscope of color--purple, lavender, indigo blue, pale blue, teal green, orange, gold, fuchsia, and pale pink.
We headed for home, stopping in Norfolk for some food, since the children’s stomachs were rubbing their backbones. I chewed my way through a grilled chicken salad that threatened to be almost not quite pretty good, and then I ran headlong into a piece of chicken-that-wasn’t, being more on the order of a large piece of gristle stuck to a very small sliver of chicken and covered with pimply chicken fat.
(No, I didn’t eat it.)
I immediately felt exactly like my children do when a plate of something detestable is set before them: “I’m full.”
I gave it to Joseph, not mentioning the aforementioned delicacy-that-wasn’t, and he ate it like a trooper.
Now don’t judge me; the boy was actually eating a salad, and it had lettuce and tomatoes in it, and was good for him! You wouldn’t have mentioned such a thing as the skin of a chicken, either, so there.
And then Joseph said, said he, “Mmmmm; this would be really good if it wasn’t for the lettuce and the tomatoes!”
Today is something of a bittersweet day for all of us. Walter is gone from us, and this morning’s sermon was something of an eulogy to him. Robert used the verses from the last chapters of I Chronicles, about the last days of David. 29:28 says, “And he died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour...” That describes Walter perfectly.
I well remember the many times Walter used to visit my father when I was little, and how Daddy would greet him with, “Walter G--! You’re a sight for sore eyes!” and Walter would laugh and reply, “I thought that was ‘an eyesore’!”
Even in the last few hours before he died, he told all sorts of stories of times gone by. He would say something funny and then laugh at himself in his old familiar, endearing way. It was a bit hard to understand him, for he was on 100% oxygen, and even then it wasn’t enough, and he had difficulty talking.
Tuesday afternoon is the funeral.
In spite of that, the family all urged Aaron and Karen and their families to continue their plans for the wedding, so that’s what they decided to do, for everything was nearly prepared; even the turkeys were all baked and ready to be made into sandwiches.
At about 8:00 p.m., a young woman came to Mama’s house with a big tray full of sandwiches, cake, ice cream, apple punch, and little cups of nuts and mints for Mama and me. They never forget Mama; she is well-loved.
As the hours stretched on, I was worried that Mama was getting too tired; but she absolutely, positively did not want to go to bed before Dorcas came.
It was about 11:00 when what appeared to be lightning started flashing through the front window, and I knew that Aaron and Karen were exiting the church and making for their car out front. The flashes, of course, were the multitudes of camera lights. I watched out the window as the last few pictures were taken, keeping a running dialogue of events for Mama’s benefit.
And now Dorcas is coming in the door, and it is time for me to pack up and go back home again. Soon I shall find out if anybody took pictures and videos for me!
And if they didn’t...... Oooooooo. The fur will fly.
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