Journal: A Time for Thanksgiving

 

The kids used to have a repeating bear.  That thing drove me plumb berserk.  I’d say to some child, “Hey, don’t do that!” and the bear, in my own voice (only snottier, somehow) would sass back, “Hey, don’t do that!”  I’d snarl, “Turn that thing off!”  The bear would promptly (and snidely) repeat, “Turn that thing off!”

Somebody would snicker, and the rest of the tribe would all fall into fits of hilarity.

’Tupid ol’ bear.

Speaking of things that drive a person berserk, once upon a time I was sewing a collar on a little dress for Lydia, who was about 3 years old.  She was playing beside me as I sewed.  Baby Caleb was napping, and Hester was in kindergarten.

I made an exasperated noise as I pulled the fabric from under the presser foot to rip out stitches for about the third time.  It was not going on properly! – and I was a perfectionist.

Lydia looked on sympathetically.  Then she said, in her sweet little voice, “Do it make ya nuts, Mama?”  😄

Tuesday, I gave the kitchen a quick cleaning, then gathered up the small handful of Christmas gifts that had recently arrived, took them downstairs, and tucked them into the proper bags. 

That done, I went upstairs, two flights up, to finish the last 80 Christmas cards; the cards I ordered last week had come.  I’d needed a total of 160, and had only half that amount on hand.  It didn’t take long to run cards and envelopes through the printer, as I keep files for signature and for addresses on my computer and need only to make sure the card and envelope sizes are correct before clicking Print.  I left the envelopes open, because the photos I planned to stick into them hadn’t come yet.  Here’s the photo I’m doling out this year.  Not the usual Christmas photo... but... we kinda like it.

“Do you know what?” commented a friend to whom I showed the picture.  “I’ve studied on you and Larry staying warm by the fire and enjoyed this photo.  HOWEVER!  I have never noticed the moon rising in the distance!  That is so cool! 🌙”

“Well, ahem,” said I.  “I plugged that moon in there from another shot I took of it with my big lens.  It looks a little contrived, I’m afraid.  I needed to add a bit of brightness to the mountains below.”

(And now that the photo has been reprinted in a batch of 169 prints, I have figured out how to do that, too!  A little late, but ah done figgered it out.)

I then got back to scanning pictures.  My little office where my rolltop desk is gets too cold in the wintertime, so I’ve moved my printer/scanner into my sewing room.

Here’s Hannah at about three months:

I came to a picture of Keith that was quite bedraggled, and, despite having scanned a big one just like it that was in perfectly good shape, I scanned this one, too – and then sent it to Keith.

“I had ordered exactly enough wallet-sized photos of you at age 6 months to put one in all our friends’ Christmas cards,” I told him.  “I wound up one photo short.  I figured I must’ve dropped two into one envelope by mistake.  Checked through the envelopes twice... couldn’t find it.

“Some years later, I found it – in Daddy’s wallet, a wee bit the worse for wear.  😄”

Before too long, Keith wrote back, “That’s funny.  He musta loved his baby boy. 🙂”

“Yep,” I agreed, “he sure did.” 

I sent him a wallet-sized one-year picture of him in similar shape, for the same reason.

The last picture in Album #008 shows the side of our mobile home, the front half of my Renault Le Car, and a strip of moss rose and snapdragons I had planted, all in full bloom.

Back when I had my little Le Car, sitting at a stoplight somewhere, I glanced in my rearview mirror, and decided I needed to wash the back window.

The wind blew the washer fluid away, and not a drop landed on the glass.  I tried again.

Meanwhile, cars behind me were honking away at their friends – or so I thought.

I went on trying to wash the window.

They went on honking.

I belatedly realized that the washer fluid was not spraying at the window, and the wind was not blowing it away.  Rather, it was spraying straight onto the car behind me, and that’s why they were honking!

Larry’s brother Kenny, a practical joker from birth, I think, had turned the sprayer for the back window around.  😂

Sometimes the HP Smart app that I use for scanning photos just will not connect with my laptop.   I did a bit of research, and, after discovering that others have the same problem, I downloaded the HP Scan and Capture app several people recommended, which works almost all of the time. 

Larry & I at the piano in the church.  We’d been in our friends’ wedding, 06-10-79, a month before we were married.

Trouble is, it does an auto-compression of the images it scans.  I can adjust it from low to high, but cannot wholly prevent it from compressing. 

Compression in the HP Smart app can be turned totally off, and it has a few more options; so I use it – except for when it refuses to connect. 

That printer can be connected either with a cord, via Bluetooth, or through Wi-Fi.  It did not come with a cord, however.  I wonder if the direct link with the cord would keep it connected better?  One of these days maybe I’ll try a cord... but I’ve been using the thing for 2 ½ years now, and will soon be done with the project; so... maybe I won’t waste the money.  It could just be a snafu with the HP Smart app, and wouldn’t that be aggravating, to spend money unnecessarily on a cord.

When I first got this newest laptop, it wouldn’t allow access unless I was online!  The machine was nothing more than a big ol’ paperweight, unless I was online.  That kind of stuff has just got to be a behind-the-scenes money-maker for someone.  Really, really aggravating.

Once I got it fired up, I changed that; but every once in a while an update turns that preference back on.  Makes me want to throw things.  There are times when we are way out in the boonies, beyond the reach of Internet, after all!  And I might very well want to use my computer.

Ah, technology!  I do like figuring these things out, but sometimes I am convinced that the makers of many of our devices and apps never, ever use them – and certainly not when they are in the middle of the Outback, wherever that might be.

As I mentioned last week, the album I am currently scanning has a lot of pictures of Dorcas as a new baby.  I was so glad to find them; I was afraid they were in one of the lost albums.  The pictures are not very good, unfortunately, because my little 110 camera was on its last leg.  I would get a Canon 35mm snapshot camera a year later, and pictures improved.        

Here is Dorcas at one day old, ready to come home from the hospital, Monday, July 5, 1982.  We even made it to the church picnic at Pawnee Park for a little while that afternoon. 

I sewed that little red, white, and blue outfit out of leftovers from a dress of mine, and used a doll dress pattern.  The picture is taken at a bad angle, because Dorcas was lying on the hospital bed, and it was high – and I’m short.  🙄😏

Here she is again at age 1.

And then I got a better camera!

Here’s Keith at age 2 ½.  To be precise, 2 years and 9 months.

Below is Hannah at age 1 year and 9 months.

“I do remember that outfit,” said Hannah.  “It’s one of the few before-4-years-of-age memories I have.  🙂”

I made the yellow suit and black blouse with leftovers from a suit I had made myself.  Her little skirt was pleated, as was mine, and the jacket had covered buttons.  The blouse had bronze and silver metallic threads running through it in stripes.

If anyone commented on her little suit, Hannah informed them very precisely, “It matches Mama’s!” – even though, if she was wearing hers, I was most likely standing right there beside her wearing mine.  haha

This picture of Larry holding Keith and Hannah was taken on a trip to Colorado.  It was chilly there, halfway up Mt. Evans!  (They are now changing the name to Blue Sky Mountain, since the Evans guy committed some atrocities on the Indians.)

I should’ve handed my camera to Larry, so he could’ve taken a picture of me.  I was holding a sleeping baby Dorcas, all snuggled up in a blanket, in one arm while I was taking pictures.  She was six weeks old.

We couldn’t drive all the way to the top of the mountain, because it had snowed up higher, and the road was closed at Echo Lake.

A friend sent me a link to a dreadful rendition of Jingle Bells, done by children on various types of horns.  They had evidently not received the notice that they should actually practice, and that there were actual notes for them to play, as opposed to merely blowing madly into their respective instruments.

I was reminded of Larry’s Grandma Ruby’s (Norma’s mother’s) funeral, wherein a woman was playing the organ, and another woman was singing Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown.

Grandma Ruby with Roy, Larry, and Rhonda in about 1962

One solitary A major chord was the introduction.  In spite of the insufficient intro, I thought admiringly, Oh, isn’t that lovely; they’re going to do it in sharps.

(I really do dislike that song in flats.  Bleah.)

Back to the song. 

“I am thinking today,” sang the soloist solemnly, “of that beautiful ---” and then the organist hit some odd note for the word ‘land’, such as a C, or maybe a B flat; can’t remember.

The soloist wobbled about, having been flung wildly adrift.  She scrambled, then settled on that same odd note, more by coercion than intention.  She barely got her warble going again when the organist bounded off into line two.

I had scarcely uncringed (oughta be a word) my shoulders and toes when they approached verse 2.

As is often the case with nice, staid hymns, they treated – or should I say, ‘mistreated’ – verse 2 exactly as they had done verse 1:  “In the strength of the Lord, let me labor and BLAAAAAAAAAAT.”

I contemplated crawling under my pew.

Half a line later, it occurred to me that it wasn’t my fault, and I had no reason to be mortified.  My lips twitched.  I got a bad tic in one eye. 

With a struggle, I pulled myself together.

Teddy, 4 months, December 1983

And then came verse 3. 

“Oh, what joy it will be when His face I be-BLAAAAAAAAATTT!!!”

I couldn’t help it.  I started smiling.  I put my head down and looked hard at my hands in my lap.  Joseph, who was 3 ½, tipped his head down, too, the better to peer into my face.  I smiled at him.  He smiled back.  I smiled wider.

Joseph, 3, 1988

And then!!!!  And then, Larry elbowed me!!!  Oh, the villainy of it.  This was his way of asking, Did you hear that?! 

I ducked my head down far enough to advance my approaching osteoporosis by at least two years.

One good thing happened:  I tried sooo hard to keep from laughing, tears started streaming down my face.  I got out a Kleenex and wiped my eyes and blew my nose.  It is not okay to go into great spasms of mirth at a funeral; but it is okay to weep copious streams of tears.  Right?  Right.

The song ended, leaving me forever wondering how many verses it would’ve taken before the organist found that wayward note.

The good news is this:  that’s one song we will never sing in heaven, for we will not be looking forward to ‘that beautiful land’, nor will we be wondering if there will be ‘any stars in our crowns’, for we will be there, and we’ll know how many stars are in our crowns.

(Even if we do sing a similar tune, we will not be making blunders on our instruments, nosiree, we will not.)

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we had a short church service at 11:00 a.m. that started with all the horns playing Thanksgiving songs.  Our son-in-law Bobby writes and arranges the music, and he is the band leader.  There are trumpets (grandson Nathanael plays one), trombones, French horns (grandsons Aaron and Levi play those; they are one of the trickier instruments to master), saxophone (Bobby used to play one, before he became the leader) (well, he still does, now and then), tenor sax, tuba...

Nathanael is the second from the right.

There's Aaron, upper left; and Levi is right beside him.  Bobby is leading.

The congregation then sang a song with the band.  The band exited the stage... we sang a couple more songs... and then the ones who play strings (violins, violas, cellos) played several Thanksgiving songs, and the congregation sang one of those songs with them.  Daughter Lydia plays violin; granddaughter Emma plays cello. 

Emma is the second from the right.

Lydia is second from right.
One of my blind friends is on the left.  The blind ladies can play just about every instrument known to man, and do it well, too.

I’d give you a long list of all my great-nephews and great-nieces who also play various instruments, but let’s just say there are a... few.  😉

Brother Robert, my nephew and our pastor, read some Bible verses on thanksgiving to God, and then he read from the writings of Richard Baxter, one of the early Puritans, who lived from 1615-1691.  The first Thanksgiving, declared by William Bradford, the first governor of Massachusetts, was in 1611.

I very much enjoy the old readings Robert finds for our Thanksgiving services.  He’s been doing that for several years now.  If you would like to read what Robert read us, it’s here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/41633/pg41633-images.html. 

Scroll down to page 143, the section entitled, “Grand Direct.  XIV.  Let thankfulness to God thy Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator, be the very temperament of thy soul, and faithfully expressed by thy tongue and life.”

After the service, we all – some 450 of us (which my father would be totally astonished at, as, when he started our church in the mid-50s, there were only 26 souls) – migrated to the Fellowship Hall for dinner at noon.  We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, some kind of quick bread with blueberries in it and a streusel top, corn, sweet potatoes, chef salad, milk (white or chocolate), juice (apple or mixed berry), orange fluff jello or frozen cranberry jello, pickles and olives, dinner rolls and jelly, coffee or tea, and a choice of apple, pumpkin, or pecan pie with either ice cream or whipped cream.

I had small portions, no dinner roll, and no chef salad; but I was still too stuffed for pie and ice cream when I was done.  Wrong time of day for such a big meal, for me!

Larry said sympathetically, “That’s just too much to eat for breakfast, isn’t it?”

Smart alec husband.

When we got home, Larry helped me look from the upstairs addition to the basement for the lost bin that must have 13 albums in it.  We did not find it.

Hopefully they’ll show up one of these days – though I can’t imagine where.  I do hope they haven’t been stored out in one of the sheds all these years.

At least, a while back, we did find the missing bin with seven albums, including the one I’m working on now, with so many of Dorcas’ baby pictures, and a lot of Teddy’s baby pictures, too.  Some albums are more important than others!  🙂

Sooo... unless those 13 albums that have gone AWOL come sauntering into my studio in the next few days, I have 2 ½ albums to go, and I’ll be done.  Therefore (if I hurry and have no interruptions), the thumb drives will be finished in time to give to the kids for Christmas.  All three albums are thick; I’ll have to work long and hard – and it will take a while to transfer 290,000 photos onto 9 thumb drives, too.  Gotta hurry, hurry, hurry!

And then... ((... drum roll ...)) I shall quilt again!

Friday, I found a picture of Loren on the nursing home’s Facebook page.  He, along with several other residents of the home, was going for a ride in their bus to see Thanksgiving décor in the city.  They thought the inflatable turkeys filling someone’s lawn were so funny.

Friday, I went on scanning photos.  Outside, Larry was starting the process of putting on a new metal roof, using his big scissor lift to assist him.  I have long instructed him or any of our sons or sons-in-law who happen to be working on the roof that if they make any loud, alarming bangs, they must immediately thereafter make a series of smaller bangs to show that they are all right.

Here he is (below) in the basket of his scissor lift, well above the second-floor window of my sewing studio.

That afternoon, a quilting friend was telling about her Thanksgiving dinner with her family the day before.  They had a nice visit, but a pipe under the sink came loose, and the oven wasn’t working right.  Fortunately, she has another oven, and they got the water to that sink turned off before things were very badly flooded.

I sympathized with her broken pipe troubles.  We used to have a dishwasher that would periodically spew water onto the floor.  Some kid would walk into the kitchen, pause, and then call out, “Somebody bring towels!”

And then there was time the door gasket came out entirely, and an entire cycle’s worth of water drained right out onto the floor.  The whole kitchen was a good half-inch deep in water.

Teddy, who was 11 or 12, walked into the kitchen... started splashing through water --- stopped in his (damp) tracks and yelled, “SOMEBODY BRING AN AIRBOAT!!!” 🤣😂😄

I got 137 photos scanned that day. 

Saturday, I went to visit Loren.  I found him close to the front commons area, in the hallway just outside the lounge with the big-screen TV.  He seemed well, was clean-shaven, and looked like he’d had a recent haircut. 

Loren would be astonished to know that his bi-monthly haircuts, shaves, pedicures, and manicures (just nail clips) cost him $135/month.

He was sitting in one of the leather loveseats eating popcorn.  The staff had rolled the big popcorn maker into the lounge, and I could see by the state of Loren’s popcorn bag that the popcorn was hot and well buttered.

“I thought it was just about time for you to get here!” he greeted me happily.

I truly have no idea if he realizes I come every Saturday, or not.  I sat down in a chair beside him and handed him the Messenger and Reader's Digest I had brought.

Roslyn was nowhere to be seen; it had been 3 or 4 weeks since I’d seen her.

A resident – let’s call her Nina – was in fine form that day, helping people go this way and that, whether they wanted to go or not, and generally at too fast a pace for them (though she herself is not particularly fast-paced). 

She came along sock-footed, carrying a pair of black canvas slip-ons, which she tried to give to Loren.  When he didn’t take them, she balanced one on the arm of the loveseat between Loren and me.  She tried explaining, but it was mostly gibberish.  She pointed at Loren, then at me.

I smiled at her and said, “Are those your shoes?”

She nodded and then shook her head.  She pointed at Loren.

“No, they’re not his,” I said, and pointed at his shoes.  “He has his on.  See?”  She looked at me.  “And they’re not mine either!”

She left the shoe on the armrest and carted off with the other.

“I wonder who’s missing their shoes?” I asked Loren.

He looked blank.  “Is someone missing their shoes?”

“Probably,” I said.

Nina returned, spotted the Messenger and Reader’s Digest on Loren’s lap, jabbered something that ended with ‘mine’, and took them. 

I popped up and retrieved them.  “Those are Loren’s!” I told her. 

She shook her head and pulled on them.  “Mine.”

“No, they’re Loren’s,” I said firmly, pulling them away carefully so as not to unbalance the poor lady.  “I brought them to him.”

Loren sat calmly, eating his popcorn.

Nina took the popcorn bag out of his hand.  I took it back – then discovered it was nearly gone anyway. 

“Well, I guess you could give her the old maids!” I said to Loren, which made him laugh.

Nina, perhaps understanding the words ‘give her’, went on reaching for it.  There was a small hole in the bottom of the bag, and a few pieces of popcorn fell out.  I tried folding up the bottom, but Nina was being insistent, and got hold of the top part of the bag – so I just got a grip on the bottom of it in my fist and wadded it.  That made her pause and stare.

I then handed her the wadded thing, saying, “Here you are!” in a friendly voice, which made Loren laugh again.  He went and got himself another bag of popcorn.

A black lady named Annie, meanwhile, had been behind Nina, watching the show and eating popcorn from her own bag.  I was glad to see her walking all right and seeming stronger again.  A couple of weeks ago, she had fallen while we were there.  She went down slow and easy, but it surely must’ve hurt.  She lay there on the floor, not making any effort in the slightest to get up.  A big, sturdy nurse hurried to help her up, and I cringed, thinking, Yikes, what if she’s broken something?!  But the nurse wrapped an arm around Annie and helped her walk toward  her room, and Annie did not seem to be in pain – just somewhat peeved to be receiving help she did not want, and to be taken in a direction she did not want to go.

Anyway, back to Saturday.  I smiled at Annie and said, “You have popcorn, too!  It looks like it has plenty of butter on it.  Is it good?”

Annie stared at me.  I would say she ‘glared’ at me, but I truly don’t think she intends to.  So I’ll say ‘stared’.

Nina went on down the hall, grabbed someone’s door handle, and rattled the living daylights out of it.  Another nurse went hurrying toward her.  “Nina!  Nina!!  NINA!!!” she called, finally reaching her and heading her off in a new direction. 

The entire time I was there, the nurses were kept busy chasing Nina down.

She made another pass through the hallway where we were sitting, walking beside a woman who had a walker.  Had Nina tried to take the walker?  I hadn’t seen what had happened earlier, but the woman with the walker was good and mad about it, whatever it was.  She pointed at a small sticker or nameplate on the handle of her walker, and slowly and with some difficulty read it aloud, punctuating each syllable with a jab of her index finger on the nameplate: 

“Med...line... Roll...a...tor!!” she read, then pointed at her chest.  “That’s me!!!” she informed Nina.  “Not you!!!  You keep your hands to yourself!” 

Nina looked at the wall... at the floor... behind her...

“You look at me when I’m talking to you!”  Mrs. Rollator demanded loudly.

Nina backed away.  Then, very quietly, she muttered, “Use your sad voice.”

“What?!  What?!” demanded Medline.

Nina turned sidewise and said very quietly to Annie, who was walking with them, probably more out of curiosity than anything else, “She’s supposed to use her sad voice.”

Annie actually reacted to all this, which is unusual, for her.  She looked at me and shook her head.  Acknowledging me was doubtless an aftereffect of my remark about her popcorn.  I grinned at her and wiggled my eyebrows.  She allllmost grinned back.  Almost.  She very definitely looked twinkly-eyed.

I showed Loren pictures on my phone.  He enjoyed a series of photos and videos of Caleb, Maria, and Eva, with Eva swinging on a tire swing... and he very much liked what Maria had written, that she had so much to be thankful for, and the Lord had been good to her.

He laughed over pictures of other great-great-nieces and great-great-nephews in Indian costumes for their school Thanksgiving parties, and he took great interest in photos of a big bull moose taken by the photographer Michael Underwood in Lake City, Colorado. 

I retold the story of the time Janice and I walked up Observation Point Trail on the mountainside overlooking Old Faithful Geyser.  We were going to have a picnic with Loren up at the top, and hopefully, the geyser would go off while we were up there.  Loren was somewhere behind us; he’d promised to catch up.

We rounded a curve in the trail, and through a break in the trees saw a little mossy valley right beside and below the trail.  A huge boulder sat in the little valley, its flat top level with the trail.  A short distance from the boulder, down in that valley, stood a cow moose.  We stopped, and Janice began filming, using her trusty 8mm movie camera.

The moose chewed her cud.

Janice handed me the wool blanket she’d been carrying, which we’d thought to sit on if there was no picnic table atop the mountain. 

“Flap it a bit,” she told me, “and maybe the moose will move.”

I flapped it.

The moose chewed on.

I hopped out onto the boulder, whose top was some distance above the moose’s head, and flapped the blanket.

The moose chewed on.

I hopped down off the boulder to the valley floor -------- and that moose turned her head and looked at me.

That’s when I learned that a cow moose was a good head taller than me, for I was about ten years old, and had not yet cleared five feet.

I give you my word, a moose looks mighty big, up close.

Without pausing for a split second, I spun around and scrambled right back up the side of that boulder.  A professional rock climber could not have done better.

The moose eyed me, then calmly commenced chewing again.

Janice didn’t get any good video of the moose moving, but she certainly got a good one of me making tracks.

Loren laughed ’til there were tears in his eyes over that story.

I told another moose story from that same trip:

We were leaving the park, Daddy, Mama, and me in a blue Suburban pulling a 27-foot Airstream, and, behind us, Loren and Janice in their Wildcat Buick pulling their 31-foot Excella Airstream.  

We were heading out the east entrance toward Cody, Wyoming.  It had gotten dark, and I lay down in the middle seat and went to sleep. 

But not for long.

Suddenly Daddy yelled, “MOOSE!” and hit the brakes, hard.  Then, moments before we would surely have made impact with that big animal, he let off the brakes and gave the steering wheel a mighty, wrenching turn.  (Never keep the brakes engaged while doing that, or you’ll wind up in an uncontrollable skid, especially if you’re towing something.)

I rolled off the seat, landed on the floor, slid, and wound up wedged under the front seat.

But before I went, my eyes had popped open, and I’d gotten a good, close-up view of a huge bull moose’s bulbous nose, a big, shaggy goatee hanging down, and a gigantic platter of horns up over his head.  His chin was about even with the top of the door frame – and the Suburban was a fairly tall four-wheel-drive SUV.

I recall noting that the moose’s eyeballs were rolled down toward our vehicle in what could only be described as astonishment.

As I scrambled my way out from under the front seat and clambered back up on my own seat, Daddy grabbed his CB mic and called for Loren, whose CB handle was ‘Silver Bullet’.  Daddy’s was ‘Preacher’. 

“There’s a big ol’ moose, right in the middle of the road!” Daddy warned him.

“10-4,” responded Loren.  “We’ll be on the lookout for him.”

By the time they got to the spot where the moose had been standing, the critter had meandered off onto the far shoulder.

Daddy then said in a tone of great urgency, “I’ve got to stop just as soon as I see a good place, so I can find out what’s wrong with my brakes!  They aren’t working!”

I thought, Huh?!  “But, Daddy!” I protested.  “If your brakes aren’t working, why did I fall off the seat and wind up stuck under yours?!”

“You did??” asked Daddy in surprise.  He gave the brakes a try.  They slowed us down right pronto.  “Well, I declare,” said Daddy.  “They are working.”

It just feels like they’re not working, when you suddenly find yourself on an imminent collision course with a 1,500-pound moose!

Old stories bring those old memories back and make everything fresh again, for Loren.  He asked, “How are Mama and Daddy doing?”

I told him, “They have both passed away—” and he made that amazed face he used to make so often last year, sometimes when he was pretty sure I was feeding him a line of hooey.  “—quite a few years ago,” I continued matter-of-factly.  “Mama died in 2003, 19 years ago; and Daddy died in 1992.  That was 30 years ago.”

Loren abruptly amended his narrative.  “Well, I knew they were no longer living; I just didn’t realize it had been so long.”

“Mama would’ve celebrated her 105^th birthday last month, had she still been alive,” I told him.

“105^th?!” said Loren.  “That’s hard to believe.”

“Yep,” I agreed, “time flies.  She was 86 when she passed away, and that was 19 years ago.”

Loren decided it was his turn to tell stories:

“I drove over to Plattsmouth last week,” he began. 

Plattsmouth is about 30 miles south of Omaha, and is the first town in Nebraska my parents and three older siblings lived in when my father first started preaching in the early 1950s. 

“I went to visit them,” he said.

“Who did you visit?” I asked.

He pondered.  “I don’t remember who it was,” he said, then changed to, “It was Norma, I guess.  And her husband...”  He paused.  “What’s her husband’s name?”

“Lawrence?” I suggested helpfully.  (Lawrence was Norma’s husband who died of cancer a year and a half before she married Loren.)

“No, it was...” he stopped and shook his head.

I tried again.  “Lyle?”  Lyle was Larry’s father who passed away from cancer in 1988 at the age of 52.

Loren frowned.  “No...”

I wonder, did the nurses forget to give a couple of the residents their meds today??  Or did the patients tuck their meds under their respective tongues and discard them later (the meds, not the respective tongues), when the nurses weren’t looking?

I changed the subject.  “Larry couldn’t come today, because he was fixing the hydraulic lines on the snowplow he put on the front of the pickup he sold to one of his coworkers,” I said.  “Next week, we might have an inch or two of snow – but it probably won’t stick for long.”  I then told him that parts of upstate New York had gotten around 7 feet of snow.  Loren was right properly astonished.

Since Nina was nowhere in sight, I gave Loren back the Messenger and the Reader’s Digest I had kept her from making off with, and then bid him adieu, telling him that it would be time for dinner in less than an hour and a half.  “Your popcorn should hold you ’til then!”

He laughed, and thanked me for coming.

As I left, a young black man was coming into the interior door with a cartload of oxygen canisters.  As I caught the door and prepared to head out, he turned quickly and took a good, hard look at me. 

I grinned at him and said, “It’s all right; I’m not escaping.  I don’t belong here!” 

He laughed.

What he doesn’t realize is that Loren could – and might – say the very same thing as he makes his escape.  😯😄

The other day I looked back at last year’s journals, just to remind myself what we were going through with Loren.  Eeek.  It wasn’t nice, was it?

I will not cease to be thankful he is where he is now!  It made me feel badly to have him put in a home, and we did it in a sneaky way, you know.  I knew what he thought about nursing homes, because every now and then he’d yell, “You aren’t putting me in an insane asylum!!”  But we’re all so much better off now, him, and us, too.

After leaving the nursing home, I stopped by Standing Bear Lake and took a few pictures.  Some children were playing on the park’s merry-go-round a little distance away.

I used to like the kind of merry-go-rounds that were on ropes and went higher and higher as the ropes wrapped around the pole, drawing the bottom part of the merry-go-round up as it went.  Then finally it was tight, we’d push off, and go whizzing faster and faster back down, then start winding back up again in the opposite direction.

Those things have probably been deemed unsafe by now, after pitching somebody into the stratosphere.

Leaving the lake, I headed toward home – and into a brilliant sunset.

Sunday morning, I woke up at 6:00 a.m.  My alarm was set for 6:45.  I think I finally fell back to sleep at 6:44.  One more minute of sleep after a too-short night was not enough.  But I got up.

After church last night, we went to Wal-Mart to get some things I had earlier ordered for pickup.  We got some groceries at Hy-Vee, then headed home to eat them.  We had roast beef and vegetable soup, Ritz crackers, cottage cheese, and raspberry Oui yogurt.

A friend and her husband took their granddaughters to one of Florida’s northern coastal islands over the weekend.  It’s a several-hour drive from their home.

She sent me a picture of large turtles and a not-too-big alligator sunning themselves on a rocky mound in a weedy pond, and I suddenly remembered what Joseph called them, when he was a wee little guy of about 2, and we spotted a few gators in a pond at Henry Doorly Zoo: 

“Look!” he cried, pointing.  “It’s a gallywader!”

I asked my friend, “Are the girls amazed at the sight of the ocean, as I always was (and still am), or is it ‘old hat’ to them?”

“A little of both, I guess,” she replied.  “I know I’m always excited to get that first glimpse each time.”

That’s how I feel about it – and the same with the Great Lakes, and the mountains, too.  When the kids were with us, we always played ‘I’ve got dibs’ – the ‘who can see it first’ game.

Someone was bound to think a low bank of clouds was one of the Great Lakes (or that a lumpy bunch of thunderclouds on the horizon was the Rockies), and make everyone else laugh.  Victoria was the only one who got to see the Atlantic and the Gulf with us.

I’ve seen the Atlantic numerous times with my parents, from Florida to Maine, and several spots in between.  When I was 12, we went to Newfoundland, taking a big (BIG!) ferry across the St. Lawrence Strait.  We saw the Pacific a few times, too.

Larry, Victoria, and I went to Daytona Beach in 2016.  We then traveled south to West Palm Beach, exploring various State Parks as we went, then west around the south shores of Lake Okeechobee, and over to Ft. Myers.  (An uncle of mine used to live there, and my parents and I visited him there a couple of times.)  We then turned north and followed the Gulf Coast all the way to New Orleans.

Victoria at the Atlantic, 02-27-16

I particularly loved driving Rte. 1 from LA all the way to Vancouver, British Columbia.  (Rte. 1 changes to 101 somewhere around Rockport, CA.)  It was so awe-inspiring to be traveling along with the Sierras, towering at 14,500 feet and snow-topped, immediately at our right elbows; and stretching to the west, the blue, blue Pacific, breakers crashing against the rocks far below.  I hope to do that again someday.

Oh! – I just found the obituary of Roslyn, Loren’s friend at the nursing home!  The last two times I saw her, she did not seem well.  That fall she had 2 or 3 months ago really took her down fast.

I didn’t know her last name, but she had told me her husband’s first name, and I knew she’d been a teacher.  With that information, I found the obituary.

She was 75.  She died ten days ago, and her funeral will be tomorrow.

Loren has not mentioned her.  That’s certainly the silver lining to this cloud – that is, that Loren does not seem to comprehend when someone has died, and therefore he does not grieve as he otherwise would.

Dementia is a sad, sad disease.  But we thank the Lord for His many mercies, and keep taking one step after another, knowing that, just like the dear old song says, ‘Each step I take just leads me closer home.’

Victoria at Lake Michigan, 08-20-13

Friday, I brought a stack of winter sweaters from a bureau in the basement to put on the shelves in my closet.  This always makes the temperature rise – and sho’ ’nuff, just like magic, it got above 60° Saturday, and the high yesterday was above 55°.  It was 55° again this afternoon, but we’ve been issued a winter weather advisory.  It’ll start with freezing rain, coating everything with a thin layer of ice, followed by 1-3 inches of snow.  40-mph winds will likely blow that snow around a lot.

I’ll take an armload of summer clothes downstairs to that bureau, and we’ll get four inches of snow, instead of just one or two, hmmm?

More Christmas catalogs arrived today, regardless of the fact that I practically never order from them.  One time when Keith was about 6 years old, I handed him the Sears & Roebucks toy catalog, gave him a colored pen, and said, “Here, would you like to look through this magazine and circle all the things you like?” 

He would, and he did.

He circled every last thing in the catalog except for the dolls.

A couple of days ago, I took apart a clothespin and used the pieces to repair the little clothespin chair Janice once made.  It was missing its armrests. 

Now the little bear that used to be Hester’s has the perfect chair to sit in and look cute.  It will be for Keira.

Back to the scanner!  I have now scanned 35,806 photos.  That makes a total of 282,468 pictures.  There are probably another 800-1000 pictures to go.  Yikes.  Gotta hurry.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn           ,,,>^..^<,,,