Friends

My dear friend, Colleen, and I made plans last week to have lunch together at my house today. I made banana bread and chicken salad with cantaloupe and green grapes. We drank hot green tea from my pretty tea cups and talked about the Easter service at church, our new pastor, our husbands, our kids, grandkids and our former lives (the young and foolish years).

We were on our third teacup re-fill when her phone rang. Her twenty-year-old son called from work to tell her his flu virus was worse today and he was having trouble breathing. The extra slice of banana bread I had just cut sat untouched as she began devising a plan to meet him at the emergency room of Zeeland Hospital. "Who will drive you?" "Shall I call your doctor?" I heard her ask him as the serenity of the afternoon flowed into chaos. She asked me how to get to the hospital, as I retrieved her coat. "Just follow me," I told her, and in a second we were a couple of little cars merging with noisy traffic, her mimicking my every lane change until we entered the parking lot of our destination. We quickly exchanged goodbyes through the opened window of our cars and she promised to give me an update later.

This is what I saw when I walked back into my home. It struck me how quickly the entire momentum of our time together changed with that one phone call.

It is so quiet now. No more laughter. No more heart to heart feelings going back and forth, creating small smiles and teary eyes of understanding. But on my kitchen window sill, a card that Colleen brought with her today explains everything, and I pick it up and re-read it.

Yup...that's it, and that's what I'll miss until the next time.

Easter

Yesterday we celebrated Easter; Jerry, me, Kody, Jack, Jack Jr., Sharlet,Tom, and Cindy.  Kayla, Daniel, Bright, Zion, Brave, and Jubilee were missing from our table but not from our hearts. Celebrating a holiday always extenuates the fact that six members of our family live on the other side of the globe.

Jerry and I went to church.  We listened to our new Pastor speak about faith and the fact that having doubt is part of having faith, it wouldn't be faith otherwise.  "Invite Jesus into your questions and work through the doubt together," he suggested.  I know this is true, it's actually how I became a believer in Christ thirty some years ago; I opened my heart just a tiny little crack and He did all the convincing after that!  After church we finished  preparing a very tasty ham dinner with orange-glazed sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes and gravy.  Cindy brought a salad tossed with strawberries, blackberries and spring greens and I made two banana cream pies....delicious.

After Jack and Sharlet arrived they sat at the coffee table decorating bunny-shaped cookies while Jack Sr., on his hands and knees, wiped the floor where three frosted cookies had landed face down in the first three minutes.  He wondered aloud why I had planned such an activity just before dinner.  Too busy pouring gravy from a roasting pan to answer him, I just smiled, grateful for his compulsive neatness.

After dinner Jack and JJ went downstairs to watch the basketball playoffs.  JJ yelled the score through the rafters every few minutes and Grandpa soon joined them.  Cindy and I cleaned the kitchen while  Tom and Kody, still sitting at the now empty table, discussed something they both seemed very interested in.  Jack left first, to make a timely delivery of his kids to their mother as Kody packed for a couple of days of 'trucking' and left soon afterwards. Tom and Cindy were not far behind him and  Jerry and I took a relaxing walk together. That was it...a fun day.


This is the face of the little girl we missed and yes, this moment was captured quite a few years ago, but I still love it. It's a picture of a picture, I apologize for the fuzziness.

This is the family we missed.

Here are all of our grandkids together last summer.

And these are the remnants of the bunny cookies. Cute, huh?