A Beautiful Day

Mother's Day - for 2007, it's now history. For me, it was a really nice day, weather and otherwise. Not excessively warm or anything yesterday, but sunny, bright - very pretty and quite a few nice things going on too.

Mandy and I managed to get up in time yesterday to make it to church - leaving the two little ones at home with their dad -his turn for them to drive him bonkers! The service was VERY nice and Pastor's sermon had many points to it that Mandy and I both took away from there. During the service though - and I don't recall what it was exactly - but something struck an inner chord of the memory bank here which brought a few tears to my eyes. Nothing drastic, just wiped them away before they fell and were noticeable, or so I thought.

In our church, when everyone approaches the altar for communion, there are hymns sung during that process and the first hymn at that time yesterday was one with very pretty lyrics, "I was there at your borning hour....I'll be there when you're old." Although it is speaking of course, of God's love for each of us and his protection given, it is also generally quite appropriate a choice with respect to the relationship between mother and child as well. It's really a lovely song in words and melody and one which both Mandy and I love.

As Mandy and I knelt to receive communion, I wasn't aware of two things - one, that I still had a little trace of a tear in my eye and two, that Mandy glanced over towards me, saw it and that, combined with the lyrics brought such an emotional rush to her that she began to cry. And, as we left the altar - she slightly ahead of me - she deposited her communion cup in the tray and felt she had to go out to the restroom to wipe her eyes, blow her nose - the whole nine yards there. It takes me a little bit of effort to rise from the communion rail and turn to return to my seat but as I made my way back to sit down, I realized Mandy wasn't there in the pew, waiting for me, something that left me a tad confused. Then, she reappeared and whispered to me that seeing the tear in my eye had brought her to tears and she was teasing me gently about that. I giggled a bit and told her I was thinking she'd run out on me!

After church, we mingled with other parishioners, conversing a lot with folks asking about the recent visitors (the Swedes) to our area - how everything had been, what they were like and explanations too from some as to what happened that they hadn't been able to attend the luncheon on Friday we'd had for the folks. I finally remembered to talk to our church secretary, Julie Jacobson-Josephson about some people who will be coming here about a month from now from Phoenix, Arizona who are not related to me directly but rather, we share a common relative - Albin Lars Gustafson, my uncle who was married to my Mom's older sister was an uncle/great-uncle to the folks who will be visiting next month. And, although I knew my uncle was related to Julie's Mom (they were 2nd cousins), I hadn't gotten around to telling Vivian, Julie's Mom, that I was corresponding now with these cousins of hers, much less that they were going to be in the area in June of this year. Mel Gustafson and his son, Eric, were here about a year ago this month but at that time, I was not aware of their existence as I'd not yet learned that Eric had responded to a query I'd posted several years back on the Ancestry.com message boards, as I was trying to find members of the Alfred Gustafson family that had originally lived in Grassflat.

After leaving the church, we went up to the grocery store so I could pick up a copy of the Sunday paper. I normally read it online but still get a hard copy of the paper mainly so I can read the birth/wedding announcements, Dear Abby and also -this being probably the most important part - get the Sunday crossword puzzle then as trying to solve as many of the clues in that is a big part of my Sunday routine! While at the store, we were chatting with our neighbor, Karen Eyerly Hulett, who works in the Deli area (where Mandy worked too-Saturday having been her last day there though) and Karen was telling us that she had waited on the Swedish folks earlier that morning. She said initially, she had a little difficulty understanding their orders -the accent and soft voices made it a bit hard at first -but anyway, she had figured out then that they must be the group she knew had been here in the area. However, when one of the ladies of the group ordered a sandwich - cheese, with butter - she said to the lady "You must be Swedish" and the lady had nodded and apparently wondered how Karen figured that out as Karen had then said, laughing, "Only a Swede would order a cheese sandwich with butter only on it." (Karen should know -she's got lots of Swedish in her ancestry too!)

Mandy, Bill, the kids and I went up to Jim/Charmaine's then for dinner out rather than heating up all the leftovers then from the evening before - saved that for our supper hour. When we first arrived at the restaurant, they only had one table of folks there, so Charmaine wasn't busy and came out from the kitchen to chat with us and to make a fuss over Maya and Kurtis. Maya loves going to this place because she knows everyone there as far as the owners and the employees and yes, they all do make a big deal out of her being there too - showering her with lots and lots of attention.

After dinner, back home, my son-in-law had gone up to my son's and brought down a small Honda motorcycle he'd recently acquired. He said my son was already home then and Mandy called him, making plans then to meet him over at Walmart. Seems they were scheming about meeting there to purchase my present for Mother's Day and bring it home which turned out to be a lovely porch type swing with a canopy over it!

Prior to their putting the swing together though, my son and son-in-law were having fun, riding this motorcycle around town a bit and Clate, joked with me about whether I'd like to take a ride on it too. Although it had been about 43 years since I'd last been on a motorcycle, I decided oh, what the heck. Why not? Give it a shot. And then, the fun began but it was at my expense as the kids made sure to get a camera and took pictures of me trying to get on this thing! My leg joints, at the hip, are very stiff and trying to pull my leg up to lope it over the bike's seat to settle in there, regardless of how I tried to do this, would pull very hard on the muscle around those joints and send really hard cramps then around there too. We finally solved the problem by mon son-in-law bringing out a little step stool from the kitchen and I could use that to get a little higher off the ground and not have to lift either leg up as high to get on the bike! Once settled in there, Clate and I took off for a little ride around town during which he, of course, had to beep the horn as we passed just about every house on the route! Nothing like announcing it to your local world that some fat old lady is coming through your street on a motorcycle, no less!

As I said, the kids took pictures - for posterity - of this great event and later, we also got some pictures of the kids and me seated on my new swing too. Once I get the film developed in these cameras, I should have all kinds of pictures then to post on this blog, don't 'cha just know it!

Last evening then, Mandy had to run some errands - take a Mother's Day card up to the store for a friend of hers there -the card (and a page Maya had "colored" for Lois were from Maya and Kurtis) and after that, we decided to take a run out to visit with Charmaine's Mom - "Aunt" Helen Ann Nadzom since she hadn't seen the two little ones in quite a while. And, as always happens when we are able to sit and chat with Helen, we had a really nice visit with her then! Helen and her late husband are not related to me, but since I was about 12 years old, when I began referring to them with the little title of "aunt" and "uncle" before their names, it has become a family thing in that all three of my kids grew up calling them Aunt and Uncle and now, this is how Maya and Kurtis will be raised too.

And now, before I start trying to get things cleaned up, caught up too this morning, here's the Bushism for the day!

"I want to thank you for the importance that you've shown for education and literacy." - Washington, D.C.; April 13, 2005.