The Relatives Visit

There were four, two men and two women. Two were twice my size, one vertically and one horizontally. They paraded in with tons of hiking boots and flip-flops, sleeping bags, clothes, Easter baskets, personal electronics, and gifts for me of an Elvis mug and a marvelous egg-shaped motion-sensor night light truly needed in the bathroom. Moving their stuff from the van into my house and getting settled took a full 20 minutes. They arrived hungry.

I love hosting them every Easter. My possessions vanished beneath theirs and a ton of wet towels because everyone shampooed and showered daily in my half-bath, the only bath there is, so I got in there before 6 a.m. or after 10:30 p.m. My Missouri provided beautiful weather, flowering trees, and birds. We ate barbecue, Steak 'n' Shake, frozen yogurt, homemade pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, Chinese buffet, Trader Joe's mac 'n' cheese, dyed Easter eggs, chocolate cake, a truckload of bagged snacks, and for Easter dinner came yet another person for a truly full 1100-square-foot house that rocked with fun. My brother-in-law read aloud from an inspirational book called Jacob the Baker and I rolled on the floor laughing to bust a gut.

They flung themselves out on carpets and snored. They relaxed and read or scrolled through their Facebook or strolled around the property or sat around the firebowl. They freaked when they saw ticks on them. (I showed them what to do.) We visited antique malls, Walmart, Trader Joe's (they'd never been to one), the farm store to see live chicks and baby bunnies, the Methodist church, and a state park.

The morning they packed and departed they granted my special request to vacuum the vacated rooms, and cheerfully did so in a few minutes, saving me 2 hours of my life, and with those hours I laundered all the towels and ate all the foil-covered little chocolate eggs they had brought.

And how was your Easter?

Reason to Live, Reason to Love

I was so excited to have relatives visit; they rarely do. My parents are too old to travel, my aunts and uncles all passed, and I never knew my cousins, most of them much older. I have two sisters too classy to come here, one with Danish Modern furniture, the other an Easterner now. To be fair, Sister Danish Modern and her husband visited once, 14 years ago, and I taught her to shoot an airgun, there's a photo (on paper; this was before smartphones); but she must have been appalled by the bathroom, as anyone would have been up until its renovation in 2011. I visit them but they don't come here.

So my third sister, her husband, and my niece from Wisconsin visit once a year and I weep with happiness when they arrive and weep when they leave, believing they are the only people my age left who both know where I came from and care to stay in touch. And they like it here. It was Easter weekend. We dyed eggs and they brought me an Easter basket with a peanut-butter egg in it, and a plush rabbit. Weep again. Weep over Velveteen Rabbit and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, also starring a rabbit. We went to marvel over and fondle baby chicks at the farm store, and to see an 18th-century homestead, and hunted fossils, and explored the woods. They thought 50-degree weather was amazing.

Some Easter weekends fall too early for the redbuds to be out. Wild redbud trees in spring are a major reason to love Missouri (they don't grow in Wisconsin). I am so thrilled to share them with non-Missourians. They were nominated as the USA's national tree; they lost to the oak. They were nominated as Missouri's state tree. They lost to the Flowering Dogwood. Redbuds, I think, are glory incarnate. They bring me closer to God, the other who knows where I came from and cares to stay in touch.

Daylight Savings Time

People who won't follow Daylight Savings Time are called "Daylight Savings Time Deniers." I happen to love Daylight Savings Time which lends to the day sweet lavender twilight and spring peepers at just the right hour, about 7 p.m., after supper, when the kitchen is clean but there's a thought forming -- in the shape of a red bell pepper on the counter -- as to the meals of tomorrow.

In 14 years here, 15,330 meals could have been prepared on this counter (this is ALL of my counter space), but I had  many meals at work, at Super Smokers barbecue, and mozzarella sticks eaten while hiking or sitting in the car in traffic, so probably I've prepared in this kitchen only about 10,000 meals, for myself and all sorts of guests ranging from baby birds to distinguished authors. I wish I'd kept a guest book over the years of the fascinating people I've hosted.

Memory Lane

One day I walked a little farther and turned onto a one-lane road I hadn't walked before although I've lived in the area 12 years, and was steamrolled by almost prehistoric memories: It looks like Ashland County, WI as it was more than 50 years ago, the place where my love for the country began, on trips to my uncle's dairy farm where I slept in a room that got very cold in the morning. Stony fields no good for crops, only cows and hay; the electrical poles, mere logs set upright into the ground, holding up a single wire to perfection; second-growth timber, and chicory weeds, all very quiet, and every half-mile a fire hydrant at the roadside, cast-iron thickly painted red; here, with lettering: CHATTA TENN 1963.

Simply hadn't seen the turnoff to this road, a memory lane, or maybe it magically appeared, a new road just when I needed it, and I walked thinking how we always visited my uncle in August, and August in northern WI is like mid-September here: breezes tepid and then cold, dealt out edgewise like playing cards; dry grass; woodpiles; understated sunlight. An excellent fitness walk because of its hills, rising 283 feet total from the starting point to its highest. Three miles into it I hadn't reached the end, and turned around, but next time I'll walk farther and see what's at the end of Memory Lane.

They Don't Name 'Em Like That Anymore

My uncles and aunts were:
Harry & Dorothy (ran a rural tavern)
Eddie & Helen (he sold insurance)
John & Elsie (never figured out what he did)
Leon & Millie (farmers)
Emily & Frank (teacher & woodworker)
I had some elderly neighbors:
Fran & Ollie (No lie!! Honestly!) (grocery store checker & manager)
Eleanor & Clare (Clare was the man.) (fun-loving, flapper-era full-time drunks)
Gerald & Rose (retired)
George & Rose (he was a printer)
Bert & Betty (he worked in a foundry)
Howard & Peggy
Elmer & Marie
It was a whole other world. Did you know some similar pairs?