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.

Saint Peters Sandstone

Entertaining friends here is a matter of serving a meal, followed by outdoor activity, or outdoor activity followed by serving a meal, and I must say it's delightful to host a friend, Frank, with a British accent that my other friends from Britain say is not the same accent as theirs, and to learn that I do not pour enough hot water into my teacups. Did I mention he's an engineer? They are easy to entertain: I showed him the dump on the property, where he might still be figuring out the origins and angles of everything and wanting to take it all home unless I'd shown him the nearby Waterfall #1, now frozen, the one with the shallow cave of St. Peters sandstone. He said it was "extraordinary."

Getting Their Kicks

These four ladies said they're traveling old Route 66 end to end, and this great American road trip takes you through Pacific and by the landmark quonset hut that since the Route 66 days has been a cafe. Currently it's called the Down South Cafe, at 409 East Osage--Osage Street is what Pacific calls old 66 as it passes the prison and the silica mine, the shuttered Red Cedars restaurant, and the business district, out to the Diamonds Motel. Down South is just across from the hardware store where I happened to be at lunchtime and dropped in and ordered gumbo and a veggie burger (it's too hot to eat fried meats) and fries (it's never too hot to eat fries, though) and pecan pie with a dot of whipped cream. Also on the menu, red beans and rice and fried crawfish. The veggie burger was a good one and the gumbo 'most as good as mine.

I said, "You ladies look so happy I would like to take your picture," and one lady said, "Course we look happy. Everybody's happy when they're feedin' their faces." When they left I said bon voyage. The cafe's concave walls are decorated with the absolutely required car and gasoline signs and mementoes; painted on one wall, a stylized map of Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles, with a yellow star for "You are Here" at the center of the universe, Pacific, MO. And there is nothing in the universe better than lunch with a cup of coffee, and, in the summer, ice water or sweet tea in red plastic tumblers.

A Wal-Mart Weekend

Drove to Bentonville, Arkansas, original home of Wal-Mart, and ended up Saturday morning with the locals at the farmer's market on the quaint and very green main square in the town center, with its two-story monument to soldiers of the Confederacy. There was kohlrabi and chard aplenty, and buckwheat crepes, and musical entertainment provided by a hot duo called The Tin Pan Alley Cats (a cover of "Your Cheatin' Heart" that would do Hank Senior proud). But the big draw for all the out-of-state cars was the place pictured above, on Main and Central, the original Sam Walton five-and-dime store, seed for all the Wal-Marts that have taken over the planet since. People make "pilgrimages" to this place, honest Injun, and Wal-Mart is working on a Wal-Mart Museum and a high-end art museum that will bring the longhairs to town as well. I myself am a big fan of peopleofwalmart.com.

My friend Reeve, after showing me downtown Bentonville, also took me to my very first Sam's Club. I'd never been to a Sam's Club; it makes no sense for one person to buy a membership and purchase in such obscene bulk as you can buy at Sam's Club, but this place was the size of four football fields and stacked to the ceiling with everything except "Soul Seasoning" in the spice section, which I use to season my greens. They just did not carry it. I was AMAZED that purchased items are not bagged and that you must hand the cash-register receipt to a person at the exit who checks your items against your receipt before he lets you go. I mean, you wait in LINE to get OUT of the store. It was so very East Berlin! Those Sam's Club workers were earning their money. The way the place was set up so diabolically clever, that everywhere you looked, you suddenly felt you NEEDED an above-ground pool, huge bags of dog food, gallons of shampoo: Reeve bought $87 worth of cheese in huge bricks you could build a house with. Why, my jaw hit the floor right there.

Open House

The kitchen door and screen here aren't flush with the doorjamb. Underneath and through those doors have slunk and marched and flown all sorts of creatures, right into my house like they owned the place. In October, spiders creep in to take refuge for the winter. I once had a Halloween dinner for family and it was as if I had ordered spiders to walk across the room every minute as a party favor.

Mouse settled in and stashed an ounce or two of cracked corn in the toe of a boot I don't often wear. That same year a mouse (the same frugal mouse?) made a silo in the ring-binding of my Betty Crocker cookbook. During a really hard winter when all food is secured against mice, they scratch at and eat my Ivory soap. In the pantry closet, just last month, a mouse chewed a stack of 250 table napkins to shreds and built a fabulous nest of them.

Wasps buzz indoors and sleep or build nests all winter up in a window frame. I found one who drowned in a jar of honey (I'd lost the cap and topped it with saran wrap and a rubber band; the wasp broke its way through). They sleep all winter in window frames, and in spring wake up trapped behind the plastic window insulation. The question is, how do I free them and direct them out of the house without getting stung? (I'd squash them, but they get really aggressive when I try!!)

During the drought of 2006, a lizard in search of water came in beneath the door and spent two weeks residing in the laundry room. I grew fond of him and named him Harrison.

Moths flutter in starting in August, planning to eat my clothes and blankets, and I chase 'em but rarely catch 'em. Once, though, I was boiling some sugar water for hummingbird nectar, and a moth flew right into it and boiled to death. I said to it, "What were you thinking?"

Woke up on a very rainy night, and there in the bathroom was a foot-long blacksnake in who probably came in under the kitchen door so he/she would not be drowned. Night crawlers, plain earthworms, fuzzy caterpillars and large centipedes do this also. These I pick up and throw outside.

Every year a "walking stick" comes and hangs on the screen door at eye level. Clearly he wants my attention. I tell him thanks, but he's not my type. Then he changes his color, comes back and looks hopeful: "Is this more your type?"

Somebody cut the kitchen door wrong long ago -- looks as if it was done with a handsaw -- just about a half-inch too high, and curved -- and it can't be fixed.