How is it October, and when did the year start moving so fast? I doesn’t seem possible that February’s snow storm was eight months ago. Ava wasn’t even close to walking and had to sit grumpily in the wagon while her brother and sister threw snowballs. Come to think of it, Ava has only been tottering around for a few months, but yet it seems as if she has been walking for forever. Time is a series of contradictions.
We jumped into the first weekend of October with our annual trip to the pumpkin farm. It was way too crowded and the fun was overshadowed by David’s queasy stomach, but he was feeling significantly better by the time we left the farm and drove up to Amicalola Falls. It was an enjoyable day, but there was something very funky about it. At every turn, there was an obstacle…like there was an outside force working to break up the harmony of the weekend. That feeling came to a head when Dad and Natalie had a motorcycle accident while coming down Highway 60 out of Suches. They were okay minus some nasty road rash and a few stitches, but it was the final (most dramatic) event in a long series of strange occurrences. When the sun went down Sunday evening, however, I walked around in my driveway and felt a wave of peace and contentment. The air was crisp and still, and for a brief moment, time seemed to freeze. The sun hung on bravely for a few more seconds before it slipped quietly below the horizon. There was no wind and no birdsong. I was the only person in the world, and I felt nothing except a oneness with nature. Those moments used to occur so frequently for me, but now they are a rare gift. I went back into the house feeling refreshed and renewed. I’m so thankful for the quality time spent with my wonderful family, and I’m even more thankful for God’s protective hand on my Dad and Natalie.
The girls were baptized that Sunday, and while I had mixed feelings on the subject, I couldn’t deny that they looked positively angelic in their poofy white dresses. Johnathan and I come from opposite ends of the Christian spectrum. He was raised in the Catholic church, and I’m the daughter of a Baptist minister. One denomination baptizes infants and sees it as the beginning of salvation. The other denomination feels that salvation should come first…and then baptism after salvation (to represent our old life being buried and raised anew in Christ). In the end, we decided to meet in the middle and have the girls baptized in the Lutheran church. I will certainly not object if my children express a desire to be baptized again once they’re older and make a decision to follow Christ. When I told David and Emily as much, Emily looked up at me with large, solemn eyes and earnestly said, “I want to follow Him.” It was so plain and so simple, and something about her statement made me feel unexplainably sad. I suppose I was frustrated by my lack of preparedness for her statement. I couldn’t find any words to say, so I just smiled at her and tried not to cry. We’re taught about the “faith of a child”, but yet I have a hard time believing that my child knows enough about Jesus to know what she means when she says, “I want to follow.” But yet there are things that she probably sees more clearly than I do…things that I have forgotten how to see. Our own faith gets clouded by life, but Emily is still at the point where there are no doubts…nothing but the idea of this wonderful person named Jesus…someone she thinks sounds worth knowing more about.
This week is passing so slowly, and I’m beginning to feel the end-of-the-year blahs. I love fall and pretty much everything about it, but I dread the cold weather that will inevitably follow. My dread of cold is probably worse than the cold itself, so I suppose I should focus on the happy aspects of winter. Like piles of blankets, cheerful fires, and the reassuring click and hum of the furnace. Oh! And most importantly, the much-needed extra hour of sleep that occurs at the end of day-light savings time. Mentioning sleep deprivation reminds me that these days, I almost always find myself stuck somewhere between laughter and tears.
On Saturday, we got up bright and early so that we would make it to the fair during the hour block of free admission. We decided to walk around the heritage village in the hopes that some of the ride lines would thin out. We wandered through the petting zoo and let David and Emily feed the goats. Then we stopped to look at the cotton gin, and Emily got a handful of fluffy cotton from the man running the machine. While Emily enthused over her treasure, David paced back and forth in front of the steam engine shed and pointed out his favorite aspects for each one. We crossed the bridge over the creek and entered the Indian village. We spent the longest amount of time in this area, listening to natives speak in the council house and then walking through booths lined with beadwork, jewelry and woven goods. When I opened the door to the “smoke house”, I screamed and jumped back. I large black snake had slithered quickly across the entrance. Mom’s husband came forward to look for himself and I saw the snake move across again…. But this time I saw the head and realized that it was rubber. David, however, ran shrieking to my Mom and tried to scramble up her as if she were a tree. He was borderline hysterical, but all I could do was laugh…with more relief than amusement. I suppose the workers get bored and need a bit of entertainment now and then. The prankster came out and talked to us for a bit, and I almost forgave him for his fun at my expense. Almost. From that point, we hit the fair in earnest and started riding rides. The first ride was the carousel. Emily and David rode horses that were side by side, and Johnathan and I stood on either side of them and endured. I couldn’t see David very well, but Emily’s face glowed happily the whole time the ride was in motion and by the end, I found myself laughing and smiling with her. The older two rode several things by themselves, and we finally limped home shortly before three o’clock. Emily shut her fingers in the car door, but thankfully, didn’t actually hurt anything. The baby tried to follow David and Emily out into the fenced portion of the yard and they wound up shutting the baby’s foot in the door. I threw down the laundry I had been folding and raced in the kitchen to see Ava lying on her back with her poor little foot stuck, stuck, stuck. David was already looking horrified, and Emily quickly said, “David did it.” Poor David. I’m afraid I was rather hard on him, but obliviousness is one of his biggest problems. When I went storming through the house to deliver a similar angry speech to Emily, she was standing on top of her toy box (in the closet) and was hidden behind our coats. You would think that she was trembling in the face of her mother’s rage, but no… When I pulled the coats back, I saw a happy little face grinning through at me. Later on, I was playing hide and seek with the kids and marveling over Emily’s knack for hiding. I had searched for her everywhere and finally found her curled up in the storage cabinet that we use as a pantry. She had climbed up on the second shelf and was lying on top of the canned goods. How she managed this without knocking all the cans out, I will never know. David and I worked on his scrapbook for Boy Scouts, and I decided that we make a pretty good team when it comes to projects like that. When I talked to my Dad later that evening and he asked how my day had been, I thought of every crazy, frustrating, exciting, laughable event and informed him that it had been a regular day.
This week is finally drawing to a close. David has his first parent-teacher conference of the year tonight, and I’m annoyed with myself for feeling nervous. Why should I be nervous? David has early release tomorrow, so I took off work so that we could head down to Guyton earlier than normal. It’s going to be a gorgeous, blustery day with plenty of sunshine. It will be great weather for David’s “Fun Run” at school tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to sleeping an hour later tomorrow, and I’m already feeling less stressed simply knowing that I have several more hours to pack and get ready to leave. I think the next few days will be pleasant ones. And even though I have to come back to work on Monday, it’s only five more weeks until Thanksgiving! I have four holidays between now and the end of the year, and I also have three unused vacation days to space out over the course of eight weeks. I think I can handle that. (smile)
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