When Lizzie Smiles

The refrigerator is on the back porch...have I mentioned that?  On the other hand, it is functioning, keeping the milk cold and the cheese safe for consumption with crackers for a Sunday supper.

Ten years ago, that was not the case.  Ten years ago, we were running by Casey's at six in the morning to buy a quart of milk for breakfast. Ten years ago our hand-me-down fridge gave up its chilly ghost during the first week of May and we didn't have time to replace it.

Until May 3, when Blake bought a fridge at Lowe's in St. Joe on his way home from a plant trip and Matt came over to haul it out of the truck and into our kitchen.  Ann was there too....and Lizzie!  Lizzie wasn't around to see the fridge, but we knew she was coming the very next morning, her birthday, which is why I always remember how old our fridge is.

Lizzie!  The first child we knew by name prior to her birth. First grandchild Aaron was introduced after he arrived; Gabe and Abbie were names chosen, but not bestowed until their mom and dad met them.  But we all knew Lizzie would be Elizabeth Carol before ever we saw her, so we spoke of her in conversation like she was just out of sight, like we knew her, like she was a person we had yet to meet at the airport, the train station, the bus stop....

And there she was!  Sleepy and soft wearing a pink headband.  I remember texting Kenzie that she was a beautiful baby girl.

Baby Lizzie had big blue eyes and an infectious toothless grin....

.And she has kept that inviting and captivating smile through these ten years, toothless or tooth-ful, braced or un-braced.

..

Love you, Lizzie!  Wishing you so many more smiles and excitement and happiness for this birthday and more to come!

How Do I Love Thee? Not a Sonnet

'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...'

Despite the self evidence of true love at any Diamond Anniversary celebration, a recitation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet would have sounded more than a little out of place at Millie and Charlie's party at the Tarkio Community Building this past weekend.   'I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach'.....comes off as kind of high falutin' in a venue with Swing Era tunes as background music on one end of the hall and tin pans of pork loin, beans, and potato salad arrayed on the long tables at the other.

But the idea of counting, of accumulation, of tallying the riches of a life like Scrooge McDuck in his money house, is tempting.  And so, with credit given to everyone in our family who contributed to this wealth of detail and mingling of fact and fancy, here are some of the highlights of sixty years of marriage.  If you don't agree, then stay married for sixty years and make up your own!

Number 1 is the story, and it begins with 2 people who fell in love and, over time, had 3 kids.  Those three kids gave them 10 grandchildren and 11 great children with another on the way.  Numbers to thrill the heart, but still, pretty universal measures of happiness.

But other associations are more idiosyncratic and personal.  For example, Millie loves chickens and over time, her 4 chickens grew to a flock of 60.  Charlie's  Minneapolis Moline 670 loader tractor was part of farm life for most of the twentieth century.  When Millie ran over a big deer two or three weeks ago, she claimed her tally for animal/automobile fatalities increased to 5 dogs and 3 deer (8).   Both Josh and his Grandpa Charlie share the number 15 for their birthdays and this November will mark the 16th time the two of them will have voted for President.  It takes 17 eggs, according to Grandma Nelson's recipe to create an angel food cake....and at least 19 annoying vacuum cleaner salesmen have dropped by over the years to eat sandwiches, ruin a recliner, and stay for hours and hours for the company!

If you call Millie and Charlie at home, you are likely to be the the 28th message waiting on their answering machine. And that's because there are an estimated 32 hearing aid batteries lost during the course of a month. During the course of a summer, Millie puts up at least 25 gallons of sweet and crunchy green lime pickles and if we're lucky, the family picks, shucks, cuts and freezes 24 bushels of sweet corn.

We save the truly big numbers for matters of significance and worth.  Millie checks on her family members, especially the grand and great grand children an average of 40 times a week. Charlie yells at the Cardinals at least 38 times....a game, that is.  Their family has racked up a total of 33 weddings and baptisms...and 35 family members will sit around their table at Christmas time this year.

So much history, so much family.  Charlie planted his first corn crop in 1948 at the ripe old age of 14 and in 1950, Millie and Charlie started "courting".  One graduated from high school in 1952 and the other in 1953. They married in 1956, giving all of us a reason to celebrate number 60, the diamond anniversary for this great couple.

 "How do I love thee?"

Let's count the ways.

How about thousands of meals eaten in the field and hundreds of basketball, baseball, volleyball, football games, dozens of fishing trips and more floods and droughts than they care to remember.

 As the poet says: "Smiles, tears, of all my life....."

Sixty is a Serious Number

Even the most mathematically obtuse among us cannot avoid some numbers.

For instance:  April 15 when the taxman takes his pound of flesh. December 25, Christmas and December 31, New Year's, which come around every year, days of celebration, of remembering the past and anticipating the future. Independence Day, July 4, when flags fly and fireworks sparkle. These are common ground, dates and numbers impressed into our heritage and vocabulary.

Then there are personal numbers, the ones writ only on your heart, tied inextricably by some inner measure of significance: when you learned to ride a bike or caught your first fish, your first paycheck,  your first car, your first child...your last child, your anniversary.....

Anniversary.  An anniversary, unlike a birthday, is not an inevitable portion of the human condition.  It takes two to have an anniversary....and the more anniversaries accrued, the greater the sum of accommodations, compromises, deaf ears, bit tongues, comfortable silences, and unspoken understandings accumulated.

Any anniversary is an accomplishment. After one year of marriage you get to eat freeze dried cake.  What?  More leftovers? Doesn't seem like much of a reward for 365 DAYS of adaptation and transformation.  There's no way to build this thing called marriage by following a checklist or bullet points; like Johnny Cash's Lincoln, it takes years, adding one piece at a time.  And if the end result has one headlight on the left and two on the right...well, at least the thing moves.

By the time a marriage has achieved the sixty year mark, it's a classic.  I always read  articles about wedding anniversaries, especially if there is a photo included.  Doesn't matter whether the photo is a black and white a half century or more old, or a church directory picture of a pair of seasoned oldsters. Either way, these couples bring to mind Proverbs 16:31:

Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.

Grandma and Grandpa Hurst celebrated their 60th anniversary in 1987.  Their fiftieth anniversary was the first family event I attended as a soon to be Hurst: at the time, it seemed there were hundreds of folks at the Farmers and Valley bank wishing to celebrate with them, but that could be memory playing tricks on a young and anxious bride-to-be hoping not to embarrass herself immediately.  But their sixtieth anniversary was a smaller get together. Inevitable, I guess.  I took a picture that day: Grandpa in his summer light blue suit and Grandma in a jewel blue dress; they are both smiling and, I'm sure, happy to have their family around a big table with them,even if it was just the Korner Kitchen.

Some people were too little to sit at the table

And some people were more into balloons

My folks used their prerogative as honorees to move their sixtieth celebration from the 5th of June to the 4th of July, giving the family yet another reason to add significance and fireworks to an already auspicious occasion.  Needless to say, with kids and fireworks, horseshoes and rocky creeks...and at least five photographers...the event was well recorded for posterity.

This week Millie and Charlie will share their sixtieth anniversary with a crowd of friends and family. I'm not going out on a limb to say there will be stories told and noise and small children underfoot and plenty of food.  The Community Building will spill over onto the back porch and down the hill when, by special dispensation of the City of Tarkio, we shoot off fireworks down at the Rodeo Grounds.  No doubt there will be a few party crashers by that time, but Millie and Charlie have ever been generous with their hospitality.

We commemorate more than the perseverance and partnership that sustains a marriage well over a half century.  After sixty years, we celebrate being together. We take time to give thanks for what we take for granted every other day: for Joshie days with Grandma Millie when he cooks mac'n cheese and other monstrosities, for another day of harvest with Charlie and some great grandkid in the combine with him, for every Sunday my father plays in the trio at church and my mom makes him peanut butter cookies.  Every big anniversary gives us a chance to be thankful for all the little moments we don't measure.  

Let's celebrate them all!

Actually, Joe Biden is not invited.....

June is Bustin' out all Over!

Like the periodic pop of fireworks this week before Independence Day, the flowers in my garden can hardly contain themselves.  The explosion of color is almost audible; its all you can do not to put your hands over your ears to protect them from the impact.  The daylilies and coneflowers are abuzz with visitors: crawling with bees, tickled by Red Admirals and crowned with the occasional Tiger Swallowtail.  Robins bathe and groom themselves in the dripping fountain; cardinals scuffle and chase in the lilac; high above the third floor swallows ride invisible breezes around the chimney. June may be busting out all over in song, but this week before July, the garden is positively volcanic.

I feel like celebrating too!  The calendar page still says June and I've just finished planting the last front porch pots.  I've tucked cannas and fountain grass, coleus and cleome, amid the waving wands of the hemerocallis; I've carved niches for colorful annuals in the rain pounded slabs of soil in the erstwhile vegetable garden of volunteer herbs and left behind tomatoes.  Up close, the back border is still a mess of sprouts and grass, but I have surveyed the handiwork of June in the rest of the yard and now pronounce it good.....and done!  The trailer is out of the driveway; the used pots are stacked by the dirt shed; it is time to contemplate and stroll, water and take pictures, and generally appraise with satisfaction the plant kingdom from the lofty perch of our porch....

Whether June has been dry or sodden, hot or not, the end of mum planting usually coincides with the first of July. Thus does the greenhouse season move seamlessly from the roar of heaters and early mornings and counting pots and filling dirt to the more relaxed routine of walking lines, dewy toes and the background music of the pumps delivering the stream of water through the leaders to each individual plant. When we all say, 'Til February!' and drive off that last day of June to our own gardens or vacations, it is always cause to celebrate.

The calendar page turns on the boys and girls of summer on the baseball diamond.  The half pints finish the rain soaked season with double headers and freezy pops....

...and Aaron hits a home run in his last game..."without any errors", he reports. While most of the county dodges showers, the Tarkio ballfield enjoys a gloriously sunny weekend for the final State Line League tournament.  We bask in the rays and cheer the home town Cubs team onto a second place trophy. 

 For those whose avocation, not vocation, is baseball, June sets the sun on organized baseball and ushers in the season of swimming.  Red Cross swimming lessons has been part and parcel of summer for three decades of our life: from the days of bus rides from Westboro for the young swimmers to shuttling four different grandchildren to three different classes from 9 am to noon.  For many of those years and two full generations of kids, the very same teachers have given weeks of their summer to community and chlorine, coaxing reluctant small fry into the water, persuading them to dip their curly heads into a strange and scary environment, and cheering on the minor victories and accomplishments and progress to independence and self sufficiency in the water.  From swimming corners to  back dives, more reasons to celebrate fun in the sun in July.  

Speaking of July, we got a head start, a sneak preview, a warmup, for fireworks the other night when our local nursing home, Tarkio Rehab and Health Care, set off their annual fireworks display on Friday night.  Such a quintessential small town type of event, the perfect example of unselfish neighborliness for all of us free riders in our backyards.  A perfect appetizer for  both those yearning to purchase the wherewithal for family performances and those desiring the full choreographed son et lumiere of the 4th of July extravaganza.  Like Judy Collins, I've looked at the 4th from "both sides now"....and can truthfully report that the American experience of fireworks and the 4th is both wonderful and appropriate whether it's micro...or super sized.

Our family has split its Independence Days over the years between Millie and Charlie's front yard and the driveway and bin floor of Redbarn in Moniteau county.  For years, we gathered at my folks' farm  for volleyball and pork roast, music and fireworks when the current old folks were middle aged and the current moms and dads were toddlers. Often Annie blew out candles on a patriotically red, white and blue iced birthday cake; why waste a good party when your birthday barely misses the 4th? 

  Last year, we resurrected that tradition, playing audience while Aaron and Lizzie and Matt choreographed the poppers and parachutes and fountains til the dew settled and the smoke settled tight on the grass.  

This summer we have even more reason to party, gathering to measure out sixty years of celebration, dedication and devotion for my mother and father's 60th wedding anniversary. Sixty years is worthy of serious celebration; why not choose July 4th and multi-task the merriment!

Though June has been fraught with worry and weather, decisions and delays, that page is turned and July beckons...count your blessings and enjoy!

In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.

Aldo Leopold