Our Epic, Part Three

The endless line into security at Chicago/Midway finally ended after a year or two and Jenny and I slipped on our shoes and gleefully caught our plane and had an uneventful flight to Minnesota, where my sister and brother, Rebecca and Fred, picked us up.

Five of us six siblings came "home," the missing one being my oldest brother Philip who lives in Oregon, about an hour and a half away from us.

Only the youngest cousins were there, and it was cool to see a new generation take over Mom and Dad's basement and goof off together and talk and laugh. No copies of the Grandma's House Gazette were typed out, but Jenny got out her design for a robotic bug, and she and Austin, who is also 11, refined it, adding hydraulics in the knees and padded feet, that sort of thing. They want Matt the engineering student to look it over and see if it would work.

For Mom's party we kept it low-key, family only, and had a picnic in the shelter above Lake Koronis and then cake and ice cream and gifts at the house. I thought the weather was hot and oppressive but the Pennsylvania and Virginia people thought it was downright pleasant.

Mom gets more tired than she used to but is still her amazing self. Like: the other Sunday she invited guests for dinner but when she and Dad were about a mile from home, their car ran out of gas. So she took off on foot cross-country, across half a mile of soybean field, and got that dinner on.

Dad at 93 still takes care of his animals, prunes his trees, zips up and down stairs, milks the goats, and eats unspeakable healthy concoctions for breakfast, with hints of broccoli and orange peel and garlic and oatmeal, which maybe explains a few of the other activities.

We siblings did what we always do. Margaret zipped around and made lots of food, Fred told stories with long pauses, Marcus made connections, Rebecca affirmed everyone, and I thought of all the things I was hearing that would make wonderful stories but sadly are not for public consumption.

I was also convinced more than ever that the difference between writers and non-writers is not talent or the lack of it. It's whether or not they sit down and write. I have siblings who can tell stories like no one you ever heard, and they're the ones who ought to be writing them every month for the world to read, not me, and yet I do and they don't. Strange. And if I tell them this they don't believe me, and they get this patient-big-sibling look--oh that's just Dorcas, all gushy and dramatic again.

Well, I'm sure I'm right.

Oh, there were a few spouses too, Anna and Loraine and Rod and Chad, who are all amazingly patient with us Yoders and our slightly neurotic ways.

We went to church, of course, the same Beachy-Amish church I grew up in, on Sunday morning, and Jenny was impressed with the short prayers. I was impressed by all the things that never change, but then the pastor announced a prayer request for a man injured in an accident and said we can get updates by email or internet, and my mind got a violent jerk.

We took Dad to Litchfield for a chiropractor appointment and picked up a bag of goat feed at the farm supply store.

And then, carful by carful, people left and Mom looked sad. And last of all Anna took Jenny and me to St. Cloud to the bus depot.

"I'm gonna miss you," Jenny told her grandpa and grandma when we left, and she meant it.

Quote of the Day:
"How far do you live from Oklahoma City, as the tornado flies?"
--my cousin Charles, to Fred