Note: For my regular chapter-a-day subscribers, please note that Wendy and I are out for a few days and I’ll continue our trek through Amos when I return.
Where does the time go? Here it is, late October and I still haven’t posted about the summer that was summer 2023. As I went through photos and pondered the memories, there is a part of me that recognizes the familiar cadence our lives have become. That said, I embrace the cadence. Life always offers new events, new surprises, as well as moments we have tried long to avoid. When you are blessed to enjoy life that moves along with a cadence of love, good family, good friends, and well-established traditions and routines, those difficult moments melt into the love and goodness. So, here’s to the cadence.
Summer beings with Memorial Day weekend at the lake with the Pella VLs. When the cadence began, their oldest was a wee one. The Playhouse has always been a thin place for healing, life-changes, and rites of passage. That wee one whose first visit was in the single-wide, seventy-feet of Ozark glory, is catching fish and experiencing his first stogie with the boys. Of course, the cadence also includes scoring the Cubs game on the deck listening to the call by Pat and Ron. It includes good books you should have read years ago. It includes “the puddle effect” of the lake and movies together as shared experience.
In ways, the Playhouse is the cadence of the summer for Wendy and me. After Memorial Day there is the annual weekend with Kev & Beck. The cadence has almost always included family, though that was interrupted in recent years by my mother’s descent into the oblivion of Alzheimers and my father’s loving and dutiful care for her. With mom’s passing and memorial service on St. Patrick’s Day this year, my sister and I enjoyed taking dad to the lake for the first time in a few years.
Life’s cadence also requires maintenance (dang it!), and this summer it was replacement of the Playhouse patio door with a new Pella (of course) slider. A tear in the chill-mat also required me to channel my 8th grade Home Ec sewing skills (thank you, Mrs. Dykema!) to repair and keep us and our guests “chillin'” for another summer or two. And, life didn’t stop back in Pella where Wendy and enjoyed the annual Pella Opera House Gala and the Red Rock Balloon Fest which sent many hot air balloons right over our house.
For Wendy and me, the cadence of summer is always synonymous with America’s pastime. While we got to far too few baseball games (though I snuck in a Columbia, SC Fireflies game with MK & G!) we enjoyed cheering on our friend, Nathan, and the Pella baseball team. I even got to be the PA Announcer for a couple of games, which was a real treat!
Speaking of the South Carolina crew, they also joined us for Fourth of July at the Playhouse. Our Rottie “grand-pups,” Bertha and Hazel, brought news of our third grandchild, due in late January. Madison utilized G’s high school football team to help celebrate gender reveal. A wee granddaughter is on the way!
Speaking of wee ones, Milo and Sylvie have continued to flourish in Scotland. As I reviewed the summer photo cache, it was definitely the “Summer of Sylvie” as the second-born commanded the attention and refused to be overshadowed by her older brother. She took her first steps and her folks appear determined to celebrate child #2 with all the media vigor commanded by child #1. Milo has become a young math whiz. Papa and Yaya are ecstatic about having the crew back in Pella this Christmas.
The cadence of life is punctuated with significant life events. Mom’s passing was followed by the burial of her ashes this summer. My dad, my sibs, and a small gathering of family had a private and personal memorial. We shared memories, laughter, and tears. We then shared a meal together. It was a small affair, but I could feel mom smiling on the other side of the veil. Dad continues the transition to Pella, but his stained-glass work (another Iowa State Fair ribbon this year) has been celebrated. He was commissioned to do a window for a new house in Pella as well as being commissioned to replicate the prayer bench he made for me years ago. He was “Artist of the Month” at Pella Manor. My sister and I joined his presentation to the fellow residents.
Of course, it’s all about friends and family isn’t it? Wendy and loved hosting family and friends through the summer, as well as enjoying gatherings with Community and loved ones. That included visits of cousins from Colorado and the weekly cadence of Sunday nights with friends to watch classics both old and new. We enjoyed potluck with our local gathering of Jesus’ followers, including young Asher who has become a surrogate grandchild. We enoyed taking mom Hall to Butcher’s Brewhuis in Pella, where she and Wendy lived when it was an apartment, back in the day. In addition, the Pella VLs opened their pool this summer. This means that Wendy and I can increasingly be found down the street in the summer where the water is cool and the fellowship is warm.
August brought the realities of age to the cadence of summer. Wendy had surgery to address join issues in a pinky and joints on two toes. The cadence of summer then ended, as usual on Labor Day weekend for us. For many years, it has been an “adult weekend” with with JPs and Pella VLs. This year, we enjoyed adding the Lubachs to celebrate summer’s end. A boat-trip for dinner ended with being towed home by good Samaritans. A ten-year-old “what happened to the iPad?” mystery was finally solved when a casual tap on the bottom of a chair revealed that the iPad had slipped beneath the cushion and the springs, requiring a forensic cut from beneath the chair to rescue the (now obsolete) iPad. A mystery solved! A happy ending to summer! And now, the cadence of autumn calls.
Wayfarer 