A year ago September, my in-laws moved out of their house of over 50 years to be near one of their children. Shortly thereafter, the doctors told them: it was back.
And so we are taking turns visiting the folks, who both feel a lot better than that medical chart suggests. Our daughter Michelle arrived there today to help cook Thursday’s dinner. We got home last night after six days’ visit.
And thus my mother-in-law’s mention that she hadn’t seen me knitting. I’d brought plenty to do, but found I wanted to spend all the time I could without even that interruption. I didn’t need to do; I needed most of all simply to be present.
Thus the chance to meet Lynn, who lives near them all.
And thus, just because the Universe wanted to leaven things up a little… That happened to be one of the two weekends a year that they hold Stake Conference in that part of Texas, ie when a group of wards (congregations) all get together for a big joint meeting.
Which is a good thing because he’s not in their ward and we would never have seen him otherwise.
We sat near the front so I could hear better. And sitting back behind quite a few heads, Keith thought that that tall guy looked a lot like his friends’ dad from back home in California.
The meeting ended. We stood up and when it was our turn, started down the aisle to go.
At the other end of that aisle, a young man suddenly caught my eye and he gasped, his jaw hit the floor, and he stood there wide-eyed mid-stride and speechless.
I remember Sue, his mom, plunking her toddler boy down on the kitchen counter while we worked and talked, I a young mom who had just moved into the area from New Hampshire, she, a young mom who had moved from Boston several years before that. We watched her little boy, her youngest, grow up. Off to college, then on a mission for the Mormon Church, and back to school, then recently graduated.
And now Richard and I got to see him in his own element, his new friends there, his own place being just down the street from where we were standing there in total mutual disbelief and then laughing and hugging and what are YOU doing here! and and and.
In his first job. He’d come visit at Christmas though, he promised me. It felt different when he said that: he wouldn’t be a student returning home on break but a good man deciding to go visit his folks. Always a good thing.
Sue–it was a privilege. You’ve done a great job.
And somewhere, God chuckled.