Another Parker picture.

Went to the main meeting at church, then bugged out and drove to Santa Cruz an hour away where Richard’s cousin was baptizing his son.

In the Mormon Church this is done at age eight. That is when children are beginning to really get the concepts of right and wrong for themselves and to understand cause and effect in their behavior, to be able to actively choose how they’ll react. Beginning to. We spend our whole lives from there on out working on that.

And so we call it the “age of accountability,” with baptism opening the way for repentance and a return to joy when we mess up, surrounded by people who know that we all make mistakes and that it’s okay to be human; just keep trying to be a better person. The habit begins of turning to Christ again and again to see us through by His patience, that we may learn to live His example of unshakable love.

We’re all in it together.

Okay, so that’s the background. What we did not know was that Jonathan’s brother and two sisters were coming, too, as well as Aunt Mary Lynn and Uncle Nate, and some of Jonathan’s in-laws with their little ones. People we love but seldom get to see.

We had a grand reunion. We got to meet babies we hadn’t seen, to exclaim like old people over how much the kids had grown. Alexander is ten? How did that happen!

They served an early dinner; there was at least one plane to catch. We were done there in time to get back up here and meet Marguerite’s future son-in-law. There was our second chocolate torte of the day, gee, how did that happen.

Her daughter’s fiance grew up in a ward in Boston where my cousin Grant was bishop, and so we had an instant connection there.

Friends showed up whom we hadn’t seen in ages and, again, hadn’t expected to.

I’m not sure how one day grabbed so much joy all in itself, but I’m selfishly asking for more like that.

(Oh, and the other part of that post in the link? I asked tonight, wanting it to be just right for her. Red, she answered, delighted. And so the next project shall happily be.)