Nancy

Head

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” G.K. Chesterton

One year, between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I had the blessing of being sick. Good timing — after Christmas, when there’s time for not doing much.

Wednesday: A granddaughter was sick along with me. Two bad cases of winter yuck: coughing and head stuff. We each claimed a couch and a blanket. Since she is the other Rod Serling fan in the family, I put in a DVD of Twilight Zone episodes. Black and white images flickered in the glow of a wood fire and a lit tree.

We found a twilight of wonder with Serling voicing over our dreams.

Thursday: Still sick, but in solitude, I wanted to stitch away some time to finish restoring a quilt. If I finished it (and applied some Lysol), two granddaughters could dream underneath it for our annual New Year’s overnight.

As I sewed, I searched for some background diversion. Flipping channels, I found two-inch deep television. I settled on Netflix and discovered The Little Prince.

It’s a story within a story. An eccentric neighbor relates The Little Prince to a young girl. Her life is consumed with the essentials of preparing for adulthood, her mother having mapped out every waking moment. No time for dreaming. No time for wonder. Only enterprise, but without the vision of wonder.

“What do you need?” my husband asked the director of a local food pantry during the holidays one year. The two had just met ‘by chance’.

A big smile spread across Bob’s face. “Nothing.”

Then he outlined a story about a great need the pantry staff had faced the week before. For years, a local company donated $2,000 worth of turkeys every Christmas. But the company was now gone, replaced by a larger corporate entity.

No more turkeys.

Someone had made a donation that would have put a tiny dent in this need. But Christmas was coming fast.

Then Bob’s phone rang. A local grocer was in a panic. Someone had accidentally frozen dozens of turkeys labeled “fresh”. The company could write off the turkeys. But they could not sell them.

“When would you like us to pick them up?” Bob asked.

When I moved into my home in 1977, I salvaged an old table my father was discarding. Our family grew from four to seven around that table.

Then we shrank. When their father departed, we were six.

The years began to show on the table. One of its legs began to wobble. Without warning, it would collapse to the floor leaving all the work for the other three legs. We would laugh. But after a while, one of us found the falling leg not so funny.

When my youngest son was eight years old, he found a hammer and some very long nails and played carpenter. He reattached the errant piece, permanently joining it to the table. The repair was effective, but not pretty.

A few years later, I got a “new” dining room table—also recycled. This table was better. It expanded. And our family was expanding. I had remarried. Some of the children had grown and married and had children of their own. 

So the table could be small for everyday dinners, and it could be large for family celebrations. Plus, it was reliable–for a time. Then one of its legs turned mutinous too.

This time, my husband Paul played carpenter, and unless you peeked underneath, you didn’t know the difference.

But our family continued to expand. Eventually, even our stretched out table was too small. Our range of motion became cramped. From fork to plate, to mouth and back. We yearned for extra room for side dishes and elbows.

So last year, Paul and I bought a new table. An Amish carpenter constructed it. 

This table is even more expandable than the last one. And it’s rectangular rather than oval. Now we have room for baked corn, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, and a host of elbows. 

The table was ready just in time for Thanksgiving. 

But in order to use your furniture, you first must get it into the house.

Paul heaved and I pushed. But even in its smallest state, the table was too wide for our front door. It would have to come in through the back door. To accomplish that, we would have to hoist the table over the back rail deck. And that seemed impossible unless we could get someone else to help.

The best candidate seemed like the young man who had just moved in next door. He seemed strong and he was home.

As Providence would have it, he is a mover by trade. God had placed the perfect workman right next to us.

Fleas! They’ve lived in our house before, and in spite of the temporary presence of a dog, we concluded my husband brought them home from his recent camping trip. He was infested; the dog was not.

So, I stripped sheets from beds, powdered the house with borax, and sprayed the dog with a mild vinegar and water wash. Three of the beds weren’t made yet, but we could take care of all that after the family gathering. There would be plenty of time when we got back with some grandkids who were staying overnight so we could pick blueberries the next day.

The plan was simple. I’d make the beds. Paul could walk the dog. Bedtime would be later than usual, but not unreasonable.

Then the plan changed.

“We have a problem,” Paul said when he returned from the walk. The dog had nosed his way into a bush and got a snout full of skunk spray.

The new plan meant the dog couldn’t come into the house yet. Paul headed to the store to buy tomato juice. I still had to finish making the beds, so I recruited the two oldest grandkids. “You two watch the dog, but don’t touch him.”

They sat on the creaky porch swing. The only light from stars and the corner streetlight.

I gathered old towels, a basin of soapy water, and a bucket for the tomato juice. By the time I finished the beds, Paul was back.

The younger grandkids were upstairs getting in some bonus video game time. Paul and the older two were outside washing the dog.

I stood in between, near a window on the stairway. Laughter arose from the driveway. It seemed as though nothing had gone right that day, yet all was right that could be. A sense of peace and gratitude ran through me.

I remembered another day that hadn’t gone quite right: we were at our church picnic and the dinner had been wonderful, and one of the grandkids convinced Grandpa Paul to go on the ride that went forward, backward, and sideways.

“Remember the time Grandpa threw up at the park?” (I had told them they would always remember that day.) “You’ll always remember this day too.”

After the dog dried off and settled down, one lone granddaughter was down the hall between pink sheets with a book and a light. Quiet there already. 

Later it was quiet upstairs. But only after the game was off, an argument over who was hogging the covers, and whispers of adventures and memories.

The next day we picked 22 pounds of blueberries! It took two vehicles to carry all the grandkids and us.

We stopped for ice cream after our work and Grandpa played tag with them in the playground. He did not throw up. But may we always remember anyway.