The Words Of My Mother

Spin Cycle at Second Blooming

The first time I talked to my husband-to-be on the phone, he talked for an hour. You could say that he was very wordy. He will deny it, but he did most of the talking. After we hung up, I realized that all my nervousness about what to say had evaporated, and we’ve been talking together ever since that first phone call. When we were dating, we had our favorite bar we would hang out at to have a beer and talk for hours. As newlyweds, we loved to sit on the balcony at our condo and chat all evening. Now we talk at the kitchen table when the kids are asleep.

You could also say my father is very wordy. We always let him know when he preaches a sermon that is perhaps too long–too wordy! In preparation for his sermons I have seen him with piles on books on his desk. Bibles in English, Greek, Hebrew, German…and dictionaries for each of those languages. Now that’s a lot of words! Sometimes he would talk through his ideas for sermons at the dinner table; I believe listening to him is how I learned to write a decent post or two.

I love talking with my husband and my father. There are times, however, when the only words I want to hear are from my mother. There are so many questions I still have to ask her; so much advice I still want to receive. Even though when she was still alive, there were times when I didn’t want to listen to my mother.

As I was talking to my dad the other day, he started off by saying “Your mother would tell you…”

If there is anyone who knows exactly what my mom would say, it is my dad. Just those five words–“Your mother would tell you…”

I am without words to tell you how comforting those five words are to me.

This post is double-dipped for Spin Cycle…with last week’s prompt of “Words” and this week’s prompt of “Mother”! Stop by Gretchen’s Second Blooming for more great words.

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Apple Picking

My kitchen smells like apples, and this time the scent isn’t coming from the hot apple pie candle on my stove.

Columbus Day is one of those strange holidays; the girls and I had no school, and yet Ed had to go to work. So we decided to have a girls’ day out. Where to go on a beautiful fall day? Why, the apple orchard, of course! I have one and a half pecks of apples in my kitchen as a result.

Emmy is too busy to stay still for a picture!

Going to the apple orchard is not just about picking apples anymore. There are slides and rides and animals to feed. We also spent time wandering around in a gigantic corn maze, carved right into the corn field.

Wait, where are we??

Running around haystacks

These haystacks remind me of the ones Claude Monet painted. I was about to look in my art books to see if I could find some photos of his haystacks, but then remembered I lost them all in my flooded basement this summer. *sigh*

Claude Monet, Meules, milieu du jour
[Haystacks, midday]
Apple cheeseburger for lunch…yum!

After lunch, we finally headed for the main attraction: the apple orchard! We got onto a wagon for a ride, and walked along the aisles of apples trees, picking and eating apples to our hearts’ content. (Our guide told us we were required to eat apples!)

Apples!

Before we left the orchard, there was one last thing the girls wanted to do: ride the cow train. Fortunately, Lily and Emmy are old enough to ride by themselves. I was not required to squeeze into a barrel cow, with my knees up to my chin, holding a child on my lap, as some unfortunate mamas and daddys.

Emmy riding Susie Q and Lily riding Jelly Bean.

Hooray for apple picking!

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