Current Events

It’s a gorgeous sunny Saturday, and all are busy at work or play, I myself reading upstairs in my room. Knowing all of our vehicles are present and accounted for, I am surprised at the sound of a car approaching. Glancing out the large front window of the second floor, I watch as two men stop their car – not able to go any further, as our truck is oddly parked perpendicularly across the driveway - exit the car, and approach our house. I recognize one of the persons as an elder son in a large family we know, but thinking that there must be others downstairs to greet them, I return to my room and resume my studies. Little did I realize what was occurring below me.

Downstairs the doorbell rings. My mother and sister, Lillian, are at dining room table eating. My sister, frustrated with the carelessness with which our younger siblings have been ringing the doorbell lately, places her hands on her hips, and donning the ugliest possible facial expression, stomps over to the door. Her anger accumulates as she grabs the door handle, flings the door open, and loudly slams it against the adjoining wall. With her eyes closed in intense fury, she begins to punch her fist high in the air and point in no general direction at all, and with her face fiery red, begins to scream. “You got to learnnn…!!!!!!!!!!!!!”………….

Then, opening her eyes, she glances up to see two bewildered men standing in front of her with their jaws dropped open in total amazement. Suddenly, Lillian, overcome with a feeling of paralysis, manages to stutter, “uhhh, welllllll ehhhh soooooo uhhhhhh pleeeease ohhhhhh meeeee mmmmmyyyyyy commee innn uhhhhhhh oohhhhhhhh”???????? (My sister, later accounted to me, that during this entire episode, our mother continued to calmly eat her sandwich as she looked on). As the men entered the house, still bewildered and possessing frowns on their faces possibly due to this recent experience, they follow my sister who leads them into the dining room to our mother. As my mother greets them, she calmly explains, “Lillian is a little upset with the baby’s recent doorbell ringing”. By now the other unidentified man has been recognized as being the pastor of a church we had visited. And Lillian, figuring that both these men must now consider her to have serious mental problems, retreats to her bedroom upstairs where she collapses in a chair and enjoys a good long laugh.

Meanwhile, as the men are talking with my mom, they are suddenly interrupted as another sister, Grace, enters the dining room. She had been busy removing the tags on our new deck furniture, the whole while singing as loud as possible to her hearts content. As she opens the back door which leads into the dining room, she stops in her tracks. Startled at the sight of two tall men standing in front of her, who now look more bewildered than ever, she chokes a vocalization and gives a strangled cry, darting past them she runs up the stairs - passing another sister, Amanda, age four, who is repeatedly yelling “I’m going to wear my new swimsuit! OK”? Grace, stopping shortly to try to warn her about what lays ahead, gives up in despair and continues her trek upstairs to join Lillian in her laughing fest. Even though neither of them knows what the other one thinks is so funny.

Thus ended another normal day at our house, with all returning to their particular jobs at work or play, and we continue to live on. - Conrad