We just finished lunch.
I usually have a salad…others have leftovers…some want a sandwich.
Even with a sandwich there is variety.
Peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese, tuna fish, chicken salad.

When a child eats a sandwich, very often they will remove the crusts from the bread.
Some like their sandwiches cut right down the middle…some like them cut diagonally.
When my youngest was a toddler, she liked her sandwich cut into four triangles.
However you make them…or eat them…the sandwich is a staple of our diet.

But it also is a phase of life!

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Almost twenty years ago, we took a vacation to Florida.
We have been to Florida since then…but this trip was different.
On this trip…we drove!
Imagine…

We only had four children at the time, under the age of nine.
Our youngest was about 18 months.

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She was born in a heat wave.
It was the summer of the centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty.
My second child…due the day before my birthday, but born eleven days early.
Ready to meet the world.

Look at her hands…Look at her long fingers…
The first thing my husband said after seeing his second child…his second daughter.
Those hands would reach out to many in love and compassion.
Those long fingers would one day masterfully play the violin.

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When my husband was sixteen years old, he worked for the YCC.
The Youth Conservation Corps.
He was away for the entire summer after our sophomore year of high school.
He worked in the Gettysburg National Park.
He rebuilt the post and rail fences, painted barns, restored the peach tree orchard.
I like the fact that when people walk around the battlefield, they are seeing things that were rebuilt, painted, and restored by my husband and others, all those years ago.

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My husband can truly fix anything.
He has an engineering degree and a Masters in business administration.
But at the core of this man is a woodworker and a repair man.

I don’t say that lightly.
I am terribly spoiled.
In thirty years of marriage, I can count on one hand the times we have had to hire someone to repair something for us.

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There it was.
I found it at the dollar store near the flower stems and the artificial fruit and vegetables.

I had been looking for this for quite a while.
It was for my oldest daughter.

…an onion.

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We have all done it. We are annoyed at someone in our family…we are speaking our mind…our tone is not pleasant…we are mad about something that seems terribly important at the moment…then the phone rings.

Suddenly, from some reservoir within us, niceties spring forth…tones become sweeter.
The caller has no idea of what has just transpired seconds before.

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I remember watching my (then) three year old daughter approach the box.

She has done this a thousand times before. She will transform her world countless times and be everything from a princess to a Mommy just by reaching inside. She opens the lid and out comes the perfect hat, the old high heel shoes, the fancy gloves.

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I was in my own little world as I walked through the store. It was one of those wool gathering days and browsing seemed to fit perfectly into that rhythm.

I passed a young woman I thought I had recognized. We looked at each other and realized that we had met in a Bible study years ago. She was pushing a stroller with her young child inside. We engaged in small talk and tried to catch up. I had never met her little girl…who was trying desperately to get out and explore the racks of clothes…the perfect hiding spot.

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