sister “how bout if I give you a cookie?”
brother “where would you get this fabled cookie?”
sister “I know where there are cookies.”
brother “the Oreos in the kitchen don’t count.”
sister “I know of better cookies in the kitchen.”
brother “you do?”
sister brings a bag of tempting Pepperidge Farm large super chunk soft cookies and waves them in the air.
brother “I can get those on my own.”
sister “what if I hide them?”
brother “well, I didn’t want a cookie anyway.”
sister “I might throw your video camera in the lake.”
brother “then you’ll buy me a new one.”
sister “bah … you’re not even threatened by my empty threats.”
“maybe I’ll beg.”
And it’s been a long time coming.
Back in 1999 my brother and his (then girlfriend, now) wife took a year off and traveled around the world. They left from Boston and went to Portugal and from Portugal they flew to South Africa. Then they hitched their way up the dark continent and through the middle east over the Himalayas and through Tibet. When they got to Thailand (I think) they stopped for a while and rested. Then they went on and spent about a month in New Zealand. It was back in Thailand that my brother proposed. The next day they got word that my sister-in-law’s father had had a devastating stroke. They flew home immediately.
He has not been the same since. He was never able to walk or talk again. He was a brilliant man and a scientist at the end of a bright career which was not yet over. He has required help dressing, and standing and eating and everything from that day to this. Now he can no longer swallow. And there is no help for that. He’s been battling a serious case of pneumonia for ten days and without real food the pneumonia seems to be winning.
Please pray for my sister-in-law and her mother and siblings. Their minister is present and assisting with these end of life decisions. But grief and sadness are imminent. Please pray that they will be comforted as they make these decisions and eased as they walk this road. That they will know the peace that passes all understanding as their father and husband goes home to know his Savior.
For some reason these threats cause me to laugh uncontrollably …
“Shut your mouth, or I’ll kick you so hard you’ll be wearing your ass for a hat.”
and
“If you don’t do XXX, I rip your arm off and beat you with the wet end.”
They just make me giggle in the beginning because of their unreasonableness and then laugh out loud because I imagine a cartoon of actualness and the silliness begins to escalate in my head.
The wearing of an ass for a hat has been causing me no end of laughter for weeks now. Whether a human behind or a donkey, it matters not. I just laugh and laugh and laugh.
Most threats have the end result of making me laugh … because there is very little that most people can do to enforce the threat, other than wishful thinking. So I end up laughing. It usually gets me in trouble.
The kids study history in sequential fashion and I supplement their curriculum with packets from Jackdaws. Jackdaws are replicas of original documents from a particular period in history that are orginized around a particular subject. Right now J is working his way through a packet called California Gold Rush and is about the gold rush of 1848-1849. Today he asked to go outside and play, I responded by asking him, “How’s your gold mining going?” refering to his studies of the gold rush.
He replied, “My nose is clear, thank you. Now can I go outside?”
We all fell out laughing …
