From “Here is the church & here is the steeple” to shoveling mulch

Stained glass inside my childhood church

 Today we A) went to church and B) shoveled mulch.

 It was a grand day visiting my parents! 

 Oh, and my dear dear mama listened to me reading part of the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last November.  She actually sat patiently on the deck while I read her the Prologue and the Exciting Excerpt where Anneke met David.  Yep, my mama is the best mama in the whole world! Click here if you want to know any more about the month I wrote a novel (along with thousands of other folks around the world.)  Not that the novel has gone anywhere, except to languish on my hard drive.  

 But let’s talk church first.  Get the religious part of the blog covered first.  Mom and Dad were greeters at church today.  I grew up in the pews of the First Presbyterian Church in Yale.  I fell in love with God there.  Even though my relationship with the divine grew out of the four walls of a church and into the woods and lakes and rivers and trees and people and blogs of the Universe.  But still.  It’s good to return to the church of one’s youth.

 Where one was…isn’t this fascinating?…an elder of the church at age sixteen!  Yep, that was me.  I failed miserably at the task.  The church wanted a young person to be on the council of elders…and someone somewhere decided that I was the One.  However, I was so terribly shy that I never said six words.  It would have been too challenging to add six words to the discussion.  I sat there mute for the entire year before resigning from eldership and returning to the teenage world. 

 There’s probably not a soul in Yale that remembers that I was an elder.  That’s how invisible I was. 

My mom & dad inside the church. They are such good sports.

 After church we traipsed downstairs for coffee and blueberry muffins.  My old typing teacher was there.  I can barely remember that I had a typing class in high school, let alone who the teacher might be.  She was Mrs. Robinson.  Apparently I won some typing award.  It was a skill that followed me into the blogging world. If you can type fast you can write lots & lots of words each night and still do Other Things.  Thank you, Mrs. Robinson.

 Then I begged Mom and Dad to pose for a photo in the sanctuary.  “There are lots of my readers who want to see you.  They remember you from Florida and last year.  They ASK about you.  Please, please, please???”  So Mom and Dad agreed. 

 After church, we ate lunch and took a nap.  (Ahhh this is the Life!)  Then Mom said it was time to do the Dirty Deed.  Since I was visiting–and since they would love help in the flower beds–I was recruited (no–coerced.  no–let’s go back to the word “recruited”–) to help weed.  Mom and I would weed.  Then Dad would help shovel the mulch out of the trailer onto the flower bed.  We would help spread the lovely mulch.  

Dad was our mulch-shoveler. Mom and I were Mulch Administrators.

 We started to work.  It was 2 p.m.  We pulled out every darn weed in the bed.  And then Dad put us to work on the “Bucket Brigade”.  He filled the buckets with mulch and Mom and I spread in between the  and barberry bushes and planters with marigolds and petunias.

 At 3 p.m. we took a break, sipping sparkling mineral water.  

Yep. The Mulch Administrators.

 By 4 p.m. we were finished.  Done!  Phew…a little bit sweaty and dirty, but the project was done.

 Mom is already planning next year’s Project.  Apparently there will be a Project every time I come home now…. 

 But it was great fun working alongside my parents, so I don’t mind!