Sunday Visits

Well, we're off and running on another week, as they say. I thought about using “another day, another dollar”.....then I realized that doesn't exactly apply when you're unemployed!

I'm so grateful for this break in the weather. I just feel so much more relaxed when I can go outside and not brace myself against the cold. We're losing quite a bit of our snow in the yard today. The streets melted off the end of last week.

We had a really quiet weekend We were both fine with that. It's amazing how complacent I've become with age. As a kid, a quiet weekend would have made me really antsy.

By the time I was ten, both of my older cousins on Dad's side of the family were married. It wasn't unusual for one or both of them and their families to stop by our house on Sunday afternoons. I enjoyed their visits, it was fun for me to finally have other females in the family. And when their babies came along, that was great entertainment.

The older cousin moved his family to Excelsior Springs, but they came home every weekend. And on Sunday evening, they always stopped by our house on their way back. Those were good visits. The winter their older daughter was two, Dad kept water in the stock tank all winter as an ice supply. When we had our Sunday evening company, Dad would take the ax and chop some of that ice, and we would make a freezer of ice cream. Their little girl was very disappointed when spring came and there was no more ice. She liked her ice cream.

When I was 12, Mom's parents moved back to Norborne from Jefferson City. Grandad had surgery and would no longer be able to work. So they knew it was time for them to get back among family. Once they got back, we fell into the routine of going to their house every other Sunday. That routine continued until Grandma had to move into the nursing home in 1991.

It was a balancing act of sorts for us. We went to a little country church that only had church services two Sundays a month – the other Sundays there was just Sunday School. So it was on those days we didn't have church that we would leave from Sunday School and head straight to Grandma's. It wasn't a very long drive through the country. Grandma always had lunch started by the time we got there, and it always smelled yummy.

Mom would take food as well, and if my aunt and uncle showed up, there was just that much more food. There are a lot of memorable visits during those Sunday afternoons, a lot of love and laughter. Grandma always washed her hair when we visited so Mom could set her hair in pin curls. Grandma always had a tube of VO5 for her hair. One Sunday it was missing. No one could figure out what could have happened to it.

I don't know how long it took Grandma to find that VO5......but when she found it, it was laying in a metal ice tray in her oven. That was when we all finally remembered that the previous time Mom was doing Grandma's hair, my cousin's little girl (who was just 3 or 4 at the time) had been playing in the kitchen while the rest of us talked. Obviously, we were so caught up in conversation that no one was watching her very well.

Those spontaneous Sunday visits were such fun. But I think they're a thing of the past for a lot of people. I wouldn't dream of just dropping in on someone without calling first. And that includes my Mom – not so much to make sure it's convenient for her as to make sure she's home. Finding her isn't always easy.