My idea was to spend this no-church evening singing around the piano. Just the singers who wanted to sing, that is. The rest could take a hike or play board games. I didn’t care what they did. We have singers and non-singers and all the between. Anyway, we invited the family by Whatsapp before morning church.
I checked my responses after church lunch and saw that nobody had. My next text said, “Please acknowledge, please respond.” Three of our families immediately gave me a thumbs up.
I simply assume they’ll bring food. This time was one of those open-the-refrigerator-door-and-bring-what’s edible evenings. If everyone has tucked the what-if up their sleeves and are armed with charcuterie things, then we’ll do that. It always works out. Last night it was a huge pack of hotdogs and a small pack of Angus burgers, a pot of cheeseburger soup and another of wild rice soup. And popcorn. I thought it was quite clever of us.
It was clever because while I was preparing for piano work and singing, Elv went out and blew the leaves off the fire pit yard and started a small fire in the pit. So when they showed up with soup and grilling meat we were ready. The wind had died and till dusk we cozied up to the fire in a circle and talked about how church was for the various ones of us churching at different places. So the talk was interesting about kingdom theology and midterm elections and the correct pronunciation of that king’s name, Ahasureus.
Finally, I went in and sat at the piano. Some of the grandkids circled up and the adults soon followed. Benny wanted his own copy of the music so he made it easy by taking a picture of the one we were on. Grandkids are so handy. Who needs a plan and copiers.
We sang songs that only some of us knew, but that didn’t stop us from all joining in. But mostly we tried to be fair and sang the known songs.
We kept the popcorn coming and finished the evening off with livingroom visiting and then the dishes. Lance had the last coda for our music by vacuuming for a minute. The younger children played outside in the dark with their own crazy version of hide and seek.
Today, I noticed that the puzzle has a few more pieces in place, and there are piles of leaves raked up into mounds outside.
