The Return of Eastern Travelers... Twelfth Day: Points of Doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Epiphany.

And after the strangeness of the evening before, there were other things to see to that morning. By eleven o’clock in the morning, St. Louis time, the girls would have just begun their twelve hour journey back home.

In bad news of the day, Joe had strep… again. This unfortunately meant that OLeif and Collette would not be able to spend any time at the house hearing about the girls’ adventures until Joe was no longer contagious. He would also be unable to come to the airport to pick them up late that night. But such things happened. As long as it didn’t spread through the family again… and hopefully it would pass as quickly as it came, and stay away. Meanwhile, Mom had sentenced him to quarantine downstairs in his room with the first season of Star Trek.

Frances also had his first Upward Bound basketball game that morning at a nearby middle school. He had never played basketball before. But by the end of the hour, he seemed to have caught on better to his position in the game. The final score was forty-eight to eight in the other team’s favor. But Frances had still successfully finished his first game.

Of course, one of the reasons Frances had likely never been able to practice basketball himself, might have been that the old basketball net had been crunched in half one day by the big green slug.

Mom had been backing out of the driveway in the old fifteen-passenger at the time, and for some reason, didn’t see the metal post behind her. Funny thing was – she couldn’t tell that she had bent the pole backwards, splitting it in half. Linnea, who was rather little at the time, had to tell Mom that she had hit it before Mom realized it herself. It was similar to the time Dad had run into the mailbox in Tennessee.

And someone had the sense to remember to take a picture of the aftermath with Linnea standing next to the bent pole with a grin on her face.

Meanwhile, back at home, OLeif enjoyed a carry-out Pasta House lunch (from a formerly lost gift certificate) before rolling up his sleeves to wash the counter-full of dishes while watching a movie on his computer. Any way it took to get the chores done…

And Collette began piling things aside to give away or put towards a rummage sale (should the youth decide to have another one for their next mission trip). She still couldn’t decide what to do with the great brown and orange tapestry that Grandpa Combs’ second wife had woven before she died. It wasn’t exactly a family piece, but it still seemed a shame to get rid of something so… odd.

It was one of those quiet Saturday afternoons at home, and sometime before dinner, OLeif and Collette took a bit of a walk, one of the few Collette had taken in the past months, since late summer. It felt good just to walk in fresh cold air before the sun began to go down.

The girls’ flight arrived forty-eight minutes late from Germany, giving them just enough time to scramble to their connecting flight in Washington. This eventually delayed their flight to St. Louis by another half hour.

And everyone but Joe piled into the van at 10:30 to pick them up at the airport.