waiting for the wrong wedding

There are details that I have stored away... just in case I might need them in a hurry, like a passport for a quick getaway. The dress has capped sleeves and is covered with lace, the bouquet is of sunflowers (even though I've heard you have to be careful that they don't stain), dancing to "caravan" by Rachel Portman, and a dance floor lighted with those little white Christmas lights. I don't have the groom yet, but I'm waiting hopefully and expectantly.

I know it's just a day, but all the same, I'm looking forward to it. Sometimes more than I probably should,
but I like the idea of my wedding. The beauty and meaning of the ceremony, the celebration with friends and family, the decorations, the prettiness, the dancing... and me being married.

I know, I know. There's more to marriage than the wedding.

And in any case, the wedding I should be waiting for is coming at an unknown date and time. Sometimes its hard to wait for a wedding you can't plan for, but I know it's the wedding that's worth the  wait.

My hope is in You LORD.

the string on our fingers

I live with my grandfather. He has short term memory issues. You can predict a conversation with him based on where he sits in the living room, mainly because of what reminders are available to him from his vantage point. I have tended to view this as tedious, but as I was trying to steer him in different directions from the same starting point, I realized something.

There is a story that my grandfather tells, about my grandmother going with him on a business trip to Bristol. While he was working, she had to find ways to amuse herself and so she would go exploring. At one point, while visiting some cathedral that had been damaged in the war she found that for a small sum she could make a brass rubbing, and the proceeds would go towards repairs. So she did, and there are two brass rubbings up in our living room as proof. Whenever the conversation lags, or he gets flustered he returns to the story of the brass rubbings, because he looks up, sees them and remembers. He actually often chuckles to himself as he remembers.

I, to my shame, have viewed this as tedious because it is a repetition that before now had born no real significance to me. I had heard the story before, and it wasn't really a blockbuster. But then I realized that  my grandfather remembers with pride and love a woman who was self-sufficient and capable, a time of youth and hope and promise. That in telling me the story, he relives a little bit that memory, and shares with me not only a bit of himself, but also a bit of my grandmother.

The other day, from the same starting point we got into what life was like when he was growing up on the farm. He did in fact half to walk a mile and a half to school except on the coldest winter days when his step father would take him in the horse drawn sleigh.  Before the depression his step father built a new barn, and the unspoken law of those days was that if you built a new barn, you had a dance to celebrate. He can remember as a boy sitting up in the loft watching the celebration and the dancing. The barn turned out to be a weak investment with the advent of tractors and the start of the depression. He can remember during the depression, men riding on the box cars of trains and going from farm to farm looking for work. He has memories of men showing up at the house and being invited for dinner even if there was no work for them, before they were sent on their way. There is such richness in these snippets that I get to glean.

I have short term memory issues. I often forget important things that I have learned. Just as the brass rubbings in our living room are a reminder for him of someone he loves, and a time in his life that he cherishes, they will now be reminders to me that it is worth the time and the repetition even, to love my grandfather by listening to him remember. 

I guess what I realized is that even if I have heard a story before, there are new things that I can learn from it, if I make the effort.