Saturday, August 17, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Badminton at the beginning and in the end
Create in me a clean heart, O God.
On Fridays we get to spend the day with Miles and Jasper, if their Thursday homework is finished and we are healthy. Both requirements were met yesterday, so we spent most of the morning and afternoon together.
The geography has changed at the Tomitas, both cars parked in the street and a badminton court set up in the driveway. The Olympics has gotten into their minds and bodies, and badminton is now a sport for them. Gymnastics is next, and chess (not Olympic but noble).
But today they jumped in the car and we sped off to the Cedar Park Railroad, just in time to join a nearly filled train which travels on a forested, tunneled track for twenty minutes around Brushy Creek Park. Johnny Cash’s train songs play over the speakers. The engineer has been around since the beginning, because he built the locomotive himself. His smile is gentle and welcomes us all.
“Look, there’s the tunnel!”
“Look, there’s a giant tree with a big black broccoli growing out of the side!”
“Look, there are high school runners trickling in after running along the track!”
Our track now.
Once upon a time we boarded a train in Cedar Park and ended up in Africa. A railway through Africa! Can you believe it? The children in Mary Poppins didn’t believe it, and snatched back their tuppence before it could disappear into distant investments. But we believed anything could happen, just after the whistle blew and we disappeared over the horizon.
What actually happened was that we got off the train, piled into the car again and drove just a whipsnatch to the Quarry Splash Park, where a hundred kids pointed water cannons and sat on the fountains, filled their water guns and emptied them. Miles and Jasper ran together, a marauding team, always after their grandpa with the faded green Pioneer hat and an inferior green water gun, of no consequence whatsoever against their far more powerful guns. They took a cue from my playbook and grabbed my hat, filled it up over one of the fountains, and dumped it on my head.
Oh, how good all that water was, as the sun beat down and the temperature rose to 102. The metal parts of Jasper’s car seat got pretty hot. Black leather seats in the car, not the greatest choice for Texas summers.
But our Prius air conditioner stood the test, and we left for lunch at Whip My Soul, a fine soul food, fried catfish and greens establishment which is Miles’ favorite. He knows what to order: three pieces of fish, fried okra and cheesy-mac. It took awhile but just like in a sports bar, there were TVs to watch and bright red and green drinks to ruin their appetite for lunch.
We had one more stop, across the street at Handel’s Ice Cream. In 1945 Alice Handel used fresh fruit from her garden to make ice cream in Ohio. Like all the good stuff (National Geographic voted it the #1 ice cream on the planet), it’s spread across the country. Each of us got to pick a flavor. We had a four-scoop sampler of choco-holic, cotton candy, s’more and peach. Somehow they got that ice cream down the hatch and played outside awhile under the trees in a playground.
Back at their house Miles re-created the badminton court and after we talked awhile with Andi about our day, we left them to the game. Batting the shuttlecocks back and forth, mostly under the trees, braving the heat, laughing, happy.
Restore unto me, the joy of your salvation.
(Ezekiel 18, Psalm 51, Matthew 11, Matthew 19)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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