Living-Deliberately.com

• this morning, in an effort to better get to know this little hamlet we’ve moved to, we attended the Presbyterian church across the street. It’s the quintessential little white country church, with bell tower and gothic windows and wood flooring. The congregation was a mixture of little country church ladies, a couple of middle aged men, and a visiting grandchild or two. They had a well-meaning but distracting little bit of announcements right before the call to worship but otherwise it followed a similar liturgy to what we are used to, which was comforting. Much scripture, the Gloria Patri, the Apostle’s Creed, and a good amount of prayer. They didn’t have the Lord’s Supper and the pastor was a visiting elder from places elsewhere. But they were in a delightful tizzy afterwards to talk to us all, showing us pictures of what the town looked like in the past (like, the 40’s! Neat to see our house with three windows on the second level, not two), offering to bring extra produce from their gardens, and heartily inviting us back. We enjoyed it, and it was very cool just walking right across the road to get home, but we missed our church. The plan is just to visit two churches here in the area now and then for community, fellowship, and gas relief now and then; I’m not sorry at all that next week we will be back again at our much loved Covenant Reformed Pres!
• Celia said today: “Mom? Why do we always sing ‘All-Men’ at the end of every song and prayer? Why not ever ‘All-Ladies’?
• We had a long and wonderful conversation with Karen over the picket fence after church today. The day was cool and breezy and she was happy to see we’d visited. Earlier this week she brought a basket of banana bread and some tourism material to welcome us; she really deserves her own blog post! She (THANK HEAVEN) eats healthfully too and can “speak the language”. She gave us some tips on where to find the good stuff out here from local farmers and of a store in Oak Ridge to try. Most signifigant: I think I found a true friend, or someone who at least seems to have a lot of potential in that direction!
• We took the kids to the Obed Scenic River today, with the idea of swimming. We found an access we’d not been to and tried to find a place where the water was calm. We’ve had tons of rain in the last few days and the river was mostly all rapids in that area. So we headed out to an area on the other side of town that we’d been to before. Yet again, the river was swollen and swift, but around the bend was a calmer area with a rope swing and a few other children playing. Andrew and Celia took turns with some other kids climbing the tree ladder and swinging out into the river in pure country style. Wheaton, ever conservative, wanted to play and practice his swimming down by a little beach area further down. I took the little boys over there while David stayed with the older two. Two men were on rafts a bit later, swimming into the current to raft down a waterfall down stream. I watched them a minute….less than a minute, and glanced down to see the little guys splashing and swimming. For some reason, my first reaction was to see that Rowan was dog paddling and oh how nice. WHAT?! No…why the delay in my realization? He was face down in the water, unable to right himself, drowning. I couldn’t reach him and Wheaton was paralyzed with fear.Screaming,  I jumped toward the baby and grabbed him up by his shorts. He was dark red but trying to spit. He threw up some water and burped and coughed and he started crying. I can’t believe we had such a close, close call. It couldn’t have lasted more than 10-15 seconds but it felt like an eternity. I had that same feeling of “stepping out of myself” that I had the moments before Clara coded, watching it happen from a few feet of myself. I cleaned him up and nursed him and just sat in the car shaking until the rest of them came back.
• On a lighter note, after we got home “Little Bear” stopped by with a couple of bags full of Mary Martha’s garden produce. Mary Martha is an avid gardener that lives on the corner and Little Bear/John is a guy (7/16ths Cherokee he proudly proclaimed) who does odd jobs around town, one of them today to pick and deliver tomatoes okra and corn to us. Little Bear makes indian crafts to sell and said to David, “I once gave that marriage thing a try. Got married in ‘87 and divorced in ‘94. Had to though. Found out she was a Navajo and Cherokee and Navajo just do not mix.”
• That corn he brought was put into a pot within minutes and we sat out on our picnic table feasting buttery cobs and layered mexican casserole. It was almost chilly out once the sun was behind the tree line; unbelievable August weather. Red Fox and Fly weren’t far away wanting any scraps. It’s kind of weird having dogs around. I keep forgetting that I don’t have to clean up what spills because they get to it first!
• Mary Martha and John/Little Bear included a bag of Okra in the mix, still warm from the sunshine. Wheaton had some pickled okra the other day that he enjoyed but he couldn’t remember what it was called. “Hey Mom…I want some…. what’s that? Kudzu?”  me: “you mean Okra?” him: “Yeah, Oprah. Can I have some of that Oprah?”

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