Hurry, Monday!

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Many years ago, expecting the imminent return home of one of our far-flung fledglings, I wrote describing my anticipation. I don’t even remember now which one was the daughter du jour. I wrote of my excitement in readying the house, and my editor slapped “Hurry, Tuesday!” above it as headline.

Readying the house. Is that odd or what? Either of our girls’ rooms as they grew up could have provided the backdrop for any film requiring a landfill.

Now the headline reads “Hurry, Monday,” and Jean is coming, but my excitement is doubled, yea, tripled, by the fact that (1) she’ll have little Samuel with her, and (2) in a couple of weeks, her sister, Mary, is coming back to attend the 30th anniversary of her graduation from Fayette County High School.

Could it be coincidental that the Word for the Day on my Yahoo home page is “euphoric”? A feeling of extreme happiness and well-being, it says.

“Don’t get too excited about it,” says Mr. Optimism. “There are a dozen ways your enthusiasm could go sour,” and as though to prove it, I walked up the driveway for the AJC, forgetting to tell him that the water in the coffee pot reservoir had vinegar in it.

The first drops were dripping into the carafe when I walked back into the house and screeched. “Oh, Dave, did you put in fresh water? I had vinegar in there to cut the grease that builds up—“

“You what?” and, snatching the carafe and the basket out, hurled the plastic parts into the sink, where they promptly popped apart, all the while expressing himself with his remarkably colorful vocabulary.

I tried in vain to reassemble the parts, to pay off my debt of clumsiness. A mechanic by birth, Dave needed only minutes to reassemble the parts. After 49 years, I’ve learned to keep quiet and let the storm blow itself out, although I did mention I hoped he’d refrain from such monologues while Samuel is here.

The relative calm that followed was quiet enough to hear liquid splashing on the kitchen floor. Another shriek from me, outdone by Dave, we grabbed towels and soaked up as much hot coffee as possible. The coffeemaker sits on the counter next to the refrigerator, and while we were able to absorb what fluid had slithered toward us, we were not about to pull out the fridge to see how much was under there.

It took a little longer this time to regain my euphoria, but once I got to thinking again about my girls’ being here - oh, why don’t I just admit it? It’s Samuel I’m wanting to see. I, who used to go to absurd lengths not to treat one child differently than the other, and still do! I am blatantly biased toward this little boy. I love his older siblings, the three we “married” when Jean and Brian wed in 1999, but in my heart, Jean’s Sam-I-Am belongs to me.

He’s cute and smart and sweet, or at least he was when I last saw him, in early February. He’ll be here for nearly a week, and then I’ll have to let him go home with his mom.

* * *

When Mary called from Germany and said she’d like to go to her high school class reunion, we were stunned. Could she really be old enough to feel reminiscent about her old friends? She’s shown no such inclination in all these years. She didn’t even attend her college graduation, nor any recognition for her master’s or doctorate.

And now she’s spending time and money for her high school reunion, the “time” part of that equation being the more difficult. “The powers above me [in the Dortmund Opera Company] are making me wait for a decision about my week off,” she wrote yesterday. “Surely tomorrow I’ll have a glimmer.”

So. Jean and Samuel on Monday. Mary for June 4th reunion. Granddaughter Esther graduates that same day and Jean plans a large party for her, but we’ll drive to Virginia a few days later and have our own small party. Jean says Esther is a “party girl” and won’t mind having a second party with family.

Of greatest significance to me is that it will be the first time Mary and Samuel will meet. At 20 months, he is no longer a baby. I grieve for missing so many milestones along the way because of the distance between us.

But I’m euphoric that our family will be together, if only for a few days.

Hurry, Monday, and let the sentiment, the fun, the digital recording begin!

Errata, mea culpa, and whoops:

An error in each of two columns got past security over the last several weeks. Wish I could say I was testing you, but better to think that no one else caught them.

April 27: I urged people to come to a Holocaust Remembrance service on May at “Beth Israel” synagogue on Georgia Hwy. 54 East. We have only one synagogue in all of Fayette County, and its name is B’nai Israel.

May 4: A couple who live in a retirement home celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary several weeks ago. I showed his age as 92 and hers as 81. Well, even I can do the math and see that that would have made her 11 when her first child was born. She was 91.