I was about to be invaded.
My birthday was only a few days away — Feb. 22 — and both my daughters and their families were headed in my direction. Since it’s been a while since my family had visited and stayed overnight, my bachelor house was in a bit of a shambles.
Quite unintentionally, I’d spent those months piling things here, there and everywhere. The guest room was filled with spare cardboard boxes, several years of newspaper articles, odd pieces of clothing and two needle point chairs. Not good.
The man cave was cluttered with hunting clothes, deer hunting paraphernalia, taxidermy supplies, odds and ends inherited from my father and still unpacked, an airbrush, hats, boots, socks, hunting coats, gun cases etc., and the workbench was piled high, a disaster. Hmm, there was much to do.
I grabbed the sweeper to clean up the carpets, but it had little suction. The hose was clogged.
Disconnecting it, I accidently hit the power button, blowing a choking cloud of dust over all myself and the room. That made me angry indeed, but I cleared the hose at last and finished sweeping. Gee, does everything have to be so difficult?
Cleaning isn’t difficult if every object has its place. Unfortunately, much of what was lying around didn’t have its own niche, so where do you put it?
Well, find a hard-to-see closet or back room and pile it there so the rest of the house looks good. Oh, we can’t forget the junk mail and magazines, how do they pile up so fast?
Amazing. Keeping things ship shape is a never-ending, frustrating task.
After a couple days cleaning, I felt things were pretty decent, and when Julie, Kate and Nate pulled in at 9:30 that evening, they had room to unpack and clean places to sleep. I was proud, but then saw my daughter’s keen eye assessing things.
The next day she attacked what I had neglected and some tasks I’d never even thought of. Julie’s idea of clean and orderly far eclipsed mine.
After a flurry of activity, my truck bed was piled high with items for Goodwill. The house is amazing now, transformed by my daughter’s touch.
The next morning, Tom and Chrissy, DeLaney and Weston appeared and the entire day was spent visiting with my mom, Elsie Robertson, now 96, looking at old photos and yearbooks, eating, reminiscing, eating, napping, and just plain lying back and catching up and eating some more. It was great.
Monday was a beautiful day — bright sunshine, warm, a gentle breeze, much too fair a day to remain indoors. The girls wanted to go shopping.
Grandson Nate and I looked at each other, horrified, and decided a nice hike was in order. The girls didn’t appear upset at all to be rid of us. Imagine that.
We bustled about, grabbed the .22’s, ammo and a spinning target, dashed to the store for hotdogs, buns and condiments and soon were on our way. Parking near a point covered with some house-sized rocks, we grabbed our gear and headed out.
Walking wasn’t bad, though in spots we broke through the crust into deeper snow. After a bit, we entered the rock cluster and, to our delight, a few icicles still hung on the northern faces. They make great targets.
Out on the point itself, an overhanging rock ledge projects some eight feet outward, this natural roof creating a perfect, dry spot for lunch. There was still some broken-up firewood there from our last visit two years ago.
Nate busied himself gathering tiny twigs and smaller branches into a nice teepee shape and soon had a fire roaring he was quite proud of. I wandered about and cut some green, forked sticks to hold our hotdogs and toast our buns.
As we carefully cooked our dogs to a perfect crispness, we couldn’t help but remember and laugh about my father, Richard Robertson. My dad loved to cook over an open fire, but it appeared he was incapable of doing so without burning his lunch to a crisp or dropping it into the fire, sometimes, often, both.
Dad would grin, blow out the flames or dig the meal from the coals and then eat it no matter how carbonized it was.
Nate is 15 and growing like a bad weed. After the hike, gathering firewood and breaking the larger limbs into pieces, he was famished. Holding the wiener carefully over the fire, he cooked it to perfection, toasted the bun, added ketchup, mustard and onions, cracked open a Coke and took a big bite.
“That’s the best hotdog I ever tasted!” He exclaimed reverently, and then went on to eat six more. Wow.
After lunch, we set up the spinner and shot some more. The sun was getting low by now and we hiked back to the truck very happy indeed with our day’s experience together.
Unfortunately, I’d accidently hit my auxiliary fog light switch with my knee getting out of the truck and the battery was dead. Really? Luckily, a passing truck stopped and we jumped the Toyota and were soon headed home.
“You know Papa, this was a perfect day,” Nate said with a smile, beaming at me.
Like much of life, it’s the simple things that often satisfy our deepest needs.
