Family Gathering

Last night a super-majority of my siblings coagulated at Roy's house to gorge on tamales and sundries. With that many folks assembled, its seemed like no fewer than two active conversations were in progress at any given time -- and generally one could move freely from one stream of effluvium to another without disturbance. I tapped into the flow of one conversation just as Roy was holding forth about one of his students during his days as a B52 instructor navigator at Castle AFB: "... Hildebrandt was just a dumb Swede from Maine. One day we were sitting around shootin' the breeze, when he shared the fact that his ambition was to go back to goat farming after he retired from the Air Force, 'There's nuthin' like the feel of warm goat teat on a cold morning.' To which one of the other instructors (who happened to be from New York) replied, 'And the best part is, you don't even have to get out of bed.'"

We, of course, roared with laughter, but what really carried that punchline was the look of complete mortification on the face of Joel's oldest daughter, a genuinely charming and gentle lady whom God has obviously misplaced in such a crude family.