Wednesday, June 25, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Lulu
The Lord took him outside and said:
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.”
On what I think must have been our last trip together, Dad and I drove north into Wisconsin to Lake Lulu. Mom came on this trip too, and Margaret, and for a few warm days and starry nights, we all enjoyed the lake house lovingly kept private and pristine for many years by our friends Don and Pat. They were traveling, and we had their home to ourselves.
On the first day we spent some time at Old World Wisconsin, an open-air museum near Eagle where in the afternoon a pig slowly roasted on a spit over the open fire, inviting everyone to stay for supper. Immigrants to Wisconsin lived on this 600-acre former farm in the late 1800’s, and even now horses, cows, chickens and sheep shared the space with us tourists.
Most of us were wannabe farmers, but Dad of course was the real thing. When he was born in 1922, the central Illinois farm where his family lived supported plenty of horses and cows and chickens and sheep, without a single tractor – not for another decade or so.
That day a Wisconsin alfalfa field was being harvested into bales, and wagons brought seventy bales at a time to be forked up into the barn’s loft. Filling our own barn had been a monthly activity when I was growing up, and a swarm of Dad’s friends descended on our farm for that special day, the always hot afternoon broken up by Mom’s sandwiches and lemonade. It was hard, sweaty, satisfying work for Dad, who knew how quickly winter would be coming to threaten the cows, but also knowing that the hayloft was full up with bales of alfalfa, a crop harvested by humans around the world for their livestock since nearly the beginning of time.
In those days it had become difficult for Dad to move – bent over by a slow-moving case of ALS. He dressed the same, but often Mom drove him around, and he sat in his rocker much more than before. His naps were longer. Then, on the second day of our trip I was swimming in the lake and saw Dad suddenly emerge on Don’s dock. Where did he come from? How could he have gotten down the very long outdoor stairs that curved down through the trees from the hilltop house?
He wore his swimsuit and no shirt. Of course even then he looked like every Caucasian farmer on vacation – tanned arms and face and stark white back and belly. I waved at him when he saw me, he took off his hat and edged his way down the stairs into the water. Always more at home on a tractor than a boat, very comfortable working his way around a barn or machine shed but not a lake, this guy was on vacation, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth.
After his short swim he climbed back up on the dock and we walked back up the staircase. Harder going up. But his strength that day at the partially-invalided age 79, probably surprised even him. He hoped to make it to age 80, since no one in his immediate family had got that far … and he did – about a year later on August 15 we celebrated that last birthday before he passed away in November 2002, on Thanksgiving Day.
Nobody in our family took anything for granted on our last trip. Every moment was precious to all four of us. Don and Pat’s hospitality showed through each day, even though they were far away.
Eyes sparkling, Dad ate up Old World Wisconsin. Energy he could no longer summon at will found its way back to his body. One more time he watched those amazing horse-powered implements and was back on his dad’s early twentieth century farm. He recalled stories from his life as a teenager in the 1930’s and his own county-prize-winning experiments with Holstein dairy cows 30 years later. His life had always been full of hard work, every morning milking and every night again.
Now in this quiet time on Lulu Lake, he remembered and relaxed. We played a little music in the evenings after dinner. His smile, always crooked, didn’t leave his face much.
And in the afternoon, that one time, Dad climbed down the steps, got in the water, and climbed back up again. We were happy.
Abram put his faith in the LORD,
who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
(Genesis 15, Psalm 105, John 15, Matthew 7)
(posted at davesandel.net)
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