Si Doux*

* So Sweet (en francais). 

I took 10 hours of French in college but  I don’t use it much on a daily basis. Surprise! One of my Living List items is to read a favorite book en francais (also in tagalog) but yesterday I thought of a wonderful way to incorporate French into my life now leading up to a book -  make up my grocery lists and to-do lists in French! I already mix in a lot of French words in text messages and e-mails so it wouldn’t be a big stretch and it will exercise a part of my brain that probably needs it. I bought some cerises (cherries) off my list last night and “si doux” was right there on the package helping me to incorporate more French into my life.

So anyway, Friday we trucked it up to Tahlequah to visit Scott’s grandmother for a few hours before heading to see Emi get baptized at church camp. Visiting camp was a fun experience….also stinky….and loud. I mean those things in the nicest way possible. We showed up early so we could go through the chow line and before they go to our table, we got to see campers get mail from their parents and a few campers sing renditions of their favorite songs. I was amazed. I would NEVER had had enough chutzpah/guts/intestinal fortitude to get up in front of my fellow campers and sing!!

After dinner we toured the campground with Emi and saw copious amounts of poison ivy and bugs along the way. Then we made our way to the pool to witness the baptisms.

Side note: Back when Scott’s dad was a camper, the baptisms were performed in the lake. Of course that was before they installed the pool. Among other things that have changed in the past forty something years, swimming is now co-ed (it wasn’t when I went to camp either thirty something years ago) and now they celebrate afterwards with fireworks out in the open.  Grandaddy-o had to pull the weeds growing over the septic tank for setting off fireworks when he was a camper. My how things have changed!

So Emi told us earlier in the week that she was going to sing a solo Thursday night and we thought we might try to make the trek up to see that (although we already know the girl can blow it out the box) until she told us she was going to get baptized (be still my heart). I can’t tell you how proud we were to hear those words. Being a parent to a tweenager has never been easy but nowadays it is much harder with entitlement, instant gratification/entertainment, and so many other distractions. I think it’s harder now for the parents who are actually raising their kids whereas it WILL be harder later for those parents just phoning it in right now, or giving up/in with their kids.

It was so sweet (si doux) to see the children getting baptized by their dads, so choked with emotion that they’d have to take a break from speaking before dunking their children. I had to explain that to David and that sometimes people cry when they are not sad.)

Emi chose to have a friend baptize her.  We all looked on with wet eyes and tight chests.

Afterwards there were fireworks and swimming and we headed  back to Scott’s grandmother’s house to try to get some rest before we retrieved Emi from camp in the morning.  With a belly full of cobbler, it should have been easy to catch some z’s but the guest bed we sleep on is the lumpiest I’ve ever known, and we had the requisite amount of coffee with the wonderful cobbler Scott’s grandmother made. I should have traded with the Little Ones but their bed was being guarded by an old doll;  the type whose eyes open when she sits up… When I got up to straighten my back and use the restroom in the middle of the night, that little doll was on the floor of their bedroom (!) and when I was finally able to get back to sleep, I had fitful dreams of reconnecting with a girl I used to work with in the OU computer labs.

After breakfast, we picked Emi up from camp and made the almost 3 hour drive back to Norman with Emi sleeping much of the way. Good thing too because she went directly to a basketball tournament when we got back home. ..