Incredible Gift

sam­bear brought in a bag from the car that I had­n’t seen before—yet more of my music that Mom had unearthed. And the miss­ing shelf peg thin­gies. And—I’m still in shock over this—Mama Sadie’s Bap­tist Hym­nal. Mama Sadie was Mom’s moth­er, an incred­i­ble matri­arch who died in 1987. Mom gave her the hym­nal, with her name imprint­ed on the front, as a birth­day gift in 1985. When Mama Sadie died, any­thing that had been giv­en to her by one of her sur­vivors was giv­en back to that per­son, so Mom got it. It was the only item any­body real­ly want­ed to argue about—but, being Mom’s fam­i­ly and real­ly quite peace­ful, they did­n’t. Many peo­ple han­dled it lov­ing­ly before she took it home, though, and every time the fam­i­ly vis­its my par­ents’ house they pick it up and look at it longingly.

And she gave it to me. With a new inscrip­tion below the one for Mama Sadie. And no preach­ing at all in it. I’m all teary now.

I feel stu­pid. I’ve just gone utter­ly blank on the names for any­thing on the piano oth­er than the keys and the bench. I know there are ham­mers inside. But what do you call that thing you put down over the keys when you aren’t using it?

Any­way, Jack­son fig­ured out how to lift that thing. And he’s been hav­ing a mar­velous time play­ing. Notably, he is not bang­ing. It caused a lit­tle trou­ble for R in get­ting mov­ing this morn­ing, sim­ply because he is also fas­ci­nat­ed and want­ed to stay and play with Jack­son. R did­n’t pay much atten­tion to the piano when it got here yes­ter­day, but I’m hop­ing he’ll find it inter­est­ing enough to learn to play it. And per­haps Katie will want to pick it up again—she did take three years of lessons.

Update on the twins—everybody is doing great. Due to their size, hos­pi­tal pol­i­cy dic­tat­ed that they spend some time in NICU, but there was­n’t a med­ical rea­son for doing so. The only “prob­lem” is get­ting Brynn to wake up to eats—she just wants to sleep. Cam­den, though, is nurs­ing like a pro. _starrgirl_ is feel­ing great. We’re going over as soon as rasilio man­ages to get the car seat to uss—we all for­got about it in yes­ter­day’s rush.

Now Jack­son has moved on to anoth­er breakfasts—raisins and cheese. He asked for them. With words. Hey, it’s pret­ty healthy. And I’m all for encour­ag­ing him to talk! He even said please and thank you 🙂