In my family we get together for birthdays and sometimes when the holidays run close to those birthdays, we’ll look at the busy summer schedule, say, the amount of hours we have left to get the garden in or play a round of good golf, or if we hear that the walleyes or trout are biting -- and to make the most of time, we will double up. Last Friday night we doubled up Lucy’s 24th birthday with Father’s Day. Her celebration was a few weeks late and mine (and Dad’s) was a week early.
I love getting and giving presents, especially when they are really catered to the person’s tastes and what they enjoy; I’m like Bilbo Baggins that way. I got some of my favorites this year. The girls got me a set of sushi bowls with a blue woodcut print of a tabby cat inside them. I got a new Ebbets Field vintage Kansas City Katz baseball cap in red. Simon gave me a cool vertical six-inch by 19-inch original woodcut print of a bearded dude by the artist that does all of the Indeed Brewery art. My sister and brother-in-law gave me this steel beer can they found in the walls of their house while remodeling. “Schlitz. The BEER That Made Milwaukee Famous,” it says. There’s just the right amount of patina on it and the steel walls are strong and solid. I’m going to make a beautiful fishing decoy with it. For a while, though, I’m just going to stack it on top of my other coffee cans and tobacco tins and other old metal that I’m saving until I carve the fish that match them.
This is the kind of stuff that my Dad would give me in years gone past. I would make him things for Father’s Day like little carvings, lures or fish decoys. I miss making those things for him, but I enjoy seeing them in Mom’s house now, or in the case of some that she’s given back to me, in our own house next to fish and frogs and turtles that my kids made for him too. I probably should just continue to make him something for Father’s Day every year. That would be a nice gift for both of us.
Anyway, Jen and Lucy made a wonderfully beautiful and crazy good, what we dubbed a “six-hour” cake, that had multiple, multiple layers of soaked sponge, fresh berries and a mascarpone and cream cheese frosting among just a few thing worthy of a Hobbit birthday party. I cut my carbs most of the weekend to indulge in a slice of that and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
The only thing I didn’t like about the weekend were the tons and tons of blackfly bites that I got on the golf course Saturday. Once when I looked down (yes, I was wearing shorts -- my bad) and there were more blackflies covering my legs than hair and that’s saying something! I guess if you’ve never left a little blood out on the course then you really aren’t trying hard enough. It certainly was readyplay golf. Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, the remembrance of another occasion of gift giving. We held church outside and the blackflies were invited, of course, but they didn’t show up, thankfully. It was a beautiful day to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gathering of Christ’s disciples 50 days after Easter. To celebrate the overwhelming beauty and diversity of God’s creation that is so evident all around us in Ely, this beautiful place we call home, with these beautiful, diverse people we call neighbors, friends and relatives.
Late that night, I thought I saw a firefly, lightning bug, flashing a morse code message to me in the darkness of the yard. “E N J O Y I T… S A V O R S U M M E R,” could that be what it flashed? That would make me almost feel like a kid again, and that’s a good thing. Summer is arriving in force and there are so many opportunities each day after work and on the weekend and days off for fishing, hiking, berry picking soon, gardening, flower planting, golfing, farmer’s market, carving, creating, sitting in the backyard, watching road construction (so much all over town) and, oh, yeah, writing. Maybe even time for a beverage that made Milwaukee famous :)?
