My golf - oh, I mean my fisherman son!

So, Luke goes to Dolthan, Alabama to play golf and every spare moment he's fishing! Lewis and Alicia's fishing waters compel him to fish and to teach all his friends the fishing art. Actually, Luke appreciates how his dad taught him how to fish. Now, he passes on the knowledge. I wonder . . . maybe he should become a trophy bass fisherman instead of a golfer. What do you think?

And here's the golfer in Joplin, MO earlier this summer.

One of my favorite pass times watching Luke play his game. "Mama, don't teach your babies to be cowboys"
. . . or golfers for that matter!
Just a warnin' - to be sure -
'Cause you'll hardly see him if you do,
but you'll follow round and round the country wishin' you never had to leave, never had to work, or clean, only wantin' to be seen
followin' around the man, whose passion lies within the scope of green
ribboned strips down which a small white ball soars and lands and soars again until is found a tiny hole in which to fit.
So now, for just a moment 'round me drape the strong arm that sends the ball into its space.

Beginning again . . .

School started last Wednesday and three school days have already passed! And I'm "Wordstruck" as Robert MacNeil labels himself and his autobiography. Too many words to read, to write, to do! Too many worlds to play in . . . shall I play wife, mom, teacher, writer, student? How will I balance on life's rooftop as Fiddler on the Roof depicts Tevye balancing in Tsarist Russia? Classes at U of Arkansas at Little Rock start soon. I already feel the crunch of time and energy to complete the course. Do I tip too far in one direction or the other? Will the present roof give way and a new balancing act be required?

Through all of the changes, how can my life reflect my Lord and Savior? Only with Colossians 1: 17 firmly anchored in my mind will I step forward with assurance - "And he (Christ Jesus) is before all things, and in him all things hold together" - even when things /life seems to fall a part.

How wonderful to see our daughter complete her half Ironman triathlon! Chris, Hannah, and I went to Arkadelphia, Arkansas Friday evening; she signed in for her packet; we ate at the spaghetti dinner, listening to the pre-triathlon information and visiting with other competitors; then went back to the Quality Inn, where I fell asleep even before Chris and Hannah returned from a MacDonald's jaunt! Yesterday, August 18, 2007, she swam 1.3 miles, biked 56, and ran 13 completing the course in 5 hours 48 minutes. Thankfully temperates stayed under 100. Even with the humidity the day remained tolerable. First place in her age group - well done daughter! We were all amazed at those winners of 48 and more, who completed the course in under 5 hours.

Here's another balancing act - tried to grade and completed only one project. Too uncomfortable and too much going on to concentrate (not to mention a few visiting ants), but I wouldn't have missed being there for her and cheering for her!

And Snoopy's escapade continues . . .

The Snoopy Story continues . . .

She was lost for 13 days, but now is found! For 13 days Snoopy, a silver gray, one year old cat, a kitten really, disappeared from her home. During this time her family called and cried and posted signs and ads and walked the neighborhood calling her name. Then, one day Luke and Patrick, a friend and golf buddy, came home in the middle of the day to eat lunch before leaving to play golf. When thunder and lightening began to threaten, they changed their afternoon plans to stay home to watch a movie downstairs on the DVD in Hannah’s space (this area used to be the dwelling place of Luke before he left to live in an apartment). When the movie finished, Luke remembered a secret place he had discovered when the family had first moved into this house 10 years ago. Under the rock front porch an empty space the size of a small room existed. The only way into this room was from an under the stairs storage area by a small door.

Was there any other way into this space? No… unless a rock had lost its hold around the sides of the porch, then another access might be found. A terrible thought crossed his mind. What if . . . Snoopy had somehow managed to find such a space? Quickly he went out to check and there was a missing stone under the porch’s right floor. He called, “Mom, come here. I just had a terrible thought.”

Now, Mom couldn’t imagine what that might be but she answered, “Just a minute, let me close this computer program.”

Closing down the computer, she walked to the front door as he asked, “Mom, look here, was that rock missing before?”

To which she replied, “No.” and she caught the idea in his mind and cried, “Snoopy!” and there appeared a small grey face holding two sad yellow eyes and two grey paws.

A tiny “Meow!” tinted the air and Luke flew like a fighter jet to the rescue into the house, down the stairs, into Hannah’s room: moving aside the memory trunk, he opened the door to the storage space. Box upon box stood in the way to accessing the small white door lending into Snoopy’s prison.

“Patrick, grab the boxes!” commanded Luke’s voice. Picking up box after box he handed each to Patrick who handed each to Mom who stacked them wherever she could. The way through the boxes seemed to take hours when in reality only minutes passed before Luke opened the access door and out whisk Snoopy! Not a barely alive cat, but a highly indignant cat ran into the room, one who seemed to say with the tilt of her head and the lift of her tail, “What took you all so long anyway?”

Overwhelmed by the many offered dishes of food and water (as all had run to get some) she simply galloped up the stairs into the kitchen to partake of cat food and cat water at the proper eating place. A little of each and she purred and purred and purred rubbing between the legs of her exuberant owners. Although a little thinner and smelling like Miss Haversham’s musty closed house, she seemed quite her old self, impatient to skid across the floor chasing a piece of dry cat food or her toy mouse.

As the family waited for their Dad to come home, they spoke of the miracle God had performed. At lunch that very day they’d prayed again for the little lost cat and then she appeared! Luke held Snoopy in his arms while he waited with Hannah, Seth, and Mom for Dad to come home from work. Dad’s eyes lit up stars and his face beamed with joy at the sight of the small grey creature who had been lost and was now found, a family member restored to her heritage. How did she survive the August heat without food and water? Water seeps in through cracks in the rocks whenever the flowers are watered and usually an abundance of camel backed crickets dwell in such underground places. None were to be seen inside the rocky room after the rescue and so the assumption is the crickets became Snoopy’s food and the seeping water her drink.

I wonder how many times I wonder away snooping into life’s small dark spaces. Investigating those spaces, do I too slip in, falling down into an empty space sealed away from my family and my Father? Do I end up existing on seeping water and crickets when the Father provides abundant drink and food? And, yet, He never gives me up for lost, His voice calls and my small cry for help is answered. In fact, He seeks my attention in every possible way by calling through friends, through His word to find me and bring me back to the family.

Snoopy’s escapade had further consequences, as once found and returned to her home, she rarely goes more than a few hops away. No more long journeys down the street or into neighboring yards for her, no more all night playing around in the bushes. Out she might go for a minute or two and then back she comes. Is that why He allows us to stray, so we, His children, may turn from self-desire, self pleasure, self seeking, and seek only to stay close to Him?

And now the Snoopy story!

Snoopy Alexia

SHE IS AN AMAZING CAT. I'd like to share a little of her history with you.

Apparently she was born in a pasture to a stray cat the summer of 2002, perhaps one who had been dumped twenty miles or so from the small town of Fredericksburg, Texas, near the farm where I grew up in the '50's and 60's. My seven year old niece, Sarah, discovered her in the pig pen, a kitten as wild, scared, and frightened as any abused animal. Many efforts to catch her proved fruitless, that is until she became too weak to resist. Sarah then brought her into their yard, found a playmate for her from among another litter, and tamed her with lots of love. However, she remained an outside farm kitten.

Then the torrential Texas rains of July 2002 poured down. After almost drowning in the heavy rains, she found herself rescued by Luke. He been working on his grandparents’ farm learning the ends and outs of “truck” farming, especially squash, for several weeks after winning the 2002 ASGA state title. His intentions were to bring the little gray kitten and her playmate back to Arkansas. However, on the morning he left the farm, her playmate died when my oldest niece, Rebekah, the then Texas Peach Queen, accidentally ran over her in the early dark hours before dawn as she left the house to ride in a small town Texas parade. Many tears resulted from this accident, and when Luke drove up to bring the kittens back to Arkansas, he found only one still waiting. Sarah wept her good-bye through tears, tears of losing one kitten and now seeing the other embark on a long journey..

The small kitten rode the entire way back to Arkansas on Luke's lap in his old S10 black pickup! Exhaustion from trying to survive, I think. However, once she arrived at 2923 Charter Oak Rd. Little Rock, AR she quickly earned her name Snoopy Alexia Bakke. She couldn't get enough of exploring her new home and seeking to make friends with the "old lady cats" then of the ages 16 and 17 while avoiding the 11 year old anti-social feline in residence who likes no other animal and few people!

Snoopy soon became my daughter, Hannah's, darling and prized companion seeing her through a difficult fight with mono which ruined her hopes of regaining her National cut in swimming that summer!. In fact, Snoopy made it into Hannah’s senior pictures as she very obligingly posed for the camera. As Hannah started her senior year at Little Rock Christian, Snoopy could always be relied upon for confidences and seemed to know when Hannah needed her comfort. Now she disappeared; a young friend staying at our home let her out to play in the back yard on that fateful Friday morning, and no one had seen her since.

Hannah's dad and I left early that morning driving to Oklahoma City where we watched Hannah swim in sectionals. Our son called in the evening letting us know Snoopy had not come home and he and our young friend spent the evening making posters and scouring the neighborhood for the missing kitten. Returning home, we spent hours and days scouring the city for this wonderfully amazing cat and my daughter - though now at Mind Games at the Ozark Conference Center - calls every couple of hours to check on the search. So began the thirteen day saga of the Snoopy search. See photo below!

Before any "farm" stories - and there are just a few- I feel I must write a "cat" blog as Precious our 19 year old Rag doll, sort of a longer-haired Siamese, yowls her way into the master bedroom where earlier she slept curled under my arm and under covers. Precious sits on the front porch by Snoopy, the long haired, gray cat.

Sometimes I think I started running a nursing home for elderly cats sometime around the year 2000 as that year the vet removed her cataract covered eye (she was born with it and never could see out of it) . During the summer of 2000 the whites of that eye began to turn red and she cried as though in pain rubbing her eye against whatever presented itself for relief. The vet thought she might have a tumor growing behind the eye but thought removing it would help, especially since she couldn't see out of it and we would not run the expense of taking her to a cat eye doctor (yes, such do exist but the nearest one practices in Memphis I'm told). He said the other eye would be fine. Anyway the surgery was performed, no tumor found, and the other good eye never undiluted (apparently, she'd been given too much of the medication used to dilate the pupil!). When she went into surgery her vision was fine - when she came home she'd lost one eye and all vision. She gradually adjusted to the lose becoming more verbal with each passing day. Twice she disappeared for three days but turned up thinner and crying. Where she went I do not know. I do know I spent countless hours, as did the entire household searching for her and calling by name. I'm sure the neighbors thought us crazy!

Itty Bitty - the last of the two cats we brought back from our tour in Japan - turned fourteen that year and slowly turned from a rather placid fat cat into a crying, lost night wanderer. The only way to console either of them was to put them together in a chair or to hold them! Putting them together helped calm them and us. Then Itty Bitty died last year at the ripe old cat age of 20, so now Precious is only content on my shoulder, under my arm, or curled up outside our house by the front porch (on sunny days).

Getting started

Amy Peterson - you are to blame for this blog! I thought I could try my hand at creating a blog - about ? - who knows what - life I suppose.