Zum Geburtstag Katharines

Yesterday, as all the world knows, Katharine had her third birthday. We celebrated with our ward as part of a ward trip to the Freiburg Temple. It was a long day. We met at our chapel at 6 a.m. to ride to Freiburg on a chartered bus and returned to the chapel around 7 p.m. On both ends a stiff Prussian wind slashed through the black and icy air. I took Eli to the bathroom just before we loaded the bus in the morning. While sitting on the toilet she suddenly clasped her hands, lowered her head, closed her eyes, and was silent for a brief moment. She then looked up to me and explained that she had been praying—“so that the bus will wait long enough for us to get on it.” When we left the chapel, sure enough, the bus was still waiting for us. “You see,” Eli gratefully cried, “it’s still here.” “I did that,” she modestly added.

Many members of our ward attended the one o’clock endowment session. Our plan was to wait until they returned to sing to Katharine and eat her cake in the cafeteria of the patron housing complex. But Julia jumped the gun. Interpreting in her own fashion our explanation that we would eat Katharine’s cake “after lunch,” Julia, as soon as she had finished her own meal, raced into the kitchen and returned carrying the cake and commencing the song. Few were present and no one was ready. We sang again a few minutes later with a few more singers and a little more advance warning. The cake, which was large, soon disappeared. So did the cupcakes, of which there were many. Katharine relished her role as the object of general adoration, and she engorged frosting with wild abandon. She had licked the frosting off three or four cupcakes in rapid succession, throwing the rest contemptuously aside, before I caught her at her game and demanded that from then on she eat the healthy (sic) part of the cupcakes too.

In any case, Katharine did have a happy birthday, though she had a hard time recovering from it today. During sacrament meeting, she protested so indignantly against . . . well, we’re not sure what she was protesting against, but she howled so vociferously that Lia had to come to my rescue (and to the rescue of the general ear) and find an instant replacement at the organ for the rest hymn. Katharine fell promptly asleep in Lia’s arms and snoozed for the rest of the meeting. But during choir practice she was up and swinging again—quite literally. In the middle of conducting one number I felt a rain of fists on the backs of my thighs. I tried to keep a straight face and eventually Katharine pattered away in search of other adventures. She soon returned, though, and the fists rained again with redoubled fervor. This time I interrupted the rehearsal and crouched to see what the matter was. “I am calling you a PIG!!!” she clarified in a withering whisper. I shared this important communiqué with my choir, who were all highly amused, and some of whom even seemed to nod in agreement.

Yesterday at the Temple Julia drew a picture of some swans swimming on a lake beneath a rainbow. She colored the picture in a brilliant hues. Duly proud of her work, she affixed to it what she thought was a fair price. A note in the upper right-hand corner alerted the viewer that the picture could be his own in exchange for only 2 Euro. She found no buyer, though many were sorely tempted. Eli took a cue from her sister’s enterprising spirit but far exceeded her ambition. One of Eli’s sacrament meeting masterpieces went on the market today for 100 Euro. She would surely have found a score or more of ready buyers had our ward members not wished to refrain from shopping on the Sabbath. “Do you know why I price my pictures, Daddy?” Eli asked me later, at home. “No, Sweetheart, why do you price them?” “Because I love my family. That’s why I want to sell my pictures, so that I can get a lot of money, and then we can be rich.”

I hardly need to remind readers of this blog that we are already rich—very rich.