Let’s add Wisconsin to the list.
We’d only been home a week from our trip to Iowa and
Missouri, and we were off again to visit Sarah in Madison.
I find road trips full of fascinating things.
Ping-Hwei notices the trailer trucks that share the road
with us—where they’re from, company names, how many locks they have. What does
Murray think they are carrying? How much might the driver charge for the load?
Where will he park when he’s done working?
We were concerned when they saw one truck where the back
wheels kept zigging and zagging. “Is the driver awake?” I asked. “He seems to
be keeping the front wheels going straight,” Murray said.
We paid tolls on roads in Ohio and Indiana, but in Illinois,
it seemed like every ten or fifteen minutes we had to stop to pay, $1.90; $1.50;
$1.80; $0.60. “Again?” I said.
I came out of the bathroom at one gas station we stopped at
and said to Murray, “They have a painting on the wall in there.” “That’s nice,”
Murray said. “Yeah. And since they’re nice enough to do that, wouldn’t you
think they’d have paper towels?”
Murray pointed out the Capitol Building in Madison to
Ping-Hwei, and we got to thinking about how many State Capitals Sarah has lived
in. Madison, Wisconsin. Montgomery, Alabama. And, we can’t forget Little Rock,
Arkansas. “She didn’t live there,” I said. “But she was born there. That
definitely counts.”
Then I remembered a car game we’d play with the kids when
they were younger. Murray would go through all the states according to a map in
his mind, and we’d all see how many of the capitals we could name.
Sarah sympathized with Ping-Hwei for having to share a hotel
room with us. “They both snore,” she told him. “They snore,” he agreed, and smiled.
When we got back to the hotel, Ping-Hwei turned on the
baseball game, The National League play-offs. Murray checked out the internet
on his kindle. I worked on my computer. We were both awake, but I surely heard
someone snoring through the ballgame.
Murray talks to everyone. We came downstairs for breakfast
in the hotel, and a man sitting at one table wore a T-shirt that said
“retired.” Murray asked him, “How long did you work before you retired?” The
lady in front of us when we were getting food got two hard boiled eggs. “You
are a smart woman,” Murray told her.
It was homecoming weekend when we were there, which caused
much ado, with heavy traffic, finding a hotel, parking. Interesting weather for
the game—rain; sleet/hail; for a short time, heavy snow; and bright sunlight.
At church the next day, the lady who asked us to greet each
other said, “You can ask the person next to you where they were during the mini
snowstorm yesterday.” Another man there called it a flash blizzard.
Sarah is crazy busy with graduate school. She was concerned
she hadn’t planned any activities for our visit, but we don’t need much to
entertain us.
I examined every area of Sarah’s apartment, including the
water purification device on the kitchen faucet, and their instant pot/pressure
cooker. The instant pot looked very usable, with round buttons to push that I
could feel individually and could operate. “I like it,” I said. “Maybe we
should get one.”
This was also my first time meeting Sarah’s roommate Angel.
She is fun and funny, and played along with Murray’s teasing. He asked if she’d
got her hair cut, and said something about noticing things that changed about
her in the two months since he’d seen her. She said, “I grew two inches since
then too, can’t you tell?”
Angel is doing Sarah’s family genealogy for a class project,
so Sarah asked us some questions Saturday. She found Murray’s history much more
fascinating than mine. I grew up in one house, went to one high school, and two
colleges, one for bachelors and one for masters. Murray had many homes, cities,
and schools through high school, and seven colleges.
Ping-Hwei had a success. Murray went to the machine outside
our hotel room to get a soda for me, and the bottle didn’t fall down. He came
back in and gave Ping-Hwei money for another soda. He told Ping-Hwei to look at
this machine and see if he could see the missing one, otherwise to go
downstairs by the front desk and get one.
Ping-Hwei came back in a few minutes with four bottles that
fell out of the machine for him. We’re sorry for the three people before us who
didn’t get their drinks, but Ping-Hwei was a happy man.
I’m always delighted wherever we go to find people who love
Jesus. We visited a great church on campus, Blackhawk church; they called themselves
Christ followers.
Murray told me the band had acoustic guitars, two electric
guitars, and drums. I was okay with that; I don’t mind loud music in church.
I’m sure the music was good, but I didn’t so much notice the
instruments. There were several songs I didn’t know, but I was able to hear the
words and follow along. I loved that.
They’re starting a new series about examining yourself,
checking out your blind spot, using the book of Amos.
The minister talked about surface grace, where Christians
might just think about having a way to get to Heaven. He said we need to go
deeper into grace, see the sacrifice and commitment. God’s sacrifice and
commitment. When we choose to follow Christ, we are inviting God to mess up our
lives, get into the rooms we might prefer to keep locked away from him.
He said Israel had a blood oath with God; punishment for
sin. The church has a blood oath; the punishment for our sin falls on Christ.
Sunday afternoon I stayed at Sarah’s apartment and worked on
my computer for a couple hours while Murray, Ping-Hwei, and Sarah went shopping.
Murray said that before they left, I needed to be sure I knew where the
bathroom was, how to get a drink, and how to get out of the house in case of a
fire.
He was serious.
On the way home to Ohio, a lady at a toll booth greeted
Murray with a big smile. She said, “Thank you very much. Have a good day.”
Murray waited for her to give him change. She said, “You’re wearing a Green Bay
Shirt. You don’t get any change.”
I am so easily entertained on a vacation. I loved my first
trip to Wisconsin.