Chapter 7: He's The One, Mama

"He's the one, Mama," Emma told her mother, Laura, as they sat on the large tree seat. Nathan, Emma's father, built a seat around the entire circumference of a giant oak tree. When Emma was young her sister Mirth danced on the seat as they played games. Nathan estimated the tree to be over one hundred years old. Now that the children left the nest, only Nathan and Laura sat there as they reminisced their days as war protesters and living in communes in their youth. When Donnie was born, they seriously considered leaving the commune and begin their life as normal middle class citizens. Now Nathan taught at Kansas University in social studies, had tenure, bought this farm and fixed up the house and the surrounding area. Their neighbor farmed the rest for a percentage of the yield.

"He seems to be nice," Laura commented. "When a girl brings a young man home to meet her parents usually means she is serious about the man and wants to marry him.

"Oh I am, Mama. When he touches me I get this pleasant but strange sensation that I can't explain. One must experience it. There are no words that can describe it. Tim is so wonderful. When his mother died recently we flew out to Long Island so he could pick some things up from his childhood that he did not wish to lose."

"You told me that she was a famous artist!"

"Yes, her name was Irene Limpa. When she hit it big with her sketches she kept the name of her second husband. I had the chance to look at her art, Mama, she is good ... was good," Emma corrected herself. "You can see some of her work on the computer. Her website is still up. Her drawings sell for up to two thousand dollars per copy. The originals are priceless."

"Who gets that money now?"

"Tim has two identical twin half-sisters who will receives all the proceeds."

"Who gets the house?"

"Tim inherited it. He plans to rent it out as soon his sisters get their things out. He'll have a real estate agent run the place, pick out tenants, and collect the rent. They will take their five percent and five percent for repairs. They will bank the rest in an account Tim has already set up."

"Emma, I don't want any bullshit fibs from you. Have you and Tim slept together?"

"Yes we have, Mama. He is so gentle but wonderful. He had my head swimming for days afterwards."

Laura nodded her head. "You know Donnie was conceived before we married. Or even thought of getting married. Mirth was on the way when we decided to make it all legal and on the up and up."

"I hope I was legal."

"No need to worry, we just want to let you know you were a mistake."

Emma laughed.

"I'm glad to see you find it funny. Donnie and Mirth were planned, you weren't. You were a big surprise to the both of us. One morning I woke up sick to my stomach and said to myself oh-oh. Now you told me that Tim and you are going to sail around the world on a schooner?"

"Yes Mama."

"When?"

"After we are married. When after, I haven't talked that over with Tim yet. I'm sure it won't be too long though. He has an eighty foot schooner in San Diego. He wants me to attend school on how to set sails, riggings, and the whole nine yards."

"What if you get pregnant on that trip?"

"Wouldn't that be nice, Mama," Emma smiled.

"Not so nice if any complications set in."

"Then we must trust in God that it won't happen."

"Emma!" Laura sounded shocked. "Do you mean to tell me you actually believe there is a God! Your father and I do not."

"I started believing in high school, Mama. I used to sit under this tree at night and look at all the stars. They had to come from somewhere."

"They formed themselves," Laura debated.

"If they did that themselves, why aren't they crashing into each other?"

"I can't tell you that but I know there is no such thing as God."

"Mama, if a naive girl like myself can figure it out that there is a God, why don't you spend sometime under this tree at night, look at the stars in the universe and try to figure out why there are so many?" Emma challenged her.

"That's it Tim," Nathan encouraged him. "Just a good yank and that'll set the hook. Don't worry about hurting the fish, it doesn't have nerves in its lips. It looks good, now bring him in nice and easy."

Nathan and Tim were fishing from a spring fed pond of a neighbor who kept it stocked with rainbow trout. He didn't mind people fishing in his pond but he appreciated a courtesy call before one dropped line and sinker into the water. Nathan done that two hours earlier. He took Tim to where he kept his worms and pulled out a dozen fat night crawlers. Tim seldom fished but he was having fun today with Nathan, this was two each now. Time to call it to an end. There would be enough trout to eat for the four of them tonight. No one knew the number of fish in the pond but these four fat ones told Nathan they were getting other sources of food. Allen Sloper, the owner of the pond, believed that the trout were eating fresh water shrimp which caused Sloper to drain the pond about ten years back to get rid of them. He was thinking of doing it again this fall. Let the cold kill the shrimp and fill it in the spring, stock it once more in the summer.

"A beauty," Nathan said, measuring the fish. "Sixteen inches. Now's the time to quit and be careful, there's a couple great horned owls who would like nothing better than to swoop down and steal one of these."

"It gives me a rush when I catch one of these," Tim grinned.

Nathan nodded. Nathan Foreman was an ex-hippie, war protester, wishing the dream of a socialist country here in America. But fatherhood changed his mind. He wanted his kids to succeed and be the best he or she could be. He took Winston Churchill's famous quote to heart. "If you aren't a liberal before the age of thirty, you have no heart. If you aren't a conservative after age thirty, you have no brain." Now approaching sixty, he voted Republican for the very first time.

They drove back to the house. Not only did Nathan build a wraparound seat at the oak tree, but had a wraparound porch at the farmhouse. Laura set the table in the shade. After scaling, cleaning, and filleting the fish; Emma baked them in the oven like she did so many times before leaving this little piece of paradise to parts unknown. That was the University of Kansas and then to Chicago. Until she met Tim, Emma believed she made a big mistake by moving to the Big Windy.

As they ate the fish along with boiled potatoes and wild asparagus, Laura had baked a heaping apple pie for dessert. She already had it cut and all she had to do his put a couple scoops of ice cream on the still steaming pie.

"Our daughter believes in God," Laura told Nathan as they finished the apple pie and ice cream.

Nathan looked at Emma in a strange manner. Then he shrugged. "The girl's over twenty one, she can figure things out for herself. You and me don't believe that, but it's her right."

"You never told me you believed in God," Tim said.

"You don't?" Emma asked.

"Yes, in a way I do. Out there on the sea looking up at night, I get the feeling Someone put those celestial bodies up there in some sort of order."