Dedicated to Carl and Laura Jacobs and their great great grandchildren they could have only imagined.

This past weekend I was privileged to have all three of my children home. Two of my three children now are married and have children of their own. All were present, my children, my children by marriage, and three grandchildren with a fourth grandchild safely awaiting birth in July.

There was the gladsome conversations, the serious conversations, the games, the festive meals and shared worship. Both my grandsons decided to sit with me Sunday after evening service and pretend they were putting an alphabet puzzle together with Grand-dad.

In the midst of all the interaction and joie de vivre I could not help but notice the turning of the wheel. I could not help but be taken back to when I was but a child attending family gatherings at my Grandfather’s dairy farm. We would all help with the evening chores (well, help as much as a child could help) and then we would assemble into the house where a late evening meal would be served. If you ever ate supper on the Farm at 10pm you were having an early supper. Bookended around the evening meal were the family games.  In my Grandparents family it was Euchre for the adults.  Most children my age watched TV to pass the time, and as a child I did too much of that, to be sure, but on the farm the TV was always broken but the Euchre games had eternal life. There were other games occasionally played (Mille Bornes, Rook, Parcheesi, etc.) but it always came back to Euchre. Grandpa always wanted to play Euchre and so it was Euchre all the way around with several tables set up so that a mini Jacobs Euchre tournament could be pursued.

As the oldest grandchild I was sometimes able to sneak into a hand or two at the adult table where I would be taught the game of Euchre while being laughed at simultaneously for not knowing proper strategy.  Uncle’s Jeff and Jim were always there to teach me the finer points of the game, though I gave them more then enough reason to think that I would never learn. Uncle Kevin (5 years my senior) would sit at one of the tables doing his best impersonation of Pistol Pete Maravich trying to break the record for the longest time spinning a ball on his fingers. I barely knew Pistol Pete but it was hard for me to imagine that anybody could spin a ball on their fingers longer while playing Euchre.

Somewhere in the course of the late evening the Schwans Ice Cream would be broken out from a deep freeze  that would not be impressed with Dante’s Inferno. I was convinced that deep freeze could make hell frigid. It was such an impressive deep freeze that it had its very own out building on the Farm. I was a child and so impressive was the size of those Shwans Ice Cream containers I was convinced that the Ice Cream was stored in 10 gallon metal containers. As near as I can remember the only flavor that came out of that deep freeze was “Butter Pecan.” In from the out building came the Ice Cream and out of the Knife drawer came the Butcher knife to carve up the Ice Cream. Most families used Ice Cream scoops to serve Ice Cream but most families didn’t store their Ice Cream in a Deep Freeze sold by Eskimos. The only way this frozen Ice Cream was going to be served was by a butcher knife as handled by a Mighty man. It was like slicing long settled concrete with a Jack Hammer.

Once the Ice Cream was sliced off and sat in your dish like some kind of miniature Iceberg next came the Nestle’s Chocolate powder in healthy proportions. The result was the look of Mt. Kilimanjaro sprinkled with chocolate in a bowl.  After that was more Euchre for 30 minutes. That gave the Ice Cream enough time to melt so that a spoon could begin to make progress on one’s Butter Pecan Iceberg.

But  the wheel has turned and I am the Grandfather now and the children are coming back home now to a Parsonage and not a farmhouse. My mind wanders back to those days that I now miss. As the grandfather now — 45 years later from those memories of the farmhouse — I wish I had been some kind of child savant back then so I could have realized how good it was then. I wish I could have bottled up all that laughter and sense of belonging so as to open it up at any time when laughter was in short supply and loneliness was too much of a companion.

45 years later I wonder if my Grandfather sat around thinking about what I am thinking now. Did he look at his expanding family in 1969 gathered at his Farm house in Howe, Indiana and remember 1924 when he was at his Grandfather’s house with his Parents, and Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents and cousins? Did he then, as I am doing now, look forward to a time when he would no longer be around and envision what their celebrations might look like? Did he look forward to the time when his grandchildren would be Grandparents with their expanded family coming home to food, festivity, and fun and … Euchre?

And what of my grandchildren? In 2060 will they have all their grandchildren visit them and will they recall with fondness the times when they were grandchildren visiting Grand-dad and Noni? Will Eleanor or Lee or Edward be full of cherished reminiscences about the family that was about them when they were children? Will they still be able to see with their child’s eyes what will then be aged memories and smile with whimsy and longing? Finally, will they try to imagine what the family celebrations of their grandchildren will be like once those grandchildren are grandparents in 2105?

The wheel has turned. The wheel never quits turning. I look forward to the time when the wheel will quit turning and the circle will finally be unbroken.

Until such a time, I can only pray God that my children and grandchildren and the generations that follow them will treasure the moments that find three generations under one roof celebrating the richness of life that God has given.