Numbers

I am the 3rd daughter, 4th child of 5. I have 1 husband, 1 daughter, 1 son-in-law and 3 grandchildren. My oldest sibling just turned 59, my youngest sibling will be 40 this year, I will turn 50 in a couple of months....just half of Great-grandad's 100. I will reach 30 years of marriage this fall, 5 years more than half my life so far, but just half of my parents 60 years of marriage, celebrated next month. My husband will have been a volunteer fire fighter for 29 years in Oct. I will soon reach 42 years of membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint and will have had a temple recommend for 30 of those years.

These are all numbers that are significant to me and my life, but they do not define me. Most are simply markers, references in my life so far. If I'm smart I'll use them wisely.

Since I'm approaching 50, I've been thinking about Great-grandad (Otis Veech) and his 100 years. I remember him sitting at the window at Aunt Dorma's, white hair and mustache, quiet, old, small, twiddling his thumbs.......... sometimes I twiddle my thumbs when I think about him. He would look out the window at the train track and farmland, that I think I understand now, he loved. He was extremely hard of hearing, but if you talked farming with him, he'd hear every word. It was what he did. There are some connections I have to him that I haven't thought about in a long time....I got to live in the house he had built, milk a cow in the same barn he had, drive a tractor on the same land he did.

I got my 1st diamond from him. We all got one, his posterity. They were gifts to us, from him, in celebration of his 100th birthday. Men and boys got tie tacks. Women and girls, necklaces. I was 12 years old. It was so cool. I've never seen another necklace design like the one all the great granddaughters got that day. I put it back in it's box today. I need to take it to our jeweler friend and have it check out. After almost 38 years it probably needs a new chain and I want to make sure the diamond is secure. I want my daughter to have it someday, then her daughter. I'd like them to think of Great-grandad.... and maybe their numbers.