Elspeth's Doctrine

The girls pretty much have doctrine sorted out. Yesterday Elspeth told me that Jesus lived in Seattle. "That Jesus," she confided as we lay on the pillows in my bed, "Has a red cape. There's a green Jesus too and also a brown one."

We went on from this to talk about death, which has come up at regular intervals since Great grandpa went to heaven.

"When will Jesus pick you?" she asked me (Jesus picking you means you're dead).

"Not until I'm an old lady," I said.

"When will Jesus pick me?"

"Not until you're an old lady."

"Why?"

"Because then your body will be all tired out."

"But Mommy," she said, stretching out on the bed, "My body IS all tired out."

When Merry was this age, she had it figured out, too. She compiled a list of facts about death and presented her findings in this pithy sentence: "First you get old, then they put you in a chair, and then they put you in a box."

(The chair was of course the wheelchair and the box of course is the coffin.) Merry also gave a sermon one day from a perch in an IKEA display: "Jesus Christ was born in Montana!" she yelled, with all the right intonations of a Southern Baptist preacher (we were living in Texas at that point). "He died on a cross in Iowa!"

Well, seems he's risen from the dead and now resides, clad in a red cape, in Seattle. Maybe we'll see him when we visit.
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Garden Update: Baby peas; lots of strawberries; a resurrected peach tree; a riot of yellow evening primrose; stunning climbing roses; sweet lavender. . .and no camera. Martin ran off to Kentucky with it.