I think you can fry crickets....

Babe's quilt. (Babe was Ken's maternal Grandmother's name). It is gargantuan, like a patchwork field in a giant's neon-lit dream.
Seriously.
It was made, apparently, for either a king-sized bed or to cover field crops before the earth warmed up in the spring.
It is the ugliest combination of colors imaginable: neon green and pink, brown, orange, yellow, bright blue, and the odd patch of some other color. Zillions of tiny octagons, crafted with thousands of hours of hand-sewn quilting.....and all done in a fabric that has stood the test of decades: polyester knit. For those of you who do not remember that revered fabric, suffice it to say, it doesn't breathe or tear. I'm pretty certain it's still off-gassing and putting chemicals into our home. My husband is nearing 60 years of age, and his earliest memories of childhood include this quilt. Here it is, all these years later, in full, bright color, unscathed and unmoving, heavy as lead and probably as radiation-proof as that. Babe gave it to us when we got married, because it was his favorite quilt when he was a child.

It accidentally got left out in the rain a few years ago, for months, when we were building our last house. It was covering the whirlpool tub we were storing in the yard (because I bought it too early). When I salvaged the Quilt, it was covered in mud and looking quite sad. I was ashamed of myself for not paying attention, for disrespecting Babe that way. I took it to the laundromat and dutifully washed it in one of those monster machines. It came out completely clean and bright, like a newly-minted penny. Garish and unashamed, ready to face another century or two.

We have raised four children to adulthood and this has always been known as the Beach Quilt. For heaven's sake, who could actually put it on a bed, in these politically-correct, Martha-Stewart-infused times......though it did serve us well when our heating system died last winter. You could insulate a house with that thing.

The beach.

We always drag Babe's Quilt to the beach with us. It's some trouble hauling it out there, with all the other necessities. But it's also always worth it. When you unfold it in all its tacky glory, you have a huge area to throw your towels onto, easily seen for thousands of yards. Our kids never had trouble finding out where the family was stationed. This year's trip was especially memorable, as our three brand-new grandbaby girls shared it for the first time. Call it tacky, vintage-tacky, or just plain embarrassing, it's the only one of its kind.

This summer, we hit the jackpot. We got two trips to the beach. We have some dear friends who invited us to go to the beach with them, and they provided the condo. Not just any condo. A  million-dollar penthouse suite, up in the ozone where you can see the sky, the moon, the stars, the beach, the water....in ways you didn't know existed. I don't know if they know, still, how much that meant to us. Ma and Pa go to the beach! Ken and I have enjoyed various blessings in our life and we'll start bantering back and forth like two country bumpkins, seeing things for the first time (or maybe it's just seeing)...."Look Pa!" Opening God's box of delights is always an adventure.

I'm thinking about one of our days on the beach. I was out in the ocean, floating idly about, when I noticed a cricket floundering in the water. I have no idea why or how a cricket was swimming in the gulf of Mexico, but poor thing, he was going to drown for sure. So I slid my boogie board up under him so he could get a footing. He promptly sprung towards the shore. I did this a few more times until he could get onto land....then I went back to my floating duty. Eventually I flopped myself out onto dry land, onto Babe's Quilt. Twenty minutes or so go by as I'm sunning and drying out. I look down and notice the cricket, yes, the cricket....sitting on Babe's Quilt. There are hundreds of people around us on the beach, but that cricket found me. How could it not?! I told Ken and our friend, Kent, about how I had saved that cricket. They laughed and made jokes about it. I reached down and kind-of petted it. It sat there quietly for a few more moments. Suddenly, it popped up as only a cricket can, straight towards my face. It flew into my (typically) open mouth! Yelling and spitting, I got the thing out without killing it. As I calmed down, I realized it had either bitten or poked both my upper lip and the inside of my bottom lip. I spent the next few days nursing my poor lips and pondering life. What did this mean -- that a cricket tracked me down after I saved it and then tried, in his own little way, to kill me? There are so many deep and meaningful stories that follow us through life, so many things we can use to illustrate spiritual truths and drive home all the important stuff.

That's not what this was. 

Sometimes life is just weird and we are given things that make us laugh hysterically. And ponder the life of a cricket. Or a quilt.