Picture of Mom and Dad's wedding

Somewhere in the flatlands of Wyoming is a third cousin with the name of Gary Weisz, Weisz being the birth name of our mother's mother. As member of my generation, he has retired and finding time to do things like dig through the genealogy of the Weisz family. One of his reference points is the consolidation of names and dates that I had gathered from my mother and put on the Internet as a reference. I am so grateful for his efforts because I have not had a chance to upgrade my data for about a decade and the information is getting stale.

During one of his monthly phone calls last week he referred to a picture of a wedding party picture on the steps of St Johns church in Hebron. A couple days ago I received a print of that picture with attached names. It was a picture with Erna and Erwin as the bride and groom, with two attendants on each side and the parents on a higher step behind them. I don't know that I had ever seen this picture and was treasure to receive.

A week earlier he sent an invitation to the Weisz family reunion in Kaylor, South Dakota, in June 2011. It is a great opportunity to catch up with what is happening in the Weisz family or get to know them for the first time. You'll also meet some Zieglers there.

First crocuses of the spring

It's hardly past the first week of February, but this year in the foothills on the edge of the Willamette Valley the first colors of the year are peaking through the underbrush. They're yellow, these first bloomers, unlike the wild purple ones on the north side of the hills of the western North Dakota prairies.

There's a fondness for crocus in my being. Maybe this came from grandma Sax, Marie, who seemed to have some on her table soon as the first ones appeared. Maybe this came from Mom who would drive me to the more prolific hill almost a mile from the house before I was grown enough to either walk that distance or drive a vehicle. We'd pick them when we went to get the cows in for milking, which, when I was in grade school, was as soon as we got off the school bus in the afternoon.

Conveniently the crocus would bloom around the first of May so they were available to put in the May basket that I'd put on the doorstep and ring the doorbell for Mom. I have no idea from where the tradition came, but after I rang the bell I'd run away and Mom would come out chasing me, catch me and give me a kiss. Well, at least that happened once and stuck in my mind as annual forever. Maybe this is the memory or emotion in the back of my mind that sparks the romantic part of me when the crocuses show color in the spring.