The Visitor

When my husband and I came home after spending the afternoon on New Year’s with a married daughter and her family in the area, we saw a strange car in the car park.

“Whose car is that? It doesn’t look familiar,” Ken said. “Maybe it’s Marit.”

Our daughter Marit had moved here from California two months ago. I shook my head. “These are not California license plates. And it doesn’t look like her car.” The plates looked very familiar, but I couldn’t place them, so I said. “They are Colorado plates.” Marit had just returned from a month’s long stay in Colorado with her grandmother, and Colorado was on my mind.

Ken parked behind the strange car, and as he got out he said. “They’re not. It can’t be anyone but Marit.”

But Ken was right. Colorado plates didn’t have a picture of a pine tree in their center. But I knew those plates. Where had I seen them before? As I exited the car, the door to our home opened. In the dark, all I could see was a fluffy blonde head of short hair. Did Marit cut and color her hair since I saw her last a few day’s ago?

Ken, several steps in front of me, spread his arms wide. “Is that really you?” Delight rang in his voice as he enveloped the woman who had come from our home in a bear hug.

At that moment I knew who it was! I squealed in delight and joined them. We had a group hug on the porch before getting into our home.

We still have two daughters and a son living in Oregon, where we had raised them for eight years before packing up and moving to Germany for two years, and then back to Utah.

The little girl who gave us our best Christmas surprise was Liesel, on of our daughters from Oregon. We had no idea she would come, and her arrival made the best surprise. Liesel will be with us until her birthday on Sunday, before leaving back to Oregon.

***

When I was a girl growing up in the carnival in Germany, we only had our parents and us children. We heard about grandparents and aunts and uncles, but they were far away. However, we had relatives visiting too, once or twice in all those years. I’ll write more about that tomorrow.