This year, I am going to miss the Cheese Festival. Our daughter is getting married, and she chose that Saturday for the celebration.
We’ve known about this for quite some time. And we’ve been getting ready, doing all the things required, like purchasing clothing suitable for the parents of the bride.
We will get to see most of our kids. They are very seldom together and even more seldom when we can be there.
I want to be all motherof- the-bride and get weepy remembering the little girl who loved to climb into the dryer, then poke her head out with a pink pacifier clenched in her teeth. But I can’t.
Kate has turned into a beautiful, confident outgoing young woman who laughs a lot. Her personality is half bubbly, half someone who does not suffer fools gladly.
She is also kind and loving with a heart for older people. Maybe she is what some call an old soul. I can’t say.
What I can say is this ceremony – a celebration – is a real reflection of who she has become, and we are delighted she has found a young man who shares her outlook on life. It will be as light and loving and breezy as they are with lots of time to spend with the people we love, crammed into a couple of hard days of travel.
So as much as I will miss the big cheese, this will be so much more to us personally. Yes, my feet will still hurt. Yes, I will eat too much. But we will come home filled up with love and happiness that we have shared with our firstborn. What a gift.
Something else I will be absent for is our anniversary at the Watonga Republican. We will turn 135 years old on October 13. What a milestone and we are rightfully proud, even though there are older papers in the state.
But when I think of the giant undertaking it was, to travel from Kansas, leaving behind family and the grave of one of the babies, to come to what must have seemed like an untamed wilderness to start a newspaper, it takes my breath away. I doubt many of us would have the courage today. I would not.
But the Fergusons did. And Elva continued to run the paper after T.B. died, in a day when women were regarded as unable to handle business. The paper passed to another owner, about whom I know very little, for a few years then on to the Curtin family. First ‘Cowboy’ then Tim’s family held the reins until it passed on to Brett Wesner of Cordell and Central Oklahoma Publications.
So here we are, nearly 135 years old. I can’t even think about another 100 years. Even 10 years is a stretch, considering the changes I have seen in just my time in the industry.
But one thing is for sure. If there is news to report, a town to cover, a light to be shone on the people’s business, the Watonga Republican will be there, holding the flashlight. At least while I have breath in my body.