All's well that ends well. Yesterday morning I presided (hah!) at the executive committee meeting for the last time as chair of the fellowship. Starting next month I'll attend this meeting as finance and endowment chair, a position that will permit me to sit back while others do the heavy equivocating. I had planned a moment of pomp and circumstance at the end of the meeting when I might give Kathleen the symbol of this lofty office -- the key to the fellowship post office box. But at 10:35, as the meeting was drawing to a close, Brock D and Charlie K insinuated themselves into the agenda to discuss funds for printing the history of the fellowship that they together have compiled.

The meeting was called to order (hah! hah!) at 9 AM, as scheduled. Our business could run no later than 10:45, lest we overlap the Sunday program, which must begin on time so that we might observe our first commandment: "Thou shalt end the program by noon."

I could crack wise about the way Brock and Charlie beat about the bush on their presentation, but that would be unfair and inaccurate. All participants at these meetings -- not just Brock and Charlie -- become unnecessarily dilatory in their presentations and deliberations, proceeding most excellently sideways, mulling this concern and that quibble, but marching ahead very reluctantly, all the while indulgently writing off our slow progress to our character as argumentative and divergent freethinkers, an image we cultivate, particularly at these meetings. In one of his essays (I forget which of his books it's in), the essayist and former Unitarian minister Robert Fulghum tells a story of such a board meeting much better than I, so I might dig that out to read at a future board meeting if only so that I might read the words "How much for the whole sumbitch?" aloud in front of the group.

We spent fully half of this meeting (and not for the first time, I might add, and not for the twelfth either) discussing what to do about the ivy that some of our members planted years ago to soften the plain, utilitarian, early-Dairy Queen facade of the building and to lend it some grace. Some years ago, the fellowship bought the building and a few hillside acres from the school district, which was using the building for storage of restroom and cafeteria fixtures, its time as functional classroom space having passed. The school building wasn't one of the traditional limestone or white clapboard school houses that still stand in the county and that have aged gracefully. Instead, we bought a flat-roofed, red-brick box. The bricks on the facade -- inexpensive to begin with, I think -- are now spalling from water and freezing, and the vines aggravate the deterioration of the bricks.

At the table we had those who believed our primary responsibility was to maintain the building properly, no matter the fate of the ivy. These were, I think, the lapsed Presbyterians. We also had those who took the "interconnected web of all living things" position, usually the more pagan among us. One maverick said she would go along with the removal of the ivy, but wouldn't participate directly in its wanton destruction. I think her spouse drove her to the meeting in a huge new SUV.

I've decided I'm for the ivy. Grace of the kind afforded by the ivy costs. Spend all you have for ivyness and never count the cost. All of this discussion is recreational, of course, because we have embarked upon a half-million dollar building renovation and expansion, and much of the ivy will no doubt be lost in the construction. The architect's footprint for the redesigned building should be available by the end of the month, peoples.

Next item, please! That would be the matter of the key and the transfer of power, no?

Well, no. The next item of business, one that arose unexpectedly, was the matter of the history of the fellowship according to Brock and Charlie, which last-minute interruption resulted in my forgetting to turn over the power, glory and key to Kathleen, but the next item touched on briefly in these pages is...

Mother's Day. Owen did a good thing as best he could. Taylor had spent Saturday night at his grandmother's house, and Owen awoke to fix a breakfast of Cheerios, toast and juice for the mom. Wham, bam, thank you, Mom!

Well, the gesture is all when it comes from a child, isn't it?

Of course, I called my own mother, explaining that if she and Dad were online she would have also received a card.

Skipping the program Sunday, I returned home after the meeting to be with the kids while the resident mom took her mother and grandmother on a picnic and a drive to the northern reaches of the county and of our lake. She reports that the lake above the causeway has silted in almost entirely. Sunday was a cool, beautiful day -- perfect for watching a federal reservoir silt in with Nebraska bottom land. Who says there's no excitement in the heartland...