Roses

Mrs. Donna Veurink

A dear friend gave me a framed picture that says “God gives us our memories so that we may have roses in December”.  And since I’m in the December of my years in education, I thought I’d share some of the beautiful roses God has given me.  (I don’t usually name names. However, if you were part of a memory below, feel free to name yourself.)

• I wore a fabulous new red dress to the Dordt Band Festival one year. It was raining when we loaded up to go home, and I was out there, making sure instruments and instrumentalists were loaded…didn’t want to leave anyone or anything behind.  I was drenched when it was time to go home, but dried off/warmed up on the 3 hour drive home (I was driving one of the vans the school had borrowed.)  Back at school, I got out to find the gray upholstery of the driver’s seat in the borrowed van was now a beautiful shade of red.  Oops.
• Driving home from my first Dordt Band Festival, I got stopped for speeding through Chancellor. I pulled over, and so did the caravan of vans behind me.  The patrolman was perplexed. He asked me what the deal was, and I told him.  After shining his flashlight around the interior of my vehicle, and seeing the teenage faces, I told him each van behind me was filled with similar faces. He let me go with a warning. I think of that every time I go through Chancellor…and I’m careful to SLOW DOWN.
• Several fun memories come from one very full field trip…USD Music Museum and Nutcracker Suite Ballet at the Washington Pavilion.
  • Between the museum in Vermillion and the Ballet in Sioux Falls, we stopped at the larger-than-life replica statue of Michelangelo’s David in Sioux Falls.  Not a good idea to take adolescent boys to this.
  • Intermission at the Ballet…the students’ experience with “intermission” was half-time at a basketball game.  They acted accordingly.
  • After the ballet, I realized I had locked the keys in the van.  We waited 60 sleet-filled minutes for a locksmith to come to open it.  With some of the above mentioned adolescents. I’ll let you imagine what those minutes were like!
  • Got stopped for speeding in Parker after going 45 on icy country roads.  45 MPH is old-lady slow on country roads, but too fast for town, I guess. 
• Took the7-12 instrumentalists to a region band competition in Gregory and found that my middle school-age drummers had forgotten their music.  To this day, they will tell you that I had told them I would bring their music. 
• Played the wrong school song for an area school’s cheerleaders at district boys basketball games, with a standing-room-only crowd.  8 months pregnant.  In an orange/purple plaid jumper.  No one noticed---just kidding, it was mortifying.  EVERYONE noticed. 

Those are just a few flowers in my large rose garden…a garden this big will take a lot of time tend it. But oh, the benefits!  I get to enjoy all of them! If you wonder what I’m up to not at school, I’m enjoying my roses.