Appointment

"I may be in there for a little while," our son Greg said when his name was called in the doctor's office. "There's a snack bar on the first floor if you get hungry."  He had asked if we wanted to go along to the city for his appointment, saying we might find something interesting to do later on.

We descended to the first floor of the bone and joint medical center and saw only doors to the parking garage.  While Howard was inquiring of people getting on and off the elevator whether there was a snack bar down here, all of whom seemed clueless, I peered around a door opening to see a couple of vending machines holding drinks and snacks.  Our snack bar!  We perched on couches in a reception area and ate our snacks. "He may be back by now," my husband said after a while,  "let's go back up."

  

He pushed the elevator button for the 3rd floor, and we stepped out  into unfamiliar surroundings.  We must have looked puzzled, for the receptionist asked, "May I help you?"  I told her we didn't know where we were, explaining we were here at  the doctor with our son.  "What is the doctor's name?" she asked. We didn't know.  She asked our son's name and started to enter it into her computer, when I told her he was being treated for arthritis.  "Oh, all our arthritis patients are on the second floor!" she exclaimed.  Feeling foolish, we remembered that, although we had had to park on the 3rd level, we'd gone down to the second floor to the doctor's office.

It seemed this morning was full of the unexpected.  Our original plan was to follow the doctor visit with lunch, possibly at Bricktown, then go to a banjo museum the guys had been wanting to see. Instead, since we were close to the Capitol building, my husband and son decided to look up info on the Cherokee Strip Land Run at the History Center in the Capitol Complex.

This proved most interesting when we found material on Howard's grandfather's claim from that time. The helpful attendant produced documents including a copy of the "patent" to his land.  He explained that a patent was the certificate showing the original owner of a tract of land.  Any successive owners would hold a deed. 

I loved the look of the certificate with its formal "whereas," "whereby," and "duly consummated," words and phrases in printed script, and the handwritten, lovely penmanship that filled in the blanks. Especially profound were the parts that read, "To secure homesteads to actual settlers," and "To have and to hold...said tract...to (his grandfather) and to his heirs and assigns forever," signed by Theodore Roosevelt.

We had lunch in the Winnie Mae Cafe, a restaurant in the top of the Oklahoma Historical Center named after the airplane of Wiley Post, a replica of which filled the atrium of the soaring structure.  Our ride home was uneventful,  Howard's nostalgic reminiscences from the front seat being interrupted only once by a phone call.  He had paid a compliment to McDonald's a few days ago, and they were calling to say gift coupons of appreciation were in the mail.

What a nice, unexpected ending to our day!  Even though Grandpa George's heirs sold the homestead land, even nicer will be the expected ending of our earthly journey, when our Father brings us to our heavenly home secured for us forever,  as heirs and joint heirs with Jesus Christ! (Romans 8:17)