You Know the Tree by the Fruit

(Oklahoma City) I met some new folks tonight at the Cheesecake Factory. Tim and Nona-Sue Mellish live in the OKC suburb of Bethany. Ellan Graham lives nearby in Yukon. I am somewhat familiar with both places since I visit this city quite often. I really don’t know much about these very friendly folks except this one very important thing. They did a wonderful job raising their kids.

I found great pleasure in telling them just that tonight.

Their kids, by the way, are David and Jamie Graham. I wrote about them a couple of months ago when they were leaving Georgia to come back home to Oklahoma City. Unlike most of the friends they made in Georgia, I promised them I would see them again. I kept my promise.

When a young married couple moves all the way across the country from Oklahoma to Georgia where they know absolutely nobody, all their parents can do is hope and pray they raised them right. The parents will not be there to tell them who to hang out with or what to do with their time. All of a sudden they are on their own in a strange land where everything all of a sudden becomes permissible.

David and Jamie did it right the two years or so they were in Georgia. They joined a good church, got involved and made a lot of friends. They even hung out at our house from time to time with some of their friends. I knew somewhere there were parents who had done more than a few things right along the way. I was 100 percent correct.

I am the world's worst at remembering names. When we finished our meal and after a lot of conversation, I pulled out a piece of paper and asked the parents to give me their names again. I wanted to write the names down for this blog. David laughed and wondered what people at nearby tables were thinking. They had seen me join this group at their table. They watched us talk and laugh. And then they saw me pull out a piece of paper and ask for their names.

I did ask for their names but I did not have to ask who they were. I already knew more about them than they realized.

Make no mistake about it. You know the tree by the fruit.