25 OCT 25

Eight forty-five... murder of crows splits above the Old Courthouse behind a full wall of glass in the ballroom... full-silver and cold now with rain a county behind... and Patience is warming up a reel for the first competition slot of the morning...

...while biggest brother drives back down to Festus for another military drill...

A reel and hornpipe later for the feisty little blossom... waiting for awards ceremonies flanked by hot pink velvety skeletons and little pink ghosts with googly eyes... Patience rakes over a silver and a bronze and a third place sash and a black teddy bear by the end of it...

Camp out with torpedo sandwiches in a quiet hallway... stopping at a vendor for crystal costume earrings for Milwaukee and a bar of aerated chocolate from Ireland to split... as Oxbear texts me from the vet about the dog's surprise ear infection (cha-ching!)...

Patience spends the next couple of hours coasting back and forth between loud-with-friends and quiet-with-Mama until her next shift... discussing excitedly about one of her dance teachers becoming engaged on a mountaintop in August to an Israeli man... while one of the janitors chats with me about the fifty rolls of toilet paper she's already put out in the women's bathroom since early that morning...

Then more reel more hornpipe... Patience slips back into secondhand vintage Hollister sweatpants from her aunt as another dance teacher leaves for The Muny's “garage sale”... and a full repeat of medals and sash by three o'clock...

After seven hours of all of it... Oxbear grabs us in the Toyota while a soft rain pat-pats through the city...

And Puck calls on his drive back from drill with all the news and all the thoughts and his very first soldier uniform on loan till the winter when he gets the “real thing”...