A Brief Reprieve
Sunday School: sitting behind the buzzed head and hulking rugby shoulders of the South African dad, another Trinity hymnal shoved behind my back for support. Church chairs are somehow the worst for lower back pain. Watching “70AD” scrawled on the white board, analyzing various dating methods for Revelation, thinking it looked more like “TOAD”.
Puck and Rose walked in minutes before the sermon. “I thought it started at 10:45,” Rose explained guiltily.
Puck was already on a thundering train of loudly whispered information, fresh off breakfast cereal and Phineas and Ferb. I tried to bring it down a notch before the next corporate reading:
“I GOT THREE POPCICLES AND I GOT TO PLAY GAMES THIS MORNING! I SHOULD GO TO ONION’S MORE OFTEN SO THAT STINKERBELLE CAN GET USED TO ME! SHE THINKS I’M AN ANIMAL TOO BECAUSE I’M SO SHORT, ONION TOLD ME! CAN I RIDE BACK WITH ONION TO GRANDMA’S HOUSE? SHE’S GOING TO GET A CAR WASH!”
Later that afternoon he ran around in sun and wind, coatless, with the usual pack of neighbor friends. Cops and Robbers. “I defended the girl from the boys though,” he explained to me later, with importance. “They weren’t being very nice to her.”
When the dance class students returned, plans were made. Life had been different without the big old green thing. A three-car armada is somehow even more embarrassing, and less comfortable. So Sunday afternoon trips have been limited. This particular afternoon, however, Francis found himself at an all-day swim meet with the O family, so the remaining ten traveled to Klondike Park in two cars, somewhere between fifty and sixty degrees on the hour.
This setup basically meant the general landscape was disrupted for thirty minutes while the boys heaved boulders onto the several spindly inches of ice spread across the lake. Shattering chalky explosions from breaking rock, or craters into icy water, reminiscent of bubbling Yellowstone eruptions. We watched air bubbles travel under the ice, hoping for some moderate gurgles, before returning.
“Everyone okay with cheap pizzas?” Dad gave fair warning before driving out to Little Caesar’s in his black leather bomber jacket.
Mom coaxed another game of rummikub out of me with Carrie-Bri on the living room floor, discussing cake toppers with Jaya as the sky caught fire in the west. El Oso helped Joe and Jaya prepare the wedding website, Joe showed off his first passport, and there were conversations about the Apostle Paul before Rose drove off to host another movie with Annamaria and Thunderbird.