Always Entertained
“Let’s build that earthworks house.”
The Bear has this dream of an underground house. This particular blueprint is resistant to fire, earthquakes, atomic bombs, and zombies. I said I’ll think about it. After all, I had been thinking something nearer a Japanese shoebox, but… who am I kidding? The boys would break it in a day. Besides, living underground could have its benefits. I’ve seen some photographs. They’re actually pretty cool.
We’ve still got some color left. I could watch it ruffle in the early sun while I washed up the breakfast dishes. Yes, it was a Saturday morning. No, we could not sleep in, because…
“Minecraft!”
Puck was at the giant countertop building away…
“Ha! Die, piggies, die!”
“Puck!”
“It’s ok, mom. They’re evil pigs… with swords… that try to kill you!”
Bacon got frying, eggs got boiling… frying bacon is the worst.
The Bear lifted the increasing poundage of Greek binder and retired to the couch…
“Alright, words. Let’s do this.”
It was warm. The Bear opened doors and windows out to the deck where Puck stuffed his pockets to bursting with acorns.
“I saw a baby spider, Mama. On an acorn. I rolled it around so he could have a little ride. But then he fell off.”
90 minutes at the park in Cottleville still wasn’t enough. After a new pack of cold water – gift from Nana – he careened back down the deck to the oak swing in the warm winds of an unnaturally summerish November afternoon anticipated to hit somewhere near 77.
Gloria mixed a large salad and shared more about their business trip to this state to our south. Stories about fried cornbread, Jimmy Driftwood, bear cubs, mutated koi, ultralights shot down over marijuana fields… Nothing from personal experience, of course…
Then Gloria was happy to bring Mom, Carrie-Bri, and Rose around to her shops to rustle up color for the living room. Theodore and The Bear escaped for some manly electronics thing. And I spaced out at the counter musing over Korea, death, and green tea fields while Puck completed Minecraft. [Nothing morbid; just following some plot lines.]
It was a gorgeous night. You don’t find them often like this, not even in St. Louis.
Crackers was so anxious for our return that she had destroyed the shade in the kitchen window. It doesn’t even surprise me anymore. She happily raced around the house to see her Puck again and batter at a piece of his dinner broccoli on the linoleum. Probably thought it was her souvenir or something.
Thought of the Day
Was death not as “terrible” for the pioneer?
In the retrospect of an individual who did not witness pioneer life, I would have to say that it kind of seems like a time where, when terrible things happened, they just sort of picked themselves up – maybe they hadn’t even been knocked over by it in the first place – and moved on. Disease, carnage, death… Maybe the severity wouldn’t have been on the same level, because they were just… used to it, I guess. I tend to think that a lot of these hard questions come from thinking life should be easy. It’s almost a modern concept. Questions like, “Why would God allow some people to be murdered?” It’s not an apathetic question in any regard. But I think there’s also a point in there about how former generations viewed, or rather accepted, more deeply and trustingly, the will of God. No matter what it was. And then they moved on. I think it might have been handled in an unhealthy way often, but on the other hand, comfortable and easy lives weren’t expected. Pain and death, were.
But then again, I’m not a pioneer roughing it out over typhus and dump cake.