April 25

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Sunday morning began with that primitive eden outside the window, rolls of green stuffs and little winds under skies of sea gray. It was beautiful enough to never lose its deserve to be mentioned.

It was a cold wind blew them to church that day. Gray.

Back at the house, for the first time in her life, Collette ate coleslaw. Homemade coleslaw. And she was a little proud of herself for that strange accomplishment. There was also marinated chicken, which Collette thought tasted a good deal like Soulard, and mini challah loaves.

Around the table, there were the usual chuckles, for everyone but Joe, who had just left for Rolla, and Puck, who was napping after his late night out dancing.

In the afternoon, the rain continued to fall over the little green land. And when Mom, Dad, and Puck had awoken from their Sunday afternoon naps, everyone, except for Rose, who was meeting Juliet for coffee, piled into the big old green thing and headed downtown under rushing gray skies.

The object of the mission was to ride past Bumbershoot in the old Polar Ice building, where Strawberry had her aerial arts studio. Linnea was considering taking lessons.

On the way, they passed the Russian Orthodox church and the Francis de Sales cathedral, which was quite impressive. And then into some of the not-so-nice neighborhoods running around the area. So they discussed which parts were, and were not, bad parts of town, including Pestalozzi Street, where Grandma Combs used to take the trolley down to visit her cousins. Times had, indeed, changed…

“This part’s ok,” said Francis, looking around. “Oh, nope. Broken fence. Bad part.”

OLeif got a laugh out of this running narrative.

Then they found Bumbershoot, which was in a better spot, and which was a studio of high glass windows on two sides. The interior was hung with ropes and silks and other trapeze-like apparatus. Next to it, in the same building, was a bakery.

And once they had returned to the house, and Francis had been dropped off at youth, everyone took advantage of the blizzard sale: buy one, get one for twenty-five cents, at Dairy Queen.

That night was a BallyK night. Except that OLeif dropped off into a snooze before it was half-finished.