Are faded and gone

Monday, September 25, 2006

Sometime during Monday morning, a black salesman came by the door back at the house. Trooper, in his excitement, bounded towards him. Mom answered the door, trying to hold him back.

“Ooooh…” the guy chuckled, looking at Troops, “I hope he doesn’t like dark meat.”

Perhaps it was inappropriate to laugh, but the guy thought it was funny. And it was.

Also during the morning hours, Rose left in the middle of her practice exam to chase “something wiggling” outside the window. She returned moments later.

“It flew away,” she grumped.

Later, after popcorn and sandwiches for lunch, Linnea tried to bribe Collette into doing her penmanship assignment.

“I’ll give you a Chinese token,” she grinned, holding up the coin.

“I don’t think so, Linnea,” Collette shook a finger at her.

Shortly later, Carrie tore through the house looking for her work clothes. Joe pulled up the driveway in the car at the same time, having just delivered Rose to her class, and observed the spastic Carrie.

“Oh, yeah, they’re on the trash can lids outside. They were in the car. I had to move them to put my bike in the back.”

Carrie stormed outside to retrieve them and sped off to work, fifteen minutes late.

Meanwhile, Rose was sneaking Hershey’s chocolate bars from the s’mores box. Collette helped her remove the evidence.

“When I first confiscated them,” Rose said guiltily, “I ate two and a half bars in my room.”

During Rose’s psychology review, Joe sent her to take out the dog. Rose returned with something in her hand.

“Close your eyes, Collette. I have a surprise for you,” she said happily.

Collette closed her eyes.

“Rose, if it’s anything slimy or dirty or…”

Collette looked down. Rose had planted a mushroom in her hand.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Rose said.

Meanwhile, Mom had decorated the house for fall. Cinnamon sticks, little pumpkin candles, wreaths of autumn leaves, jack o’ lanterns, and other soft glowing cider things…

Especially during the afternoon, Collette had trouble keeping Rose nailed down to the books. Around four, Collette looked out the back door to find her taking photographs of a gigantic fuzzy spider on the patio.

Minutes later, she had successfully distracted Frances from mowing the yard. He and Linnea were watching Rose herd around the spider inside a fish tank on the lawn.

Earlier, while Rose had been at class, Collette rode bikes up and down the street a couple of times with Linnea. It seemed like it had been years since she had done so.

Her little blue bike had been given to her for her fifth Christmas. She had remembered one day while the family was out that Mom told her to duck down in the car as they pulled into a certain shopping plaza parking lot.

“What, Mom? What?” Collette had asked, crouching down.

“Don’t ask questions around Christmas.” Mom had laughed.

She stayed hunkered down until she heard Dad lift something into the back of the station wagon and they had pulled away.

“Now don’t turn around,” Mom had warned her.

And she hadn’t. Christmas morning, Collette had received a little package under the tree. She thought it was odd that Carrie had received a bundle of presents, but she didn’t ask about it.

“Well, Collette, do you want your other present?” Mom had asked.

“Oh, I thought this was it,” Collette had said.

“Take a walk downstairs,” Dad told her.

Collette hit the stairs and crept down. She peeked below and saw a shiny blue bike sitting there propped up on its kickstand. Surely it couldn’t be hers, she thought. She returned upstairs.

“There’s… a bike down there…” she said, a little confused.

“It’s yours!” Mom said smiling at her.

“What?” Collette was very surprised.

They all hurried back down for Collette to look at it. From then on, she was rarely off of it. Dad spent countless hours teaching her to make figure-eights around the basement floor, with a rope attached to the seat which he held, should she start to take a spill. Dad wouldn’t let her have training wheels. And after weeks of going at it, she had mastered the riding of the bike.

And whenever the weather was warm, she would often ride up and down the street for hours on her little blue bike, talking out other worlds and stories to herself. Soon, Carrie had a red bike. She liked to bike fast, much faster than Collette cared to drive. However, they would have their share of races down the road. And usually, Carrie would win.

Then one day, when she had grown a little too tall for the little blue bike, Dad and Mom took her and Carrie-Bri to the bike store where Dad pushed out too black-cherry colored bicycles for each of them, full size. Collette felt that she had never received a greater present. It was also the same day that Star Wars had been released on VHS at the store. And seeing as they had never watched it before, Dad picked up a set along with some sodas and snacks for the evening, and they watched all three episodes over the next three Saturdays. Before they watched it, however, Collette and Carrie had walked their bikes catty-corner across the lawns to Felicity’s house to show her their beautiful new bikes. It had been a day of great surprises.