Around the Bloomin' Onion
“Turn your little bum around, Puck, I’m going to pin this to your pants,” said Frances.
He clipped the string to the little man’s britches.
“Now we’ll be able to find you wherever you go,” Collette told him.
“Yes, it’s your little honing device,” Frances agreed.
Puck was already tangled up in the string, grabbing for the elusive balloon at the other end.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, Puck,” Frances laughed.
Dad had received the helium birthday balloon from co-workers, and what was left of it, Puck was enjoying.
At one point of the day, Mom convinced Collette, Carrie-Bri, Joe, and Rose to help her learn the English Country dance: “Barberini’s Tambourine”.
“Here, Mom,” Joe called out from his back on the floor. “I’ll help you learn it.”
He ran himself around in frantic circles, singing the tune aloud. Mom decided that this was not beneficiary, and called him up off of the floor.
“Will you be a guy, Carrie?” Mom asked.
“Gee, thanks, Mom.”
“Okay, Collette, you dance with Joe. And, Rose, you dance with Carrie.”
“I’m not dancing with that!” Rose protested, pointing at Carrie.
Rose later dropped out of the dance so that Mom could take her place. Then later, Frances subbed for Carrie.
“Now, boys, take hands and form your line,” said Mom.
“Eeeeew!” Joe exclaimed. “I don’t trust Frances’ hands.”
Sometime later, somehow, the dance was finally learned while Linnea watched Puck scramble around on the floor. He had been given a yellow maraca, baby-size, and found it terribly fascinating.
Dinner was at Outback with the whole family (except for Puck who was being watched by Denae, as it was too much past his bedtime). They were celebrating Dad’s 50th birthday. They laughed their way through two bloomin’ onions and the entire meal, recalling funny stories about Dad, reading his cards, and discussing various other things of interest, including Rose’s latest idea: to decorate the basement bathroom in a Celtic theme, including a Scottish hologram on the wall.
Dad’s cards included three humorous ones from both grandmas and Uncle Hilario and Aunt Corliss. Grandma Combs’ (which pictured a big chubby pig on the cover) read:
“Another Birthday,
Big Guy? You know, if you
figured your age
in pig years…
…you’d be a football by now!”
And Grandma Snicketts had written another charmer. The pre-typed inside read:
“I was thinking
of you today,
when
I realized…
how wonderful
it is
to have you
for a son…
“Sometimes, of course,
I worry about you,
but that’s just a natural part
of being a parent…
Followed by her own hand-written:
“You only gave me a few gray hairs growing up like when I found you and Balthasar striking matches in your clothes closet. Have a wonderful 50th Birthday,
Love Mom”
They laughed at how cute it was.
“Dad, you were a bad kid! How did Grandma find out you were lighting matches in the closet?”
Dad began to get the giggles.
“Well, she would never have found out,” he said, “except for the fact that I let one burn too long and dropped it on to Balthasar’s foot.”
Then there were the stories about how Dad saved the kids from drowning: Collette once, and Carrie twice.
“Yeah, we were all at Grandpa’s swimming one time, and Dad had sprained his ankle so he was using crutches,” said Carrie.
“And so no one was paying attention while Carrie was drowning,” said Collette.
“Yeah, Mom was probably too busy getting a Popsicle for Collette or something. And Dad ‘ran’ over with his crutches and reached down to pull me out of the water.”
The other time had been in Ohio when Dad saved both girls from a watery death when they were swimming in the L-shaped apartment pool with two Dutch girls and somehow simultaneously slipped through their pink inner tubes.
“I thought that was the end,” said Carrie.
Collette, also, had thought that was the way she would go, through drowning. But Dad had been there to save the day, and she lived past her seventh birthday.