Beginnings of "Birthday Week"
Monday, November 14, 2005
(7:14am) Denae’s 52nd and Diana’s 21st – And it was good to celebrate a birthday on a less-busy day of the week. Although Collette knew of a birthday on every day of that week, from Monday till Saturday.
Saturday had been full. On the way out to the car that morning, Collette was nearly hit on the head by double cherries which fell with a simultaneous thud on the pavement. Looking up from whence they fell, Collette was surprised to see a cluster of purple blossoms in the branches. The same sort of tree one door down held three such clusters in its branches on that Indian Summer day.
“It’s confused!” Collette laughed, as she showed OLeif.
Back at the house, Sean, Pearl, Frances, and Linnea were in their trove and under gray skies and whipping winds, they traveled nearly the entirety of the Zoo – from the hippos and penguins to the zebras and monkeys. At the gift shop, Pearl chose a stuffed monkey with a sweeping white tail and Sean took a sign for his room which read something about being a monkey.
Forest Park was windblown from stretch to stretch and they all tried to keep their sandwiches and juice from blowing away in the wind. All the kids took turns jumping off an outcropping. Then OLeif commenced to instigate throwing chocolate cookies and handfuls of gravel at one another, which they all loved of course.
There was a film on the Nile at the Science Center where Joe and Rose met up with them right before they were admitted to the Omnimax. Afterwards, in the gift shop, Joe took to a windbreaker jar of slime, Rose and Linnea took a package each of three rock candy sticks, Sean found a colored spot disco ball, Pearl took a little magic fuzzy worm critter with eyeballs, and Frances found a gyroscope – hand-operated.
Before heading back out, Collette called Mom on the cell to see if they were nearly ready to have them back for dinner. Mom was in the process of eating a waffle cone of ice cream when she received the call, and informed her that they were having a fabulous time. And Mr. and Mrs. Lord-Welches had already ordered a bed and a beautiful quilt for their cabin. Back over pizza, they all joked about and Mr. Lord-Welches looked through Carrie’s new tree house book, quite impressed.
After saying their goodbyes, Collette and OLeif drove over to the church office, where they took Boy, Bob, and Nacchianti, (all three of whom clapped, snapped, and grooved to the music of some black blues tunes on the way, courtesy of OLeif’s numerous oddity music collections), following Jimmy and six other junior highers to “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” at Christian High School. There, they met Mr. Mather whom they were more than happy to see once again. He was looking very well, praising God for everything as always, and enjoying life. He was also preparing to learn the bagpipes, and had purchased a penny whistle in California, but it had cracked in half in the luggage on the journey home.
During the intermission, OLeif attempted to convince Goofy Nickels that he could impress any girl by eating a cupcake in two bites. Boy also worked on the same scheme by insisting that his girlfriend fell for him in the same manner, after which he shoved his own chocolate frosted cupcake from the refreshment table into his mouth in two bites.
During the play, Collette was praying for the Middle East and dear sweet old Uncle Fred, and thinking about the amazing churches in Ethiopia (which she had seen on the Omnimax film), cut forty feet down into the rock, (13 all in all, connected by tunnels), 1600 years old. She also thought that Aslan must have been a German lion, because of his very odd accent. Samantha was there as well, hurrying from backstage where she had been the makeup artist for the beavers. She was in all black, a smile of perfects whites, tanned, made-up, and her hair in a sloppy bun. She was on her way to have dinner with her grandparents. Only thirteen years old with an unofficial boyfriend of 19 – the infamous Jesse James of the old choir days. Somehow, Collette often felt quite responsible for all the little kids running around in church and the home school group… Why, she couldn’t quite say. Meanwhile, several audience members hurried around with grand bouquets of bright flowers for their favorite Narnian character.
In the play, Pablo Honey from the junior high youth, was the centaur, and Asia Minor was Mrs. Beaver. She always turned up at odd and assorted places. As Collette watched her talk with her friends afterwards, she couldn’t believe that she had known her parents before they were married at Immanuel Lutheran Church. Collette remembered when she was very young (perhaps two or three) that Asia’s mother was talking with Mom outside while Collette gathered and ate mulberries from the tree hanging over the lawn outside the church. Collette had remembered her hunching down, sitting on her ankles so she could talk to Collette, and that she had been wearing a tan-ish tie, as it was the eighties. And now here was her daughter, a little younger than Rose, and quite beautiful.
Collette was increasingly hoping to get to know all the kids better – the youth from church and choir, and other places… It reminded her of their idea of the house, the “Luther House” as she called it, where nearly every evening, they would open their home to whoever would come. She had things written down, and thought about new things from time to time.
Sunday was spent after Sunday School and Church (where Pastor and Mrs. Marshall visited), at Simple Simon’s Pizza (with cinnamon sticks) with the three Coca-Cola boys, Joe, and Curly. At the house, OLeif crashed in Rose’s bamboo saucer chair (while she was at girl’s Bible study and Carrie was at work). He and Collette both fell asleep, Collette on the couch downstairs with OLeif’s hat over her face, leaving a mark on her nose where the bill had been pressed down. Then there was youth with the kids and back home… Long weekend, but good.
And that day, it was a rainy Monday, with many plans and such going on. Collette was greeted by Linnea:
“Collette, could you quit your job at the church office and come work as a lifeguard at the h-YMCA (Linnea and Frances always pronounced it this way)?”
“Why is that, Linnea?”
“So whenever the water slide is closed, you can let me go down!”
Meanwhile, Collette was surprised that day to run across a quote by the famed Dostoyevsky:
“The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was sublime and beautiful, the more I sank into my mire…”
Even Dostoyevsky had a closer understanding of man’s total depravity than most Christians in the American church that day… Sober thought.
And in other news, Elizabeth had been on the first date ever of her entire life, with a 24-year old Marine from the community college, who was absolutely head-over-heels for her. As of that morning it was undecided as to what would happen next. Times were a ‘changin.