brunete sans ami,
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death that morning. Collette wondered if his heart was hardened past the point of no return. Murderers had been saved in the past before their execution dates. Specifically, he was set to be hung.
Meanwhile, all eight Sunday School students were very fidgety that morning. And six year-old Red Blunt still quite unashamedly wore the chunky diamond ring Carrie had sent to him.
Later, while OLeif played some ditties on his violin in the last few minutes of Sunday School, he had the kids guess which tunes he was playing. After a few notes, Red Blunt started singing his guess:
“Somewhere beyond the sea somewhere waitin’ for me…”
“No, no, that’s not it,” OLeif laughed.
But Red continued raspingly, “My lover stands on golden sands,” his voice cracking oddly on ‘sands’, “And watching the ships that go sailin’.”
Later he requested that OLeif play “The Sound of the Music”.
“It sounds just like it,” he said, awed, after OLeif obliged.
Before youth that afternoon, there was a pot of vegetable soup and garlic bread and some talking over the dilemma with Grandpa Combs ashes – where they were to be spread – in the ocean, over Great-Grandma Combs’ gravestone, etc., which got into the discussion on Grandma Combs wanting her ashes spread over Gus’ Pretzel Parlour…
“Do you really think she’s serious about that?” Collette had never been so sure.
“I don’t know,” Mom said, “She’s a river-town girl though, so I imagine she’ll want her ashes spread down river.”
“I’ll send her down river…” Dad joked.
But Grandma had decided long ago that she wanted to be cremated.
“She always says,” Mom was saying, “’I don’t want all my grandchildren lined up there looking at me saying how nice I look. I’ll be dead; I won’t look nice.’”
So that was that.
“I think Grandma will have a fun froonral,” Rose said, who still couldn’t pronounce funeral correctly.
“Yeah, she’ll have hired her jazz band to play and will have them display her struttin’ umbrella,” Carrie laughed.
And then on the way to youth, Rose (in the dark), got out her make-up bag and propped her little mirror between OLeif’s seat and his headrest.
“Hold still,” she demanded, “as he tried to knock it out of place. I have to finish my toilett-ee.”
Another Rose-ism.
Youth began with Jimmy, OLeif, Collette, Ben-Hur, his friend from school (Olive Circles), Rose, Bob B., Molly, and Nacchianti. It ended with Jimmy and OLeif smashing old table tops see-saw fashion, which were meant for the dumpster. Rose and Molly helped out with a smaller piece, more like a stick. And that was the evening.