Cookies, Weddings, and Irises
Sunday, February 20, 2005
The previous afternoon had been met with more satisfaction than Collette had originally hoped for. Upon arriving at the house before leaving for the shower, Collette was immediately greeted with a slew of information.
“Hi there,” Mom called as Collette entered. “Hey, where’s OLeif?”
Collette could see that several baking projects were commencing at the same time as the pots, bowls, pans, and other utensils littered the counters, with flour, sugar, and other such items.
“Oh, he’s just untangling a kite from the tree out in the front.”
“A kite?” Everyone seemed to ask at once.
“Yeah – someone’s homemade creation. I think it was a kite, anyway.”
“Collette! Collette! Look – look what I got!” Francis excitedly called from the living room.
Some sort of flying saucer was hovering just over the floor and then suddenly flew to the ceiling, crashing then into the piano.
“Wow, dude!” Collette pulled her coat off. “That’s so cool”
“Collette!” Joe bounded into the kitchen. “Here, this is for you.”
He handed her a folded piece of paper – a request from the youth group to reserve the new church office April 22nd and 23rd for their fund raiser night.
“OK, man, I’ll take care of it,” she told him.
“Collette – I bought a new Polly Pocket set and a LIFE computer game with my Christmas money.”
Linnea was already proudly displaying her new Polly Pocket wardrobe set, this time with magnetic clasps to keep the clothes on the dolls.
“Cool, Linnea. I didn’t even know you had money left from Christmas.”
“It was a Target card,” she explained. “And I had twenty dollars in it.”
“Collette, I finally figured out the secret ingredient in Auntie Anne’s pretzels.” Carrie told her as she got up from the barstool in her powder blue princess robe and her hair in a fluff.
“Cool – what is it?”
Collette never quite heard, as the flying saucer was beeping and soaring most obnoxiously in the living room, however, she did hear the next bit.
“And,” Carrie continued, “I made peanut butter cookies – Mrs. Field’s recipe.”
Collette was all up for that, and they were soon chowing down on the plate of soft brown goldenness.
“And, I got my tickets for the “Green Day” concert – yes!” Carrie continued. “Oh no!” She held up her hands to her face in agony.
“What?”
“The date – March 13th – the madrigal dinner. Oh no!”
She was about to race off to a calendar somewhere.
“Carrie! Carrie!” Collette held her back. “Madrigal Dinner’s over April 9th.”
“Are you sure?” Carrie began to relax. “Oh, whew! I was really afraid there for a moment. Remember last time – I had to miss “Good Charlotte” even after I had the tickets?”
All of these conversations were taking place at one time – yes, she was home. And it was always good to be there. However, it was nearly time to leave and so the house was in a flurry. Dad was listening to music while working on his laptop in the bedroom – the bed always made a nice desk – just the right level. And Carrie hopped into the shower, getting ready for work. Joe was to take Francis to the Cub Scout gathering for a trip to the Art Museum. And the rest were leaving for the shower.
Meanwhile, Mom was in a rush to find Linnea’s black shoes to go with her party dress. Carrie had snatched the remote control for Francis’ flying saucer. She beeped it around.
“Here’s the grumpy detector!”
She held it near Dad and made it beep more and more as she panned it on to him.
Dad got his smile lines over his grumpy face.
“Carrie…” He scolded.
Carrie giggled and ran off.
“Now it’s the cuteness detector,” she announced. She panned it around again and then on to herself. “Oh! Well, what do you know…” She rolled her head to the side in her “who would have guessed” face, as it beeped loudly. “Hmmm…. don’t get any reading off of you,” she told Mom as Mom waltzed by in a ballerina-like pirouette.
“Carrie, how rude!” Mom laughed and went back to the present business of finding Linnea’s shoes.
“Linnea set it off!” Carrie announced, and then tossed the remote aside, flying off to find her bath towel before anyone else claimed the shower.
Rose quickly took over.
“Look!” She called to Collette. “It’s the stupid detector.”
She beeped it over Troop’s head.
Carrie flung her towel in Rose’s face just as she bounded down the stairs.
Then Linnea became involved as Collette walked off to the hall. She heard behind her:
“You don’t want to make it the brat detector, do you?” Rose was discussing the situation with Linnea. “It’ll run out of battery.”
But finally, finally, they were on their way. And as small twinkles of sleet began to scuttle down from the skies, they arrived at the Swiss’ beautiful lodge home. The whole front was weathered gray boards – a sort of cross between a fisherman’s mansion and a Quaker Colonial front. Two giant holly bushes stood guard before the wooden door and lanterns hung in soft glows.
“Welcome, welcome!” Mrs. Swiss called softly with her warm smile as she pulled them inside from the cold.
Collette had forgotten how beautiful their home was. She had been there before, three or so years before, at night, when Judah Rye had given a talk and slide-show about his experiences in Africa. This was the place where he had used his biology major from Wheaton to aid in growing fishing ponds as a second source of food in the mountains, but it had never quite worked because of the cold. And his adopted family there had knit him a woolen cap of pink. Collette figured that some day he would return to his adopted family and rough it out a while in Africa again. But for now, he was singing in the Bach Society, a “poor seminary student”, and the worship/choir director at Grace.
And, he had broken Great-Grandma Jewel’s rocking chair in the living room when he had visited over coffee with OLeif that Friday afternoon. But it could be mended. It was the spooky rocking chair – the chair that seemed to rock on its own, as Collette and Carrie always insisted. They remembered it years ago at Great-Grandma’s, in the living room next to a vase of long peacock feathers that always glimmered fantastic shades of topaz and aqua and violet. Collette had once even noted the same rocking chair with its seating and backing set into a flat oval back and scrolled rocker on an old black and white film, although she had forgotten which.
Nevertheless, the Swiss’ home had the makings of a lodge with pine rafters and beams and little ledges on the staircase for candles – which there were – several glass votives flickering, with wreaths of little golden berries around them. There was a grand piano tucked in a back room by a window of lace curtains. There was a loft catwalk above where more nooks and crannies, rooms, and hidden windows hung suspended above the living area, divided by a white pine-board wall. The floors were all of wood and dipped down a step into two more living areas. One held a crackling fire.
And on one wash-stand was a glass bowl ready for sparkling tart punch of raspberry sherbet and ginger ale. There was a table set with a cotton rose tablecloth covered in thickly crocheted lace and tied at all four ends with soft ribbon and silk pink flowers. On the table was a china bowl of little white lilies and pink blooms. And there were chocolate mints in a little dish with a small silver spoon, pinwheel sandwiches on a silver plate, and fresh little party vegetables. When Rose selected several bright green crunchies later, Collette asked her how they tasted.
“No comment,” Rose replied settling her pruny expression back against the couch so as to hide it from the rest of the crowd.
She set down the winter pea pod in disgust.
“You didn’t use dip on it, silly.” Collette laughed over at her quietly.
“Oh!” Rose tried it again, but the effect hadn’t seemed to have changed.
The cake was also lovely, from Susie-G’s, where Collette’s wedding cake had been made. And Idlewild was looking delicately beautiful as always with her blond hair even longer.
“It’s going off after the wedding,” she insisted again to Collette. “I hate it! I’ve been growing it out two years, just for this.”
“But it’s worth it for the wedding,” Collette nodded her head. “It seems like everyone gets married and cuts their hair right after.”
The afternoon was very pleasant with the cake and presents, games, and words of wisdom. All the church ladies always enjoyed each other’s company. And all was cozy and warm on such a cold afternoon.
Collette learned that Jordan was taking Idlewild to the Bahamas for their honeymoon. She also discovered during the game of twenty questions, that Jordan had once lived in Turkey.
“Turkey?!… Turkey?!” Collette thought to herself. “No way, no fair. A Texan got to go to Turkey. Texans – who never wanted to leave their home “country”. And she, a Missourian, would likely never lay eyes on such a land. There was something about those Texans – their blue bonnets and their Alamo…”
Collette also happily agreed, at Idlewild’s request (who was also very happy to hear that OLeif was to play during the ceremony), to clear up the candles and bows and such, following the ceremony, as Kirk would have worship the next morning and would not have time to be cleaned the morning of.
At home, everyone began returning for pizza and sodas. Francis came home in his little blue shirt and neckerchief and proudly presented a drawing of the park and river outside the Art Museum, which he had drawn as a project for OLeif and Collette.
“Oh, Francis, it’s very good,” Collette held it up in admiration.
She noted the perspective and the bits of golden color beneath the park benches he had sketched in with pencil.
And then Francis handed Mom a beautiful Japanese painting of blue iris. It was hand-painted and Francis had bought it from an artist there, for fifteen dollars. He had wanted to buy something beautiful for Mom.
“Francis,” Collette called him as she looked at the beautiful writing and water-color, “so you bought it from him for fifteen dollars?”
“Yes,” Francis said seriously, “but he was selling them for fifty. And so I asked him if he had anything for fifteen dollars, and he said, ‘No…. but I’ll make a bargain for you.’ And so I bought it for fifteen dollars.”
“Oh, Francis, it’s beautiful. I’ll treasure it always.” Mom came over and hugged him.
He had such a big heart; he wanted to give the world, and she knew it.
And the evening ended with several rounds of LIFE on the computer among all of them, a watching of “Mulan”, for OLeif’s first time, and many good slices of cheese pizza and lemonades and black cherry sodas for Dad, which were his favorite. It was such a lovely evening. How a day could change in an inkling, Collette observed.