Downtown
Saturday, January 7, 2012
By ten, out the door with packed lunch, four bottles of chilled water, and a heavy-duty sized hand sanitizer to pick up Rose, and then to the Art Museum. The weather was more mild than originally anticipated.
The Art Museum.
It was predictably crowded, but comfortably so. Anything cultural, warm, and free on a January Saturday in St. Louis. How could it be avoided? The principal piece to be viewed was a Dutch film. Mountains and desert, strange string quartet arrangements, infinity, the number of stars in the universe, etc. It was intriguing. Sobering collections of mummies. It was a small bit disorienting staring into the precious stone eyes of a mummy mask. Oils of Native Americans on horseback. Funky chairs from Austria…
Back to the Irish neighborhood of Tamm.
OLeif helped Rose hang the world map in her room. There was the heated grilled cheese and the Reeses Pieces. Puck watched a spinning top show in the park across the street while he ate, and OLeif tried to use Rose’s fat telescope. Caramel-eyed Madeline mewed in terror when OLeif blew his nose.
On the way back into countryland…
“Mama? Do people have batteries in theirselves?” Puck wanted to know.
A phone call from Theodore enabled OLeif to meet him at the Tinder Box to look over cigars and tobacco and stuff while Collette and Puck hung around at the house, and Puck had another round in the corner. Chump.
“Mama? How much minutes do I have left?”
“Twenty hours,” Dad suggested.
“How about ten?” added Carrie.
“No,” Puck grinned. “Two.”
“How about five?” Carrie said.
“No, two.”
“Two and a half?”
“Two.”
“How about two plus zero?”
“No,” Puck grinned again. “Please make it two, Mama. Please?”
“I can do that.”
Dad rummaged through the pantry, whistling “Sugar Lips”. Mom was painting the first coat of the ceiling of Carrie’s room. Linnea was out shopping with Gretyl, and Joe was with Wally and Lolli. Dad had received the first response to his dissertational survey.
OLeif returned with a new bag of pipe tobacco to gather the rouge pre-K-er, who had apparently repented of his ways. Francis hunted out some Chick-fil-A sandwiches. And Collette stayed to join the girls for church while the boys took off for home. And Mom and Dad were about to turn on the Blue-Ray version of The Sound of Music.
Collette and Carrie met Rose at church. She had been there since three o’clock, preparing the pot-luck afterwards and communion.
Memorial pot-lucks were dangerous events. If truth be told, Carrie was sometimes “afeared for her life”. Pink burgers, stinky stews, unidentifiable “salads”. Yes, danger was the name of the game. Fortunately, everyone was the captain of their own dinner plate destiny, and food poisoning could only be reasonably blamed on the discretion of the individual. Therefore, Collette would be eating only packaged food. And she would be checking all expiration dates, whenever possible. Fortunately, with Carrie in the lead, who had a better sense of what was good and not, Collette departed the line with a plate of lasagna and salad.
The remainder of the evening, another hour and fifteen minutes or so, was spent, for Carrie, looking at the portfolio collection of a fellow with a goatee, 1950’s business man hat, and glasses, who had been to France. And Rose chatted with Benedict regarding their various theories of everyone. And before eight o’clock, Collette dropped Carrie off at Rose’s where Benedict would shortly join them for the rest of the evening.