Dreams of the Wild Blue Yonder

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

A day of wind and white blossoms. Suddenly the temperatures soared to seventy-five and severe storms were on the horizon. Collette figured it must have been Van Gogh’s birthday as well, as the Google display was written in “Starry Night” swirls. One thousand had been reported dead in Monday’s earthquake. It was all a very sad business. And both Collette and OLeif found themselves rather nervous that morning, for no reason in particular.

The night before, Collette read an article on the Pacific Crest Hiking Trail – two thousand, six hundred fifty miles of beautiful terrain from Mexico to Canada.

And there was another programing class. Collette took notes as they talked.

“…It’s only eight hundred pages,” Dad was saying, in reference to a Java text. “You can read it in an afternoon.”

Carrie choked, and looked up from her doodles. “That’d better be a business joke.”

Dad laughed, and shook his head, and went on to talk about some programing he worked on, designed for incoming enemy languages.

“Are we supposed to know this?” Carrie wanted to know.

“I haven’t told you anything important,” Dad said. “I didn’t tell you about the cryptography. Then, I’d have to kill you.”

Carrie looked suspicious as everyone laughed.

“Now,” Dad went on. “As we were talking about the organization aspect of projects… I can’t really think of a good example of chaos.”

Carrie took a swig of soda.

“Carrie’s room,” Collette said.

Carrie heard, began to sputter, and recovered after a few moments.

Collette knew what she was thinking:

“Why do people always make me laugh when I take a drink?”

Meanwhile, Collette thought of space flight and sponge divers and odd jobs while she scribbled notes. She wished there was some dynamite job she could wire up for Joe or OLeif or Dad. She knew Dad would take the space aeronautics and fighter pilots, the jets, and the wild blue yonder. OLeif would still go for the computers. And Joe would take the cycles, cogs, gears, racing, and paint jobs… Hmmmm… She thought to herself. Might need to work on that one.

The afternoon was already an hour over, and the great billows in the sky had begun to roll in. White blossoms swayed in the wind and delightful breezes pushed through the open window to ruffle the curtains. Collette still felt slightly ill but kept the day to studying and cleaning and writing. After all, there was always something to be done, no matter how one felt.

Collette put on some eggs to boil for deviling as the storms rolled in. The light went gray around one o’clock as she waited for a delicious afternoon and an evening of wild skies. She opened the windows to the warm air and cool breezes. It was certainly a day for fun weather and interesting thought. Although she battled getting her mind on the right track off and on throughout the day.

It was a good evening. On the wings of a blustery afternoon, came the lightening storms. They were something to speak of.

In the afternoon, there was the usual, and little Francis was recovering well from his surgery. There was barbecued ham for dinner as the gold of the sun slipped behind the blossom trees and pines and the blue of the night sky was met with magnificent white thunderheads and glowing, like undersea lamps. The kittens were romping about, snuggling in the windows next to the screens, where they might view the windy night and spy on the storms.

Later, Dad and Joe drove Collette home and they had good conversations about things.

“Oh, man, I just love this stuff. It’s like Philmont.” Joe ranted about the storms.

“I thought you didn’t like New Mexico,” Dad said from the back seat, rolling down his window.

“Oh, no, I loved it. It was just so awesome.”

“It was,” Dad agreed.

“That one thunderhead we saw like an anvil. You should have seen it, Collette. It went out over the mountain and it was just huge. There was so much lightening and even rotation and everything.”

“Awesome,” Collette wished she could have seen it.

“I’d like to go storm chasing, you know.” Joe went on.

The subjects changed.

“Collette,” Joe thought, “You should come back on some rides with me to Chesterfield. It’s just beautiful back there.”

“Oh, I know,” Collette agreed. “If you take that one road by Grandma’s… and you follow that back, there’s just fields and forests and all kinds of cool places.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Joe was enthused. “The one by the triangle school…?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“It’s so awesome back there. There’s like castles around the hills, and beautiful scenery.”

“It is beautiful.”

“Dad, you just wait till I’m really rich,” Joe continued. “I’ll get you a mansion out there. You’ll never have to go anywhere crumby. I’ll have room service for you all the time.”

“You’ll change your mind when I’m a cranky old man in diapers,” Dad chuckled.

“Yeah right,” Joe laughed.

“That’ll never happen, Dad,” Collette said.

To imagine Dad as an invalid, or doing anything less than scaling the highest mountains and operating the fastest jets (if he had one), was absolutely unthinkable.

All three continued to discuss the storm, schooling, friends, cars, and the like on the way back. It was good to just talk about things. It always was.