Feathers on Ice
Thursday, February 25, 2010
During sitting practice that morning, Puck pointed to Collette’s face.
“What’s that, Mama?” he whispered.
“Those are eyebrows. You have them too.”
Puck touched his eyebrows.
“I don’t want to wear eyebrows, Mama.”
Later in the morning, while Puck was busy with his ‘tea’ things, he was given a pocket magnifying glass by OLeif. Earlier in Puck’s littler years, OLeif had showed him how to burn things with it. Puck remembered, and held it out over an object on the floor.
“I’m gonna smoke this up, Daddy!” he declared.
In the afternoon, Rose arrived with the 869-page manual of Emily Post’s etiquette. She then got to work raking out the piles of dried leaves in the holly bed.
After his bath, Puck proclaimed that he had ‘a headache on his stomach’ because he didn’t want rice for supper. But he ate it all, because he wanted the big, fat orange for dessert.
“SEED!” he said loudly, examining his orange wedges.
“No seeds, Puck,” Collette replied. “This is a seedless orange.”
“SEED!”
And the little gentleman wasn’t appeased until she held up the wedges to the light to prove that there were, indeed, no seeds buried within.
By the evening:
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The United States had taken a gold and silver in the Men’s Nordic Combined — Individual LH/10 km CC.
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The Women’s U.S. Hockey team had played Canada in the gold medal game and came away with the silver.
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The United States took silver in Men’s Aerials.
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And there was chocolate pie and Reeses peanut butter cups for all (joined later by Joe, and his sketchbooks, who had attended the Boy Scout 100th Anniversary that evening).
The peanut gallery was at work again as the Women’s Figure Skating commenced:
“Man, she looks nervous,” said Joe, beginning his commentary. “What do you think, Charlie?” he turned to OLeif.
“Olympics is Greek for nervous,” was his seasoned reply.
Then Scott Hamilton let out his signature rising shout of success as the girl flipped through the air…
“The first woman in Olympic history to do THREE triples in the same competition!!!”
“Do it again! Why won’t she do it again?” Rose exclaimed.
“Sure, why not do it another time,” said OLeif. Then he squawked a Rose-like imitation, “Do seventeen of them!”
Then just as Kim Yu-Na’s fate was being decided, Rose started telling a story about having to bring rum and Orange Fanta when visiting Madagascar to pour out to the spirits to please them. Rum for the first attempt. And the Fanta if they didn’t like rum…
“This is weird,” said Joe, still watching the screen. “It’s like watching feathers float around over the ice.”
And when the Canadian had completed her routine in a magnificent fashion, Joe exclaimed…
“Peru, eat your heart out!”
“Peru?”
“Isn’t that where she’s from?”
“Does she look Peruvian to you?”
Then Joe got up to do his own skating interpretation and fell over, nearly smashing his face into the coffee table.
“Do you think if I was there and I threw stinkweeds on the ice instead of roses, that they’d still pick them up?” Rose asked.
And for the big news of the evening, Kim Yu-Na, the beautiful nineteen year-old rockstar super skater of South Korea, took gold, with reportedly the best performance in history.
Mao Asada from Japan, also nineteen, had the silver.
And Joannie Rochette, 24, from Canada, took the bronze in the wake of her mother’s unexpected death only four days before.
And though the U.S. Women’s Figure Skating medal streak of nearly 60 years had ended, they had future promise in their two young accomplished skaters, seventeen year-old Rachael and sixteen year-old Mirai, who finished seventh (just behind a Laura from Finland) and fourth, respectively.
And the U.S. was still erupting in medals, almost tying their all-time medal count in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics:
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8 gold
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12 silver
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12 bronze