Funky Colors & Aluminum Ice Cube Trays
Thursday, March 3, 2005
It was Jashub’s twenty-seventh birthday. The half of a moon was still out that bitterly cold morning in early March. Collette found she could scarcely keep warm in the little apartment, though the thermostat was set to a balmy seventy-four, complete with tropical breezes, white beach, and swaying palms. She hoped the skies might warm toward the middle of the day, but little cloud-cover had been forecasted to keep the heat trapped over the ground.
Collette’s right wrist ached oddly that morning. She wondered what she had done to it – perhaps she had written too much the day before. Whatever the case, she would be using it little for writing that day.
A strange reality had settled over her recently. She had told herself often before, so very often, that there was never anything to fear in life, to shy from, to depress over, or worry of. God had some purpose for everything and had it all worked perfectly as to how it should go. And Collette had often forgotten even such a simple reality as that, yet she was determined to see beyond it. Yes, there would always be mysteries. She would not always understand why certain things were so, in regards to higher matters of sin and time and deity and universe. But she liked to compare it, in a weak illustration, to a man from long ago – perhaps a Native American in the highlands of New Mexico, or in the forested mountains of Idaho. And if she had suddenly crossed zones of time and space and had brought with her the knowledge of the present days’ technology and progress… presented them accordingly with nothing more than her own words and crude drawings to represent the computers and space shuttles and other such things… it would be beyond belief, witchcraft in their minds perhaps. She would be considered a lunatic after describing a television where faces and music and talking color might pass through a box. And so it was often with the larger concepts of creation and God and the mysteries that no one could quite get a handle around. After all, men… God… Whom should logically know all and keep many things from the far inferior?
There was hot buttered toast for breakfast. OLeif went off to the computer, quite excited to order a set of new aluminum ice cube trays from the Vermont Country Store after shattering the plastic ones during the Chinese youth get-together the Saturday before. And there would be an hour extra in advance at the office to study hieroglyphics as OLeif was leaving early to measure the graduates at SLU High School, for tuxes.
There were some slight complications for the day, but not an overwhelming many. The most important piece of news, was that Diana was not coming back for Easter. It was a shame, and Collette promised herself to send her a chocolate bunny and a card or something cheery for her lonely weekend of studies at the dorms. Perhaps it would be better not to send her something sugarful.
However, in other matters, on the way to work, OLeif waxed philosophic on the concern of the formal wear industry:
“…They’re making lines of funky colors for young kids, like… purple and red… and yellow. And people aren’t buying into that anymore. I think the tuxedo business is headed for a turning point. This Edwardian mindset, where clothing sets an idea of one’s standing… while it’s still in effect today to a degree with celebrities and whatnot (although that’s pretty much only at award ceremonies), it’s a sign of decline in the thinking that money makes you happy. The youth of today are starting to recognize that, which is bringing the spiritual revival – I think – albeit things like Scientology and Buddhism…”
And then there was the leave-taking for work and upon entering, the office was freshly strewn with packing boxes for the move. And there was a Tupperware of chocolate fudge brownies on the work table, studded with small brightly colored m ‘n ms.
On Ivy’s desk sat a plump arrangement of blooms in a glass vase – stark orange tiger lilies, slender closed green buds, papery violet blossoms, sun yellow daisies, barley green feathery bunches and grape vine buds, shiny green fern pieces, and a solitary red velvet rose off to the center. And the vase was tied around with a silk ribbon of dark purple. They had been a gift from her sister, Gretchen, in Florida, for her coming to stay two weeks during her surgery.
After another quick day of computers and paperwork and laughing and concern over recent events, Mom picked her up to the lovely afternoon of cool breezes, hinting at possible evening thunderstorms. (Collette half-hoped they might have a screen door that spring for the balcony, the breezes were so lovely.)
As they drove up to the house, they noted Carrie-Bri and Linnea sitting snugly on the porch swing strung from a tree in the backyard. They watched Rose, laughing at her, as she danced around in a circle with her arms clumsily stretched in the air.
“No doubt some crazy thing Carrie put her up to,” Collette noted aloud, laughing at the comical situation.
And indeed it was.
“I told Rose that she had to do it,” Carrie announced shortly later as the girls piled back inside. “I said she had to do a fairy dance and get a score of at least six, or I wouldn’t let her dance at the madrigal dinner.” She pulled a glass from the cabinet. “And she got a minus zero!”
And so they proceeded – Mom, Carrie, and Collette – to teach her the Barberini, which she finally semi-successfully stumbled through, just in time to get a session of algebra completed before Joe took Collette home on his way to Scouts. And Carrie was readying herself for going to the movies with Elizabeth and Louis. She was to wear her new distressed leather jacket, crushed rose sherbet, scuffed up good with biker labels and brushed chrome.
Collette decided to pick up another Irish novel on the way back that evening and sit over a pink lemonade after exercising, but there seemed to be little time. It would be another fast and busy weekend. They were also to set off on an errand for large stickers as rewards for memory verses for the Sunday School children, after OLeif had promised the “largest stickers ever” to those who so memorized. But meanwhile the radio played stirrings of Carmen and Spanish guitars and far-off Crusade Spain, as though the Irish and St. Patty were far off in the year.