Hunting for Something
I woke up late somewhere from 1) grocery shopping with Puck at Dierberg’s – eggs, chives, sweet potatoes, bananas, garlic, 2) sky-diving with Carrie right over a country of dense woods, and 3) Eve Avonlea wanting her lawn seeded before the baby came. The boys were deep into Minecraft already when I emerged.
As I poured a bowl of banana nut Cheerios for Puck, Carrie had sent a message to him over email:
“PUCK! Something took our bait and the camera took 3 pictures last night!!! Please pickup the pictures from Walgreens and tell me if there are any pictures of the Sasquatch!!!
Love,
Sun (the Sasquatch team)”
Puck’s grin spread quickly as he popped up from the kitchen table…
“This is very good. I will put on my boots.”
By noon we finally got out of the house to take care of Saturday. Aside from the library [Erasing Hell and Lies My Teacher Told Me], post office, and Walgreen’s for the Sasquatch pictures under foreboding gray, the boys dropped me off to carpool to Linnea’s volleyball tournament.
Westminster.
The academy of all my fellow Kirkian Sunday School classmates so many years ago. The ivy league Presbyterian private school that regularly sifts out rich, elite talent in sports, including Mike Matheny’s son. I’ll bet they serve sushi and chocolate mouse in the cafeteria.
It was Mom’s turn to provide a quadrant of the purchasable lunch for the girls. Keeping the tradition of autumn and autumn holidays, Mom had provided a crockpot of homemade chili and fat Rice Krispie treats stuffed with candy corn. There were other things, too. Veggie wraps as thick as Mead notebooks, which didn’t seem to please Joe so much. “Send it back,” he joked, handing half a wrap back to Mom. But I ordered a walking taco, and even personally garnished it with tomato and black olive [I was very proud of myself]. Carrie, Joe, and I chatted it up while Linnea made her sets, or whatever they call it, and won two matches below our balcony folding chair seats on a campus worth Belgium’s GDP, to Joe’s occasional – “Touch down!” or “Home run!” Dad just shook his head at him as we exited the building past showcases of baseball championship wall plaques and brick wall galleries stocked with intricate – and good – abstract art.
“How old are you, three?” he asked Joe.
He and Carrie ran off skipping to the car, arms waving in the air like three year-olds.
Enjoying the twice-as-big feel of the Silverspoon’s new living arrangements, Gloria displayed her new larger-than-life imitation granite countertops.
“Look how big it is. We could do surgery on this thing.”
“Please don’t,” The Bear protested.
He had just spent part of the afternoon with Theodore at Mozingo Music jamming to their once-a-month bluegrass play-along. Gloria served them beef stew in the basement while Puck – who had already downed an apple, carrots, two bananas, beef, and an entire box of mac ‘n cheese – declared new tricks on the tree swing, which I watched in motherly admiration.
“I need a canvas,” I noted later in the evening while Puck showered up.
The Bear grinned.
“I will buy you a canvas. And chocolate. And a pony. And a space station!”
I was appropriately impressed.
Thought of the Day
I like to picture the very beginning – the creation of the universe – in two ways. One is silent. The vacuum of space slinging out stunning celestial orbits, soundless, cascading the universe in billions of glittering galaxies. And the other is the louder version. Not necessarily a colliding grind of space boulders and explosions of red and yellow gases. But rather an orchestral setting… If anyone really knows me, they understand that I don’t have that one band or group or genre that I will always go to, a favorite, a style, a particular era. It’s always been eclectic. But then again there’s this one piece of music that will probably be always number one for me, out of the mess of notes that is my musical listening ability. Because it reminds me of this idea of a sound-filled universe.
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”; Philadelphia Orchestra directed by native Hungarian Eugene Ormandy. I’ve heard other versions, but they’re not the same. Different musicians, different conductor. It really starts to hit at about 58 seconds in – this almost appalling sense of the very beginning. It sort of stuns a person for a little while when heard cranked as loud as that tragic fourteen year-old boom box will allow. In my case, anyway.
Maybe that’s why I keep my four miniature paper books slipped inside the CD cover from all those years ago. They remind me of other worlds, places we can’t see now.