Idlewild's Day?

Monday, June 4, 2007

Saturday evening, coming home from Union Station, a great rainbow stretched across the river, beginning on one muddy end and ending on the other. Collette had never before actually seen the end of a rainbow. And there it was, coloring the woods along the Katy.

And Puck had slept a magical eight hours that Sunday night.

The clouds were fantastic, Monday – spread from all four corners, in mounded whites, they made the heavens appear more wide and more blue.

Over at the house for another tutoring session. Carrie had brought home a flower arrangement from the Manino’s daughter’s wedding with dark pink roses the size of cups and bubbles, which Joe proceeded to shower on Puck wrapped up snugly in his soft blanket.

“Rose, school books. Chop, chop!” Collette commanded.

Rose chop chopped, seeing as she wanted to finish her work on time that week in order to attend all of the social activities, which were beginning to pile: Shakespeare on the Green, Six Flags, a photo shoot for Flint River, etc.

Later in the afternoon, Puck was laughing at Grandma Combs who was singing to him over the phone which Mom held to his ear. He was occasionally in a cheerful mood through the day, when he cared to display his baby happiness.

And outside, Dad was working with a chain saw on two very dead trees. The second trunk hit the lawn with a great crash after Carrie-Bri, Francis, and Linnea pulled with a rope from the other end which Dad had wrapped around another tree to the side of the crash-sight.

There had been more gifts for Puck: a wonderful fuzzy-maned lion from the Honeys and two rubber ducks from the family, one being a baker duck and the other a pilot duck with helmet (from the Air and Space Museum in Dayton).

At home that night, OLeif made fish tacos over Howl’s Moving Castle. Both OLeif and Carrie insisted that the main character reminded them of Collette.

“The castle reminds me of your Messy Shape Turner when you were little,” Carrie told her.

Ah, the Messy Shape Turner. Collette had not thought about that in years – her childhood “worlds inside a machine” – it had often kept her thoughts occupied for hours on end.

And sometime during the morning hours, Idlewild went into labor.