In the Wind
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
February 29th would have been an attractive birthday to pencil in on standardized tests and tax documents, but Collette had missed it by over ten months. Her second pick would have been March 17th. But apparently neither were available that particular year for her debut.
The wind had kicked up in the night.
It was brutal enough to produce mass destruction of tree limb in the Snicketts backyard. The ground had been speared, saturated ground punctured with javelins. One still hung dangerously twenty feet in the air.
“Did you hear the storm last night, baby?” Carrie-Bri asked Puck.
“My ears are super,” he replied. “They don’t hear anything when they go to sleep. I only hear things in the morning. Like chirping.”
Dad had retired the landline, forwarding all calls to Mom’s cell phone – the way of the future. Therefore, Puck, almost by default, immediately became the new owner of four useless handsets, which he adored, of course.
Puck was excited about the mac and cheese for lunch, with grilled sandwiches, which he enjoyed with Linnea after she descended from the roof with her ukulele.
Pumpkin had stuffed herself underneath the house through a small hole beneath the sidewalk.
“How did she fit under there?” was the question no one could answer.
She emerged later when the coast (i.e. Puck) was clear.
At Mom’s suggestion, Carrie-Bri and Puck got busy preparing gingerbread cookies. A bucket of cookie cutters was shaken out on the counter.
The wind was tearing through sunshine all morning and afternoon.
Mom and Dad took Puck on a walk through the neighborhood, Linnea tagging along in shorts and her David Freeze tee, which were still too cold for the season.
Wally and Joe pulled up almost simultaneously from their respective places of work. After some lolling around looking for water bottles and such, they took off track-running before Joe attended to other social obligations before services that evening.
The wind was still roaring through the trees, which would continue to rattle the roof of the church into the early evening.
There were also reports on the tornado in Branson.
Puck then employed himself with weight lifting (i.e. exercise biking) in the basement before Francis departed to teach a competitive swim class at the YMCA.
“I just make them tread water holding bricks until they can’t do it anymore,” he explained, as he walked out the door.
Mom was writing a letter on her bed as Joe – just returned – lounged with the cat on his stomach and Linnea fiddled with her iPhone that didn’t make calls.
Dad tried to sneak a cookie past Mom.
“Martin!”
“Carrie saw me take it,” he protested, as if that cleared his name.
“Yeah, but that was the first one,” Carrie called from the kitchen. “That’s your second.”
Collette and Puck had the car for the day. With the weather so nice, OLeif blazed off to work on his bike, followed by a two-hour BBQ and lectures at seminary that evening. At 5:03, they, with Linnea, pulled into the Plum driveway to collect Hansel and Gretyl for the evening. It didn’t take long for them to start acting like Hansel and Gretyl…
“Don’t flash that in his eyes,” Hansel scolded Gretyl, as she reflected the sunlight off a CD cover in Puck’s face.
“Your hair needs to be washed,” Gretyl retorted. “You should cut it like Puck’s. Then you would be twins.”
“Except my hair is a different color,” Puck interjected.
“Not if Hansel dyes his,” Gretyl explained.
“Does he have the right color paint?” Puck asked.
The fifteen ragamuffins were less catastrophic that night.
And Anneliese handed Puck a canvas she had painted of a mermaid, every centimeter splashed in bright colors. They seemed to have been a steady item for nearly two years already…