Joe & Angelina the Younger
Monday, January 10, 2005
In the dream… she had seen the end of the world. She could see them coming over the sea – a grand army of brown and enormous tanks the size of large buildings, all evil and coming for something… she did not know of. That had been in Boston. They retreated back to Ohio where there was a nice old sunny neighborhood with large shade trees and all was calm and peace on a warm sunny afternoon. Dad, OLeif, Joe, and Francis were off to help. Mom and the girls, including herself, were all in Ohio, waiting to hear of what had happened. Collette never did find out what came to pass. She woke up, wondering what it was about.
It was Judy Garland’s birthday that cold gray January 10th, and Collette rather wondered what the coming months would hold. There seemed to be a bit of a deadness in the air, as if the earth was waiting for something.
She had talked with Diana on the phone the previous afternoon at the Silverspoon’s. Diana was still lonely and worried that she would hate the school. Collette knew there was no chance such a thing would happen.
“I mean, everything really is going well here;” Diana told her, “I don’t know why I’m sad. It’s so beautiful! It’s like an old college in New England. My dorm is the best – there’s little old-fashioned lamps around and the student lounge is great. The food is amazing.”
Collette laughed. Wheaton had been voted the best of all colleges and universities in the quality of their food. Collette had read Diana’s packet of information on the school before she left, of how all the food was made daily from scratch, hundreds of fresh warm cookies, juicy pineapples, and who knew what else. It sounded good.
“I guess I’m just feeling a little crowded,” she went on. “I mean, at home, I could be with my family whenever I just wanted to get away from everything else. But here, I’m talking with people at lunch, in the shower room. Even when I’m just in the dorm, Emily’s usually there. And she’s really sweet and so beautiful, but I’m just… I don’t know.”
Diana seemed better by the time she got off the phone to get ready for the pizza party for the new students. She did sigh a bit, as if she would much rather be where Collette was at that moment. But Collette knew she would make it fine. She would send her an e-mail that day to see how her classes went.
Meanwhile, her thoughts still traced back to what she wondered about the world – whether there truly was something coming or not. There she had sat in the Silverspoon living room while Denae was discussing OLieif’s old music teacher, Cecil Tinnon, and how his guitar playing was “cream, silk, velvet…” Collette occupied herself with geography in her little leather-bound atlas, wondering who in the world named the place – Monster, Holland. She almost wished she had brought in the pickles left over from the luncheon, although surely the air was cool enough to refrigerate them during the afternoon.
The goodbye lunch for Joe and Angelina the Younger had been good and simple with barbecued ribs and fried chicken. They had presented Joe with a series of New Testament commentators, and Angelina with a lovely framed photograph of a country church at sunset. Even the music during the service had been uncommonly good, and Joe’s sermon was one of the best she had heard from him.
The only trouble of the day might have been on Linnea’s sad face when she walked back, slump-shouldered to the lunch table, saying that:
“Oh no… all the chicken wings are gone.”
Each day was so very different. They always brought something new and unusual and fun. Even the very worst of days had something good to redeem even a very small part. Collette was glad of that. There was always something to be looking forward to, even in a very tiny way. And somehow, this thought brought hope to the situation, no matter where she found herself.