Lanyards & Spring Blossoms
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Somewhere around midnight, Joe had returned from more movies with friends. And at one o’clock, Collette heard Carrie return from work. At seven-thirty the next morning, she was leaving for The Columns once again.
At church, little Juliet Pie marched up to where Collette was sitting before the service began.
“Hi,” she said, her blonde curls bouncing around her ears.
Collette could see her looking at her stomach, as though she had never seen it before.
“What’s that?” Juliet asked, pointing.
“A baby,” Collette told her.
“I didn’t know you were going to have a baby,” Phoebe said, very surprised, and ran off to find Cholly Muffins, one of her little buddies, before church started.
Linnea had been working on a lanyard all weekend, while resting her neck on the couch. Holding taught to four pieces of lanyard at the same time obliged her to wrap two pieces around her big toes while holding on to the other two pieces in her hands, all pieces pulling equally away from the center, where the weave had been started. She looked a little funny, like a crab on its back, while weaving the blue pieces together. And for her first lanyard, it was pretty good.
“The Boy Scout who came to teach us how to make these was very shy,” Linnea explained, tugging on one piece.
Collette could imagine – one Boy Scout against a gaggle of little girls…
It was a good afternoon outside. Mom napped for a bit and Joe took a half-hour bike ride over to the Silverspoon’s to play Catchphrase with the family.
It was a warm, quiet afternoon. Cool breezes floated into the yard while Linnea let Snuggles prowl around in the bushes out front. The high treetops were budding green, the bushes were rustling… wind was slowly taking care of the old oak leaves on the little tree in the front yard. Everywhere Bradford Pears had burst into great white balls and the redbuds had also begun to bloom. Birds whistled to one another in the later afternoon.
Come four o’clock, the two vans thundered into the driveway and the four passengers spilled out with bags and laundry ready for the wash. Francis commenced to tell stories about the trip and unloaded his loot from the hotel room: shampoo bottles, packaged coffee, tiny hand towels from eating at Pizza Hut the night before… He was excited about how much “free stuff” he had been able to find.
Dad was happy to be back and looked for munchies in the pantry. Rose didn’t have much to say and changed into her neon yellow sweatshirt with an irremovable stain on the front. And it looked like OLeif’s hair had grown another inch in the two days he had been away, while he worked on transferring retreat pictures between desktop and laptop.