Last Day

Sunday, August 1, 2010

The morning of mist, gold, and green, same primordial garden through the back lawns at the kitchen glass.

Puck was meanwhile having a typical conversation with his breakfast. “I can’t drink you, cereal, ’cause I’m drinkin’ real milk. See? I have to drink you all gone.”

OLeif was somehow always scheduled for nursery and music on the same Sundays, so Collette and Puck covered for him that morning.

Sadly, it was the Popples’ last Sunday. They were Kentucky-bound. After that substantial handful of years together, it was time to say goodbye. There it was again, all too often — change. Life presented such partings all too often. The Popples family would be greatly missed.

After church, back at the house, Rose had treated the family to a breakfast of powdered sugar and chocolate gem donuts, orange juice, and milk. The remains were few.

Over Cecil Whittaker’s at lunch, Dad, during the usual conversation, started laughing silently to himself.

“What, Dad?”

“Oh nothing. Just an old memory.”

“What?”

“Just thinking of a guy at a meeting once and the chair broke out from underneath him.”

Laughter.

“But he became a marathon runner later,” said Mom.

“That happened three times at church too.”

How could they forget.

“And the time Joe was talking on his cellphone at Culpepper’s and fell backwards out of his chair.”

“Yeah, and he didn’t even stop talking on his phone after it happened. And everyone was staring and laughing.”

“He wasn’t even embarrassed.”

“Of course he wasn’t embarrassed. From the boy who went to the bathroom in the median of the interstate during rush hour traffic…”

Dad giggled red at that one again.

After lunch, as Dad and Linnea prepared to leave, they all took turns feeling the gel handle of Linnea’s new hairbrush.

“Don’t take that!” she scolded Francis. “It’s my squishy handle!”

A napless Puck stomped up the basement stairs to say goodbye to his grandpa and Aunt Linnea. Then he donned a black sheet over his head and ran around as a ghost.

“Rawr! Rawr!” he growled.

He then wrapped up Donkey in the sheet and handed him carefully to Collette.

“I bought you a new baby, Mama,” he said. “This is my baby.”

Then his speech behind the cream-painted rose-encrusted lectern from the hall bath: “The Lord has done.”

Two-thirty saw everyone on the road in two cars. First, Francis to Puff ‘o Lump’s, after which he would be carted off to youth. Then everyone else headed to Grandma’s in Florissant.

A lazy cicada-hazed afternoon. They did little else for not quite an hour but sit in Grandma’s living room hearing the latest news, while Grandma passed out gifts, as usual.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but I just can’t wait!” she said excitedly.

Puck received a large rubber bouncy ball filled with water, wroils of opaque-metallic ribbon, and a smaller ball which flashed with lighted color when bounced on the floor. For Linnea-Irish, two pairs of dainty silver earrings festooned with miniature keys. “To match the key necklace you gave her,” Grandma said to Collette. And for Carrie-Bri and Rose to share, from the flea market, a brightly colored beaded necklace-collar with dangling metal circles. Winners, as always.

Unfortunately, as Puck was examining Grandma’s rock collection, he handed her a particular piece with a hole in it.

“Hey, could I see that?” OLeif asked.

Grandma tossed it to him. Well, that was the only invitation it took. If Grandma was tossing rocks inside, well then, by all means, it was acceptable for Puck to toss his new bouncy ball. Up it went. Just once. Straight into the air. And down again. CRASH! Right into Grandma’s maroon fleur de lis. A clean break anyway. Mendable with heavy duty glue. Puck apologized. And Grandma thought it was all rather funny.

“So, what’re we doing for dinner?” Grandma asked later.

There was some hem-hawing around, uncertainty about whether people were hungry yet… except for Puck, who, every ten minutes, despite the Jelly Belly freeze pop from Grandma, said to his daddy, “I’m hungry!”

“Now see here,” said Grandma adamantly, laughing, “I like to have you over here and all. But don’t come here at my dinner hour and say you’re not hungry!”

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at Deaver’s Sports Bar & Grill. It was a good choice. Potato boats, cheese sticks, chicken fingers, mini tacos, toasted ravioli, hot dogs, reubens, sweet tea, and rather good quesadillas later… they were stuffed. And all over remembering everything from the kids in Carrie’ Sunday School class at Kirk of the Hills whose fathers were Cardinal’s baseball players, to the possible JFK government cover-up conspiracy, to why Grandma always collected rocks (because she knew she couldn’t ask her parents for souvenirs as a kid; times were tough, but rocks were free), to Puck asking for the ticket when it came time to pay. He was also awarded an individually-packaged Oreo upon leaving, which Collette hid for another day. (And Mom and the girls returned with Grandma to her apartment for Down to Rio.)

Puck summed it all up later when he said, “That was a cool place there.”