Manna, Aliens, & Midianites
Saturday, January 29, 2005
It had been a nice evening. As they drove over to pick up the pizza, the world became a snow globe of giant white fluff, like down from heaven. Collette watched the bits of lace fall into the shelter of the still green grass as they whirred by on the road.
“Big flakes there,” OLeif said.
“They look like fairies falling into the grass,” said Collette.
“I kind of feel sorry for the fairies who hit the road.”
“They’re only fairies if they hit the grass. The rest is manna.”
“That’s kind of… um… gross.”
“Yeah. Never mind. That’s disgusting. No, it’s like you see these big loaves of bread falling from the sky.” She thought of the Israelites in the wilderness.
“Yeah. Hey, Josiah! Look out! Wham. Mommy! Wham.”
“Good thing they didn’t have yeast back then. Maybe they were crackers.”
“All these flying saucer-like things come falling down,” OLeif swished his hand past her face as he followed the snowy road.
“So that’s where all the alien stories come from. All these Midianites up over the hills saying, ‘What was that?’ And they draw these alien spacecraft on cave walls.”
That night something unusual had come in the mail – a message in a bottle (from Sacramento), complete with sand and shells and a wedding invitation. It came from OLeif’s co-worker, Gina, and as her wedding was taking place in St. Louis at the Columns Banquet Center (the exact place Carrie-Bri worked), Collette wondered why it was postmarked “Sacramento”.
For Gina’s reception, there would be pork chop with mango chutney or tilapia with coconut breading. Neither sounded very intriguing, but at least they were exotic. OLeif went on to say that, as the wedding seemed to have a tropic theme, Gina had found fifty green plants for a dollar apiece and was keeping them fresh and watered in her basement until the wedding – 03.04.05.
Upon arriving at the Pizza Hut parlor, OLeif went inside to retrieve the pizzas and cheesy bread while Collette crawled around the car in the dark, hunting for a pen.
Finally, OLeif had been inside long enough, that Collette rather suspected he had been snatched by a private eye at the undercover Pizza Hut. But soon he returned with the two piping hot boxes to a rather disappointed Collette, who realized that the pizza joint was, indeed, like any other pizza joint.
That Saturday afternoon, as they readied for the installation service that evening for the new senior pastor, Sinai Hatch, a cardinal suddenly popped into the bean tree. So bright and red he was against the brown branches and snow-covered world. Collette smiled at him through the window. He seemed to enjoy his perch and stayed a short while.
Meanwhile, Collette had continued studying for her final exam, reading of the ancient Kickapoo Indians in OLeif’s home country, Texas.
Soon her mind wandered, as she began thinking about the Tower of Babel and whether or not their skin color and nationality changed with their spoken languages when they were cursed and spread out over the earth.
Then her thoughts turned to the long service ahead of her that night. Admittedly, she would rather have gone directly to the reception afterward where punch and white cake had been promised. However, her sore now stung so badly, she could only talk out of the left corner of her mouth, and, as OLeif reminded her, she apparently had a tendency to look like “Kip” from Napoleon Dynamite whenever she tried to speak.
It was also Mardi Gra weekend coming up, and Grandma Combs was sure to be out partying with her new mask (she had designed and made herself) and her cakes.
Then she had heard from Diana in Wheaton, settling plans for the coming Friday. She had good things to say about life:
“I’m really starting to love my new life here! I’m not quite a Wheatie yet, but I’m getting there. I am so incredibly excited to show you guys my new school and some of my new friends. I heard that (Carrie) might not be coming… tell her that I really want her to come!!!! If it helps, tell her that I think she’ll think that one of my new violinist friends is quite attractive. He looks just like someone I think she would be attracted to ;-)”
Collette had to laugh. It was so good to know she was doing well and enjoying it all. When Diana was in a good mood, everyone else around her tended to follow in her lead.
Earlier, she and OLeif had driven over to the Chesterfield Target for the very last digitally remastered 2-CD set of Scottish Moors and Emerald Isle for Dad’s 47th birthday that Saturday.
Then on the way back, Dad helped them move the two bookshelves and cedar chest into their apartment. He was such a cute daddy (as Carrie would say) in his sweats just up from running.
Meanwhile, Carrie was up in the living room wearing soft pink boots while Rose was trying to set up the DVD player for the new “Little House” episodes. Collette had just come up from the basement as Carrie was saying:
“Kiss it!”
Then she saw Collette and put on her surprised face.
“What?” She said.
“Carrie, what are you doing?”
“She has to kiss my toe,” she pointed to Rose, who rolled her eyes.
Apparently Rose had done something annoying again, and whenever she did so, Carrie made her kiss her toe in homage of… something. And so in the end, she did once again.
“At least,” Collette thought to herself, laughing, “she had boots on and not just socks.”
Upon returning, without the cake and punch as Collette’s mouth ached beyond description and she could barely talk, let alone sing,…. there was a message from Shepherd to OLeif about his first date with Malaya Grape. Apparently it was “awesome”, “very cool”. They ate dinner at the cheesecake factory, with coffee of course, and then “browsed the philosophy section” at the Brentwood Borders, listened to live music, and then “just talked for awhile”.
Meanwhile, she froze her sore with an ice cube and quickly pressed on a coating of powdered aspirin at Dad’s suggestion. The pain was temporarily relieved. Although looking at the little paper of white powder, she thought it looked more like cocaine.
The Saturday night movie was “Inn of the Sixth Happiness”, and as they watched, OLeif told her of two old single ladies, sisters, back in Illinois where they had once lived. They were amazing women, he said. In their front yard was a big old sloping shade tree, covered in ivy, and in the ivy were raspberries. One of the sisters had been to China and had kept a journal. She had been kept prisoner while there, doing mission work, and had been tied to the ground, face down, arms spread out. Were she to move her arms, the cords tied to her neck would have choked her. It sounded quite fascinating, and Collette would have liked to have learned more.
While the movie played, OLeif worked on the results of his latest photo shoot – jewelry. A woman in her late sixties had hired the company to which OLeif was just admitted, to photograph her works of art. She named each piece. One she modeled after a lovely bracelet of turquoise and topaz at Neiman Marcus. Another was an arm bangle of Aurora Borealis and onyx woven together with silver wire. Another, perhaps Collette’s favorite – named “Sea Treasures” – a thick bracelet composed of dozens of strands of pearls in various roses, plums, and eggplants, with smaller darker shaded crystals – a hodge podge of beauty. It was the sort of stuffs movie stars would pay big money for, and she was charging a very minimum price for masterpieces crafted in her own home. A retired nurse, just doing what she loved to do.