Monday's Memo: Eat Your Spinach
In the early quiet darkness of a Sunday morning, a 55-pound shadow slinks into the room, grinning, flying leap onto his dad’s back. A little game I like to call “Froggy on the Rock”.
“Did I bounce the wind out of you?” he giggled.
A new church, and fortunately Puck was handling the change ok. It helped he already had a friend. After the communal potluck following the service, Puck announced loudly, “DAD! WE’RE GOING TO OUR FORTRESS! LET ME JUST GRAB ONE MORE MEATBALL!”
Mom loves New Salem, and we were due for an autumn drive. Leaving Francis and Linnea for Fright Fest at Six Flags, everyone else joined the two-car caravan under pads of October clouds through Illinois plains land. Normally no favorite, but when the skies are like that, of course. An old world of Native Americans and silence outside the wind and small things in the grass.
The game was going south as we drove up, a little rain fall, through the woods, and a walk through the old village of Abraham Lincoln cabins, crackling fires, horse, cow, sheep, gardens, tavern, shops.
“How old were we when we were here last?” Bær asked me.
“Oh, fourteen, fifteen.”
“Yup,” Rose teased. “That’s when it all started.”
“Well, he did put daisies in my hair, so I figured something was up.”
“And here I just thought it was a gesture of friendship. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”
We drove under a bridge on the way back.
“Oh, I remember that bridge,” Rose said. “You took us over there last time we were here and wouldn’t let me read the graffiti on it. And I was like, ‘Oh, dang it!’”
“No, see,” said Bær, “that’s one of the words we wouldn’t let you read.”
Wendy’s and three rainbows later, my hopes were temporarily refreshed. I guess the Baconator helped. While Bær and Rose talked work, her three bosses a.k.a. “The Troublemakers” flying in Monday afternoon, and business relationships for about two hours, Puck giving the occasional advice…
“I’m tired of managers walking in to show me dead bugs,” Rose complained.
“That is so awkward on all sides!” Puck laughed.
So… I hoped my best for those poor chaps on the East Coast, but it just wasn’t good enough today. When Rose got the verdict, she offered advice for Monday’s game. “Tell them to eat their spinach.”
Eventually these sentiments were forgotten as Bær described watching drunk wasps fly into walls in an Arkansas apple orchard and asked me to buy him an avocado tree, while Rose announced she would marry a Cuban so that “when he’s mad at me, he’ll yell in Spanish.”
So… I sat on the couch, watched Crackers eat rubber bands, and… waited for Monday…
