Mother's Day
Monday, May 9, 2005
Another Monday morning, another laundry day… Collette rather began to wonder if the world was spinning faster and the weeks were getting shorter.
Mother’s Day had been fun. Following church they found (not sunflowers), but a shockingly bright bouquet of emerald green, lapis, fuchsia , and orange blossoms for Denae, plus the tickets for the concert in several weeks. Denae was happy to see them, and after helping to get dinner ready, they whipped down a full ham, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, and flat rolls before they all split to go their own ways.
Meanwhile, Curly and OLeif recalled funny things.
“Yeah, so this little girl in our class, Maria Welches… she’s like four I think. Anyway, she has this vocabulary like nobody’s business. And she speaks really distinctly. So I had the kids make these Mother’s Day cards, and she finished her first one. Collette gave her another piece of paper. And I said, ‘Oh, you’re making another one?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I’m making another one for no apparent reason.’”
They rocked with laughter. OLeif managed to mimic her just exactly.
“And then she got another piece of paper and said, ‘I’m making a report for my mother.’”
Then Curly recounted something funny Francis has said, while praying during small group. Apparently Wally Hobcoggin thought it was hilarious, and passed it on:
“So Francis is praying, ‘And please let there be no more war…’ And you could just see it going through his mind – ‘If there’s no war, that means peace, and if there’s peace, that means no army…’ ‘Well, maybe let there be a little war…’”
This deserved some more guffaws.
It was soon time to go, but OLeif quickly played the original “Numa Numa” by Gary. As if they hadn’t been dying in laughter already from the conversations during the meal, this topped it.
Before they arrived back at the Snicketts, there was a bouquet of white roses for Mom. At home, they saw that the mischievous Judah Rye had already arrived, and was engaged in a badminton tournament in the backyard with Mom and the little kids. They were to stay at home, as Babler would have been very crowded and there were storms on the horizon.
Grandma came shortly later with a nice box of strawberries, and they enjoyed barbecue around many games of Frisbee and badminton.
Mom had received a lovely pale pink set of pearls (Monet) which Carrie-Bri had picked out from the whole family. She would wear them to graduation.
And after Mom’s new carnival-striped citronella candles were lighted (another gift from Carrie-Bri), they sat around and chatted about things while Judah and OLeif created a wax sculpture on the table. They talked of how Collette “hated” Florida and hated cauliflower, how Rose “hated” everything, and how Carrie “hated” the Chinese, of twins names Orangejello (O-rahn-jeh-low) and Lemonjello (Leh-mahn-jeh-low) in Judah’s high school, of the lonely lives of inchworms measuring marigolds… very enlightening conversations they were.
To wrap up the evening, there was another viewing of the “Numa Numa”, a pan of meatballs, and “Elvis” (a new miniseries on television). And OLeif managed to find the new boxes of good cereal in the pantry for himself and Judah. Even Rose had a bowl. It was a flashback to the good old days of the cereal boys – when Brit and Judah (the “coolest cousins ever”) stayed the summer.
So all in all, it seemed to be a good day. The icing on the cake was that the sun was on vacation.
Monday was set aside for spring cleaning. So Collette braided back her hair and got to work. It would likely be one of the few Mondays she would have open for a long while. She hoped, over the next ten years, that her weekdays would be full with tutoring and work from that June on. However, Collette had a tendency to plan things too far in advance, and as a result, they usually worked out differently.