She's Growing Up
Sunday, October 9, 2011
In which Linnea’s birthday is celebrated, October style…
Following the relative brevity of the congregational financial update and pastoral search committee nominations and the completely extinguished platter of Carrie’s first delicious attempt at caramel-stuffed apple cider cookies…
Rose began relaying her experiences of the strange and the odd while downtown the previous day with a friend, including the gentleman in the pink v-neck shirt who was accused by another man of snatching something from Rose’s purse…
“I didn’t,” the pink-shirted man had protested. “Here, you can check my purse.”
As lunch rolled in, discussions of the services began, as Dad and Joe had visited a John MacArthur seminarian church plant in Chesterfield: Christ Fellowship Bible Church.
“So, how was it?” Mom asked in her usual cheer.
Joe replied, “They told us to sell all our clothes and join a commune.”
Then Dad was presenting the differences between such a church and the Presbyterian doctrine, mentioning something about communion and ‘mystical’…
“Mystical?” Joe’s ears perked up.
“Church spells.”
“Boom!”
“Ruth!”
“That’s the love spell.”
Rose was busy spitting hot dog pieces at Snuggles to fatten him up.
Linnea sorted through a pile of homemade earrings from a friend at church, many of which were shortly later dangling in her sisters’ earlobes.
And Joe and Puck were arguing about who was ‘the best boss’.
Following some sunshine, The iTunes Game was played…
“Oh, that one’s a fluke,” said Rose.
“No, Rose,” Carrie reprimanded. “You can’t manipulate the timelines. OK, Collette, your turn.”
“Alright… Are the Cards going to win today?”
[Les Miserables: “Papa, Papa, you’re going to live! It’s too soon, too soon, to say goodbye…”]
“Linnea’s turn.”
“Will I win my next volleyball match?”
[The Man that Got Away: “The night is bitter; the stars have lost their glitter.”]
“Rose.”
“OK. Will Puck get a dog?”
[Johnny Cash: “Why me, Lord? What have I ever done, to deserve…” That was for Collette’s benefit.]
“Carrie’s turn.”
“Will I have another adrenal crash?”
[Phantom of the Opera: “Down once more to the dungeon of my black despair!”]
“Oh no!”
There were some good laughs.”
Before three o’clock, Mom and the girls were sprawled out in the kitchen around the potato bowl. OLeif and Joe were busy chatting in the driveway under yellow leaf-fall, with Joe’s boss and Carrie’s former co-worker, Big Z, who had dropped in with his fire-engine-red Suzuki.
“Was he home schooled?” Collette had asked.
“Yeah, he graduated with me,” Carrie replied. “He was that tall white guy who always followed Peach Fuzz around and pretended he was black.”
“Oh yeah…”
The grandmas began to arrive at four during the beginning of what had originally intended to be a promising match between the Cards and the Milwaukee Brewers.
Grandma Snicketts was discussing the Black’s new puppy…
“Well, I told them they were dumb for getting it.”
“Grandma!”
“Well, it’s like having a child, a lot of responsibility.”
“She told them this while the dog was in the car,” Dad teased. “No wonder the dog didn’t like her.”
“Oh, no, she didn’t mind that.”
The family adjourned to the back lawn where multi-colored light strands hung Mexican-style over the eatery. Earnest came out in his harness for some bounding practice once the fire in the grate had been lit to a moderate crackling. Puck’s accessory of the evening seemed to be the Charlie Chaplin hat and paper mustache that Grandma Combs had brought for him. And the boys slipped nylon cord over some high dead branches and ripped them down until Joe started using a shovel as a pogo-stick.
At this point, the game was not going well…
As the stacks of glittery gold and Victoria’s Secret pink packages were being brought to the picnic table, Puck ran over, smudged puppy-dog nose, with a large seashell in hand…
“Look what I found in the yard, Mama!”
“Puck just found proof that there was a worldwide flood,” said Francis with a grin.
And the cute fourteen year-old raked it in. First, from the little Silverspoon family, was a bag stuffed with caramels and ten tiny nail polishes in various shocking colors, or as Puck told Linnea long in advance…
“We got you the most beautiful colors for your fingers, Lila!”
“Show us all the colors, Linnea,” said Mom.
She held them up one at a time…
“Orange-ish-red-ish-pink. Metallic emerald-ish. Bright orange. Sparkling blue-ish purple…”
“Oh!” said Dad. “That’s my color!”
There were cards and greenery from the grandmas, in some lofty amounts. Grandma Combs’ card played music: Lollipop, and referenced the fact that candy will melt in hot tubs… a hail to the incident aboard ship in the mid-Atlantic with Cherry. Grandma Combs had also wrapped up a doggie in ghostly attire, carrying a jack ‘o lantern in his canine mouth.
“Trooper’s Ghost.”
From the family: two oversized sweaters, pink polka-dotted jam shorts to match Mom and Joe, and two pairs of Converse. Linnea was a happy happy girl.
Then came the cake Grandma had ordered in white, and pink roses, and Linnea’s birth announcement: a sketch of a little girl in baker’s hat and an original poem by Mom, signed by everyone in the family able to write in mid-1997.
The evening finalized with a round of Reeses s’mores, Grandma and Joe crooning long-lost tunes in off-keys, and the suggestion via Farmer’s Almanac that snow was due for Hallowe’en…