Six Years
Saturday, August 28, 2010
It had been six years.
And according to random records of information, it was traditional, on such a six-year occasion, to give gifts of candy or iron, or, perhaps as a more modern gesture: wood. Or in the land of the U.K., sugar.
Ten hours of sleep. Till eight o’clock in the morning. A luxury unheard of in all the history of mankind… at least, maybe since the last time Puck had spent the night with his Nana and Papa…
OLeif was feeling more himself. Indeed, he had already been feeling so the previous evening when deciding upon dinner…
And so, OLeif and Collette started their day by cleaning the house, whatever needed it, and organizing whatever they fancied, tossing things, all to the occasionally obnoxious tunes of bagpipes. And a piece of buttered toast eaten over the sink for breakfast.
1:00…
Bacana Brasil. OLeif had been waiting a long time to try out this place where the only thing on the menu… well, there really wasn’t a menu at all, honestly… was meat. Collette knew that something was different when the menu listed only ten pages of wines, and the prices for lunch and for dinner. And each set of tableware included a personal set of tongs. Everything else was explained to them by their waiter who looked, in Collette’s professional opinion, very Mongolian.
“For lunch, we serve seven different meats, he said. For dinner we serve fifteen.”
And that was very much what happened. After they had helped themselves to the cold salad bar and the hot salad bar garlanded by vases of tropical flowers… where Collette tried some egg salad dressed in a light herb of some sort, and some potato salad, which were both good… the meat came. It had been no joke. Collette could not even remember, really, which was which. They came out on skewers, slabs of meat, dripping in their own hot juices. And the man behind the meat sliced off chunks, slices, slabs, and slivers, as the occasion called for it… lamb, pork, beef, chicken, and sausage… all you could eat. The stuff, in the case of the sirloin, of which Collette had enjoyed only several times in her life, truly did, melt. They were stuffed. Pricy check… but then again, to provide OLeif with all the meat he could eat on his anniversary, was quite worth it.
Back on the road. A walk in the cool drone of the mall, just to stretch the legs, as the day was warm. An abundance of owls in the shops: in clothes and jewelry and journals. Nothing much of interest showing at the AMC. The old Bubble Tea was hopping. So was the carousel. And they marveled together over the amount of rubbish in the ‘Young Adult’ section of the bookstore.
Then conversation on the road, which included a set of time discussing the Tower of Babel. Then a coffee for OLeif at the fuel station. And a root beer for Collette. Before a drop in at the library. Home by 4:00. Did they know how to party, or did they know how to party?
Five-thirty arrived. They had, now, officially, been married for six years.
The evening was spent in little more than unrepentant sloth: cheese, crackers, and films.
All in all, a fine day.
“Think of it, this very globe and I love to think of it in these terms, this very earth that has soaked up the blood of multitudes upon battlefields, this very earth where the sod is stained with innocent blood, this very earth that supports the footsteps of the tyrant and the lecher and the murderer and the thief, this very earth that supports the rebel activity of the multitudes of the unconverted, this very earth in which God Almighty is denied, this very air that surrounds us that men breathe into their larynx and speak words of blasphemy and denial of God, that this very world and its total life-support system will be renovated by the fire of judgment at the return of Christ. And when He’s through, every particle, every atom of this earth and its support system will be permeated with nothing but righteousness. It will be the new heaven and the new earth wherein righteousness and righteousness alone has its home.”
~Al Martin, via John MacArthur