Someone "In Like" with Little Collette

Saturday, March 18/Sunday, March 19, 2006

[9:45am] Collette wanted to see a great field of thick green clover, the brightest green a shamrock could offer, a carpet for angels… but that was a rambling thought.

[6:54am] As usual, it was another quite busy weekend. Friday night saw a good handful at the barn, preparing for the youth dinner on Saturday night. And earlier, at the solo/ensemble, Collette heard that the guys’ madrigal had been exhibited on the stage. Dad, Mom, Frances, and Linnea had gotten off safely to New Salem for Frances’ Boy Scout field trip to the Abraham Lincoln Museum. Izzy was going off to Dayton, Ohio, with a pal from Scouts. And Collette was so tired, all she could think of was sleep by the time they gathered at the barn for dinner preparations. Perhaps it wasn’t all that bad, aside from the three and a half hours of sleep she had taken the night before after the movie. But the point of the matter was that she was tired.

Meanwhile, Molly had painted eight or so murals which were already hanging on the wall – bright colors and New Orleans scenes. Poseidon had created out of tree branches and real Spanish moss (which he had smuggled back from his recent trip to Florida) a down-south atmosphere, attaching them to the walls by all the white twinkly lights from the Christmas program. And there were fish nets, shells, sand dollars, and lobster or crayfish centerpieces which Poseidon had also made (holding table numbers in their crafty claws). Bright red tablecloths, little glass bowls covered in beads and glass (from Molly’s crafting corner) which held little yellow blossoms (not retrieved from the funeral dumpsters after all). And one table even boasted the addition of a small live crab claw to their centerpiece collection. And so after a brief bit of comic rehearsal, it was time to pack up and hit the hay for a good eight and a half wonderful hours.

Saturday brought on a trip to the Chocolate Cafe (where Eve worked) to hear the boys and Starr play. And eventually, Mrs. South came by with Lollipop and Mrs. English toted in Annamaria with her friend, Tor, and Eleda. OLeif and Chester played two and a half games of chess while the boys and Starr played, and Chester beat him all two and a half times.

And Collette was able to catch up on Diana through Mrs. English as they sat over by the fire. Diana would be back for a week after graduation, May 7^th, before scooting off to New York for three weeks to a journalist convention. Upon returning, she would have the rest of the summer in St. Louis minus the two-week family trip to Oregon for Aunt Gigi-Celestial‘s wedding. And the entire family plus grandparents would be coming to her graduation, although they didn’t expect to have them all admitted into the actual building for the ceremony itself. Bing, sadly, would not be able to attend, as he had a concert in which to perform. He would not be working much longer at McDonald’s either. And Eve would soon stop work at the Chocolate Cafe as she would be entering an intense three-year program at Deaconess beginning July 17^th, with only a week and a half off for Christmases, four days for spring break, and a few weeks in the summer. It sounded almost as intense as Carrie’s program, except that she would be working three years straight, and graduating just before her twenty-first birthday. Oh, the things that happened to people!

On another track… Bassanio-Ignace… funny old chap. Collette had known him since she was five and had first started coming to Kirk of the Hills. He was a grade behind her and tended to be rather loud and somewhat mischievous when around the other kindergärtners. However, when the beginnings of Grace Presbyterian Church began to form several years later, both their families were involved in the planting. And since September 19^th, 1999, they had not spoken a word to one another, though seeing each other nearly every Sunday for the past six and a half years. And it struck Collette that particular Sunday morning, when she saw him leaning up against the door in the atrium, that they used to see a lot of each other in the old days and it was rather odd that they hadn’t spoken in so many years.

For at some point in the early years at Kirk, the Snicketts, Ignaces, and several other families began to form a K-group (small group Bible study) together, on Sunday evenings. And it was always Olice L’Abri (a big jovial girl, Collette’s age), Collette, Bassanio, and Carrie-Bri who would get together and attend to whatever pastime they might find while the adults talked. Collette rather wondered if Bassanio remembered the following incident, which she could still recall quite well. She thought not, but despite the high embarrassment of the moment at the time, the following did happen when she was six or seven years old:

It was another gathering at the Ignace house one Sunday evening. Perhaps it was a little more elaborate than the usual Bible study time, as it seemed that some sort of dinner was being served. And that particular time, only Mom and Collette had come along for some reason or other. Now, Olice, Collette, and Bassanio were all sitting in the living room watching 101 Dalmatians and Collette recalled being a little frightened by Cruella DeVille. In fact, she was so engrossed in the ghastliness of the devilish woman, that she had quite become unaware of what was happening. And so she was taken completely by surprise when quite suddenly, she felt a hasty kiss planted on the right side of her face. She was so stunned by the action, that she quite forgot to look, though she knew perfectly well who it was. And as Olice burst into peals of laughter, the guilty Bassanio became enraged at Olice’s obnoxious laughter and bolted up the stairs to his bedroom, slamming the door. By this time, the parents had entered the room and Collette was not quite sure if she should be embarrassed by the issue or not, and so she continued to sit there on the floor, not quite knowing what to do.

Olice had plans of her own to make the situation worse, and hurried up the stairs to stand outside his door. As the parents came in to watch the show, Olice knocked on his door and giggled.

“Oh, Bassanio!” She called out in a highly fake and sweet voice. “It’s Collette.”

“No it’s not!” Collette heard him yell from the other side.

“It is! I promise! Come out; I have some candy for you.”

“Well…”

“I promise it’s Collette!”

“OK…. But you’d better not…” Bassanio opened the door to find Olice once again laughing off her head at him, and once again the door was sufficiently slammed.

And Collette could not remember if he opened it again before they left.

But that was the way of it – how Collette found out for the first time in her young life, that a boy seemed to like her. Seeing as how she did not know how to respond at all to such a situation, she didn’t talk about it, and everyone seemed to forget about it. And that was the only time she had ever been kissed before she married OLeif, and she supposed it didn’t really count anyway.

And despite the other occasion of Bassanio calling her “his queen” once or twice when they had dinner once again, there was little else to it. The four had been sitting around a small table with large silver goblets and Bassanio told everyone that they would pretend they were in a castle, himself being the king, of course, Collette, his queen, and Olice and Carrie the minions of sorts. And that was all she remembered of that particular set of events in her seven-year old life.

But back to the present weekend – the dinner seemed to come off tolerably well. The youth seemed semi-disappointed (as Collette anticipated) with the results, however, from Collette’s perspective as a food-server (green beans were her specialty for the night), she thought that over-all, the evening had gone nicely. After all, there would always be people who complained, but that was life, and so that was that. And what with fried chicken, red beans and rice, greens, corn casserole, biscuits, and cobblers and cakes for dessert, the guests seemed to have a good spread for the evening. But such things were not creatively summed up in a written passage, and so Collette left the rest of the telling to the video recordings.

Meanwhile, Sunday evening saw the kids crashing together, already prepared to discuss their rummage sale.

“We need big signs!” Someone said.

“Or someone running around in a suit.”

“Corn cob!” Judah called out.

“Yes!” Joe raised both arms in the air in sign of victory.

“We’ll have you all run around off N and wave to the cars,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, and if one of us gets hit and dies, the life insurance will cover the cost of the trip,” Augustus grinned over the brilliance of his idea.

A last Celtic Melody for a Week of Shamrocks – An Irish Lullaby

Over in Killarney
Many years ago,
Me Mither sang a song to me
In tones so sweet and low.
Just a simple little ditty,
In her good ould Irish way,
And l’d give the world if she could sing
That song to me this day.

Oft in dreams I wander
To that cot again,
I feel her arms a-huggin’ me
As when she held me then.
And I hear her voice a -hummin’
To me as in days of yore,
When she used to rock me fast asleep
Outside the cabin door.