Spurgeon West is Married
Saturday, July 8, 2006
Sierra’s and Elizabeth’s 21st birthdays and the day of Spurgeon’s wedding.
Meanwhile, Collette decided that she did like the second Pirates, sitting there in a sold-out show. What exactly was so thrilling about pirates in general, she did not quite know. Bloodthirsty pillaging devils, all of them. But nevertheless, her own pirate blood sort of thrilled over such things, regretfully. Perhaps her pirate had been a privateer after all. How else could he have been given burial in a church graveyard? Collette hoped one year to find his tombstone, but she was not entirely sure on which continent he was buried, which didn’t much help her quest.
At the wedding, Spurgeon was hurrying around looking a little nervous. Collette figured that a week in Orlando would fix his harried look. Justus of Orange was rushing around being happy to people as usual, flashing his million dollar smile, talking to everyone:
“I’m ready to get this boy married. Are you? OK; let’s get this boy married.”
Yet another ceremonial gathering for all the old folks of the older years – Oranges, Snicketts, Hobcoggins, Silverspoons, Souths, Pretzels, Humbles, Succotashs, Georges, Wests, Ernies, Tecumsehs, Milks, Friendlys, etc… Weddings seemed to be the sort of place to catch up on old faces and the latest news buzzing about. Everyone seemed to be interconnected some way. And so amid the puffs of pink and the lily petals, Spurgeon and Rebecca were married.
Oh, but Pirates! It was the sort of film for Collette that grew in its appealing-ness. Yes, cannibals, black magic, the scummy cut-throat lot… but, oh, it gave her the shivers.
The rest of the evening was spent at Laurel Park for OLeif, Collette, Joe, Wallace, Curly, Rose, Bob B., and Molly. The boys ran around and jumped on dirt mounds in the same woods where Diana and Collette, years ago, had come across a dirty magazine and had left a note for the person in the woods whom they presumed had left the magazine there – a girl named Katy. They took this name from a plastic cup which had likely been discarded from an Easter gathering and had found its way into the grove by some remote wind. It was also the park that Collette had visited for the TFC quizzing family picnic the evening of Edred’s death.
Collette walked over to the tree under which she had sat at the time, reading Phantom of the Opera and thinking about Edred and the fleetingness of life. Rose and Lolli had joined her for awhile with some of the younger children to talk about his passing. Collette remembered it well as she stood there, now five years later, and picked up a tiny acorn from beneath the same tree and slid it into her pocket. Such a bittersweet time it had been.
After walking around the park, they drove off to Coldstone Creamery for a new experience, watching the singing employees mold ice cream in front of their very eyes into creamy masterpieces. And then everyone (except Wallace and Curly who were leaving for Branson and S-F, respectively, the next morning), went back to the apartment for I Love Lucy episodes. It was a mostly satisfying day as Collette thought on John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life, the lecture which they had listened to the night before at the Piper group.