Sunday Afternoons Abroad
Carrie-Bri took a seat up front in the van, right hand bandaged and swollen. It was just after services and the whole family (minus Joe and Jaya; more musically-based events) was driving to New Salem for the afternoon. Including Carrie’s “toothed” hand.
“Cat fight,” Mom told me earlier.
I guess “Pickles” was a little uncomfortable returning to the original scene of domesticated life, since Stinkerbelle had decided not to put up with him. And when Carrie intervened: CHOMP, and deep.
Dad got behind the wheel, maybe the third time in my life I had seen him wear jeans to church.
“Have fun without me!” Joe fake-sobbed as we left. “Bring me back a cannon!”
Mom passed out pre-bagged sandwiches, grapes, chips, and bottled water. Then Grandma joined the tribe as we passed through Hazelwood.
I’m not a huge fan of Illinois countryside. It’s very flat. But sometimes when the sky is cooperating, and you can see that far, it has a pleasing effect. Even in November. For awhile, the sun and clouds were getting along, and the hour and forty-five minutes wasn’t bad. Not even with the potential squabbles amongst adult-ish siblings and Grandma, Mom, and Carrie confiscating the travel candy stash from Dad. Who ever really grows up?
“Well,” Grandma was saying, “the cookies I baked were a disaster. Disaster. So I brought these instead.”
Dad was suddenly paying attention. “Did somebody mention cookies?”
Meanwhile Puck, who had made himself busy folding mini paper airplanes during church and hoarding them in a ceramic “ash tray” Rose created years ago at the community college, hung out with his snoozing buddy, Francis, in the back seats. Between the chums sat newly renamed Wally the Woolly Bug in his box, hitching a ride.
New Salem. We wandered around the mostly deserted village for about an hour. We have a knack for picking the right times to sight-see. Listened to the smithy discuss philosophies on the forge and his craft. Rose chased Francis around with a big stick. And the girls discussed which house they would have preferred during those 1800s – almost universally settling on the stone or the cabin at the edge of the village near the sheep pastures and woods – and about how terrible it would have been to live during said century.
“It would have been so nasty.”
“Spiders.”
“Everything would have stunk.”
“They had soap.”
“Made out of fat.”
“Ug. I just would have lived in Egypt instead.”
There were a few nappers on the drive home, including Francis. Of course. When he woke up at the end of the road, the first sleepy words out of his mouth were predictable.
“Dinner?”