Sundays Together

Sunday was full. After OLeif’s usual morning rehearsal at church, Collette helped Lady Plum supervise the seven active children in the nursery, not including Puck, who still had a cold. One baby, in particular, needed cuddling, and sat on Collette’s lap for most of the hour.
After dropping off Mom, Linnea, and Puck back at the house, Collette hopped in the next car with Joe, Carrie-Bri, and Rose for the service at Memorial. This, while Dad took the third nursery shift at church, and OLeif played music.
Memorial was always beautiful. The mix of autumn leaves in the late morning, shone through sun and sky. The service lasted one and one half hours, under stained glass window and scaffolding, and the flags of nations around the world.
Afterward, they dropped off Carrie at dance class. While she practiced, the others hit the Taco Bell, splitting a grand total of two steak quesadillas, one nachos BellGrande, a small cheese pizza and breadsticks, two chaulpas, a taco, and a Mexican pizza between the four of them, which included Carrie polishing off the leftovers after a tiring two hours of class.
Until three o’clock, Carrie’s pick-up time, Joe, Collette, and Rose spent the rest of their time at the local Borders. Collette ogled over the shelves of journals: moleskin, red leather, silver printed leather, cloth-bound in black and multi-stripes, miniature metallic hard-print notebooks, neon-colored pages, etc.
Rose was eclectic, and shuffled between categories. Joe was almost certainly in cycling and automotive.
After Collette scanned an Eyewitness guide on Israel, Rose had a book of art through the centuries ready for the cash register, and added a five-dollar Portuguese cook book to the purchase for Collette, who had seen an intriguing recipe for fried donuts, which called for pumpkin stock.
After Carrie was picked up from another successful lesson, they returned via Olive, a scenic route, in the lengthening topaz shadows of a changed world.
Puck was happy and bouncing at the house, gleefully sorting through Linnea’s bucket of bright Halloween candy. He didn’t even mind that he couldn’t eat any of it. He merely liked to look at it all. He thought it was very funny to watch his Grandpa eat a Tootsie Pop. He giggled to himself and pretended to eat another Tootsie Pop, smacking his lips against the red wrapper.
A family picture for the Christmas cards came next. Fortunately, they were all able to precariously contrive a somewhat matching wardrobe of blacks and dark blues, sitting on the picnic table in front of the flaming red burning bush on the side of the house.
Then Puck laughed, running through piles of leaves with Linnea and Carrie. He became a little nervous, however, as Linnea raked the pile higher. It would take time to learn how to tumble in crunchy brown piles of leaves, fearlessly.
As the evening darkened in warm stillness under crescent moon, Mom and Dad returned with 30 tacos, and everyone watched Lawrence Welk together in the living room.