The Great Angel Fiasco
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Breakfast began at 6:40 with Puck blasting away on his bugle around a bowl of oatmeal.
Still cold, still gray… just the way December ought to be.
After services, back at the house…
“You want some of my omelet, Puck?” Carrie asked him.
“No, Sun. My stomach’s growling for crackers.”
Meanwhile…
Rose had returned with a book of ghost stories from 1944, a real beeswax candle that had been handmade by a gentleman in a bow tie, and a tea mug of Missouri Painted Buntings for Carrie from an older fellow who photographed birds and printed them onto the mugs.
Rose was also currently busy sorting the ancient train set and additionals on the floor in front of the fire.
Then Dad came into the room.
“Why didn’t you go to church today, Rose?” Dad asked.
“Because I have switched to The Church of the Spaghetti Monster,” Rose replied.
“I already go there,” said Carrie. “I’m an honorary member.”
“It was too cold,” Rose offered next.
Later in the afternoon…
The community gathered in the living room discussed the rise of Julian Assange. And Carrie found old photographs of Dad that looked uncannily like a cross between Francis and Opie Taylor.
Then Collette and Rose chastised Carrie for doing push-ups and sit-ups earlier, and was subsequently feeling rather poorly.
“You’re not supposed to do that yet!” Rose scolded her. “I don’t even do push-ups and I’m healthy!”
And Puck was telling his aunts stories…
“Once upon a time there was a brown shark that lived in the woods. And he got you in three bites.”
Then pizza.
And off to the children’s Christmas musical at church.
Fiasco.
It actually went pretty well for most of it, all the three year-olds and four year-olds in their angel t-shirts. And the older kids also as angels. With Pablo as the appropriately curly-haired ‘head angel’. The tinsel halos…
“Where’s the stick that holds them up?” one kid screeched, as they gathered in the kids’ choir room.
The halos, however, were the want of a nail that lost the battle. In a manner of speaking…
They sang their songs pretty well, really, all the little tikes. They even attempted to sing and do the hand motions at the same time. Some of them.
But it was the last song, the reprise, that was the downfall…
Collette couldn’t quite remember who started it, in the blur of meltdown that commenced. But she had a pretty good feeling that it was her own son.
Off came the halo. There it went — flying through the air. Giggling. And before anyone really knew what had happened, or what to do, almost all the kids were throwing their halos through the air and laughing and… chaos. Finally, Daisy-Jean, Idelwild, and Collette stopped even trying to stop the madness, after having collected a number of the halos that had already come apart. It was ridiculous. And fortunately for everyone involved, the crowds loved it. Worst angelic performance. Ever.
After everything was over, and Puck had been talked to by his dad, everything was forgiven. And the atrium was packed with guests feasting on Christmas cookies and punch. And Puck, who had also felt the need to call out, “There’s Uncle Francis!” while singing, and had also run over at some point in the middle of the program to greet the rest of the Snicketts family and his nana and papa who had also come for the occasion… found blissful solace in a Christmas tree cookie, and in running around with his fellow patriots in crime.
It was a night for the record books. And the memory books.
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