When the Parents are Gone
Puck was a little out of sorts that morning. I’m not sure what set it off, but he wasn’t pleased with the current state of the union. So when he walked off with Mom before the service and returned with Francis from a small nearby lake, he seemed refreshed.
“Nothing’ll take away my anger like throwing rocks in a lake,” he explained as he walked past me.
About an hour later, Yali was dead to the world, his face plastered inside Oxbear’s sports jacket, snoozing away the sermon.
One way or another, my boys will solve their life dilemmas.
After white chili for lunch at the Big House, Mom and Dad hit the road fast for their drive to Cedar Falls, Iowa: business trip. They broke out in song as they walked out the front door:
“So long! Farewell! Auf wiedersehen, goodbye!”
Oxbear laughed as he handed Yali another spoonful of beans, “Do you think your dad had that planned out in advance?”
“Actually, right before he started singing, I was about to sing the same thing,” Joe laughed, too.
You could definitely say we’re a family that finishes each other’s sentences.
As the afternoon bloomed into the expected muggy heat of a day in early August, the house didn’t hit full disaster mode until about four o’clock in the afternoon. The usual explosion of dishes – ice cream, toys – Yali, nail polish – the girls, and then…
“I’m going to trim Pumpkin now,” Irish told us. “I’m going to make her look like a dinosaur.”
Back scales included.
Twenty minutes later while Irish was still working on the same patch of matted black fur, she concluded that the process was going to “take awhile”.
When we left not that long later, piles of fur were floating around the floors from the fat cat’s unsuccessful hair trim. Irish had at least temporarily given up to knit a red scarf in the living room.
We stopped for a few things on the way home at Dierberg’s: Italian sub, green apple Izzes, gourmet malt balls.
After Yali had been tucked in for the night, and I was enjoying a little Korean in the living room…
BOOM!
About time. Thunder and lightning had returned to St. Louis. For about half an hour anyway.