Day Three
Woke this morning in the third stage of missing you: anger. When I feel like the world is taking some kind of revenge by robbing me of your company. Cue the magic pill, and soon I’m filled with that soft, thumping love of all mankind.
Took the boys to Home Depot to look at hammers.
H has taken to reading Winnie The Pooh along with the audio book. It’s the cutest thing in the world. Scratch that; it’s cuter when she reads it to Parley, all on her own. She even does the voices.
We took a vacation to the park to escape the tiresome grip of the house. I had intended to go West, aiming for some trail along the river. But the game day traffic drove me straight South and we disembarked at Bicentennial Park.
H has become rather the matron in the last few days. I’m not sure if that’s what prompted her headdress, but I thought it a charming meeting of Strawberry Shortcake, 50’s suburbia and Aunt Jemima.
Our adventures looked like this:
Driving home we listened to the football game on the radio. Hazel was thrilled to be involved but didn’t understand a word. Parley declared his hatred for the Yankees and his sincere wish that they wouldn’t win. We all agreed, and then I sought a careful way to let him know that while the Yankees were likely playing somewhere, they weren’t in this particular match.
Hazel wanted Chinese for dinner, since she thinks she’s Chinese too. We took it out onto the patio and listened to the game on the radio. This has been the most pleasant September and it refused to let up this evening. You would have had to see the color of the waning day to believe it. It cut through the Western horizon and washed everything in blinding gold. And the kids ran in circles and bothered the cat, fried rice and noodles hanging about their cheeks.
Tonight I laid next to Parley, reluctantly rubbing his back with my fingers. Thinking he was asleep, I rested my hand on his hip and waited for an opportunity to exit. A moment later he turned his head and whispered, almost inaudibly, into my ear:
“What day is tomorrow?”
“It’s Sunday, buddy.”
“It’s not Tuesday?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
Pause.
“When is it going to be Tuesday?”
“Not for a couple more days.”
“Tuesday is too long.”
The poor little goat. I think he wakes every day expecting it to be Tuesday. Like it’s some Holiday, and he’s doing his best to be grown-up about it and not make a fuss. But when you don’t come and wake him and when you don’t just show up during lunch, the anticipation gets the better of him. And he asks when he thinks no one else can hear. He’ll put down his activity for a minute and say, “Daddy, is it Tuesday, yet?”
I rather wish it was.
