01 May 2014

The week

It's Saturday, it's Saturday. Time to get ready for Sunday. First, to breakfast, the breakfast of champions! It begins, as always, with apricot juice, my personal favorite, or patiently peeled orange, carefully sorted into each bowl, so that no one person gets two halves from the same. This allows the worst and best to be shared by all. Then comes a bowl of oatmeal with walnuts with a generous amount of honey. Bread comes last to finish the meal. Then it's off to scrub the potatoes, or make the jello, but only if it's red jello with canned fruit and that's only for company. And after a long day of work, it's time to unwind with the Lawrence Welk show and the Champagne Lady.

And now to Sunday, a new week begun. The Spoken Word rings through the house. The cheese toast is crackling. And mostly, the organ is singing its familiar tunes with its robust and favorite singer, until its time for to play Upwords alongside the worn and well-loved dictionary. There shall be music wherever he goes.

The work week begins again on Monday. It's off to battle, to battle with the noxious weeds, the dandelions and morning glory, with a trusty brown knee pad as shield and a sturdy dandelion digger as sword - the same used by various young invincibles to threaten loss of toe or worse in a treacherous tossing game.

And a birthday on Tuesday, which must have cake! Out from the freezer it comes bedecked with the candle, the special 8 candle, and only after and song can the rowdy group dig in. "Get out and walk."

It's Wednesday, which means it's Ice Cream Night. The night would go as it always does; "What do you want, bug?" "What is there?" "What do you want, Boss?" "Whatever's good." Within a few short minutes, a small bowl would arrive, brimming with melting ice cream, with indentations where a stray finger eased the scoop into the bowl.

It's Thursday now and maybe raining outside. The saw in the shop is whirring, or maybe the lathe. Sawdust flies to unswept recesses of the room. And maybe later, it's the sewing machine binding ever lengthening strips together as the next braided rug forms in tight, flat rows.

It's Friday and shopping is the order of the day. Reams has all the delights for the week. In comes plastic bags of bananas, cereal, milk, and generous packages of meat, ready for the roaster on Sunday.

Hardly a day goes by without some work on a puzzle, study of the daily paper, and a slice of homemade bread, slathered in margarine and homemade jam. In the fall, it's canning and passball. In summer, it's weeding and the print shop. In spring, it's waking the yard. In winter, it's pruning and shoveling.

On every bridge, there is a road to travel. On every road is a sign to read, and very few make it through life unread by one well-seasoned Traveler.

Adios. Au revior. Aufvedersehen.

http://www.holbrookmortuary.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2512237&fh_id=13204