The Day After Yesterday

At 2:30 pm yesterday, we weren’t sure how it was going to go.  I had been hauling books upstairs for at least an hour, and the water level had risen during that time.  Still, the electricity, notoriously fickle, was still on and the sub-pump was still working.  Both were keeping things under control.  Yet, with another hour’s work ahead of me, not to mention 15 or 20 boxes of other materials, the loss of either could be devastating – and especially since high tide was a few hours off.  So Lynn-nore called Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth.  SWR proved invaluable, helping me move to empty bookcases upstairs and move those umpteen boxes to safer, dryer locations.  The rain stopped.  With everything upstairs, our apartment felt like a storage area.  Lynn-nore cooked a quick dinner of Tortellini and they had to be on their way.  Caleb was perfect the entire time, rocking lackadaisical in his swing, alternately snoozing and waking.  During his waking times, he was content to suck quietly on his thumb and contemplate the smooth clicking sounds of the rocker and the living room scenery.  Kara was also quite good.  She offered to help me do several different things, and Kara also spent time playing with Queen Elizabeth once she had arrived.  During evening hours, we held Caleb for awhile (who was a quart low) and I began sifting and shelving books.  The “toss” pile had grown to some 20 volumes by midnight!  Lynn-nore and I went around most of the evening feeling very much like we did in college.  We couldn’t explain it.  Something about having all my books up in line-of-sight again; something about having friends to dinner and it not being a scheduled thing; something about moving everything around, it all felt optimistic, energetic, youthful and familiar.

This morning did not feel youthful.  It was dark and the rain on the windows kept whispering: “shush….shush….sleep...sleep.”  Kara’s first words were, “Why are you waking me up when it is still dark-time?”  I woke up too late to shave.  AM light always feels like science fiction.  You turn it on to simulate some liminal organic, living past with cardboard industrial prefab.  Mornings in commercials are always sunlit and 9 o’clock.  Kara’s school invited students do dress up as their favorite bible character today.  Lynn-nore puzzled over this for awhile.  Eventually, she and Kara came up with Moses’ sister, Miriam.  L. put Kara in a brown/earth tunic, with a white shawl and carrying a baby in a basket.  The original baby was a girl with blonde hair (I made a crack about how Moses had been replaced in the pilot by Sarah Michelle Gellar.)  Speaking of cracks, it didn’t occur to me until Kara and I arrived at school that she could have been something besides people.  There are lots of things mentioned in the Bible.  We could have, for example, put her in an Eeyore costume and had her continually ask people, “Why are you beating me?”  or sweetly chime out, “Hi! I’m a talking ass.”  Kara and I did decide that Ogasa, who was being particularly loud this morning, must have decided to come as one of Daniel’s lions (pre-Angelic stopper.)