our last "real" day

I thought I might as well walk you through a "typical" day, so be prepared for a mundane post (since I can't remember if I've done something like this before).

I woke up at seven o'clock this morning, and spent the time until eight o'clock taking care of dressing, devotions, etc. Then I helped Rachel fix breakfast. She flipped pancakes again today, but I was in charge of clearing the tables of last night's debris (tea mugs, pencils, a Bible, a walkman, sweaters, etc.), and setting it. The soundtrack of Missy's "Rigoletto" CD drifted out of the steaming kitchen.

Lucas and Melissa actually arrived for breakfast this morning at eight-thirty. After breakfast, I washed the dishes, with the help of Emily, Michaela, and Virginia. Instead of Lucas leading the team time at nine o'clock, Aaron lead it since Lucas has to work on another sermon for this coming Sabbath. Yesterday we finished Hebrews, so today we started Titus since it has three chapters. We discussed the qualifications for an elder. Lucas and Melissa joined us for prayer towards the end of team time. Emily, our prayer-request-keeper, assigned requests to certain people, and we spent ten or fifteen minutes in prayer.

After team time, Lucas broke us up into groups and sent us out to do distribution. Virginia, Michaela, Aaron, Toby, Rachel, and I walked down to Gartlea just south of Airdrie. Rachel, Aaron, and I were in a group together. Since we're trying to finish things up before we leave, we just shoved the newsletter through the mail slot instead of knocking on the door and handing it to people. I opened endless wrought-iron gates, opening onto scraps of "garden": paving stones and gravel, or overgrown patches of grass, or bright flowerbeds with hollyhocks, roses, Canterbury bells, and hostas. A cold wind scoured the grey houses. The town always has a forbidding, Northern air: cold and empty above, gritty and grey below.

At half eleven (which is the Scottish phrase for eleven-thirty), Rachel and I broke off and walked to Morrisons to buy groceries. We bought lunchmeat, fruit and vegetables, chicken, milk, orange juice, icing, and two sponge cake mixes for Carla's surprise birthday party tonight. We then had to lug the groceries the half-mile back to the church. That was not fun. Twenty bags made ten for each of us, and what with half-a-dozen glass jars of spaghetti sauce, and another half-a-dozen cans of beans and enchilada sauce, our arms were aching as we climbed the hill toward the church, then stumbled down the other side. We pushed through the market square where people were bustling about their midday tasks. Magpies and pigeons fluttered down, their wings churning a cloud of breadcrumbs on the stone walk. We staggered up the steps into the church, laughing giddily to distract ourselves from the throbbing in our arms, and collapsed in the church. "Praise the Lord! They made lunch!" Rachel cried when she saw that Mrs. MacLeod, the wife of one of the deacons, had fixed baked beans and pastry-wrapped sausage for us. We sat and waited for the others to return, so it was about twelve-thirty before we ate. Rachel and I both offered to help Mrs. MacLeod serve the food, but she turned us down and pressed us to sit. When Mrs. MacLeod set down a heaping plate in front of John, he muttered quietly behind her back, “Guys, I don’t like beans.” But he manfully ate them all down. After the meal there were lavish desserts: the Scots remind me of hobbits, especially because they love to "fill up the corners" with sweet things. Beth ate lunch with us. Everyone sat around after lunch talking about bad actors and bad movies. Beth really likes Viggo Mortensen, but Rachel doesn't. Lucas and John tried to outdo one another by thinking of stupid films, and Beth's succinctly mocking spin-offs on certain film plots had us rocking with laughter.

After lunch, we would normally have read and discussed Spiritual Disciplines, spending half an hour reading and half an hour discussing. But Lucas wanted to work on his sermon. Mrs. Robertson, who is having serious complications with her pregnancy, needed someone to come clean her house, so Beth dropped Michaela and Rachel off at the Robertsons' house. Missy and Virginia slept the afternoon away. The rest of us finished painting: radiators and the trim on the doors. We talked about music and movies, the usual topics of discussion when no one wants to think about anything serious. Brenda and Emily turned on rock music in the hall.

While Brenda, Emily, and I were painting the frames of the doors in the girls' bathroom, Carla stopped by to pick up something. She was still in her school uniform. I casually asked her if she'd like to go for a walk tonight. She said she'd swing by between eight o'clock and eight-thirty so that we could go out together. We've been wanting to go for a walk for a long time, and I was planning that we could go out for our walk, then return to the party. Emily and I chuckled conspiratorially together when she was gone.

When the painting was done, John called Mr. MacLeod (who's been supervising our painting) to see what else needed to be worked on. Mr. MacLeod told him that there were several items in the church needing to be taken apart: a desk, the piano, and the ping-pong table. These three large things clutter up the hall. John, Matt, and Aaron set vigorously on the desk. When they'd emptied it, they carried it outside into the cool afternoon sunshine. They quickly ripped the desk into large pieces. Then Matt took a metal crossbar and smashed the wood to bits, while Aaron kicked other pieces, and John pulled the drawers apart bare-handed. The plywood splintered easily, and the metal studs popped as the boys jerked them apart. Missy, Brenda, and I sat on the steps and watched. "When we have our peasant uprising, your weapon should be the battleaxe!" Brenda chuckled when Matt held up the iron bar, which had bent from smashing into the wood.

When the desk had been taken apart, Aaron poked around at the piano, but no one could bring themselves to dismantle it. Aaron and Emily rubbed their fingers over the metal strings, producing an eerily discordant chord. I baked a spongecake for Carla's birthday party (in the process burning my finger, which resulted in a nice blister), and then sat on the steps to the girls' room and read Murder Must Advertise while Missy boiled tea for everyone. The hall filled with a strange combinations of smells: baking vanilla spongecake, fresh oil paint, hot tea, and the strange combined smell of harsh Scottish soap, cleaning fluid, garbage, and people living in a small space.

At five o'clock, Rachel and Michaela returned from the Robertsons'. Rachel immediately started work on broiling fajitas for supper, but Michaela and I walked back to Morrisons to buy cheese and mushrooms for the fajitas, and chips and biscuits for lunch tomorrow. The town was beginning to be quieter as we walked back to the church. The tall buildings cast long, pale blue shadows over the street.

We ate fajitas for supper tonight at about six-thirty. I introduced Rachel to the delights of rice with milk, cinnamon, and sugar. Everyone sat around the table after supper, laughing and talking. I washed the dishes, with Michaela's help. Michaela also iced the cake with strawberry icing, dusted it with sprinkles, and wrote "Happy Birthday Carla!" on it. Missy went around with Virginia’s computer, collecting everyone’s addresses, phone numbers, aim names, and birthdays.

Since the dishes had been done, I sat down again to finish my book. Lucas and Melissa had gone home after lunch, and had returned too late for supper. So when they returned at about seven o'clock, they fixed pasta for themselves and ate it in the kitchen, chatting with John. Everyone else congregated in the office to watch silly videos on the computer. At eight-thirty, Missy and Michaela sauntered over to the Quigleys' house. Carla hadn't come, and it was getting late, so they decided to forego the walk. While they were gone, I whisked about to set out the cake, stack the bowls, and hang up a poster that Rachel had made with glitter and crayons. Just as I was taping it to the bulletin board, Missy, Michaela, and Carla walked in. "Hi, E--! Do you want to go for a walk now? Who else is coming along?" Carla asked brightly. "Well.... I would like to go for a walk... but I think we'll have other plans tonight...." By that time I'd gotten the poster taped up, and I motioned her around so that she could see it. "Oh! Thanks, guys!" she said with a grin. Missy and Michaela giggled and hugged her. "Happy birthday!" they said. "Were you suspecting anything?" "Yeah, sort of. I love you guys," Carla laughed.

We stood around her and sang to her. Then Michaela and I served cake and ice cream, and everyone sat at the table and talked. Lucas asked us to tell our favorite Carla stories, so Brenda and John, who've known her for awhile, told a couple of tales, which made her laugh. Lucas told other funny stories, then shouted, "It's a tradition for people to recite poetry at birthdays! C'mon, let's hear some." Missy stood up and sang a silly song from "The Court Jester". Her tongue moved so fast through the limerick that Carla was crying with laughter. When she was done, Lucas said, "E--, do you have that poem we asked for the other night?" So I stood up and recited Sam's troll poem from The Fellowship of the Ring, delighting in the laughter that exploded as I gave little flourishes to act out the poem. Then Carla opened her presents: a hair straightener from Michaela (Connor had jumped on hers and snapped it), and a basket with towels and soap from Missy and me.

When the cake and ice cream had been consumed, Emily and Virginia washed the dishes while I wiped the table. The others sat around trying to think of games to play. They joked about duck-duck-goose and mother-may-I. After a couple of false starts (it was quite humorous to watch a bunch of college kids trying to play Carla's Irish variation on duck-duck-goose), someone suggested fruit basket. We actually managed to organize the game, and everyone played. It was quite fun. We all took fruit names. One person stood in the middle with a pair of socks wrapped up in another sock. Lucas started off, reciting his own fruit name and then the fruit name of someone else, as fast as possible so that the person in the middle wouldn't swat him with the sock. And so we played, until someone froze up and was swatted. Then they were in the middle. Ridiculous fruit names popped from mouth to mouth: "Cherry kiwi!" "Kiwi banana!" "Banana kumquat!" "Kumquat pomegranate!" "Pomegranate mango!" Lucas was a pickle, Matt a prune, Rachel a cactus (by Lucas's fiat since she's from Texas), etc. As the game progressed, it became more of a contest to see who could swat the hardest. John, Lucas, and Aaron all had smarting red bruises from whacking each other. Michaela always froze up, and every time she froze up when Lucas was in the middle, she whipped him as hard as she could when they changed places. Aaron swung the sock over his head like a lassoo in a ridiculous stance. Matt and Brenda baited Missy by calling her names: "Schloss! Kraut!", which made her laugh and turn red.

We played this for an hour or so. Then Lucas fished a plastic hockey stick out of the craft closet. "Here's a game for you," he said. He cleared his throat, then tapped the stick on the floor. "Funny is the man who can't do this," he said. He stared around at all of us. "Who thinks they can do it?" he asked. Missy and Michaela tried for a long time. Missy was especially zealous, and frustrated. John and Melissa were the first to catch on, and Missy squirmed with frustration until she did figure it out--at which point she giggled like a maniac and thoroughly enjoyed making fun of everyone who hadn't figured it out. I sat and watched. When everyone had solved the puzzle, Carla started a similar game with a pair of scissors. I trailed out of the room: my mind was beginning to shut down, and I felt in no mood to participate. I don't like playing games much, though I do enjoy watching other people play.

At eleven o'clock, Mrs. Quigley called to tell Carla that it was time to come home. The girls all hugged Carla good-bye. She collected her presents, and Matt and I walked her back to their house, which is just down the street. The western horizon was still light, glowing turquoise behind the black trees. We chatted quietly as we walked her through the gates, up the driveway, to the side door, where we said good-night.

Back at the church, everyone was still playing the scissors game. Missy was focused on trying to figure out the hidden rule to passing the scissors, and she persisted with childlike questions and halting attempts until she finally figured it out.

Now Rachel and Michaela are going to bed, but everyone else is still up, too excited to sleep. It's past midnight. The plastic orange chairs stand about idly, in a rough ring of twelve or thirteen, where people shoved them when they got up--with a paper-full of chocolate "biscuits" in the middle.