I wake with sun shining through my bedroom window and the sun is still shining at two in the afternoon. Thank you, kind day.
Emma is a languid blob of fur. Cats are peace personified. She's sleeping in a deck chair in the sun and she doesn't mind the nippy air, because of her beautiful, orange hair. She doesn't deserve such a warm coat, when I only ever have hoodies. But, who am I to decide such things?
We're playing Clue. I'm out, though. I guessed, "Reverend Green with the Rope in the Lounge." Well, I was wrong.
Dad has just guessed. He is right.
Now they're comparing notes and I am secluding my self to write.
Calvin is fifteen today. He is quite a young man these days, but I was remembering when he was a little boy and used to pretend he was Peter Pan. He'd fight Captain Hook with one hand behind his back as Wendy walked the plank. Mom played the nightgown-clad girl every evening when Captain Hook came home from work. Then Peter Pan would challenge the pirate to a duel and they fought with Lego swords, or wooden ones, or anything else that would serve.
"Windy! Put on your blindfold and walk the plank," Peter said. Mom climbed up on the board which lay across the blue arm chair, a dish towel tied over her face.
"You can't get me, Peter Pan," growled Captain Hook.
"Oh, yes, I can!" cried Peter, in his brave, young voice. "I'll fight you with one hand behind my back, you Cod Fish!" And he did. He always saved Wendy from the crocodiles.
He was Robin Hood, when Uncle Chris gave him a bow. It was a long, hand-carved bow with string made from the dried intestine of a Kudu. Uncle Chris also gave him ten yellow arrows and he practiced with them every day in the hood and cape that Mom sewed for him, shooting at a target and most of the arrows ended up flying over the wall into the neighbor's yard.
He was a pirate. I don't know why he was a pirate. Maybe it was because Mom read 'Kidnapped' to him when he was five. He drew pirates on sheets of pink cardboard, afloat in shark-infested waters. He drew some pirates for Granny and she tried to tell him how they were blood-thirsty pagans and that he should draw nice things. But he was innocently in love with pirating and made himself a ship from a cardboard box and built an anchor out of Lego - I remember he was so proud of it - and he'd sail away with Buster Bear.
He also played at Titanic.
For his second birthday Mom and Dad gave him a tool chest full of new, real tools, like a hand drill and a wood shaver and things. He loved to build. He sawed wood at his work bench in the playhouse. Once he came running inside shouting, "Mommy! Mommy!" He had a wooden cross in his hands and could hardly get his words out he was so excited. He spluttered it rather: "I made propeller!"
When he was five, Calvin asked Dad how a bullet works and Dad explained it to him. The next time we took a walk to the lucky-bean tree, he crouched down and searched for a certain one of the bright, orange seeds. He said, "I'm looking for a bullet." I said, "Here, is this a good one?" "No, it has to be a sispific one." He found a tiny, round one. Then, on the way home he wanted to go to the place where there was a fine dust on the path. He collected a little bit of it in his hand. Then he sat on the front steps of our house with his six-shooter cap gun and put the powder and bean into some sort of shell, which went into a chamber of the magazine. Then he called us to see him shoot the thing. And it did. It shot about five feet, maybe, with a little explosion of dust.
Yeah, I think he's pretty amazing.
He was an Indian too. He ran around in a red loin cloth, clutching his bow, till, for his sixth birthday Mom made him a real Indian suit. Pocahontas might have been the reason for his being an Indian, or Peter Pan, because Mom read the book to us one time.
He was many things. He was a puppy dog too for an extended period, but I won't go into that.
Then Uncle Chris gave Calvin some welded, steel, machine guns and Dad dressed him up in his old SAS belt and berett and from then on, I think he was a soldier. We moved to America and he was a soldier with the Dove boys next door and they played guns every day. They perfected the game. My brother could throw himself on the ground differently depending on whether he was shot in the head or in the legs or from the side or whether it was a grenade or a mine. He wore out three entire suits of camo.
He's not a soldier anymore. He's just a regular boy. For now.
I'm tired of writing this post. It has been so interrupted. I have lots of pics to go with it, but can't get them scanned anytime soon.
Just listened to Beethoven's 'Midnight Sonata' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT7_IZPHHb0 because I read a story about it and the song has put me into a mood, along with acute writer's block.
I'll be writing later.
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