Silent Sunday
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Both girls are at the table for breakfast, observing the temporary but appreciated comity that comes each Sunday morning. The peace lasts between them but not in the house as the younger one, whose bowl has run empty of cereal, begins hammering the table with her toddler-sized spoon.
The racket it creates in the all-wood dining room is tremendous, and it sounds as though a half-dozen full-size workmen are in the room with hammers in hand and nails in teeth pummeling sheet rock across bare walls. That is merely the sound of it. The real culprit has tangly golden hair and wears a pink nightgown with a single stretch of ballerinas across the chest. She’s backlit by the windows on the front of the house and the thin, baby tree that’s the same age as her, but taller and more reserved.
One holler from her father and she drops the spoon. She goes back to eating, which, with cereal, is an activity that involves streaking milk across the table top. Her sister, the oldest, cleans up her bowl without any real notice of the younger, not so much as even a laugh to encourage more outlandish behavior.
Surprisingly, the peacefulness breaks in a confrontation with the house’s only boy and his younger sister. The fight involves a card game that involes arranging cards in a particular order on the floor and when the little girl screams, the boy tells him the fight occured because he doesn’t want to share. Fair enough, the house’s proprietor thinks, as the house temporarily still again. It is quiet enough that the dog can sleep and a car door far up the street can heard closing. The weather looks beautiful today and the light comes strewaming in on the chairs at the dinner freshly pushed out from a brief breakfast. These children are just now gaining their energy for the day, so the volumes will rise and the pace for confrontations much faster, and that is the most threatening fact to parents who are responsible for discipline.
