5.6.07

Dear Reader,

We write on the heels of a quadruple triumph: (1) After decisively trouncing the upstart socialist Sègolene Royale in the election runoff, the pugnacious Nicolas Sarkozy will replace the hapless Jacques Chirac as the next president of France; (2) After falling into a 2-0 hole against T-Mac and his Houstonian cohorts, our beloved Jazz rallied to beat the Rockets in seven games and, (2a) thanks to the providential implosion of the Dallas Mavericks who won an eye-popping sixty-seven games in the regular season but who in the first round of the playoffs capitulated miserably before the irrepressible tide of the heretofore unmemorable Warriors of Golden State, stand a respectable chance of advancing to the Western Conference finals; (3) After plodding with his buddy, Kirk Cheney, through thirty-odd hours of unmitigated tedium in preparation for the notorious Source and Citation Exam—the five-hour edit-athon which constitutes the opening round of qualifications for would-be editors of the Yale Law Journal, a venerable periodical as widely esteemed as it is universally unread—Justin learned on Sunday morning that he passed, as did the redoubtable Kirk; and, finally and most important, (4) After fighting tooth and claw through all the serpentine maze of the Candyland canvass, Justin drew a timely double-red that sent him flying across the finish line, just ahead of his lovely wife and firstborn child. In such a spirit of victory on every hand, we turn triumphantly to the latest installment of this illustrious Review, bidding defiance to our detractors, casting a steely-eyed virtual glare at those readers who read but never comment, interrogating an irresponsive universe to know if their was ever a blog such as this—in short, sounding our barbaric Yawp from the roofs of the world. We proceed.

Monday (April 30): Mr. Elliot is an uncommonly tedious poet, but he was certainly correct to call April the cruelest month. This final day was particularly so. Unwilling to take the aforementioned Source and Citation exam on the Sabbath—the day on which the exam was regularly scheduled in a signal acknowledgment of the secular humanist glory of the Yale Law School—Justin and five others (four Mormonites and the inevitable fifth) petitioned for the chance to take the exam at an alternative day and time. Their petition was granted, and they were mercifully allowed to take the exam a day after the others, from 6 to 11 p.m. The worst of it was the waiting. At length it became too much, and the magnitude of Justin’s nervousness was exceeded only by its irrationality. In a happy instance of logical inspiration, he went home and spent the afternoon in the company of toddlers, the effect of which was entirely salutary. Justin’s return home coincided with Lia’s baby-sitting one Isabella Rosenberg-Flores, an eighteen-month-old very much used to being the baby and to being babied. Predictably, Old Hag Jealousy reared her ugly head: Eli was in an uproar. The timely intervention, however, of Justin, Addie LaDuke and the intrepid Callie, Tiffany Buehner and her strapping and stripling twins Thomas and James, served to soften the tensions of the situation. Even so, Eli was none too sad to see Isabella go. At length, Justin took his misbegotten test. And as History would have it, he passed. When he arrived home around 11:30 he was happy to note that Lia had waited up for him, and thrilled to note that upon the dining room table there awaited him a handsome container of chocolate peanut butter ice cream. The ice cream was purchased in the course of an exotic trip to Target® that also witnessed the purchase of a big blue ball for Julia. “To match our car,” suggested that young lady in explanation of her choice.

Tuesday (May 1): While the Democrats in Congress could think of no better way to secure the autograph of the President of the United States than sending a bill including a schedule for the removal of troops from Iraq to the White House for an inevitable veto, the three great ladies of the house of Collings went to Bassett Park together with the ward playgroup. True to form, Lia then launched the trio forth on an ambitious round of errands and Julia, true to form, took pains to curb and thwart the realization of those ambitions. She walked all places with the velocity of an unusually docile snail yet insisted on walking. In addition, like the pioneer children of history and homily, Julia sang as she walked and walked and walked. In the evening the trio had family home evening—rescheduled in lieu of the SCE—but absent their truant husband and father, who joined with a makeshift band of elders of Israel to help one of Justin’s home teachees move.

Wednesday (May 2): Concluding at this late date that the Sears photos were simply too hideous Lia took the girls to Kiddie Kandids (deviant orthography helps even the most obtuse to recognize alliteration) for another try. The result was felicitous indeed, suggesting that the forgetful family fiasco at that institution two Christmases ago was owing more to the insanity of the project than the ineptitude of its executioners. Julia was the object of a single 8 x 10 shot, which she adores not because she is vain, but on the entirely reasonable ground that she believes herself to resemble therein the inestimable Mary Poppins.

Thursday (May 3): The intrepid trio packed a lunch and joined the trio of Lindsay, Mayah, and Asher Sevy for a picnic at a farm between New Haven and Cheshire. In the presence of so many peacocks, roosters, goats, sheep, ponies, bunnies, and wallabies, Julia was in a veritable world of wonders. Eli, indifferent to the animals, nevertheless relished the leisure with which she swayed comfortably in a swing while eating impressive quantities of peaches. As always, Julia’s and Mayah’s interactions were marked by alternate intervals of tempest and tenderness. Julia spent the afternoon donning, or trying to don, her beloved pink summer hat while Mayah spent the afternoon stealing and trying to steal the same. At one point the enterprising Mayah snatched the article in question right off of Julia’s head, at which point Julia began to cry. “You have to ask, Mayah,” remonstrated a distraught Lindsay. So ask Mayah did, and after a minute or so of regarding her friend with a sneer of cold command, Julia shrugged her shoulders and said eagerly, “Of course you can, Mayah!” Saying which, Julia surrendered her hat and skipped away.

Friday (May 4): Not only Julia but Lia too woke up with an unmistakable sentiment of unalloyed joy. “Oh boy,” said Julia to Justin when first she saw her father. “I’ve got joy.” At this point Julia and Lia broke into song and Justin fled while a hapless Eli watched after him with a visage of agonized betrayal. Luckily, the exuberance of her mother and sister was sublimated in the salubrious channel of Joy School itself, which was held in the Whitehall community room with Lindsay Sevy as the instructor and Lia as her aide-de-camp. The freudekinder made smoothies and still-life drawings, ran relay races and listened to stories. A good time was had by all. Such an overflow of joy was followed by a hurried lunch and a trip to aquatherapy—the last such trip, since by common consent Eli is doing well enough that such ostensibly remedial therapy has nothing left to remedy. Always an acolyte of efficiency, Lia decided to get her grocery shopping done at a Stop-n-Shop located a stone’s throw from the aquatherapy center. All went well until the whole of aisle 17 began to stink horrifically just as an otherwise kindly looking old woman walked past. Lia’s heart went out to this latest victim of gerontoputridopathy—but just for a moment; then she and the girls were on their merry way. The unwelcome stench, however, seemed to linger, though Lia thought nothing of it until after they had left the store and she was about to place Eli in her car seat. “Oh dear,” noted Lia with breathtaking acuity. The gang retraced their steps into the store for an adventure in makeshift damage control that did not go at all well. Because this is not Rosalyn’s blog, we will not give the gory details. The long and short of it is that the episode ended, mercifully, with Eli’s outfit in the dumpster, her mother in despair, and Eli herself grinning wildly as she rode in triumph back to the car, her liberating nakedness obstructed only by the diaper she donned with hearty reluctance.

Saturday (May 5): In the morning the ladies cleaned the house while Justin parsed the mysteries of the First Amendment (who knew “Congress shall pass no law . . . restricting the freedom of speech or of the press” could mean so much?). Then Justin returned home as reinforcement, for Lia had offered to watch the Turner kids—Isaac (5), Shad (3), and Abigail (1)—while Mike and Rhonda went out to celebrate the latter’s birthday. This was an adventure, but we all survived with nothing more than scratches and bruises. We then attended the Whitehall farewell barbeque (though it was unclear to whom we were bidding farewell—perhaps one of the two dozen families represented is leaving). “It was yummy,” wrote Julia in a letter to a Parisian pen pal. We then took a family drive through Cheshire and on to Waterbury in a vain search for a series of elegant Victorian mansions adverted to in a guide book called Off the Beaten Path that Trevor and Caci sent Lia for her birthday. Our failure to leave the proverbial beaten path may account for our failure to find the mansions. We did learn however, to our great cultural and intellectual satisfaction, that the ghetto in Waterbury looks uncannily like the ghetto in New Haven. And you have undoubtedly learned, fair Reader, that this installment of our illustrious Review bears, in terms of its soporific potency, an uncanny resemblance to its predecessors.