Fearful Symmetry

Dear Reader,

At the close of a week during which the leaders of the world’s eight richest democracies have gathered at an elegant German resort for the heady purpose of congratulating one another on being the leaders of the world’s eight richest democracies, you and we also have cause for mutual congratulation as, respectively, the authors and the exegetes of the world’s richest blog. Although this calls for the mutual exchange of virtual pats on the back and reciprocal wishes of many happy returns, we confess that we are weary. The hour is late and the muse of our high genius seems to lie dormant. A less courageous blogger—and there are millions of them—might forgo the composition of another installment of this illustrious Review. But, as one of our editors said to the other when that other briefly considered doing the dishes instead of writing this blog, “[o]ur intergalactic audience awaits [us].” And with this dutiful consideration pressing relentlessly upon our keenest sensibilities, we proceed.

Monday (June 4): Justin began work today at the YLS legal services clinic and as a more than occasional research assistant for the mighty Bruce Ackerman. It was a long day, the prospect of doing practical legal work for living, breathing, featherless bipeds with genuine social problems being almost too much for one generally confined by circumstance and inclination to an ivory tower of greater or lesser altitude and confinement. We had a family home evening lesson about the resurrection, featuring the classic missionary object lesson involving a hand and a glove and the belabored point that a handless glove must remain forever inanimate, absent the intervention of some external force, followed by a game of match that employed small pictures of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, though the second picture of President Hinckley has gone mysteriously missing.

Tuesday (June 5): On this historic day we became the fiercely prideful owners of what eighteenth-century Italians creatively christened the “soft-loud,” or the pianoforte, which speakers of English in their indolence and ignorance of original understanding have reduced to the familiar sobriquet of “piano.” The beast was free only in the most rigidly monetary sense: the daunting process of transporting the piano from Skiff Street to Prospect Street and into our humble apartment nearly cost the intrepid triumvirate of Cameron LaDuke, Brian Knudsen, and Justin Collings the future use of their limbs and backs, and nearly cost the last of these heroes his good standing with his erstwhile adoring wife when an abortive attempt at moving the piano in through the back door—a course Lia counseled against in no uncertain terms—caused several component parts of the piano to part paths from the cumulative whole. In short, the piano was somewhat the worse for the transportation, and Lia was devastated. But her devastation was short lived as Justin, with the help of the Good Lord, a screwdriver, and a wooden block Julia is sure never to miss [and Lia] managed to put the piano back into a presentable condition and a working order. Soon Lia was playing the moonlit sonata and the cultural milieu of our transfigured dwelling was fairly rhapsodic.

Wednesday (June 6): In the grand Suttner family tradition of one family member trumping another’s birthday, Jini overshadowed Davy’s seventeenth Big Day by entering the MTC at Provo, Utah. Most of the family apparently went, and by a providential interposition they did not go in the suburban. The upshot of this was that Jini did in fact arrive at the MTC at Provo, Utah and is now a missionary, as official as they come. Meanwhile in Connecticut Eli practiced saying, “Daddy”, and Julia practiced reciting Cicero’s unfriendly reflections on the strange career of the hapless Catiline and his fellow conspiratorial grandees. Our readers will recall that when Rome arose as one man to thank the Republic’s eloquent savior, Cicero’s response was: “Don’t mention it; I’ll do so for you.”

Thursday (June 7): Lia and the girls went to Eva Allen’s to check on our plants: the watermelon seem to be fulfilling the measure of their creation and we see encouraging signs from other corners as well. Eva, an art historian, happens to be studying medieval Latin this summer, so Lia returned after the girls went to bed for a brief tutorial session. While she was gone, Justin tried to force himself to work on the writing component of his law journal application. As he labored against the combined forces of apathy and inertia, Julia sneaked into the room and, after quietly approaching her beleaguered father, beamed and cried, “Daddy, look who it is: I’m you’re lovely princess JULIA!!!!” She is indeed.

Friday (June 8): Friday evening always carries with it the unremitting duty to “do something.” On the suggestion of a trusted friend, we mounted the bull for a pleasant ride to the smalltown hamlet of Wallingford, CT and the Church of the Most Holy Trinity. Why would we make such a trip when we could alternatively visit the Church of the Second Most Holy Trinity right here in lovely New Haven? Because the Wallingford COTMHT happens to be hosting its annual bazaar, which presented the opportunity, a trusted family friend assured us, of wholesome family fun. There was indeed some of this, but it came at a cost: cheeseburgers of middling quality for $2.50 a piece and a round two dollars for every round Julia rode on a gloriously gaudy carousel (she rode it twice, Eli once). The highlight of the evening was, however, the upstanding company the bazaar attracted. The near universal absence of modest dress was wholly compensated by the unqualified ubiquity of beer, which flowed as freely as the rap music thumped interminably. The air was filled with the sweet sound of profanity and the delectable perfumes of surreptitious but unmistakable bong hits. When Lia looked apprehensive, Eli suggested that this might be the Catholic counterpart to certain Evangelical haunted houses where adolescents are frightened into upright living by specters calculated to approximate the horrors of hell. The crowning disaster of the evening came when Justin, hoping to win a stuffed animal for his admiring daughters by swishing three baskets in a row with a weighted down and lopsided nerf basketball, blew fifty hard-earned—i.e. governmentally loaned—cents by shooting 0 for 3. “Don’t worry Daddy,” said Julia encouragingly, “they say Henry VIII cried, ‘0 for 3’, in despair upon the death of Jane Seymour, but he snapped out of it by and by.” On our way back to the car we witnessed the familiar American spectacle of two diminutive male adolescents (one of them corpulent and diminutive) shouting absurdities at a middle-aged man who, in his turn, frightened the stalwart inanities out of the boys by pretending to call the police. “I want to go home,” said Eli in no uncertain terms. As we all assented in the proposition, we remounted the bull and retraced our path to 517 Prospect #2, haste post-haste.

Saturday (June 9): It was a rainy day, which afforded Eli the inestimable opportunity of galumphing about the apartment on her hands and knees, pausing now and then with a thoughtful refrain: “Tut, tut, it looks like rain.” We passed the day in philosophic reflections such as this before descending upon the LaDuke residence for some evening games. We played Taboo, a game which allowed Justin to display both his synonymic virtuosity and his residual immaturity, sounding the infernal Taboo horn a time or two more than even Callie thought was called for. Initially the boys beat the girls, then the LaDukes beat the Collings, prompting Eli’s helpful observation that “this makes Mommy the biggest loser of all; she never won once.” Ah, the innocence of childhood.

Sunday (June 10): We leave our readers on a note of unbounded good cheer: this morning Justin was presented with an early Father’s Day present that could never fail to warm the heart of any periwinkle-blooded American father—tickets to the Yankees-Diamondbacks game on Tuesday night for all members of the Collings and LaDuke families. Forgetting himself entirely, Justin thundered a singular, “Boo-yeah!” and slapped high fives all around the breakfast table.

So long, friend Reader.