Rant and Storm

July 31, 2008

I again came home from work to an empty house. I had stayed a little later than usual to finish up a couple assignments, and there was a significant backup on the Metro, so I didn’t get home until about 7:15. In the past, Lia has left a note informing me of their whereabouts when they’ve left the apartment around the time I usually come home. Often I haven’t seen these notes, even when Lia has placed them quite conspicuously. This time, she hedged her bets—one note on the table, another on the fridge; one note on the desk, another on the jon. I got the message that they were at the pool. I quickly shed my yuppie-wear in favor of my tropical swim trunks, Italy soccer T-shirt, and flip flops. Then I was off to the pool.

The girls were, to understate things, excited to see me. This was a bit surprising, however, since Julia had earlier insisted to Lia that I couldn’t come to the pool. “But Julia,” Lia said, “Daddy has only got to come to the pool once.” “He is only allowed to come once,” was her retort.

When I arrived, though, Julia insisted that she had only been “kidding.” The ladies were all playing mini-golf with friends when I arrived, but Julia quickly ditched that sport and ushered me into the pool with her. She was so cute. After a couple minutes she ran back to the mini-golf area to fetch her “fish” (i.e. her floating tube). I could only smile as I watched her run off with her jiggling thighs and diminutive wedgie, beaming a smile that could illuminate the galaxies. We had to drag her out of the pool when we finally went home for dinner.

Before dinner, though, came baths. As I washed Eli I sang a small ditty, the ungrammatical lyrics of which run, “Rub-a-dub dub, a little girl in the tub, / And who do you think she be? / Eli Dorothea Collings, / She’s my little dolly.” Eli protested, of course, because the first syllables of her middle name sound like “Dora”—and she is not Dora but Boots. After some disputation on the matter, with officious input from Julia, Eli carried the day by repeating my song correctly: “ . . . / And who do you think she be? / Eli BOOTS-a-thea Collings, / . . . ”

Earlier in the day, Lia entered the dining room to find Eli sprawled on her side over the table as she softly chanted, “Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip, etc.” Such a scene would rouse the curiosity of the most truly indifferent. Lia investigated further, only to discover that Eli had knocked over her mom’s water jug, spilling its contents all over the table and onto the floor. Eli seized upon the accident as an occasion for scientific observation, and so was watching closely as drops of water rushed over table’s edge and down to the floor. Lia asked Eli when she had planned on telling anyone else about the mess. Eli responded with a laugh and a rather inapposite quotation from The Princess and the Pauper.

We sure love our girls. They are such ebullient, efflorescent effusions of life—endless torrents of verbiage and song; whirlwinds of music and dance. Blogging is a feeble, futile exercise in trying to capture some of this. Years from now we’ll struggle in vain to tell them just how cute they were. Pictures and even video will never convey it; neither, of course, will words, words, words. Still, the collective chronicle of all these years may tell something of how happy they make their parents.