;)
It is Lavina's birthday and, to my great frustration, I cannot take the time to go into town, join in the party and wish her a happy one. I suspect that all the family but me will probably show up. There will be good food and gifts, cake and ice cream. Candles will be lit and even though they will be for Lavina, Kalib and Jobe will assist her in the blowing out part. Lynxton, who as of yesterday had grown to seven pounds, seven ounces - nearly two pounds more than he was born with - will at times open his eyes and look around and at other times will sleep peacefully.
He might cry a little bit, but not much, because he is not a cry baby and, anyway, once he starts to cry, whatever need he is asking to have taken care of, whether it be a serving of mother's milk, a needed burp or a diaper change, will soon be taken care of.
Oh, how I want to take this day off!
But I can't. I must stay right here and struggle to complete my work. I cannot go to Lavina's birthday party.
I hate my work. I love my work. I love it and I hate it all at once. But it is all a labor of love - even the hate part.
I had to do something and, as it happened, just yesterday, I learned through Facebook that my old friend, Ernest J. Tigglemaster, who I had not seen since our kindergarten days together at Lincoln Elementary in Pendleton, Oregon, is now Five Star General Ernest J. Tigglemaster, US Air Force, and is assigned to the Pentagon. He has great authority.
So I sent him a Facebook friend request. He accepted. Then we started messaging back and forth. I asked if he could contact the folks at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage and have them send up a pilot and a jet to make a sky cake - triple decker - for Lavina.
"Sure! Anything for the daughter-in-law of my old kindergarten buddy, Bill Hess!" he exclaimed. And he did.
And this is the jet, in the process of making the sky cake. The thing about a sky cake is that you cannot eat it. You can only look at it and admire its transient beauty, for, like a real cake, it does not last long. It disintegrates, sublimates, disappears, joins the clouds and drifts away.
But, for the little bit of time that it exists it is a beautiful thing, one that proclaims to all who can see:
"Happy birthday, Lavina!"
And see those things down below in the shadows - the things that look old, junked, cars?
They are not junked cars. They are expensive and elaborate birthday gifts, creatively wrapped. Any kind of gift that you want, Lavina - just imagine it and you will find it there, down below your sky cake.