I’m having a conversation with an intelligent (and very sweet) talking parrot–the big blue kind with a goldenrod breast. He’s so smart that he’s about to be taken for testing. This is not what he wants; he just wants to live his life.
We’re in an alcove at one end of a shopping mall. I go out into the mall proper, and with the help of a friend I decorate the high ceiling of that section of the building with rows of silky Mardi Gras hanging banners, streamers and beads–everything purple, green and gold. (It takes us about three seconds.) I’ve done this for the parrot, to make him think he’s going on an adventure with pirates. He gasps in awe when I carry him out to see it.
And now
the parrot is gone and I’m goofing around in that same space with the friend who helped me decorate it. My friend’s friend works behind a counter in this part of the mall. In front of her I’m pretending to be the Second Coming–or at least that I’ll be inhabited by God on Friday the twenty-third.
My friend’s friend believes me wholeheartedly, especially when I start quoting remembered snatches of Scripture and listing the names of as many of the books of the Bible as I can from old, old memory. (Good thing I’d read that reference to the book of Kings somewhere recently. I’d pretty much forgotten about First and Second Kings.) Gail M (son Luke’s teacher from this year) comes in. By the way she looks at me, smiling quizzically, I can tell she’s wondering about all this.
Next I’m floating up among the banners. Strands of tiny white lights have been scalloped along their tops and edges now, and I gently touch one, and then another…
*****
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