I think you have been there. A dark room, late at night, or maybe put… in the wee hours of morn, a bright light bursts thru an aperture as the refrigerator door opens. The question remains… is the door opened knowing the precise target of your visit. Or perhaps this is a visit of adventure… the item, or items, needed to cure the hunger pang not yet determined.
Midnight raids are solitary incursions, not shared experiences. Their evidence does not reveal the how’s or wherefore’s. The next morning we are only confronted with less of the chocolate mousse cake than the night before.
Did the raider simply take a fork and eat straight from the shelf of the frdge? Or perhaps the cake was taken from the fridge, put on the counter and a neat slice was separated from the main to be consumed while sitting on the bar stool. Maybe a bracing seltzer to wash it down? Maybe enjoy the Science Section the of NY Times that wasn’t read in the morning? All in the privacy of the darkened kitchen in the quiet of the evening/morning.
My Dad, was a Master Raider… I can picture him, a black watch cap, face covered with pitch to cut the moon’s reflection, black turtleneck, black slacks, rappelling down the face of the house from the second floor, taking a glass cutter to enter through the window above the sink in the kitchen. Quietly removing the chocolate mousse cake, one sliver sliced… but lo, the remaining wedge had an irregular edge that had to be attended to… another slice is manicured; but the whipped cream topping is now out of balance… the top third of cake had to be ever so carefully adjusted… all has to be accomplished before the household is alerted.
He looks left and right. Was that a sound? He returns to the surgery. Another whisker of cake has to be disposed of.
He is not alone. His presence has been compromised. Baa Baa is there. Our Bedlington was my Father’s perfect confederate. Baa Baa was an inveterate surreptitious eater… just like my Dad.
The same Baa Baa who peed on my Dad’s leg. And for some reason I am thinking that he did that more than once.
I got to thinking about this last night as I enjoyed an almost ripe banana.
So… as is my custom, late at night, I reviewed a couple of things in my mind. I thought about the story behind the story. About the Baa Baa peeing on my Dad’s leg… about the story I had just written.
As I say… it was a fun thing to write… although there was some factual basis for the tale. That story took four days to write… and I didn’t know where the ending was ’til my third day… or I should say the early morn of the fourth day.
It was then that I decided that the real story within the story, was simply the “remembering”… that an old anecdote (Baa Baa taking a whiz on Dad) had been given a new life. And it is why in my story I wanted to have the two life-long friends, attending a funeral… a time of sadness and loss… still being able to laugh at living… still giving life to a shared memory.
It’s the small stories that make up the big stories… and really, the small stories become indistinguishable from the big stories. The pieces in abstract are always there.
When I raided the “fridge” last Thursday as I was writing the ending words… I knew exactly what I was looking for… I wanted some “Baa Baa peeing on Dad”… I took it out and put it on the kitchen table… And then I kept slicing… more and more.
Just like my Dad would have done.