A Connection

I phoned Carrie with some wonderful news. Her Poppy is home. I heard her squeal, then ask "can you come pick me up?"

Did she really need to ask? I told her I was on my way as we speak and I was. Carrie lives but a few minutes from me and soon I was in her driveway. She was sitting on the porch with her brother waiting. Through the slight drizzle of rain, she waded the puddles to get to my car and we were on our way.

She immediately made a request and it was to have me hand her a CD that was in the door pocket on my side of the car. It was Cher's album with "Half Breed" recording on it. Much to my daughter's embarrassment, I have her daughter hooked on Cher music. "I'm passing along a tradition." I tell her. "Cher needs a younger audience. She plans on being around a while longer."

 Unfortunately, neither Carrie nor I can carry a tune but she slips the CD into the player and quickly grabs a hairbrush laying in the seat of the car and hands me the cigarette lighter. We WAIL. All the way home, she sings into that hair brush while I use the cigarette lighter as my "microphone". Our heads are swinging close, cheek to cheek,  then apart as we sway to the music. Our voices  are loud and totally out of tune and we don't care. I peek across at Carrie. Her eyes are closed now and her head is thrown back, with the hair brush close to her lips.  Serious faces, we sing about being a half breed slighted by the white man, while called  a Cherokee squaw by the mothers' family, being on the move, never staying in one place and then, we are in my driveway and both of us our bailing out of that car to get to Poppy.

She dances into the house and screaming "Poppy!" "Poppy", she races across the living room and launches herself onto his lap. She sits and hugs him and plants her kisses on his forehead and cheeks. I hear her tell him she missed him soooooooooo much. Carrie is happy and quickly she takes his hand and drags him outside to the back patio.

A shovel, some dirt and some treasures to bury, Carrie is soon dirt covered from her head to her toes. Everything is back to normal here. From buried treasure to mud soup, a trip through a tub full of bubbles will be her next stop. I stripped off her clothes on the patio and sprayed most of the dirt off with the water hose, wrapped her in a beach towel and headed for the tub.

Soon she is dried off and dressed in her oversized Marshall University shirt that skims the top of her knees and she says "I'm pregnant. Where is my little doll?"  Her next stop is the toy box sitting on the fireplace hearth where she extracts her small doll which she shoves up beneath her shirt and walks about the room showing off her baby bump.

"Carrie", I ask, "how did you get pregnant?"  Puzzled, she looks at me and says "I don't know" to which I reply, "Don't worry about it."  I know a lot of young ladies that don't know either. We'll figure it out later. Bring your pregnancy and come with me. It's bedtime."

Carrie and Poppy are the two happiest people in this house right now; a connection has been completed. I'm taking up third spot in happiness.