Track twenty-nine

Saturday night is usually date night, a tradition that my husband and I have kept for years. But tonight our date was a short phone call, since he’s out of town and in a different time zone.

The boys and I ate dinner at my parents’ house: ziti with homemade sauce and meatballs, homemade bread, salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. When we started talking about Frank Lloyd Wright’s House of Falling Waters, my father said, “I’ve got a program on it. In my collection.”

My father has hours and hours of programs that he’s recorded from the television set and then carefully entered into a spiral bound notebook, with numbers that match the labels on the VCR tapes. He selected the tape with the program that showed Falling Waters, and after we finished a dessert of apple cake and hot tea, we settled in the living room to see images of the famous house.

When it was time to leave, Shaggy Hair Boy went out to start the car, but With-a-Why and I lingered in the doorway for a moment, chatting with my parents. I’d been telling my parents that With-a-Why is always singing the song, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” (yes, a song from 1941), and my mother asked to hear it. So With-a-why, wearing a band t-shirt and zip-off pants, his long hair dangling, stood in the dark doorway and sang both verses of the song.

We’ve still got snow on the ground, but each day the sun melts the snow just a bit more, which means when the temperatures go down in the evening, an icy crust forms on top of the snow. March snow crunches and squeaks underfoot, not at all like the soft snow of February.

When we got home, Boy in Black took a shower and headed up to campus to meet some friends. I practiced piano for a while, but now I’m settled down by the fire with a book and a cup of hot tea. Shaggy Hair Boy, With-a-Why, and Quick (home on his spring break) are playing some kind of computer game upstairs. Their voices drift down, with varying levels of urgency. In the distance, I can hear a rumbling as a train goes rushing past, along the tracks at the end of our road.