Pass the parcel

I pause with my knitting in one hand and a cup of tea in the other as I chat with my daughter on the sofa. We discuss meaningful adult issues, quietly, whilst all the children are asleep. Thirty minutes in, close to the pivotal moment of decision making, we hear the garage door open as Nonna and her son return home from their pottery class, flushed with success and failure.

“Look at dis!” she flourishes a broken bisqued bowl before thrusting it into my body. I drop the knitting to the open space on the sofa to the left and the cup of tea to my daughter on the right so as to save the already broken bowl that’s dropped into my hands.
“Ooo that’s a shame.”
“E broke it, butter fingers!”
“Hmm yes that’s really beyond hope I’m afraid.”
“It snapped like a biscuit.”
“Yes they’re very fragile at the bisque stage.”
“Wot about dis one den?” she murmurs as she scoops up the cat. After many years of tender training, this is a cat who has learned that inertia is the best defense. He lies in any position, a saggy bag. She shuffles forward, I can see it coming but I’m powerless as I hold the bowl. The cat is repositioned, upside down, one handed, this way and that, a pliant bean bag of purring fur. Her delight is joyful and child like, “look at dat!” Closer and closer. A feline without a gyroscope. As she extends her arms and the cat towards me I pass the bowl to my daughter, but not fast enough as she lays the cat in the open space to the side, with his claws, plop, onto the knitting, “ooo ee likes dat doesn’t ee! Good night den.”

Now that’s just the kind of thing that drives me completely potty, if not crackers or ever so slightly crumbly. Clearly she's made a full "recovery."

Pass the parcel

http://sandwichedgenes.blogspot.com/2009/02/pass-parcel.html