September 5: Enormous Gratitude and Applause, Cookies, Sweetness and Gloom

Another true thing that Billy saw while he was unconscious in Vermont was the work that he and the others had to do in Dresden during the month before the city was destroyed.  They washed windows and swept floors and cleaned lavatories and put jars into boxes and sealed cardboard boxes in a factory that made maple syrup.  The syrup was enriched with vitamins and minerals.  The syrup was for pregnant women.

The syrup tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke, and everyone who worked in the factory secretly spooned it all day long.  They weren't pregnant, but they needed vitamins and minerals, too.  Billy didn't spoon syrup on his first day at work, but lots of other Americans did.

Billy spooned it on the second day.  There were spoons hidden all over the factory, on rafters, in drawers, behind radiators, and so on.  They had been hidden in haste by persons who had been spooning syrup, who had heard somebody else coming.  Spooning was a crime.

On his second day, Billy was cleaning behind a radiator, and he found a spoon.  To his back was a vat of syrup that was cooling.  The only other person who could see Billy and his spoon was poor old Edgar Derby, who was washing a window outside.  The spoon was a tablespoon.  Billy thrust it into the vat, turned it around and around, making a gooey lollipop.  He thrust it into his mouth.

A moment went by, and then every cell in Billy's body shook him with enormous gratitude and applause.

Billy is a prisoner of war, forced into labor for the enemy.  The labor is in a syrup factory, and he is surrounded by sweetness.  He's hungry, so he does what countless people have done before him.  He steals mouthfuls of syrup.  And his body, unaccustomed to the luxury, reacts violently to the treat.  It shakes with gratitude and applause.

My kids are coming home in a little while from their first day of school.  My daughter just called from her cell phone, and, when my wife asked her how school was, my daughter said, "It sucked."  We will be picking my son up from the bus stop in a little less than 15 minutes.

My wife spent the morning making cookies for our children.  Chocolate chip for my son.  Oatmeal butterscotch for my daughter.  Their favorites.  We do this every year.  When they come home from school, the house smells like fresh baked cookies, and they can sit down and eat as many as they want.  My son has made himself sick on cookies before.  My daughter hoards them like life-saving medicine.

They won't express much gratitude for the effort that went into making these cookies.  That's not what kids generally do.  They will be too busy eating and contemplating the eight months of schooling ahead of them.  Sweetness and gloom.  Sort of like Billy in the prison syrup factory.

Saint Marty is thankful this afternoon for the cookies he stole from his children before they got home.