Quiet Cloth

This past weekend we drove to North-Eastern Oregon to see the 23rd Annual Nez Perce Tamkaliks celebration.
It is a PowWow and friendship gathering filled with their rich oral tradition, stories, dancing, prayer, and the appropriate pomp and circumstance. I’ll get to more of that later.

First, a vignette from the ride home.

We drove a lot, 909 miles over 4 days, and near the end of the tired drive home The Mermaids were mostly good, their DVD player was malfunctioning (overuse?) and TheDaddy purt-near ran us out of gas between Yakima and Ellensburg when we stopped for dinner. The Mermaids were half asleep and somewhat delirious – bordering on cranky – a good time to stop.

The WeeOne was strangely holding out for Subway sandwiches until she tasted the pancakes and syrup which TheMommy had ordered with her meal. She ate roughly one-fifth of the short stack but the shot of sugar to her system was obvious – like three big swigs of whiskey on an empty stomach.

She started free-associating.

This carried over into the van, back on the read, where she was (mis)quoting lyrics from songs, beating her sister with a pillow-pet and just generally getting the jitters out.

Finally her sister had enough and after the n’th iteration of some lyric LaGrande loudly SHHHH’d her; WeeOne whispered her refrain this time.
We laughed and TheWeeOne got more ‘gas in her tank’.

Again the refrain
SHHH! (Laughing)
Again this time, but different.
(more Laughing)
SHHHHHHHHt!

The car fell momentarily silent – LaGrande held her mouth for a second and then said

Oopsie, (still laughing) I just said ‘SHHHHHHt’?!
It’s okay, it was an accident.
Okay.

But TheWeeOne was still going, hair on fire, and hearing this nominal acceptance she gave a testing whisper.

shhhhht.(giggles)
SHHHHHHHt. (this time louder)
Hey?!
SHHHHHH…………….t!
Hey now, that’s enough! I know it sounds funny but that’s still like saying a bad word.

Then, with TheMommy’s reprimand still hanging in the air, TheWeeOne paused; and queued her zinger.

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHirt!

I don’t remember the next 2 miles of road, nor could I see it through my laughing tears; all four of us were delirious..

The Mommy and I agreed we are pretty much on defense from here on out.