demonstration
Hold a small piece of paper perpendicular to your lower lip. Blow across the surface of the paper. Watch it lift up instead of droop. Now you've got an insight into how airplanes fly. (The young boy is intrigued by his grandfather's on-the-spot science experiment. He runs off to get paper for everyone. Now we're all scientists, blowing on our pieces of paper, feeling a spark of wonder.)
familial
He puts down the book and joins us in watching and laughing at the movie. Study and work don't seem possible after the meal. We're in a semi-circle, three generations, taking a break from whatever usually calls us to other places.
flitting
In the bookstore I pause at the same tables three, four, five times in the course of browsing; I touch the books, flip through them, glance at their summaries and covers, and wait for that feeling that tells me that this one or that one will be a good gift.
iridescent
The bubbles are enormous. They erupt from large sticks and soapy ropes and glide through the air in rainbow amoebic shapes. When they explode clear pieces of their skin collapse to the ground.
priceless
"Look what I made you." (A soft slipper of felt in which to keep my glasses). "Look what I made." (A little felt coin-purse dangling from a red string, and on it a greeting for me in large block letters). "Read this one." (He leans on my shoulder and attends to stories of robot-like creatures who battle for the fate of Earth and its reserves of energy.) "How do you get it to open?" (Children's toys are so complicated.) "I'll give her pizza before her nap." (She pats at the doll's eyes and sticks a wedge of plastic pizza in the vicinity of its mouth.) "What day is my birthday?" (I tell him.) "But what day of the week will it be?" (I don't know.) "If you come I'll be so happy," he says.
rearranging
At the end of the game I wind up with two S's and two blanks, and I won't be able to call myself a respectable Scrabble player if I don't make a seven letter word. But 'morsels' won't fit, and neither will 'sellers'. The suspense mounts.
yum
Thanksgiving treats - mashed yams with cinnamon and pecans, cranberries glinting in a glass bowl, apple cider flowing from slender green bottles.
