The door slapped open and the children avalanched in, all talking shrilly at once until David waved his cup at them and lifted one eyebrow. ‘Chell laughed at the sudden silence.
“That’s better,” she said. “What’s all the uproar?”
The children looked at one another and the five-year-old Eve was nudged to the fore, but, as usual, David started talking. “We were out gathering panthus leaves to make our Gathering baskets, and all at once-” He paused and nudged Eve again. “You tell, Eve. After all, it’s you-“
“Oh, no!” cried ‘Chell, “not my last baby! Not already!”
“Look,” said Eve solemnly. “Look at me.”
She stood tiptoe and wavered a little, her arms out stretched for balance, and then she lifted slowly and carefully up into her mother’s arms.
We all laughed and applauded and even ‘Chell, after blotting her surprised tears on Eve’s dark curls, laughed with us.
“Bless-a-baby!” she said, hugging her tight. “Lifting all alone already-and on Gathering Day, too! It’s not everyone who can have Gathering Day for her Happy Day!” Then she sobered and pressed the solemn ceremonial kiss on each cheek. “Lift in delight all your life, Eve!” she said.
Eve matched her parents’ solemnity as her father softly completed the ritual. “By the Presence and the Name and the Power, lift to good and the Glory until your Calling.” And we all joined in making the Sign.
“I speak for her next,” I said, holding out my arms. “Think you can lift to Gramma, Eve?”
“Well …” Eve considered the gap between her and me-the chair, the breakfast table-all the obstacles before my waiting arms. And then she smiled. “Look at me,” she said. “Here I come, Gramma.”
She lifted carefully above the table, overarching so high that the crisp girl-frill around the waist of her close- fitting briefs brushed the ceiling. Then she was safe in my arms.
“That’s better than I did,” called Simon through the laughter that followed. “I landed right in the flahmen jam!”
“So you did, son,” laughed David, ruffling Simon’s coppery-red hair. “A full dish of it.”
“Now that that’s taken care of, let’s get organized. Are you all Gathering together?”
“No.” Lytha, our teener, flushed faintly. “I-we-our party will be mostly-well-” She paused and checked her blush, shaking her dark hair back from her face. “Timmy and I are going with Beckie and Andy. We’re going to the Mountain.”
“Well!” David’s brow lifted in mock consternation. “Mother, did you know our daughter was two-ing?”
“Not really, Father!” cried Lytha hastily, unable to resist the bait though she knew he was teasing. “Four-ing, it is, really.”
“Adonday veeah!” he sighed in gigantic relief. “Only half the worry it might be!” He smiled at her. “Enjoy,” he said, “but it ages me so much so fast that a daughter of mine is two-oh, pardon, four-ing already.”
“The rest of us are going together,” said Davie. “We’re going to the Tangle-meadows. The failova were thick there last year. Bet we three get more than Lytha and her two-Jug foursome! They’ll be looking mostly for flahmen anyway!” with the enormous scorn of the almost-teen for the activities of the teens.
“Could be,” said David. “But after all, your sole purpose this Gathering Day is merely to Gather.”
“I notice you don’t turn up your nose at the flahmen after they’re made into jam,” said Lytha. “And you just wait, smarty, until the time comes-and it will,” her cheeks pinked up a little, “when you find yourself wanting to share a flahmen with some gaggly giggle of a girl!”
“Flahman!” muttered Davie. “Girls!’”
“They’re both mighty sweet, Son,” laughed David. “You wait and see.”
Ten minutes later, ‘Chell and David and I stood at the window watching the children leave. Lytha, after nervously putting on and taking off, arranging and rearranging her Gathering Day garlands at least a dozen times, was swept up by a giggling group that zoomed in a trio and went out a quartet and disappeared in long, low lifts across the pasture-land toward the heavily wooded Mountain.
Davie tried to gather Eve up as in the past, but she stubbornly refused to be trailed, and kept insisting, “I can lift now! Let me do it. I’m big!”
Davie rolled exasperated eyes and then grinned and the three started off for Tangle-meadows in short hopping little lifts, with Eve always just beginning to lift as they landed or just landing as they lifted, her small Gathering basket bobbing along with her. Before they disappeared, however, she was trailing from Davie’s free hand and the lifts were smoothing out long and longer. My thoughts went with them as I remembered the years I had Gathered the lovely luminous flowers that popped into existence in a single night, leafless, almost stemless, as though formed like dew, or falling like concentrated moonlight. No one knows now how the custom of loves sharing a flahmen came into being, but it’s firmly entrenched in the traditions of the People. To share that luminous loveliness, petal by petal, one for me and one for you and all for us-
“How pleasant that Gathering Day brings back our loves,” I sighed dreamily as I stood in the kitchen and snapped my fingers for the breakfast dishes to come to me. “People that might otherwise be completely forgotten come back so vividly every year-“
“Yes,” said ‘Chell, watching the tablecloth swish out the window, huddling the crumbs together to dump them in the feather-pen in back of the house. “And it’s a good anniversary-marker. Most of us meet our loves at the Gathering Festival-or discover them there.” She took the returning cloth and folded it away. “I never dreamed when I used to fuss with David over mud pies and playhouses that one Gathering Day he’d blossom into my love.”
“Me blossom?” David peered around the doorjamb. “Have you forgotten how you looked, preblossom? Knobby knees, straggly hair, toothless grin-!”
“David, put me down!” ‘Chell struggled as she felt herself being lifted to press against the ceiling. “We’re too old for such nonsense!”
