That night at a quarter after seven, cranky, definitely drained, and yet at the same time extremely grateful just to be here, I stepped off my elevator and finally made glorious contact with the loose brass knob of my apartment’s front door.
Sometimes bad days at work depressed me and stayed with me, but this was one of the days that made me happy just for the fact that it was over and I’d gotten through it in one piece.
I was locking the apartment door behind me when a horrendous crunching sound ripped out from the vicinity of the kitchen.
I peeked inside and saw Martin, with his back to me, throwing a bunch of carrots into a blender. He seems to be in one piece, I thought. The same busy, assured, positive, energetic person who’d come to work this morning. First days were tough. Especially ones that involved taking care of double-digit kids. But it was looking like it had gone well enough. Excellent, I thought. So far, so good.
Instead of interrupting him, I peeked into the living room.
Uh-oh. Maybe not so good, I thought when I saw the kids.
All the boys were there except Brian. They were lying all over the place. Eddie was passed out on the ottoman. Ricky was on the carpet, red-faced and staring, dazed, up at the ceiling. Trent, huffing and puffing, was sprawled facedown on the couch.
Seamus, who was on the end of the couch, thumbing through the Irish Voice newspaper, rolled his eyes at me.
“What’s wrong with them, Father?” I said.
“I don’t know. I just got in myself, and they won’t say,” said Seamus. “They keep sighing and moaning, though. I believe they’ve come down with some sickness perhaps mental in nature.”
“Help, Dad. Just help,” said Eddie as he looked up weakly from the ottoman.
“He makes us run, Dad,” said Trent, pointing toward the crunching sound in the kitchen. “We were doing drills. Soccer drills.”
“You made Mary Catherine disappear and replaced her with a drill sergeant,” Ricky said. “We’re not that bad, are we? Well, I mean, we’re sort of bad, but this bad? Honestly, what did we do?”
The blender stopped, then whirred again.
“And he says he’s making us smoothies,” said Eddie. “But I saw vegetables, Dad. He bought vegetables from the corner market! I definitely saw carrots and even some green stuff. That’s not a smoothie, Dad. That’s V8 juice!”
“Give it up, fellas,” I said with a smile. “You couch-potato Nintendo athletes could use some running around. Not to mention some vegetables. Mary Catherine would be pleased.”