I had a chance to visit the Big Castle over the weekend. I think it’s time this place had an official name. It’s big enough to warrant its own address. The neighbor, up the hill, upon spying its construction on my parents’ lakefront property, had contacted a building inspector. The inspector ambled over one day and managed to have a conversation with my step-father about what was needed to bring this thing into code—or something like that. A few revisions were necessary. Height had to be lessened some, I think, and maybe they got rid of the four-car garage or the eight-horse stable or whatever it was that came with the original design we brainstormed over the last few years.
The weekend’s weather was rainy and foggy as warm air moved in over ice and snow. My sons received a few gifts to enhance the castle fantasy. (Pictures forthcoming.) At one point, they went out on the ice-covered lake just off-shore from the castle, and posed for my mother’s camera on some ice-bound rocks, with their tunics, armor and swords. It was marvelous, I’m told. The ice, fog, and darkened clouds in the distance, shrouding the setting sun, lent themselves to a scenery that looked painted, too deliberately perfect.
Meanwhile, indoors, River and I were introduced to a new addiction by my sister, Molly. It is a game called Settlers of Catan, although we were playing an expansion set called Cities and Knights of Catan. A single game takes about two and a half hours to play once you know what you’re doing. The previous night, our first foray into playing this game, we started at about 10:00 pm, had finally finished hearing the instructions by about 10:45 pm, lost a player around 12:30 am (my step-father, who simply absolutely had to get some sleep), and finally lost to Molly just before 2:00 am. I went to bed and dreamt of settlements, cities and metropolises, resources and commodities, robbers and merchants, and collecting victory points. If ever I had dreams worthy of geeky dungeons-and-dragon-hood, it was that night. Then I awoke before dawn to hear my three children bubbling and bursting eager to look at stockings laid out by my mother the night before, and all hopes of having a nightly recuperation evaporated like so much paint on a Buddha board. But it was worth it.
Now we are eager to find this game and own it and play it over and over and over until there is nothing left of our real lives.
