GOOSE CAVORTS

 

The "Toast" as we came to call it, began WAY in the Nineties, when we were first here on a Military base for "a few months" and has extended into 36 years because we loved it here, and had not such call to return to the HOT SOUTH.   We came for five months, with his coming in October of 1990, to begin, with plans to come home for Christmas and bring me back for the further three months.   Then came Desert Storm, and he could not "get leave," so he had a talk with his Colonel about going to bring me back---My silver-tongued sweetie could get gold from a stump.   Colonel said, "We're on Lockdown.  Have your A-- in a chair in the room on Monday.   That's all I've got to say."

So we had Christmas on Christmas Eve, with all seven of our children gathering down on the coast, and woke Christmas morning at four to kiss lots of sleeping faces and drive all day to get here.  His children had gone home after dinner to be with their Mother for the actual Eve and Day, and Leah and her brothers planned a nice dinner to cook together for the actual day.    

 He'd taken a tiny apartment in a nice complex, for such a short duration, and we were at the very back, with a whole parking lot and vast lawn of picnic tables.   Our Ground Floor windows, wide open to that Spring breeze, first became the target of a pair of mallards.  There were also DUCKS and GEESE in the central lake, and soon they caught on that there were goodies to be had around at #13.   They brought their kin and neighbors and babies, and finally we were visiting the "used bread store" twice a week.  

But before those little dinner visits turned into the Avian Tearoom, we began with a little couple, named Maurice and Velveeta.   They came to the bedroom window at 5 a.m., better than reveille, and chatted away til we brought breakfast.     THEN, they brought a Third Wheel---and MY, did she SQUEAK---not murmuring a bit til we woke, but with the abrupt WAAAAAAIKKK of a Klaxon on a clown's suit---we named HER Miranda, because we SO wished she'd remain silent.

And so it went, with the wee three becoming crowds, then flocks, then a drove of thirty or more, with the lake-scenery geese soon getting in on the action.   THEY were even louder than the ducks with their honking blares, and when two or several tied up out on the lawn---it was like a bar-room fight with a Pep Squad.   Not to mention their unmentionables---mating season was a surprise to our ears, with quite a lot of goose music day and night, and when one guest asked about the noise, Chris just said, "That's just the geese cavorting."

And so it became Goose Cavorts, which my sharp-wit sweetheart immediately proposed as a toast at our next gathering.    He raised his glass and said, "GOOSE CAVORTS!" and party-goers followed suit, to whatever inflection they thought they'd heard.    So many of them had served in Germany and all over Europe, lots thought it was one of those languages.    And still we say it from time to time, that long-ago silly misnomer of a TOAST:   GOOSE CAVORTS!!    and never explain.   Do say you'll propose it with no explanation!!  (never on a serious, somber occasion)  See if it will catch on.