"Home! Daddy! Home! Homing!"
You crawl down from the breakfast table chair that you pushed up to the cooking counter, the cookie dough and sticky raisin residue on your fingers smearing prints on the chair seat.
"Yep. Daddy is ... did she say, 'homing?'" your dad asks your mom.
"Homing!" you say again. You crash into your dad with a hug, face to the side, and push off him again. Back to the chair.
Your mom looks over her shoulder from the mixing bowl and smiles. "I was just getting used to pluralizing," she says. "And now ... "
"Now we're fully in present-participle territory," your dad says. "Drop the e and add i-n-g. Unless," your dad says, "she now identifies me as a heat-seeking missile. That'll work. It is lunchtime and all."
Your dad lays his backpack on the kitchen table, the laptop shut but humming with warmth from this morning's job search. People at church have asked with diligence and firm handshakes, "Find any work yet?" Your dad finds it easy to put on a smile and throw out a Biblical metaphor -- he can't resist: "Not yet. Still fishing. May need to cast my net on the other side of the boat, though." Everyone smirks. There's eye contact. Promises are made of keeping your dad in their prayers. Your dad is appreciative but occasionally wants to bust out of prayers and praying. Sometimes it feels like so much talk.
"No thank you, Estelle. No. Listen," your mom says. She removes the butter dish from your hands."
"Listening?" you say. You put both hands on the counter and stare at the butter dish.
"Yes. Good. Estelle is listening," your mom says.
Your dad then remembers the second part of prayer; the part your dad should be doing when he's done talking.
