What's So Good About Good-Bye? And Kobe.

Yesterday at the park in Providence, the afternoon was disappearing too quickly and Plotnik was conscious of every passing second. Now it was four o'clock and time to say good-bye to The Great PunkyDunky, and to The Great FiveHead, and to the precious Brooklyn Belly, so they could get in the car and on the road for their four hour drive back to Brooklyn. Everyone hugged and tried to stay merry, but at first Isabella didn't get what was happening. She told Plotnik she loved him THIS MUCH (she put her fingers together, almost touching, playing the joke she and Plot had been playing all week, where her next move would be to say "...and THIS MUCH" and open her arms wide), except that PD then turned around, with her in his arms, and started walking towards their car.






Belly spun around on his shoulder, staring at Plotnik and Ducknik and BZWZ and Ben, who weren't moving, and the look of such sadness, as she realized for the first time that everybody wasn't getting in the car and coming with her like we'd been doing since a week ago Wednesday, that this time good-bye really was good-bye, at least for awhile, was pure torture.



Oh, did that hurt. Plotnik knows she loves him arms open, not fingers shut, but it's already the next morning, and he should be thinking about the Laker Championship, but he keeps seeing Belly's sad and beautiful little eyes, not Kobe's.



Later yesterday afternoon Plot and Duck toured around Pawtucket (the next town over from Providence) with BZ and Ben, and ended up in a great little ice cream shop. Plottie wasn't hungry. Ducknik said to him: "Are you all right? You're so quiet." Plot just shook his head.

Belly would have loved to slurp an ice cream cone but she was out on I-95 and Plottie kept seeing her eyes on his boy's shoulder as it dawned on her that Papa and Bobo and Ben and BZ were staying and she was going.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. This grandparent thing is easy until it's murder.





Of course, visiting in Brooklyn is about PD and 5H, not just Isabella. They're the reason it's so much fun to go there, just like it was in Stiletto City and New Orleans before that, even before there was a Belly or a Bumby Umby.

And being in Providence means getting to laugh a lot and hang around with The Great BZWZ in a very appealing place. Both kids keep asking "Why are you going home? Why don't you two just stay longer?" Usually, it's easy to answer: home is home. Your bed is your bed. And anyway ya gotta go back before they get sick of you.

Right. We have to go home because...we have to go home. Right. Right?

Well, Plotnik will deal with the rest of that on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Plotnik had all three big screens to himself to root for the Lakers last night in Spats' Sports Bar down by the university. Nobody cared. The few people who were in the place were concentrating on beer drinking.



It's a lot more fun to celebrate a hard-earned championship with other people to whom this type of thing matters. Still, Providence has the best biscotti in the world and tonight Duck and Plot will try to find a Portuguese restaurant to go to with BZ and Ben. Life is good and continues to be so.