SPRITES
///Paul Hundt
This has been a tough two years. I have watched the election of a mi-
nority president, who with his venal cronies has launched unrelenting attacks on our political institutions and the Rule of Law.
Long retired, I lack the refuge of a responsible job to distract me. In
addition, the inevitable health and physical issues of advancing age restrict my chances to escape to the outdoors to hike, climb or fish. I have become a pris-
oner of the endless loops of TV news coverage bewailing our perilous situation. Thus, there have been few opportunities to forget about the deconstruction of the freedoms, norms and protections of the country I have lived in all my life and of my body as well.
But one of those opportunities occurs each Wednesday afternoon at two
o’clock. At that moment Puck, Ariel, Titania, and all the other sprites, fairies and magical people in Shakespeare’s lexicon dance through our front door in the
personages of our two grandchildren, aged seven and eight. Denizens of two alternating caves about twenty minutes away, they flit into our staid, quiet household and turn everything topsy turvy. Like Prospero, my wife has loosed them
from the confines of school, apartments and car seats and they rush to our front door to perform a weekly ritual: the senior sprite rings the bell insistently and the junior sprite hides; when I totter downstairs from my office computer and
open the door, much is made of his absence. Did he run away at school? Did he
find something to do elsewhere? Did the teacher keep him? Who is going to get his share of the afternoon snack? At which point he materializes from nowhere and they cross the threshold shouting, laughing, interrupting each other and
me, claiming my attention with “important things” to tell me. As they cast off
their coats, I am transformed into a line cook, waiter, busboy and dishwasher so they can fuel up on French toast or grilled cheese before the wild dance begins in earnest.
However, before that starts they must dispatch one insignificant admin-
istrative matter that burdens their joy. The chief sprite, who as a baby would
cry bloody murder whenever I approached, now insists I sit beside her, while
she races through her English and Math homework at my wife’s desk upstairs.
However, I am not permitted to look, help, or check. I just sit there. To pass this very short time, I color in an adult coloring book (inevitably going outside the
lines) or I take my 2B pencil and draw the same desk lamp I have been trying to 56 SANSKRIT
