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    â€œWell, Douglas, you think you might have over-seasoned the tootsies a bit?” Mom snickered as Dad walked up with little brown clouds puffing from his shoes with every step.
    â€œYeah, I guess cinnamon may have been a poor choice for a shoe deodorizer,” he said.
    Syd snorted as Aunt Jo slapped at Dad’s shoes with a dish towel to dust them off.
    Uncle Clay pretended not to notice. “That was some mighty fine bird-trapping you did this morning, Douglas. Fine, fine work,” he said.
    â€œThanks, brother.” With a gentle pat to Uncle Clay’s back, my dad took his usual spot on a folding chair next to the recliner. Uncle Clay tapped a flat carpenter’s pencil on the metal part of his arm brace. “Now that we’re all here, I’d like to say a few words,” he began. “Toodi, we don’t like when you leave. But we know that when you do, you’re making the darkest day brighter for countless others more needy than us.”
    His hand trembled as he held the bamboo stick out.
    â€œAs a welcome-home gesture, please accept this custom creation of mine.”
    â€œThank you, Clay,” said my mom, taking Ye Olde Piñata Whacker and studying the letters carved into its length. “I assume that cumulonimbus dangling over there is in need of some whacking.”
    I couldn’t wait to see what would fall out of that cloud. There was never any predicting what was hidden inside of Uncle Clay’s piñatas. Popcorn, cashews, paper clips, but almost never candy. Just whatever was within reach at the time of creation.
    â€œRubber bands,” Syd whispered his guess in my direction.
    I thought marshmallows.
    â€œHow about I test this thing out after we eat?” Mom said, leaning the Whacker against the fan and making her way to the table, with Syd and me fighting for next in line behind her.
    Once everyone had piled food onto their plates and found a place to sit on the porch, we took turns asking Mom questions, so our words wouldn’t all blurt out at the same time. Mom always came back from storm trips with the best stories. Chickens stuck on telephone poles. Double rainbows. Toilets in the road.
    There on the porch swing, she sat with her toes pointed in at each other, so that her knees were close enough to balance a flimsy paper plate on her lap. Even with a glub of onion dip sliding down her plate, she was graceful.
    â€œToodi, what was the strangest thing you saw this time?” Aunt Jo asked.
    â€œWhew, that’s a tough one,” Mom said, damming up the dip with a deviled egg. “But I’d have to say it was this poor old lady hanging on to a church steeple for dear life. My whole team tried to peel her off of it into the rescue boat, but she was so scared of the water around her, she just wouldn’t budge. We had to remove her and the cross together, and she held it all the way to the first-aid station.”
    The way Mom described the lady and the cross was so vivid, I imagined the whole scene depicted in stained glass.
    â€œDid you ever have to bust through a window to rescue anyone?” asked Syd.
    â€œNo,” Mom said. “But I did see a wall with the shape of a fire hydrant broken through it.”
    â€œCool,” he said, and went back to throwing peanut shells at the box fan.
    After a while, I noticed that each time the question-asking would make its way around the porch, my dad would always be doing something that distracted him right out of his turn. Clapping the bottoms of his shoes together to knock off the excess cinnamon. Removing his ball cap and scratching at his sweaty head. Jangling the mix of keys and change in his pockets.
    â€œHey, what’s with your dad?” Syd asked me. “He looks like a baseball pitcher doing signals or something.”
    â€œI think he’s all nerved out,” I said. Which was odd, because my dad’s edginess is usually pretty smoothed by the time