24 : Day 17

Sunday morning. About eight o’clock. I was packing up for the day, passing out church clothes to the boys. Puck was rolling around on the bedroom floor, thinking hard.

“Mom?”

“Yup?”

“I’ve had enough snot from my nose over the past nine years to build a whole shed.”

“Why a shed?”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”

On that note, we hit church.

I think it was the first time in my life I’d been preached to by a kid younger than myself. In fact, almost until the last minute he walked up to the pulpit, I thought he was a high school student. He was also an historical re-enactor. That explained the heavy sideburns.

Halfway through the sermon, Puck leaned over to me, tired of sketching monster faces with red pen and yellow highlighter.

“Mom?” he yell-whispered. “Can I have a mint? My breath smells like rotten fish!”

Several hours later, we were at the Big House. Some of us. Francis had a date with a pair of jet skis on Mark Twain Lake. Oxbear took the boys swimming. And etc. So Mom and the three oldest sisters decided to soak in some vitamin D in the backyard for as long as we could handle a 117 heat index.

It was eight o’clock again. Puck’s sun-kissed face and freckled nose stared intently at his final computer session of the day, accompanied by yet another bag of carrots, his go-to veggie. I walked up from the basement and the beginnings of another disappointing Cardinals game to hand over the unpleasant verdict.

“Okay, bud. It’s bedtime.”

“Mom, please not yet. I’m just talkin’ to myself up here,” Puck replied as diplomatically as possible. “I’m getting thoughts out. I’m getting thoughts done here.”