26 : Day 15

Puck sat at the counter finishing his breakfast. He was playing with the stretchy rubber snake he picked up at the Science Center gift shop Thursday afternoon. I can always tell when he has thoughts.

“Mom? Did you ever think about how snakes used to walk on feet, because then God said, ‘You will slither on your belly.’”

A few hours later, Yali was walking around barefoot in the front lawn at the Big House, his fat little brown arms and legs slathered in dripping strawberry popsicle. Even with the morning rain, the heat hadn’t been completely killed. And it was showing up in pink stains all over Yali’s shirt.

Back at the Silverspoon’s, I watched the boys wrestle around the basement carpet, Yali occasionally pausing to squeal from a misplaced bump to the arm or head. Then he’d run over for an air kiss, followed by a dimply grin and a thumbs up.

After awhile, Puck draped a blanket over Yali’s little plastic playhouse.

“Mom? If I was homeless, I think I’d have a little money still. Maybe like a hundred dollars or somethin’? So this is what I would do. I would buy one of these little playhouses and put a tarp over it and then I’d have a little house. … But you guys would support me with food.”

His plan became more elaborate a little later as he continued to contemplate new ideas.

“You know how you can buy that little piece of land in Scotland, Mom?”

(I did. The rights to one square foot of Scottish highlands sold as a gift in a tin box.)

“So,” he continued, “all I’d need is a shovel and I can go over there and dig down into the ground and build a mansion!”

Movie night. It always takes forever to decide what to watch. Probably because we usually end up having conversations like this:

“What’s that movie about the guy who saw an ad for a time machine?”

“The one where the guy goes back in time when he looks at a picture?”

“No, that’s the one with Laura’s Theme.”

“No, that’s from the film noir, Laura.”

“No, you’re thinking of Dr. Zhivago.”

“No, I think that’s Dr. Strangelove.”

“Who are all the guys named Armstrong? Lance, Louis…”

“Francis, what does that have to do with anything?”

“I just wanted to remember all the guys who have the last name Armstrong.”

“Who wants to watch a documentary about pink dolphins?”