48 : Descending Diphthong

“DESCENDING DIPHTHONG!”

Those were the words that pulled me out of dreamland early that morning. I didn’t know what he meant by them, but Puck was already busy making Wednesday interesting in the other room.

“DESCENDING DIPHTHONG!”

It was late morning. With the last of the doors painted, I let the boys go outside with their bikes for a little while in air that was more akin to late spring than early summer.

“Uh, Mom? Can you get that little guy off my bike?” Puck pointed to a tiny, fat orange spider in a web on his handlebars.

“He worked fast, didn’t he?” I said as I picked up a twig and removed him, and his web, to the lilac bush.

“He did nice work,” Puck replied. “Uh, Mom? Do you think… he laid eggs?”

“Boy spiders don’t lay eggs.”

“How do you know it was a boy?”

“Oh, I thought you knew. You called him a ‘him’.”

“I don’t really know. He was all curled up so I couldn’t tell. But, oh… It’s okay. There couldn’t be any eggs. There would have to be two spiders for that to work.”

It was already dinner. Puck warily eyed another bowl of pasta, worked up a little differently from Tuesday night.

“Did you put SPICE on this?”

It doesn’t matter whether it’s plain black pepper, or curry. Everything is too much spice for Puck.

“Just pepper, bud.”

For once, the look on his face didn’t display concern.

“Hey! I like it!

As dinner concluded, Puck organized his Legos for the evening.

“DESCENDING DIPHTHONG!”

“What does that mean, Puck?”

He thought about it for a second. “I don’t know. It was just something on Phineas and Ferb.”

The television show of his summer.

A little while later, Oxbear rolled up the driveway with treats for the family: shark shorts for Yali, blueberry bagels for Puck, and a roll of chocolate chip cookie dough for later that evening.