Back at It

“Mom, you were wrong.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah. Mr. V is 50. He isn’t even close to your age.”

Puck was back in school again. His most important piece of information gleaned from the day was hardly academic. For the past few weeks, after learning that Mr. V’s birthday took place one day before his mom’s, he was under the impression that we were, in fact, ten years apart. Not twenty. I was inclined to agree with his original opinion.

“Bud. There is no way Mr. V is 50. I’m sure he’s 40, like you thought in the first place.”

“No, he’s 53.”

“So he’s a grandpa’s age?”

Puck paused to consider for a moment. “All the kids in my class say he’s 53. And I think they would know.”

“Well, I guess the easiest way to solve this dilemma is to just ask him tomorrow how old he is.”

Momentary silence.

“Can you just text him?”

Puck had nothing else to say about his day, and was more interested in listening to the Oldies radio station on a freezing half-gray afternoon drive down the highway.

Meanwhile, I had spent my six and a half hours at home cleaning up the house, folding laundry, writing my next book, and watching “The Shop Around the Corner” on my extended lunch break. Picked up two bags of Trader Joe’s whole wheat mini pitas, and caught up on a little reading while waiting in the brick hallway.

On the other side of town I learned that the girls were almost over the flu. The weird 10-14 day flu with super sore throats and low-grade fevers. Although, because they had been declared non-contagious, Linnea-Irish had insisted on returning to work.

By evening, Puck had finished a folder of homework, stuffed himself with pork cutlets and sweet potatoes to the tune of another “I Love Lucy” – we’re working through the pack – and sat for further readings in “Calvin & Hobbes”. Some things don’t change even after Christmas vacation.

And Oxbear spent his evening in Chesterfield fixing Judah Rye’s laptop before their return to Ethiopia with now three kids under the age of five.