Back to One
Having a cat is a remarkable adjustment. Well, for me anyway. For the first time in my life, I have to remember to always set a volume of Spurgeon’s Sermons over my drinking glass for the day, every time I leave the kitchen. Because if I don’t, Floozie here, will stick her face in it to get a lap.
I engaged Puck in his morning reading lesson – he was ready for the usual action – shrouded in faded MIZZOU sweatshirt, hood pulled over his head, the inevitable dirty bare feet, discussing how long God has been alive, which he at first estimated at about “one hundred fifty thousand weeks”, which then morphed into a discussion about eating. “Is that why you don’t eat much lunch, Mom? You don’t want to grow up to be huge like Goliath?”
I love “Wishbone”.
Fortunately for me, Puck does too. I realized that this current generation is possibly not acquainted with the canine classics. There’s something interesting about watching a small dog act out “The Phantom of the Opera” and “One Thousand and One Nights”. I also realize that, in many ways, I learned more literature from a dog the size of a small suitcase, than I did in studying for the Literature in English GRE. Funny how you remember things better when a dog narrates them for you. So I’ve been schooling Puck in this memorable pastime for the last several weeks. I imagine he’ll be ready to write an essay on “The Red Badge of Courage” by his sixth birthday.
Oh, but I jest.
I’m just not one of those cookie cutters, I’m afraid. Sorry, Puck, but I won’t be tutoring you in Italian by second grade or indoctrinating you with quantum physics before junior high. I just… can’t make myself do it.
Today, instead though, I taught Puck how to score a baseball game. Per the Bear’s request, mind. I promise. Puck actually enjoyed it. Sort of like a round of Candyland following runners on base with a tightly-gripped black ink pen. “He’s now retired twelve in a row, Bob,” followed the narration… “What’s a ‘rowbob’, Mom? Robot? Could I name my baby brother robot?”
So, as usual on every afternoon, I scratched out the calendar day at three o’clock in my schedule book. My sisters, in general, seem to cross off calendar days in the morning. But I’ve always preferred the afternoon. Makes me feel like I’ve accomplished a little more of something. Meanwhile, Puck cooked up a stack of 1980’s fuzzy virtues audio cassettes while I folded three bushels of laundry. I hold to the fact that this kid is still easily entertained.
At dinner, I found it necessary to intervene as Puck was taxed to the limit with his newly discovered parenting abilities. “Crackers, you’re going to be dessert for a monster, if you don’t stop that.”
You know you have some warning signs – practically served up on a silver platter – when your five year-old has to have the soap dispenser turned a certain direction when he’s done washing his hands.
O, futures.
“One hundred and fifty thousand, one hundred and fifty thousand, one hundred and fifty thousand?”
“What?” I asked the shouting voice coming from a young man supposed to be trying to sleep.
“One hundred and fifty thousand, one hundred and fifty thousand, one hundred and fifty thousand years ago was the world here?”
“I doubt it…”
Sometimes it is just absolutely ludicrous how quickly the Bear falls asleep, by the way. I’ve timed it several times. Seriously.
Thirty seconds.
Snores.
Thought of the Day
There is always someone, somewhere, using a table-saw in our neighborhood. I think it comes from the red-headed red-bearded kid in his twenties down the street, where it pretty much looks like he stashed a wood shop in the garage, right beside the house that erected a “Pike’s Peak” clapboard sign above their carport. I realize our neighborhood is sort of… the wrong side of the right side of the tracks. But then the guy next to us is a carpenter who owns land in Augusta. A few more houses down, the guy who lived there was a professional gardener before he moved to purchase a vineyard. Then there’s this bright yellow house, the shade of a Mediterranean lemon, one street over, that always makes me think of my visits to the Caribbean. So… our neighborhood has character, some hard working folks. Even if the general accent is one I can never exactly classify – well, nowhere close, really – as the preferred St. Louis accent. [And we definitely have an accent, I’m told.] Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is, that despite the run down sea-chanty effect this place sometimes gets on certain corners – my landscaping, or lack thereof, included – I can still appreciate the culture of these five intersecting streets.