Ch. 149; Vol. 10
Puck watched The Bear jam on the fat cigar box banjo Tuesday night, thinking carefully…
“You’d be great at a show.”
It was Wednesday morning…
“Dad, can you please drop me off here?”
We were just driving up to Mom’s and Dad’s, bursts of yellow roses, pink, and greenery.
“Ok…”
The precursor to young teenage Puck, who had just learned how to buckle himself into his own seat, popped the buckle and exited the vehicle up the short green hill.
About half an hour later, he was sporting the lawn mower headphones and ski goggles, spaceman-like, keeping an eye on things, with a dish of unwanted scrambled eggs in his lap.
Later, he planned his next exit onto the patio. His ears still covered in soundproof headphones, he thought I had asked him something…
“What, Mom?” he yelled, removing the headphones. “Do I have chocolate on my face?”
BUSTED.
Dimples and grins.
Puck was skating in the house, inching carefully, trying to speed up his momentum by twirling the tornado tube. Which wasn’t working…
“I wish I had a propeller attached to my pants,” he grinned.
CRASH.
“Oh, Puck, are you ok?” Mom asked the chap, spilled out on the hard wood floor in his skates…
“That’s ok,” he said like it was a matter of fact, “Just a little pain… That’s how you learn anyway. That’s just how you learn…”
Off he went.
Target – Mom, Carrie, and I – for about half an hour. There were four babies born or in the works who needed gifts. And then Carrie dropped Mom and Linnea off at the English’s for playtime, talktime, and wedding decoration planning up at the church. Annamaria had some unusual, if not unique, plans. Carrie hit the store for hoagies and fixings, and back out to join them at the church as consultant.
“Fran!” Puck yelled into his ear, skating in Joe’s black skates with The Bear’s old madrigal dinner jester’s hat on his head, “LET’S GO OUT TO THE CLUB!”
Puck was so proud of the vine sculpture shelter club in the backyard, he just couldn’t help himself. I guess Francis was readmitted.
Carrie returned with a set of dried and dying bleeding hearts. Grandma Combs had emergency-rushed them out to her at the church before they croaked. Bleeding Hearts. Always my favorite flower when I was little.
Puck biked in the afternoon…
“HELP! HELP! HELP!” he yelled as he smashed into the lawn. “I HAVE TO ITCH MY NOSE!”
Then he bumped over a muddy ramp into a puddle…
“So… why did you do that, Puck?”
“I wanted to show you who’s boss.”
“Well, I think the puddle is boss…”
“The puddle is boss.”
Mom drove with Joe to pay a traffic ticket in Foristell. It wasn’t Francis’ fault. The license plate was stolen from Mom’s car. But it couldn’t be helped.
A box arrived from Walgreen’s full of tonics and elixirs: shampoos, soaps, and detergents of an organic nature. Puck sampled smells as Carrie peeled back the wrappings.
I thought it was a dog first before I looked closer – a turkey was taking a dust bath in the driveway. A turkey.
“It cleans all the oil off,” Carrie explained, tossing out some handfuls of dried corn. “It’s sort of like dry shampoo for them.”
Mom and Francis drove out again to pick up the green slug from the mechanic – not quite dead yet after all – after consulting on the number of tables needed for Annamaria’s shower. And other exhilarating things on a Wednesday afternoon.
We hoped for more storms.
