Ch. 191; Vol. 10
A grumbling in the southwest.
Thunderstorm in the early morning, after six hours’ sleep, which got us up at 5:30 to beat traffic.
6:15 and the Big House was dark. Fine by me. I wedged myself onto the loveseat with a blanket and almost snoozed away another twenty minutes until…
Pad, pad, pad…
Puck was up.
“Puck,” Carrie asked him later, “you know what the law is? While you are still in your PJs, I can give you as many hugs and kisses as I want.”
Pause to process…
“You did’t tell me that.”
Two minutes later he emerged fully dressed for the morning.
Wind, muggy rain, heavy rain, green things and ferns and mint and roses…
“Look what the roses did to me,” said Carrie.
– She rolled back sleeves – red dots, tiny scratches all over her arms. The roses had not been doing well that year. Some sort of fungus. –
“I walked out there and they were already singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Puck wasn’t concerned about roses. He was busy building robots in the living room. Dead pencil sharpener stuffed with crumbled scrap papers for brain matter. Papers that instructed the robot what to do…
“Is that a math page, Mom? Is that math on there? Will the robot do math now? Francis will never have to do math again! HA HA!”
He ruffled through some stickers in the craft hutch…
“It will do basketball… no, not basketball… It will learn to drive cars.”
The discarded European Cars magazine was toast.
Eventually he transferred his imagination to the travel trailer at the top of the driveway where he helped Linnea clean. And play.
Then after eleven o’clock, Dad called. Grandma Snicketts was in the hospital after apparently falling twice in two days. So he left work to see what was going on.
Puck watched a DVD about oceans and concluded lunch with a Bomb Pop.
“Mom? Do you still have your college hat?” Puck asked me in the dining room where I was assisting Francis with mathematical quandaries.
“I think he means your graduation cap,” Mom explained from ironing shirts in the living room.
“No. I rented that cap.”
“Why didn’t you save it? I would want it.”
“I didn’t think I would have a little boy who wanted everything he saw.”
“I don’t want everything. I don’t even want that sugar bowl! I don’t even want that boat! See that thing that’s holding those plate things! SEE? I don’t even want all that stuff over there!”
Dad brought Grandma over at three o’clock while we were at Linnea’s lengthy orthodontist appointment leaving a little dizzy: roast beef with cheese, curly fries, and jamocha shake, sand volleyball [I don’t know how she does it.] But anyway, Linnea had already given up the rights to her room for several days or more, clearing out all essentials. She never said a word about it.
Six o’clock.
Movie night at church. Veggie… Tales… Popcorn; I scooped several dozen bags of that for all the kids. And then s’mores…
“I give up!” Puck declared, before the marshmallow was even on the skewer.
By the time I convinced him to figure out a way not to burn his person by standing too close to the fire, he was enjoying the process. And his chubby cheeks were lightly toasted by the time we left.
