Chapter Eighty-One
The Bear was sort of sick. Not super sick, just a weird head cold sick. And because he has unlimited sick days with the shoe company, I advised staying at home.
“Can’t,” he groaned through headache and throat-ache. “Important… meeting…”
Snore.
That’s what you get for full time career, part time seminary, big time dad, church trouble, and all the other full-time/part-time things in the melee that is life.
Cough, cough…
– from the red couch, 6:30 AM.
“I’m making you tea, Puck.”
“Mom! Noooooooo!!”
He’s come a long way. Nevertheless, chamomile, hot water, stevia [hate that stuff]. I plunked the small tea cup beside him and threatened no breakfast until the amber water was in his stomach.
“I’m not going to drink it!”
Oh, pal. You just messed with the wrong lady.
Meanwhile, I could only hope that Friday in Cozumel would unlace the good time I knew was hiding around someplace inside the framework that was my little sister.
I boxed up a fat three stacks of books for Nacchianti Coca-Cola and his assumed-flourishing home library. Someone could maybe wring a few more drops out of “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” than I did.
I was the proud owner of a new Rubbermaid tupperware set. 40 pieces. Red lids. Normally I wouldn’t care about rubber boxes with lids. At all. Not even if the lids are red. But when the last useable lid of my wedding gift tupperware set finally cracked a few weeks ago, I decided it was time. $15.88 at “the bad place”. Why do I torture myself. And a package of “orange pencils” with small hand-crank pencil sharpener for Puck. Per his request. My boy is growing up.
The eggs stuck to the non-stick omelet pan. That almost never happens. And Crackers wasn’t really interested in the squishy velvety sapphire blue Dalek toy. I concluded it would just be “one of those days”. And I don’t like cliches. Or most rhymes.
In honesty, though, I guess I really don’t care all that much about artificial sweeteners, chain stores created in Arkansas, snooty cats, or “crumby” mornings. They are what they are. But it’s something to write about.
By this time, the tea battle had increased to an all-out war. No breakfast until tea done…
“You guys are making a famine in here!” Puck yelled from the kitchen.
We were pretty unaffected by idle threats.
“Sorry to leave you with such suffering,” The Bear grinned at me, walking out the front door in the cold gray. “You know. With all that famine. And war… and pillaging…”
“Oh. I’m going to be here for the rest of my life,” Puck whined from the kitchen. “… … Mom? Do cats grow beards?”
In the end, I won. Of course. You can’t not win when you’re the parent. And he got it all down with surprisingly little difficulty after all, even if it was two hours after the fact. With a tip from The Bear to keep the straw towards the back of his mouth so he tasted less of the bitter quality…
“It works!” he exclaimed through shed tears.
“It’s not about the tea, you know,” The Bear had told him. “You must obey your mama.”
And a brief string of explanations I combed from “Shepherding a Child’s Heart”. All true, of course. Granted, I’m no less stubborn than my own son. I just duke it out with The Creator instead. Which, I guess, is what Puck is ultimately doing anyway. We learn theology by protesting tea.
Pancakes. “Babe”. For movie night. The Puck version of movie night that is, because Joe was too important for us and had a date with Thunderbird to race F-1s and talk business plans. Business plans… Francis joined us anyway, ate about fourteen flapjacks dowsed in butter, before leaving for work. Three weeks left at the old Y.
