Chapter Fifty-Eight
We got that sugar frosting after all. It arrived in the form of half an inch and scattering white dust, like tiny fireflies in the wind, still falling into the first hours of the lit morning… Puck was ready for anything, including his newest idea of becoming a scientist. He pulled the wad of The Bear’s old worn out white collared shirt from the bottom drawer of his dresser. I had intended for it to become a paint shirt. But Puck had other plans.
“I’m a scientist,” he told me importantly, if not somewhat soberly.
The white “lab coat” accompanied the fedora and pocket-full of pens and pencils very smartly.
Because being a scientist sometimes involves monitoring plants, Mom’s project for Puck that day involved planting a little terrarium box of basil. He was also very interested in collecting pocket change for a particular fund. I saw him run past the doorway with a cleaning cloth and spray bottle, rubbing all the door knobs…
“Are you helping Grandma clean?” I asked him.
“Yeah, um. I’m earning some money. For the poor.”
He examined one of his hard-earned coins…
“What personal language is that in?” he asked his uncles, for whom I was frying egg sandwiches.
“2012.”
Puck pointed to another section of the nickel…
“What doofus would write that?”
“I don’t know, Puck. What doofus would write – In God We Trust?”
A few moments later Puck ran past me, squealing, followed by his Uncle Francis…
“I’m the government, Puck! I’m coming for your money!”
Puck took refuge in the leather cushions of the couch…
“I have twenty-two monies for the poor, Mom! Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four! Twenty-four monies!”
In the powdered sugar fall, Mom and Linnea departed on less-than-pleasant terms. Today was the day the braces went – snap, click, pop, glue – on the teeth. And for a certain stay of two years, probably at a minimum. The result was… braces. As the millions before her had already come.
“They’re crooked,” was Linnea’s solitary comment, throwing up two hands of bright red polished nails over the tin grin.
A box of Heath bars accompanied their return. So did Francis’ delight in seeing his younger sister affixed with immovable metal boxes cemented to her teeth. Because that’s just the way Francis is. Linnea and I talked a little bit about Haiti and missions and Iowa roller skating birthday parties, friends, and life things, while she adjusted to tickling teeth and ibuprofen.
“I think I’ve worked up enough magic, Puck,” Carrie told him. “There was a little thunder, so…”
Puck pulled the awaited prize from his yellow boots…
“An apron, Sun!”
Just his size, too. He slipped it on, ready to meet whatever mad cleaning chores awaited him in the day. And naturally I couldn’t help myself but catch the Cards’ fifth spring training game via internet play-by-play, against the Mets. Spring comes quickly. All those chills just come right back though, every time. And the snow kept fluttering, no break, but too warm to make much of a difference. Some oranges were peeled. Linnea relaxed on the couch with her chocolate blizzard, a blanket, and some cartoon dragons. Sometimes it’s ok to be ten again. Carrie snipped up homemade dumpling squares for the chicken soup as a car shuffle was prepared for the evening. Grewe and her mom were stranded at the airport; Carrie to the rescue. And Joe dropped us off at church for a change-up by re-visiting Islam in Ray Bolger’s World Religions class. And, yes, Puck wore his fedora.
The Bear and I took a break this evening. He brought back Culver’s cookie dough mixers – Carrie had converted me – to watch an English-subtitled Danish film about a body builder visiting Thailand. Sometimes I surprise even myself. All while Crackers went to town on another crunched leaf from the windowsill plant.