Chapter Fifty-Five
It wasn’t quite seven yet, and Puck had removed himself from breakfast for a huddle of blanket in the living room…
“Puck, you need to eat your banana.”
“I have to get warm, Mom. It’s 5,000 degrees out here.”
Puck found himself pretty important at church today. While I helped stuff envelopes in the chairs during the 7:45 rehearsal, Puck handed me a name tag…
“Mom, I need to wear this. It means that I do stuff.”
Some time later, I saw him marching around the still-mostly-empty sanctuary, chin rested in one hand, thoughtfully patrolling the stained carpet.
“What’s up, bud?”
He looked up at me seriously. The sort of over-the-spectacles seriousness…
“I’m expected for stuff, Mom. I have a job to do. He [one of the deacons, no doubt] told me too. I’m examining the floor for paperclips. I have to throw them in the dumpster.”
“Find anything yet?”
“Mom. I’m busy now. I have to do stuff.”
Later I heard he was examining the walls and floors for cobwebs. Still, in a church that feels like it’s turning over and shrinking, sometimes it’s hard to find a lot of happy things about Sunday mornings.
Carrie had her hands in a bowl of water, shelling the skins off chick peas for a bowl of homemade hummus to add to the fresh veggies and another bowl of hand-crafted chicken salad flavored with cranberry sauce for the butter bakery croissants. She had a revised blonde color in her hair, like Mom had a dark brown. Joe walked in from a service at Magnus’ church after a day with friends [including his newly adopted brother, Thunderbird] of Old-St.-Charles-walking-around and pizza baked by Annamaria and Rose.
“They didn’t burn it,” he noted generously.
“Sounds kind of like it was a guys’ day,” Carrie observed when he also mentioned that they went to Fast Lane.
“Hey, we let them stare at potpourri for an hour,” Joe offered.
Francis was my second option to take the DNA test from the polished black National Geographic box sitting on the table…
“DNA test?” Francis repeated skeptically.
“We need to see if you’re human,” The Bear told him.
“I already know the answer to that.”
“I know. But we need to have the scientists tell us.”
Only Linnea [in Iowa] and Rose [who didn’t want to “waste gas”] were absent at lunch while we talked about the casualness of worship services, suits, jeans with holes, infant baptism. Then Wally called Joe about tires for his car while Joe tried to get rid of a headache with a glass of coffee. Apparently it was snowing a lot in Colorado. Puck was still at the table…
“This is worser than the YMCA! This is a lot worser than the YMCA!”
I don’t know what the YMCA has to do with good chicken salad, but apparently Puck saw some connection.
“I wish I was a boy that was hungry,” he continued to mutter to himself. “Really hungry… Grandma. Let me ask you a question. Do you have any tiny cups? Miniature size.”
Carrie relaxed on the couch with another film featuring South African born Louis Hayward. Joe shoveled the front walk. Mom and Dad napped. It was going to be a long twelve weeks of quiet Sundays because you can’t really have field trips when small groups start at six o’clock. Hence Rose not joining us. I checked in on the Cardinals second spring training game.
“Puck, are you still eating your sandwich?” The Bear asked.
“Yes, but, you know I have tastebuds, right?”
“I do.”
“And the tastebuds! Might not like! What they taste!”
He went back to the table for a few minutes of quiet, until I heard him talking out stories between a wood bead and the metal piece from a clothespin, in all the different voices. Including rhythm songs…
“Well, I’m made out of wood and metal, so you could throw me off a cliff!”
Puck – who had been invited to a first birthday party of the year for a young girl in his Sunday School class…
“I guess I’d better get to World Market,” I told him. “Find a gift there.”
“Oh, Mom! I’ll go; I’m good at that stuff! She likes Butter Balina.”
“Butter… Balina?…”
“Uh… Barb… Bar-bie… dolls?…”
I’ve never bought a Barbie, and I don’t have any plans to ever do that. But I will walk around a warehouse of strange international imports that you’re sort of certain sat on a dock in Taiwan for three years prior to shipment. Well. Maybe that’s partly why I like that place. They smell of international must. Must is just must, and I don’t like it so much. But international must… now that’s a little more interesting. Spices, soap, incense. But Carrie and I aren’t big into shopping, so a paint-your-own/bake-your-own tea set and chocolate rocks [standard], and then a package of assorted German biscuits and wafers for anyone else who would, and we were out… Carrie picked up her cream at Ulta, and we were back so that Carrie could cuddle Puck and ask him things…
“Are you going to be a daddy someday?”
“Sun, can you please stop asking me personal questions.”
Joe took the DNA test. Two swabs. Of course he rubbed the first one so hard that he drew blood. In the vial it went. Can’t be helped. If that somehow mistakenly classifies us as Martian or something… The Bear was gone. After sculpting a large snow rabbit on the stump in the backyard, he had another rehearsal and performance with several children’s choirs at Lindenwood. Joe killed the headache and ran off for a BSF dinner at McAlister’s before the small group folks arrived.
It’s not all Sunday roses, though. When you hear about the friendly lady in the purple dress, drinking coffee, whose husband sits beside Dad at the Truth Project on Wednesday nights, the lady who works at the community college and helped Francis and Joe with their assessments… when you hear she had a stroke at church that morning and no one knows what’s going on yet… Or when you find out about the same time that the Redcoats have also left church; it was time… No, it’s not everything you expect.
