Chapter Fifty-Nine
Puck was already in his apron, grinding popcorn kernels in the antique jar which he removed from the kitchen cabinets, most of which were all open. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to stay in bed till seven… Four more casualties littered the rug from the night. I was afraid my new window plant was on its last life. Crackers just couldn’t help herself…
“Salad!”
As I transferred newly de-shelled hard boiled eggs into one of my last eight-point-five-year-old Tupperware that still had a lid, a cracked lid of course, I realized that I must be growing up. By the mere fact that I actually considered adding a Tupperware set to my Amazon Universal. Disgraceful. Had I really succumbed to the syndrome of requesting socks and sweaters for Christmas? I hoped not. That was about as exciting as asking The Bear to pick up a loaf of bread from the store on the way home. He needed super glue anyway.
“Puck, no more popcorn. Just leave it in there.”
“But, Mom,” he protested carefully, pulling a sandwich bag from the drawer, “Dad needs his own collection, too! He wanted one!”
How could I refuse that? More kernels poured out of the small off-brand “yellow popping corn” bag… I always find it a little bit of a mistake when Puck has been in the bathroom too long…
“Mom! Come quick!”
I don’t know why I always find it necessary to ask…
“What is it?”
…while I’m already walking back to ascertain the disaster for myself anyway, but I always do. Fortunately this time, the disaster was no disaster.
“Look! Crackers is purring in the bathtub! I put towels in there for her!”
So other than a perfectly clean towel being wasted until next Monday’s wash, we were good… We laughed over, and talked over, books about colors and mummies and snails with goofy eyeballs together. A little more Yo-Yo Ma to suture the morning, not because anything was wrong, but just to add a little more dimension. I tried to refrain from too many baseball statistics while prepping pork chops for Friday, like how Texas and the Angels were the only two clubs in both leagues who hadn’t won a single game yet… but no one cares about that but me, so I moved on. [Hey, I couldn’t help it that Lance Berkman was debuting for the Rangers that afternoon, battling off nine pitches for a walk in his first appearance resulting in a run and then a single in his second at-bat resulting in another run. I had to be in the know.] While Puck unpacked the tropical brightness of new molding clay blocks…
“I think I saw a fruit fly buzzing around here, Mom.”
“Could be…”
“You better watch him. I do not trust that guy.”
I allowed Puck to paint a birthday card for the young blonde-haired girl in his Sunday School class that afternoon – violet sheet of paper, washable paints, all kinds of fun. Finally the paper was so soaked in colors, I thought it might just sort of disintegrate…
“Ok, bud. Better let it go now.”
But Puck was determined…
“No, I’m not letting it go. Julie loves beautiful rainbows, and this is not a rainbow at all. Brown will do it, too.”
I discussed Barcelona with Rose over the phone before Puck sat down for the last page of his first math book with popcorn kernels as counting aids…
“Could I start my next math book right away, Mom? I am so determint! I am so determint, Mom! Because I have so much popcorn seeds to count for it. I have so many popcorn seeds, I have as many as a cannon ball!”
How could I say no to that enthusiasm? Of course then a pair of cloth-covered button earrings arrived in the mail from Australia – The Bear bought them for me – so we were a little distracted. Puck approved.
We wound down the evening with the early version of “The Parent Trap”, followed by a teeth scrubbing. Puck is catching on to Dad’s philosophy of “brush ’em till they bleed”, albeit modified…
“Brush them till them sparkle, Mom!”
And then I hear him muttering to himself like some Bostonian aristocrat from the 1920’s…
“And I’m going to groom my hair for tomorrow, to make me look fancy and handsome. [Smack.] I’ll perfume my feet, too. [Smack.] Never mind about that. I’ll look handsome for the party and look normal as always when I come back home.”
And because my son is a Silverspoon boy, it only followed that he had dismembered both straps from the apron by that evening, without trying at all. Out came needle and thread once again. And Puck feel asleep listening to his dad preach from last spring.