Chapter Fifty-Seven
Crackers, who had dug herself under the covers beside me all the way to the foot of the bed Monday night, was still there Tuesday morning. Somehow she had survived in the dark cave of the yellow bedspread, and without an accidental kick or shove. She trotted out sometime around six in the morning, when she heard that her boy was up to serve breakfast… So. Despite grand hopes for further accumulation, there were flood warnings posted instead. Fortunately, we’re way high above the river and not near dooming lakes. Puck believed we were safe for other reasons, suggesting the incline of our driveway…
“Hey, Mom! We won’t get attacked! We have a high moat!”
“Oh, you mean a motte…”
I’ve learned something from all those Eyewitness library reads.
The Bear and I talked Christian Science on the drive in from The Bear’s readings the previous night – a small green copy from the seminary library, checked out a total of sixteen times in the last 45 years I noted. Rain spit. Puck requested Andy Griffith’s music from the back seat.
Later we entered Forest Park past the traffic light that Puck has routinely pointed out to me as being blue. And I routinely forget to watch for it…
“I’m pretty sure it would be green, bud.”
“I think I’m colorblind, Mom.”
“I don’t think so…”
“But I see blue when I’m uh-post [supposed] to see green.”
Stinkerbelle watched us – wary – from the step-up outside the bathroom door. Advil on the counter. Colby Cheez-Its. The fresh rose-scented Mary candle on the blanket chest to disguise the odor of cat.
We picked The Bear up for his chiropractor appointment at 11:30, somewhere across more rain-washed streets and gray skies that wouldn’t sugar-shake snow after all now, apparently. Past the old Clayshipe Electric – I like that name. A drive-by that white windmill for a fill-up on the car, and us. Juice for Puck; another “belly washer”. He wasn’t as enamored of the mist-shrouded buildings as I was this morning.
“You like the mist, Mom?”
“I do. I think it’s beautiful.”
“Why?”
“We’re made to like beautiful things.”
“Well I don’t think mist is beautiful.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mist is just mist.”
“Well, I guess sometimes we find different things to be beautiful. You think other things are beautiful.”
“No I don’t.”
“Of course you do. Think of something that you think is beautiful.”
“Uh… Girls.”
I’m pretty sure that was followed by a short, embarrassed snort. He also wanted to inform me that he had…
“a headeck [headache] in my foot.”
Somehow a couple of hours later we ended up talking about gumballs for the children in Haiti instead of paying complete attention to Puck’s writing lesson. Poverty is a subject he is only just now getting a grip on understanding. Just the corner of a glacier that spans a space larger than I have been able to understand myself. We looked through the pictures of children on Compassion International and talked about pennies and streets packed with garbage. Oh, we finished the lesson of course, but I think we got a lot more out of it than just improved penmanship. Then we broke out the spaghetti and meatballs. Stinkerbelle might have helped us out a little with that…
“Uh oh!” Puck declared, watching the fat gray cat take her stance on the countertop. “She’s aiming from the bleachers!”
We packed up to go after five. Puck had questions, life-changing questions…
“Are cats made of meat?”
“Sure. Most things are. We’re made of meat, too.”
I realized I may have overstepped the line with the look of true and “slightly horrified” revelation flooded my son’s face. But I didn’t explore the concept of cannibalism with him yet. Too young, too young…
Puck fell asleep on the ride home. Warm car, music, rain splashing the windshield, The Bear and I discussing life… just dozed him off. Of course he didn’t fall asleep right away when we got back either, but it’s hard to wake a cute sleeping chubby-cheeked kid in that kind of scenario…
The Bear had a dinner appointment with Simon and Alfonso. That left me with a scratched-cover copy of another film a little too embarrassing to pick up at the library for myself. Yes, I confess that Bollywood has done it again. Sometimes the terribleness and the awfulness of it will never actually be forgotten.