Chapter Fifty-Six
After having taking that “snow” day on Friday, we got back into classes later in the morning. Puck tries to focus; I know he does. But sometimes he has questions that extend a little further than “au for faucet”…
“What would happen if people worshipped false gods… in the city?… Would the United States punish them?”
Puck’s philosophical entanglement of the morning… I get the feeling I’m pretty spoiled sometimes. I get to stay at home any day I want and just hang out with my son. If it’s Marbleworks on the to-do list, we learn about design and gravity and mechanics, without a textbook. If it’s painting, we learn about creativity and colors and textures, without a studio. If it’s library books, we explore a universe and imagination inside the universe. We don’t need a car, a passport, or a canteen. We’re good to go.
We’ve also just recently passed the halfway mark in our nine-year seminary family plan. And I think that, all good and bad considered, it’s worked out better than I probably would have thought nearly five years ago when Judah and Scott encouraged The Bear to take the plunge in the first place… Speaking of “the bad”, Crackers decided to use Puck’s head as a chew toy this morning. After some tears, we had a talk – with Crackers – on Puck’s bed, explaining the intricate reasoning of a baby cat…
“If she sees your head, sometimes she’s just going to think to herself, ‘Oh! Chew toy!’”
A little grin.
“When you were a baby, anything I gave you, you thought was a chew toy. You used my fingers for chew toys all the time.”
A giggle.
“You even used my face as a chew toy sometimes!”
Great laughter. We were mended and appeased… Puck was taking awhile to get things done in the early afternoon, so my time morphed someplace between St. Louis/Native American literature, German cookies, Elisabeth Elliot, Mongolian ballads with Yo-Yo Ma, Bollywood, and Irish kings. The early afternoon hours were gray again. The sun had made a full retreat over still-white-capped roofs. And Puck hoped for thunder. Because thunder produced the magic his Aunt Sun needed to conjure a new “working apron”, Puck’s latest fancy. He kind of liked mopping the floors and dusting up while donned in cherries- or roses-printed cloth hanging in Mom’s kitchen. So he figured he’d need one of his own, maybe that didn’t brush his ankles… I got him back in the shower again. Shampoo and soap usually yields the wild cry for a towel communicated in the spartan expression of…
“Eyeballs eyeballs!”
I gave him an extra ten minutes to enjoy the pool he created, followed by a lot of pounding in the tub itself…
“I’M STOMPING JUST SO YOU KNOW!”
We read a book called Chinatown while bacon crackled in the oven. Puck liked the book. Turning his most recent phrase he informed me, a clean soft roll of blonde hair nestled against my shoulder…
“I think we should adopt it… shall we say… for my birthday?”
And, yes, the smoke detector did scream in the kitchen, and the basement, as usual. Then the one in the hall started hollering. Until I stared it down into submission. They cry “wolf”… My days aren’t ridiculously difficult or anything. Not physically demanding. I’m not a rock-climber or a track and field athlete. But about the time I get to the last hour of Puck’s day, which is spent almost entirely in reading until my voice sounds like a sixty-two year-old who’s smoked three packs of cigarettes every day of his life… pile on top of that Puck’s endless questions at every other sentence, which I don’t mind but…
“Why don’t animals have to wear clothes?”
I’m out of decent answers…
“They don’t have souls…?”
Puck had already asked that question a couple of times that same day, I was pretty sure. And…
“Are Adam and Eve wearing underwear?”
These are questions I cannot completely ever answer. But you do what you’ve got to do… And with the laundry and The Bear coming back late for dinner after the UPS store and the library again and a dozen paper-based computer-based things I wanted to do but probably didn’t have to do… that’s a Monday… with a few more final words from Puck down the hall..
“Mom? You know Pumpkin got on TV. Because she got out in the wild and they tried to hunt her down. She was so big, I think she ate a llama or something. You know? But Sun and I saved her life by calling into that business company.”
