Chapter Fifty-Three
“It’s 6! 2! 2!”
Groan… Yes, we transferred my alarm clock to Puck’s room to teach him how to stay in bed until seven o’clock. I’m beginning to think this is a bad idea now. It’s like he’s got a cue in his head to wake up half an hour before the time just so he can count it down. But I have to attribute some of this morning’s loud awakening to the snow. What kid can resist the urge…
“That does it,” he announced ten minutes later. “I just have to get out there. It’s so much snow.”
It didn’t take long to pull three pairs of The Bear’s socks, four plastic grocery bags, a pair of Puck-socks, jeans, sweatshirt, two scarves, a knit cap, snow suit, winter coat, and rubber boots over the young chap. He was ready. A few minutes later and…
“Help… Help… Help…”
I opened the door to find him standing unaffected in the garage, the door of it balanced on his head. He just wanted the sled. The cracked purple saucer sled found on the side of the road a few winters ago or whatever. He was out to drift. Half an hour with his dad to shovel the drive.
Another to build a snowman on the stoop, knock on the door, and run off to hide grinning behind the tree. An hour later a sweat-soaked young gentleman was pulled back inside to say goodbye to his dad, off to class, work, and dinner with the fellas for some occasion or other. So Puck and I, we worked our very through the first Magic Tree House book [set to the soundtrack of “Seven Years in Tibet”] before math and lunch. Puck was shocked that we finished the whole thing when he realized there were no further chapters to be read that day. So he toted himself off into the basement…
“Could I have some toilet paper to measure stuff, Mom?”
“No. Be careful on the trampoline down there.”
“Ok! I’m bringing up my soccer ball to practice soccer! Crackers, you stay down there! I’m just practicing soccer, ok? And then you can come back up for when it’s time for real lunch!”
He launched the ball against the glass door. Fortunately it was only a light air-filled rubber ball… BAM.
“Mom! You should have seen the beauty of it, Mom! Did you see the beauty? It stayed up in the air for maybe a minute or more… Could I have my own tissue roll to blow my nose on?”
He couldn’t help himself after Quiet Hour. He needed another round in the snow, this time to roll down the hill as if it had been covered in grass and buttercups instead of a half-foot of fluffy white cold. He also assisted me with the mail…
“A BOX, MOM!”
I know. The whole neighborhood can hear him every time I open a door or a window. My DNA kit had arrived. Well, for Joe, really. The ancestral results will be more accurate with his contribution to humanity’s greatest history book, as the booklet advertises.
Of course then I looked out the window to see Puck trying to lift the entire mailbox and post out of the snow bank. I joined him for some snowballs, forts, and sledding before mixing him his second small cup of cocoa on the day.
Some more Brazilian Yo-Yo Ma. A thousand books, and Solomon Leviathan’s 931st Trip Around the World. The sun had cut the clouds by this time. Hot shower for Puck and the kind revelation that, no, we didn’t already have to purchase another bottle of Drain-O. Puck only had to fish out the brass drawer knob that he – inevitably – had dropped into the drain. But not before the handle of the garden rake, which he had removed from the garage and brought into the shower, had met his foot…
“I crushed my toe, Mom!” he yelled to me in the kitchen.
Not really so much because it hurt, but more so that I would be fully informed on the situation… Once the chubster was down for the night, I picked up Schaeffer’s “The God Who is There”, several chapters marked with receipts from 2002. Two pairs of jeans from Express. That must have been Carrie’s. The days when only name brands would do. Those red techno chino pants from Old Navy. Those were the times I never thought I’d hear the end of red techno chino pants.
Carrie was about to fall asleep on the saucer chair, which Rose had put up a fight about because she practically still owned the saucer chair. So we needed to find something a little more funny than a two-hour documentary about a Brazilian Formula 1 race car driver from the 1980’s. So of course we chose Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Sometimes I forget how funny those things can be. We passed around the snacks – Bottle Caps and sparkling cider for Rose, Reeses sticks for Joe, strawberry wafer sticks for The Bear, even Carrie had some Runts. I think I ate half the package of chocolate-dipped mint Oreo cookie wafers… But no one likes to hear about these kinds of snacks unless they’re consuming them for themselves. We also may or may not have shown Carrie the intro sing-along to “Singham”, just to pass on the absurdity to another family member.