Chapter Fifty-Two
The best that seven AM could boast for us was a dust of ice on the street, which… on second look, was probably just salt. But we were in a winter weather advisory till midnight, so we hoped for better. Something in those heavy dark gray clouds in the southwest… plus, I hadn’t heard a single school bus thunder by yet, which was also a promising sign. I grabbed another cold boiled egg from the fridge for breakfast. Sometimes I stockpile those things, while I spent a little more effort on Puck’s bowl of oatmeal laced in stevia, cinnamon, and honey. With a banana and two amber glass goblets [his choice] of apple juice. [I chalk that up for at least 1/3 of the calories he needs for a day that promises to be mostly sedentary.] My chap in scruffy blonde hair, Nike sweatshirt, and zebra band-aid over his nose with a little Neosporin. Things happen. He had already helped me light and place candles around the house [also his idea, which he had been waiting for since yesterday afternoon]. He’s a collector. Of everything. After the candles had been arranged in partial to probably precarious positions, which we adjusted together, he pulled out his notebook and asked for me to help tape in the artifacts of the morning. My Romans scripture memory scraps, laminated reminder cards, a coffee bean… that was from The Bear, who woke late from a resolved headache to work in the library. We pulled up the radar – how could we help ourselves? Puck meandered through it while I washed up dishes. I returned to find him sitting in Verlegenhugen, Norway… Yes, it came. We were sitting on the couch, just us two, Puck learning his new sounds of the day, and just a flicker of three or four flakes. I looked up again, and the snowglobe was in moderate process.
“Could I have three dollars, Mom?”
“Why?”
“So I could buy something.”
“What?”
“A glass tube.”
“Why?”
“To fill with sand.”
He wanted an hour glass… We were getting some super chunky flakes now.
“I bet the snow shover is going to come along soon, right?”
A pleasant white carpeting. Only Dad had made it into work, of course. I switched on some Yo-Yo Ma and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. It seemed appropriate. Tried to pull Puck quickly through the last words in his workbook…
“Ci.. Cin… Cind… Cinder… Cinderell… Cinderell…”
“Seriously, man. It’s Cinderella. Cinderella.”
I don’t know why it would bother me. What do I care if my five year-old son is aware of princessy fairy tales?… I guess it shouldn’t really have surprised me when I heard from my brother that we were dubbed by the governor as being in a “state of emergency”. That always sounds so impressive. We are often frightened by a smattering of ice… Still, Puck agreed that he should pray for the mailmen out today which turned into…
“…and please help them not to drive into a pool and have to swim back…”
At least he was serious about it. Still, we were pretty blanketed. And only got junk papers in the mail. The Bear — working around some intense deadlines, long-distance chat with Curly about wedding invitations, and tying up a practice fishing lure for Puck from heavy string and magnets and paper fish. Some good-natured shouts went out back and forth in the street where men in the neighborhood were shoveling driveways… For dinner we enjoyed an early movie night in the form of “Son of Flubber”, which was strangely a first for us, probably mostly exhibited by the fact Puck couldn’t stop giggling during the football game at the end of the black and white classic-but-not-classic while I spit-balled about a six-seven inch caking in the lawns around town. Puck went down for the night talking to his cat…
“What are you up to, Crackers?”
Like any exasperated parent.
