Chapter Forty-Two
Mondays are usually sunny around here it seems like. Maybe it’s because most people you talk to don’t like winter or Mondays and somehow the sun helps that I guess. Makes them feel a little more alive or something. I’m glad I’m not on that boat, but I can sympathize. A light frost glinted hay-colored grass. The grass of our yard that I’m never exactly sure is real grass. Puck entertained himself finally slicing open that red-scarred avocado seed…
“It’s just like cutting the Earth in half with a knife!”
Speaking of red things… Our second fire extinguisher had also bit the dust. I heard it late Saturday night as The Bear walked downstairs…
Boom, boom, boom, THUD.
Same fate, same place. The object in question once again sat on the kitchen counter waiting evaluation. An experiment I didn’t plan on performing. Instead, I listened to part of the candidating pastor’s sermon at breakfast, just to start my research. The Bear heard a clip, too…
“Kind of has that surfer dude thing going on, doesn’t he?” he laughed a little.
I did learn that he had once been a carpenter. Even Puck heard the part about a nail going through his foot before a vacation to the Grand Canyon and Disneyland. The face of shock was predictable. Counted illustrations; habit. Just like Dad taught me. Anyway, we got a huge late start this morning, but it’s not like we had to be anywhere. The wind and blue sky, tonal tap of wood chimes from tiki man face on the patio. Crackers’ tail all poofed up still, the cat that coats my yellow tunic sweatshirt in fuzz that will never come off… We got out the next dig-box before lunch, scratching out a chunk of rough green and pink epidosite in a twelve-piece geology dig. Then wrapped up lunch with some corn chips from Saturday, while Pa Ingalls slugged the Sleepy Eye sheriff over a Sioux chief…
“Pa punched him because he celebrated over shooting him,” Puck declared. “Why did he do that? That was horrible!”
The lessons of history leave marks. I scrubbed the strawberry preserves off his face. Always a mess. After yesterday’s fiasco of two enthusiastic young men spreading the contents of their nose all over my Israeli scarf – terrible idea, yes – I hand-washed the whole thing in heavy detergent and hung it to dry on the shower curtain rod above the tub. Returning several hours later, I noted the splashes of dried pink marks on the tub’s white interior. The remains of Jerusalem dye. Puck heard a tap on the door just as Quiet Hour had ended. He scooted in two different color socks to the deadbolt…
“Thanks for the mail!” he shouted out to the little white truck.
A white envelope with red letters waited for him. An old-fashioned valentine from Grandma Combs. She had also sent him home with a box of fresh blueberries on Sunday, an early Valentines gift. Half of it was already gone, Puck eagerly waiting more…
“I’m not sure if Grandma Combs told me to wait until Valentine’s Day… to eat them or not…”
I’m pretty sure he already knew the answer to that though. But I allowed him to dig in anyway before the little blue gems lost their bounce. We also lugged in two boxes with the mail shipment. One packed with tool kits and batteries and other things for my ailing Macbook. Another stacked with books. More more books. And good things to read… Puck took the scissors out at dinner and began clipping his tortilla into shapes…
“I want to have more pieces of tortillas.”
“Why?”
He continued shredding the soft white triangles into smaller, less-triangular triangles…
“I don’t want to run out too quickly.”
One of the things I love most in the world is all those little moments every day where Puck just runs up for a tackling hug, or a big bear hug, or a kiss on the cheek. I’ll never get tired of that. Especially when he’s in his rocket jams, fluffy coconut-shampooed hair, and Doctor Who bath robe. He was out like a light, by his Vick’s Vapor humidifier to dispel the last dredges of a mild cold… We had moved “Chinese New Year” celebrations to that night instead, by the way. This meant crab rangoon, of course. Creamy hearts in crispy shells. And the equally Chinese – Reeses peanut butter cups… All while digging into some “Parks and Rec” and The Bear transforming the white Apple into a new and amazing thing with speed and power that wouldn’t die after two seconds of being unplugged from the wall…
