Chapter Ninety-Five
“Mom! Do I have a hole in my EYE?”
I was already awake. How could I not be when my five year-old had already walked in about six times since 5:55 to snuggle in between us before remembering something else he had to do, i.e. put on socks, feed Crackers, water Crackers, retrieve some gizmo he left in the living room… and by gizmo I mean things like the box of food coloring. But I was still a little groggy…
“What’s that?”
“Come here, Mom! Do I have a HOLE in my EYE?”
I stretched open my eyelids and followed the hand of my son, curling the little baby fat left on his fingers in a beckoning gesture. He stood in the light of the hallway and opened two big hazel eyes, staring hopefully at me.
“Nope… No holes. Why would you think you had a hole in your eye?”
He looked a little embarrassed…
“I swapped it with a stick.”
He pointed to one of those long toothpicks on the floor. It’s impossible to prevent all danger from kids. It just is.
“Well. Don’t do it again,” was my sage warning.
A couple of hours later, Puck was mixing more of that food coloring into glasses on Gloria’s kitchen sink. We were hanging out there for the day due to various handfuls of logistical circumstances which don’t need to be explained. A fat roll of cardinal red yarn waited for Puck on the counter. He got his birthday wish two weeks in advance. That, and a serving of popcorn, bowling with marbles and wood blocks on the floor… This kid has the life.
By the way, those 10:41PM Thursday night Culver’s cheese curds morphed in Dairy Queen cheese curds, which are much squeakier. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.
So after half an hour at the park for Puck, who spent pretty much all of his time monitoring the slide so that no one would start the descent before the first person had hit the ground, Gloria picked us up and brought us back for corned beef on Hawai’ian roll sandwiches. She added apple juice, grapes, and a box of brownie mix. Puck licked the bowl. I know people are probably generally shocked and horrified…
“Raw egg! You eat raw egg?”
But then again, I licked the bowl all the time when I was a kid. And by “all the time”, I mean literally every single time. And the spoon and beaters. Raw egg probably once or twice a week. So did all my siblings. And we hardly ever got sick. I think we had the stomach flu maybe once in my 19+ years at home. So my theory is that with all that raw egg every week, we built up immunities to anything trying to sicken our system. To my credit, I ate a spoonful before adding the eggs, and asked Puck if he wanted one too. When he didn’t respond, I added the eggs…
“Could I have some, Mom?”
“I already added the eggs.”
“Oh no! God, why did you PUNISH ME?!”
And, no, he’s not swearing. He’s actually talking to the Creator of the Universe. Might need some direction on flippancy… So I let him have the bowl anyway. Just because.
Anyways… UNO. Puck slapped down a “draw two” card.
“Sorry, kid,” he grinned at me, settling back into the couch.
Sun; I got a little rose-faced myself. Puck finished his Blue Back Speller, which houses all the sounds in the English language, seven months and a few days later. So he celebrated with that brownie batter…
“I could sit here forever!”
Between class sessions he laced the deck in red yarn while Bollywood hits blared through open windows. Gloria was helping Mom decorate the banquet hall for the evening festivities, so I figured no one would mind. Off came Puck’s sweatshirt as the yarn went around and around. He was hard at work.
I guess it had been two years again. Time for the 7th bi-annual home school high school choir madrigal dinner. If I didn’t recognize how nerdy that sounded back in the day, it just sort of punches you in the face with it now. But I can live with that. We received enough accolades at the time to make up for our freak-dom. And even the coolest ones of our tribe were, now admittedly – freaks.
Linnea was one of a trio of aristocrats. Francis was sort of a bland courtesan or something. Me being the morbid creature that I can be, back in the day ten years ago now, as a senior I had gowned up in all black and faux rubies to serve the king’s table, envisioning myself as a recent widow whose knight husband had taken a sword through the heart over in the Holy Land. Strangely dramatic…
Anyway, it’s the same jokes, the same music, the same Mayfair salad, cornish game hem, cornmeal mash, and the dreaded carrot cake – Dad always knows he’s going to get two slices of that when he sits at my table. But there’s sort of this lasting charm that sticks with these madrigal dinners over the years. I think even my two youngest siblings agreed because they were willing to pose for a low-lit fuzzy picture after the performance for their annoying big sister.
