Chapter Ninety-Six
Puck had been batting the bushes yesterday afternoon, just to clean them up for his own amusement. With a badminton racquet. Dirt dust went flying everywhere.
“It is a bit of a fog, I presume,” Puck explained as he continued to light-whack the shrubbery.
This same young sprout was up at 6:16AM for more adventure, which included the old rubberband gun from days gone by. He exited through the front door to find fun – which doesn’t take much effort if you’re a high-energy Puck – and announced…
“It’s ok, Mom. If I try to shoot someone with my rubberband gun, they will tackle me to the ground.”
The Bear had adventures of his own planned…
“Want me to make eggs benedict?”
“Sure…”
He had never made them before, of course, but that didn’t stop him. About half an hour later, four plates of eggs benedict on the counter. Four, because Izzy had crashed home from spring break and a sun burn at 2:30 in the morning. And Theodore and Gloria were already halfway to Nashville for Lulu’s senior recital. Anyway, even though The Bear mistook the hollandaise sauce calling for the whites instead of the yolks, and substituted with bacon and Hawai’ian sweet rolls instead, the dish was pretty good…
“That’s because it’s ninety percent butter,” The Bear laughed.
Doors open, windows open. Storms for days. YES. And a few blossoms, song birds. The Bear smoked his pipe on the deck, working. There is nothing better than a day that starts with wind, bird song, mysterious skies, and cranks in a high storm by three o’clock. Absolutely.
“Mom? Could I make electricity?” Puck asked me from the ombre rug on the floor. “With glass… and, and… leather?”
He was getting there. Piecing things together.
We had things to do. Puck had outgrown his room. So he was transferring from Easter green walls to traffic cone orange. At least, that was the plan. But when you’re shuffling 300 books, five book shelves, and a desk as heavy as an island, it takes a little longer. It’s also not helpful when the ice cold goodness of the water dispenser in the fridge somehow quit working while we were away. I blamed Crackers.
So about halfway through the first three hours of lifting heavy furniture and blocking the hall with mounds of things upon things, I realized everything had been a little too quiet. Trying to be responsible, I quit sorting Shakespeare from how-to juggling books [I think you can guess which belonged to whom], and walked back into the wind to find my son. There he was – both hands gripping each end of the bright red bolt of yarn, running back and forth across the street to catch that wind. Why would I even suggest anything different? Of course, in and around all of this mess, I had to cajole him out of a handful of tears. At one point I found him sitting in his empty closet pondering the cruelty of life…
“What’s wrong, bud?”
“I don’t want to move out of my room.”
So The Bear sat with him in there for awhile to talk things through.
And then the wifi stopped working of course…
“Let me take you to Orange Leaf,” The Bear offered me sometime later.
Now this was true temptation. Who wouldn’t want a paper bowl packed with honey dew, green apple, banana, and wedding cake flavored frozen yogurt? However, I didn’t feel like it would be a good idea to drive all the way back to St. Peters that afternoon, so we made other plans.
The rest of the family had their own list for the day. Mom, Francis, and Linnea would be camped out for another madrigal dinner that night after Linnea’s all-day volleyball tournament. That sounded like a crazy time. Joe had surprised Jaya with tickets to a Switchfoot concert and was driving her to Rolla for the event. And if guesses were correct, Rose was at work, and Dad would ask Carrie if she just wanted to have Culver’s for dinner, with a mixer for dessert, maybe follow that up with Carrie complaining about Dad “hogging Netflix” with more Star Trek.
So we ended up with Chick-Fil-A, Simply Apple apple juice, and a few bars of Hershey’s air chocolate bars. A library 1960’s movie about a pet cougar, and The Bear drilling holes into the floor to lace more computer cables into the basement to repair the wifi. But at least Puck’s moving blues seemed to have subsided. In fact, I’m pretty sure he had forgotten about the whole thing.
People sometimes ask me, why we decided to home school Puck. I can’t guarantee it’s an actual reason, but with the extra free time that naturally tends to come hand in hand with home schooling, I find my son is provided just that many more hours for exciting adventures such as reading high literature like – Calvin and Hobbes, or Garfield, or sometimes even Farside – which eludes me completely. But my point is this – all that time not spent in Kindergarten study hall provides more time for my son to become inspired with ideas like this one…
“Wait! Don’t scrub my back yet, Mom! I have to moon my bum at the shower!”