Chapter One
Sometimes, when Puck isn’t here to bother, the cat will borrow me for her tightrope instead. I can feel the jumbo-marble-sized paws digging between my ribs in all the worst places. It’s like she’s kidney hunting. Still, sleeping in on New Year’s morning has its merits. Well. The merits of not actually sleeping – because the cat went spleen harvesting at 7:27AM – but thinking. I’m not much for observing the sentimentality of a new year’s start, but twenty minutes of tranquility under sun-yellow bedspreads can’t be argued as non-therapeutic. I let The Bear snore away another 90 minutes, quartered a breakfast Honeycrisp, and called Mom. Maybe it’s just my own mom-bit inside, but when the last time you let your son sleep over elsewhere and you get the news that he upchucked twice in the night, the indulgent superstition – which I prefer to label “maternal responsibility” – of the back of your head will suggest that the same could happen again a week later. But there had been no volcanic episodes in the night. Rather, it had been popcorn, a bedouin tent, and the 1961 version of “The Absent-Minded Professor”, a Grandma Snicketts’ classic. Puck was currently more concerned with the location of his Nagle’s candy bag anyway – which I had hustled home early for good reason – while Francis packed up to spend a day at a friend’s farm. And Cherry bundled her goods for the four hour drive back Io-way.
“I haven’t finished my hot chocolate yet!”
Puck raced back to the coffee table in his rocket ship jams, after shoving a handful of drawing pages colored completely in Cardinal red into The Bear’s hands – one of which he specifically gifted to me, to catch the next float of the Rose Bowl parade. I think it featured Trader Joe’s.
“He went to sleep in the tent last night,” Carrie said, arms full of Christmas decorations, “and I put the yule log on Netflix. He was snoring in five minutes.”
Dad was busy “paying himself” in the basement. The added luxury of owning your own consulting business. We discussed a five-minute breakdown of Francis’ senior spring semester. The kid doesn’t know it, but I control the puppet strings. Well. As far as registering for college classes goes.
You know you found good in-laws when you drive up in half an inch of snow New Year’s morning and they’ve already primed the king size bed your father-in-law built by hand. And there’s even a small pot of orange and cranberry boiling on the stove to counteract the aroma of paint. Fried cheese sticks, buffalo wings, stuffed scallops, Greek olives, sugar snap peas – Puck packed those away, blackberries, raspberries [he packed those away too], soft oven rolls, and black-eyed peas [a Silverspoon New Year’s tradition] were rolling out of the stove. If you add in the Irish band from Izzy’s laptop, the football game on television, and Relevance and Kitts walking in the door before one o’clock, it was another lively scene. Carrie also joined the mix for further decorative consultation. And Old Blue too in a new style of beard. Mounds of Brie, honey, and crackers… The Bear likes to eat around here. Knitting, coffee. I guess there really aren’t any rules for New Year’s Day. That included Puck on the iPad.
“Time to get off, Puck,” The Bear instructed.
“I’m not playing any games, Dad!” Puck tried to explain.
“You know,” Relevance added, leaning over the counter, “if you stare at an iPad too long, your eyes will burn out.”
Puck thought about this.
“Uncle Relevance is pulling your leg…” Gloria warned him.
“Hey, you gonna trust her or me? I’m a doctor.”
“He’s not that kind of a doctor!” Gloria scoffed from the linen closet.
It was sort of inevitable that the kids sat around the dining table to try out some board games involving the seven wonders of the world. This left Theodore for his nap. Rose sent me a note about juvenile sea squirts that ate their own brains. Sounded like she was really cranking through her certification studies… Gloria put on the tea for Carrie; you’d think the girls in my family were solid English. They talked mirrors and “poodle” pillows for the house while Kitts finished building the Pyramids in the other room.
It’s been awhile since Kitts and Carrie have chatted, I guess. Time moves on and on. I doubt there’s any more haunted house plays or reading poetry by the lake, flying enormous bolts of cloth in the wind in the foreseeable future. Now there’s language courses, apps sold in international countries, blueprints, babies… but I think they’ll always have a little tree house masquerade mask in them. Enough to share at least.
Gloria reverted to scrubby sweats and tee to begin painting our Christmas present a rich Aegean blue. She made one last effort to encourage me to change my mind about the color of the bed. She was hoping I’d see the light and convert to white. Kitts and Carrie joined her in the basement to continue their overdue catch-up amongst the storage shelves. More football. Izzy’s next photo shoot mock-up. The South boys chatted up politics and law, maybe. And my own boys dug into the sculpting clay, which included gold and silver. They didn’t make colors like that when I was a kid. The younger boy making “art”, the older boy sipping a Dos Equis over a purple dragon with red back scales while listening to the younger tell tale of plants vs. zombies…
We had been invited to McGurk’s Pub with a small section of the old school group that night to see Catalina before she left for Iraq. But there really wasn’t time. The Bear was staring down eight days of intense Greek translation at the seminary and one more night of social gatherings didn’t mix right. For the record, I would have gone with the Grilled Three Cheese Sandwich [without onions].
Instead, The Bear took tech support call from Red Strike, beefed up some additional changes to Theodore’s website, and reviewed 300 Greek vocabulary words for his initial quiz, Wednesday morning, half-joining me for another run-through imagined 1970’s Korea. I listened to them gab in technology, while I brushed my teeth. One of my least-enjoyable tasks of the day, although the new brush designed for three year-olds [I have small teeth] helps, I’ll admit. Crackers, as usual, followed me to the bathroom, jumped into the shower, and air-attacked the backside of the shower curtain. Maybe she understands the white fish pattern. Who knows…
Estimated wait till adoption – 2 years, 2 months.