Chapter One Hundred
Yelling myself awake from being chased by two of a triplet of “green foxes” [how I knew they were triplets, I don’t know] on a stone fence in some old country at midnight did somehow not alert the rest of the family to arrive at my aid sometime after six o’clock this morning. Maybe the inclement thunder drowned me out. But then I realized that the fox-growling in my ear was actually just Pumpkin looking for a fresh head to squash.
I joined the land where foxes did not hunt humans for midnight snacks where Puck was begging his own first meal of the day. I incorporated his pleas for bacon into a pan of four egg-bacon-and-sharp-cheddar sandwiches for the boys. They were granted two apiece…
“Two?!” Joe declared. “It’s Christmas!”
The coveted thunderous skies had returned. With the bird song and white crab apple blossoms, the wait before the rain, heavy blue-gray patches past the trees, dark limbs scratching the sky… The wet hush before the storm. There is nothing better, and no better memory from childhood than this.
The girls went shopping again, this time for groceries, because the boys are on this constant revolving door of complaining that there isn’t enough food in the house. And because hanging out in a house that actually has screens in all the windows was preferable for storm-watching, Puck and I decided to hang around until church that evening.
“Mom! I’m happy deep INSIDE!”
Puck pointed out a still lightly chubby finger at me where a mood ring encircled it. A gift from Linnea.
“It’s blue so that means I’m HAPPY!”
Honey-baked corn dogs and blanket tents as the rain took a pause in the late morning, just in time for the game, as the temperatures climbed past 80.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Puck had picked up some itch mite or rash or something. My theory was that Rose’s rug was infested from the cats. Melaleuca cream from Carrie temporarily soothed the itch. He was distracted by the Puck and Grandma box filled with plastic coins and paper money. Another hit.
“Please don’t make me use this money for SCHOOL, MOM!”
This kid. He also had ideas about the mood ring changing colors on his finger…
“Mom, the mood ring is brown which means I might be normal, or… that I have itch mites.”
We were in the calm between storms. More “stuff” was coming. And we were hoping for big stuff. Mom and Francis made a two-run effort to drop off all the madrigal dinner props at Mr. Sing’s church before the next wave arrived. Puck plucked a bunch of crab apple blossoms in the passing sunshine. He handed me a cluster. The smell was foul…
“I think they’re just stink flowers,” he assured me with a nodding, pacifying grin.
Then he found a patch of weedy flowers growing rogue by a tree in the front lawn…
“Mom, can I stomp these?”
“Sure… But why do you want to stomp them?”
“Just to teach them a lesson.”
STOMP STOMP STOMP!
“Mom, my ring is purple now. What does that mean?”
“Maybe that you’re in love?”
“In love with who? Anneliese? Maybe I’m in love with her deep down inside. It could be wrong. But I think I’m in love with her deep down inside.”
I caught him hiding in the trees across the street later when I informed him he needed a washcloth scrub down with soap to work on those itchy patches…
“No SOAP! No MOM!” He grinned wickedly.
A Tornado Watch was issued. So naturally Joe took a jog, before visiting Lolli and baby in town and prepping for a later-imminent tornado chase. Popcorn. Watching the rain come in with the thunder on the porch right as Jake Westbrook completed his full game shut-out. These were good times.
I guess it was about perfect timing that the Tornado sirens went off during Ray Bolger’s closing prayer in a class of four and a half, exploring cults and heresies. There was soon a charging pack of screaming children running for the barn under electric blue sky. Thanks to Carrie’s expert trained weather spotter advice, the crowd dispersed at will just in time – lightening cracked, rain pounding – and after a brief rain-out in the barn – because I didn’t feel like attacking a Noahic deluge on the road single-handedly – the disaster had been averted. Tornados down in Wildwood and Sullivan. But we survived. Again.