Chapter Seven
I had tossed a full bird’s nest’s worth of hair last night. That’s about the size of it, usually. Maybe I just don’t feel like shaving off The Bear’s mane every month, so I always let it get out of hand before doing anything about it. Manes can have their advantage too, though. I get the idea trouble steers clear of large men with prehistoric hair. Besides, I owed him one for another late evening grocery run for rubber bands and pasta sauce. Then I madly clipped snowflakes out of the Reeses cup paper squares to avoid watching any possible carnage from the film. Kids and violence don’t interest me so much. I guess I should clarify – kids mixed with violence. Not that I’m really all that interested in violence either…
After Puck twisted together a handful of The Bear’s pipe cleaners before I could intervene – an invention to draw Crackers out from under the new bed; it worked – I gagged down a quarter cup of plain oatmeal this morning. See here’s the thing – I hate, hate, hate visiting the doctor’s office. Call me four years old in pigtails with Suzie Cupcake bandaids or whatever patched on scraped-up knees, but I can’t stand it. I really have zero reason for this zealous dislike, but it can’t be helped. Every fifteen months on the nose, I am required by law in the U.S. and Colombia to receive a basic physical by an authentic physician over in Manchester. Blarg. I mean, there’s really nothing to it. At all. Even with the tetanus shot; painless. Still, two weeks prior to the momentous event, I scratch out a to-do list which generally includes consuming – if at all possible in any way – a bowl of ungarnished oatmeal for breakfast every morning leading up. Just in case. I got about halfway through the doll-sized portion when I had to leave the kitchen for a few minutes. Just before the tornado sirens wailed their monthly test, then I hear…
“Mom! I’m making orange juice!!”
When I walked back in, he had responsibly placed a washcloth on the table before pressing the small orange into a tea cup and spearing the fruit with a curly-handled fork, rocking it back and forth like a railroad pump car.
“You want to watch me make orange juice, Mom? Aren’t you very proud of me? Besides. Some flew into my eye. By mistake.”
“Sure am proud of you, bud.”
My oatmeal was stone cold. Chased it down with a prettier glass of pomegranate juice. I’m healthy. Considering that the world could always end before my two weeks is up anyway… yeah, I guess that’s always one way to get out of it. I guess it gave me something else to think about besides the Berkman exodus, away from any tempting digital news articles slapped with big T’s and swathed in Texas blue. Wahoo with Puck helped some too, which I quickly came to realize is the racist version of Sorry!. Of course when Puck took a bathroom break halfway through and didn’t return for about eight minutes, I knew the army cap, swimming goggles, roller skates, and a pair of old shiny silver keys tied on a length of twine, would not be a surprising following occurrence. Neither was the fact that between bandaging his finger with a Cheetah band-aid [courtesy: Crackers’ claws] and the first episode of “Little House on the Prairie”, he downed two Hebrew National all beef hot dogs, a whole green bell pepper, another orange, a glass of skim milk for lunch, and then asked for something more because he was still…
“…pretty hungry. Very hungry, in fact.”
I remedied the situation once, but wasn’t willing to try for a third round, because Quiet Hour is – I find – a very important part of the day for my sanity levels, given the lung capacity of my Kindergartner. Volume control does not exist in all children. Then I replaced the batteries in his wall moon, which delighted the chap more than I expected. I did also discover a variety of thin colored wires snipped into the bathroom trashcan after the hour had wrapped up, as well… He mentioned something about the old computer mouse, and then displayed the clothes line he had constructed from Cracker’s penthouse to the lamp in his bedroom. So. Something productive was done, I guess.
At the halfway point of his J-term, The Bear came home later after a Mazda oil change, which fortunately seems to be necessary only every 6,000 miles. Reading the driver’s manual pays off, thanks to advice from a certain brother of mine. Right about the time I slipped four pounds of chicken in a glass dish into the oven. Sometimes I wonder how moms like Liepaja Coca-Cola could feed five boys in one house when I can scarcely scrounge up enough for two. Of course all this food also fuels more energy, which requires more dance parties for Puck. I try to appease. And maybe tying that keys-on-twine to that army cap and running back and forth through the house over and over and over again to keep the cat in shape, even with the occasional run-in between them…
“You bad cat, Crackers! You’re fired!”
And then they’d start running around again until Puck took the rest of the twine and rigged it in the basement across the stairs with an old microwave rotating ring. I didn’t ask questions when he lugged the giant pretzel jar of rubber bouncy balls down there. But when he started inquiring about candles, I stepped in. Especially when he somehow found a fat stack of ancient bills and check stubs that he intended to safeguard in his room. And somewhere around the introduction to 90’s techno, Joe IM’d me the news that he had received a second part-time job, through the same company where Curly worked. Graphic Design. Occasional road trips to Nashville. With truffle-tiering on the side. Sounded like a great Joe-lifestyle. Somewhere between spackling apartment walls and driving cars cross-country for old friends. And then there was dinner of chicken parmesan while Puck reviewed our day in extra detail for The Bear, asking me to take over where he couldn’t remember…
“Tell Dad about all my inventions again, Mom!”
After that, he figured it would be good to ask The Bear about his experiences…
“Tell me the whole story, Dad!”
Hazel eyes bright and wide in eager anticipation. The Bear was running tired on six hours sleep, and only one coffee to fill the day, but he obliged anyway. Even contributed to the last few hands of our afternoon Wahoo game before crashing back in the library for a late night of intense verse translation. This left me to the night glow of the Japanese punch lantern at the kitchen table, pouring through more Spanish – the Spanish I can remember great during the lesson, and not when you ask me to my face, and more articles about baseball than I was supposed to read, while The Bear tried to cajole me into driving out into a cold night to buy him a milkshake. I turned over the last handful of almond Hershey’s kisses from his Christmas stocking instead. It was slow going back there, I could see. A third of the way through his translation, and only seven o’clock. Maybe it was the Sampson syndrome…