Chapter Seventy-Three
The Bear was home to work. Pale rose-gray skies. Some heavier blue-gray in the west. 29 degrees. But they said 72 for Friday… Puck can’t just ever sit still completely without something to do. It’s nothing like ADD or ADHD or ABBA or whatever else they come up with. It’s just that he always has to be inventing something. This morning it was the “Cat Food Shooter”, which was basically the hollow mop handle detached from the mop, filled with Crackers’ breakfast. But of course his dad was – at almost the same time – trying to coax this same feline into the bread pan…
“Let’s see if she takes the bait.”
It wasn’t long later that Puck was skating in these same bread pans across the linoleum. With kitchen hand towels to cut the noise. He thinks.
The Bear emerged to boil water for coffee and began snapping his fingers around my ears to the rhythm of the salsa. Or whatever we had playing on the internetsss…
“In stereo,” he said, snapping on both sides of my head.
Puck strummed the ukulele during the devotions this morning, trying to pick out a tune, which really wasn’t trying to find a tune at all actually. At least he was inspired. The Bear ground the coffee beans. We were about to walk out the front door with a stack of library books when the fun-mix: rain, sleet, and snow began to fall. And they said today would be 61. We delayed the trip. School. Wahoo. Puck trying to convince me to let him keep the bread pans. Pawning off the just-expired skim milk to Crackers and the just-expired natural Sierra Mist to The Bear. My dish disposals. Puck spreading peanut butter fingers all over those nice kitchen chairs with the faux-embroidered cushions. I can’t keep nice things in my house.
Giggle, giggle.
That’s about the only reaction I get from Puck when I mention things about “destruction” and “chaos”. Figures. What else can I expect from a Kindergartner?… So we forgot about any visit to the park. The sky sort of had that strange pale-gray light in the west, like the kind from “The Willows”, and even though the precipitation had been very short, it still all looked kind of threatening…
The peepers were out at the park. On a cool March afternoon at two-thirty. Strange… Puck and I ran around the apparatus for awhile, Puck encouraging me heartily to chase him as “the big bad wolf”, which I did until the half hour was over. I’m usually the “backup kid” if there are no other ready specimens available. I can keep up. Maybe not the monkey bars though…
We joined our new library books for a drive to pack in some new groceries, including Cuties [always a hit], Bisquick [it had been awhile], and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos for The Bear, because he was having a tough day. Slammed with work, slammed with school. I guess you wouldn’t know it. He’s still cracking jokes and bouncing around with Puck, for what it’s worth.
I switched on some Native American tunes while Puck and Crackers batted at each other through a crack in the patio door. Baseball scores, lean pork chops in the oven, fish for The Bear’s Friday lunch, getting things together for movie night – “Candleshoe” [The Bear’s choice.]… The Bear had his first big exam on Friday morning, so instead of hanging out with the guys, he stayed home. In the last thirty seconds of our film, which was surprisingly good I might add, Rose called…
“I got the promotion.”
System Administrator, as heavily urged. And heavy benefits. My twenty-two year-old sister was rolling in the dough. My little sister who used to catch bees with her bare hands and win ribbons in horsemanship shows… I scrubbed Puck’s face with the bar of olive oil soap that smells like the art museum before bed. A quiet cool blue out the windows where neighbor children played ball in the yard.