Chapter Sixty-One

It was still snowing. Just wandering bits of fluff, even more like fireflies now, drifting in the wind. Half sun, half pale gray. Puck was up like a snap at 6:15 to enjoy it… or maybe just to find the iPad for “game day”. I think he can appreciate both. In my daily rounds of the morning, I heard that Joe had somehow ended up at Great Skate with Jaya and her younger sister Friday night, and almost went deaf in the process. Who wouldn’t? Two hundred kids screaming for cheap nachos, blue raspberry slurpies, and Britney Spears tracks… maybe I’m just remembering the 90’s. And what do I know about that either? I went roller-skating maybe once in my life. End-of-the-year home school choir party. I didn’t live in a bubble. Well. Debatable. Still, getting married at 19 assured me that I would never experience “the bubble” again. Probably the biggest reason I avoided ever living on a college campus, by the way. But that’s a soapbox for another day…

“I’m just going to pack a little snacks, Mom. A little snacks. Bubblegum definitely. I wonder what else snacks are in here…”

My son was all ready to march out the door in red robot shirt, army cap, jeans, and the now-heavy green Upward Basketball backpack latched over his shoulders.

Nothing like picking up groceries again, mid-morning, Saturday. Puck surveyed the highways through his binoculars on the ride out. Fortunately the red reprieve of quiet Target prepared my soul for the circus unfolding a few blocks down the street. Puck took the interior of the cart this time. Last week, he wanted to drive, but this time he preferred to organize the pears, peppers, pork, and peanuts…

“Mom!!”

I’m rather aware that the other shoppers stare at me each time my son opens his mouth in public, but what am I supposed to do about that?

“Shhh, bud. What is it?”

I scouted the chopped walnuts in a very busy baking aisle. Not for me, of course. For Puck.

“Could we get vinegar!?!?”

“Why, bud?…”

“To drink it! Could we please get vinegar?!”

I probably looked a little too absent-minded for that sort of question, but I’m used to it.

“We already have vinegar, bud.”

We moved on to Dairy.

About as soon as we walked back inside the house, Puck was off washing his hands…

“How ridiculous! How silly of me! Oh, how ridiculous!”

“What, Puck?” The Bear asked, unable to speak over the tremendous exclamations in the other room.

“I flushed the toilet and I didn’t even go to the bathroom!” Puck trumpted.

I guess that is worthy of mention… I prepared hot dog squids for lunch. Not exactly my choice, but Puck easily scarfed down twelve segments, or three total hot dogs over an episode of “Little House” again.

After Bomb Pops, he was already back to digging into more brain reserves – carving an oatmeal box into a tube “for the bun-buns”, popsicle stick and rubberband crosses…

“Mom! Did you see me shoot that rubberband over the whole United States?!”

[I suppose I mentally affix both a question mark and exclamation point to every phrase Puck utters.] He dug out a handful of new peanut to bring back to his room for Quiet Hour. I checked his room later…

“Bud, every week you mess it up pretty bad again.”

“I know. That’s my talent.”

The Bear explained to him that this was no talent.

When we finally got over to the Silverspoon’s, Puck – wearing his batting helmet – marched over to Theodore in the garage, sweeping up around one of his wood-working power tools, requesting that Papa please not turn it on until he got inside the house. He doesn’t like loud noises. Go figure…

“He might want to make fancy things for Nana with that machine, Mom. Like, he got the workers here to make fancy things for her.”

Gloria had Girl Scout cookies. The Thin Mint. Oh boy… Puck was distracted enough sculpting Minecraft mansions of dark red-stone floors and mahogany ceilings to not notice. Besides, there were organic carrots and strawberries. And I kept tabs on the Puma down in Talking Stick, Arizona. Puck took a break out in the just-at-freezing. He returned maybe less than ten minutes later…

“It’s pretty cold,” said Gloria. “He wanted to come in.”

“I’m not the one who wanted to come in,” Puck grinned. “My hands wanted to come in.”

Theodore and The Bear walked back in the door with four dozen red roses to split between Gloria and myself. Beautiful, good-smelling, red blooms. I wrapped two felted dryer balls while Gloria served up uncured ham [it’s white], couscous with butter, sweet potatoes, and
fresh strawberries and blackberries… Let’s just say it beat out my hot dog squids. By a long chalk.