Chapter Twenty-Three
Nine hours of sweet sleep. I was a happier person. I’ve never been a good candidate for insomniacism, but that fluke sent me for a loop. Of course we couldn’t make it out of the house before Puck slid down the steps on his tailbone again, slipping on the hem of his cherry red track pants…
“Why is that happening to me?!”
“You’re a boy.”
That is the only explanation. The Bear needed a quiet house to work from home; a new Wednesday program had been established so that he could apparently just work from his home office/library on Wednesdays. But this also required that absolute silence for conference calls and things like that. So, considering that I had a five year-old with cabin fever, I shuttled my son out to Mom’s and Dad’s for the day. Just as we turned into the neighborhood, I saw Puck’s eyes in the rearview mirror, about to make an announcement…
“Mom. I want to fly a plane when I grow up.”
“Make sure you tell that to Grandpa today. He’ll be very proud.”
“I will,” he grinned.
Mom was already busy finishing the basement, cleaning up the last stacks of everything. I started in on another tupperware packed end to end with enough paper to write sixteen novels, some of which was truly ancient construction paper, fading blue to green at the edge of its wrapper. Puck made short work of that tub. He wanted to keep every scrap, within my judgment, I guess. Joe cranked out some bluegrass from his room to serenade the workers. He had been out till midnight again with Annamaria’s fiance. They had sort of become best friends overnight, really…
“Kindred spirits,” Joe described it.
Then I sorted the DVDs and, yes, stacks of VHS while Puck continued the ornamental sculpture of all things he wanted to bring home with him. Then I revised that stack while he joined Linnea-Irish on her school break to install a Japanese-based Nancy Drew game on my laptop. I finished things off with a stack of my great grandmother’s newspaper and article clippings from 1948-1952. Things like: the average cost of a bride’s trousseau [just under $700], divorcees in the church, Civil War widows, and a booklet advocating retirement funds. In between this clean-up, Francis wandered down the stairs to change. He was recovering well. Of course, he couldn’t shower for a few days, which wasn’t in the best interested of himself or anyone else in the house. But he was feeling good enough to play Angry Birds and enjoy the red licorice and chocolate bar from Zuñi. After lunch, Mom took a deserved nap. She had caught me up on the Lord-Welches family in Iowa over a bowl of chickpea goat cheese kale salad. I assisted Joe with some credit card login issues downstairs and ideas about businesses and free-lancing, discussed Linnea’s own sleep issues and offered suggestions, checked in with The Bear about the upcoming transition to the new semester while adjusting to a new role at work… I guess in the ordinary days you still find things that make it unordinary. Mom next donned boots and face mask to tackle the basement bathroom next. What do you expect with two boys living down there in their own cave?
“I think I’ve grown more veins.”
Joe flexed his muscles right up from the storage room where he had been pumping weights. Mom tried to cajole Francis away from Angry Birds to chemistry. Chemistry would probably have to wait until recovery. He fell asleep instead. So Linnea crimped her hair a couple of hours early, sitting on the bathroom sink after the form of her other sisters. This was my cue to take Puck out to the tree swing for awhile…
“Aren’t you happy I was born in the spring?” he asked, flying past me towards the branches.
“I am. April is one of the best months to be born in. It was a beautiful day when we brought you home from the hospital.”
He grinned…
“Don’t you just love the warmth of a summer day?”
His yellow boots, permanently scuffed, sailed past.
“I do.”
Then we checked in on Mom to see if she had survived the fumigation. So while decontamination was going well, Puck and I de-cobwebbed and Old-English-ed the antique desk chair in the storage room to be transferred for Puck’s continuing education. Carrie walked back in from work to hang out with her favorite nephew.
“I used to toss bread up here.”
“What?”
Joe stood on the kitchen table bench examining the top of the tarnished brass and glass chandelier lamp.
“Yeah. Dad used to make me eat my crusts and I didn’t like them, so I put them up here. Or sometimes under the table”
Then he filmed Snuggles dumpster diving for the empty clam chowder can. He later went on to attack the huge salmon laid out on the pan. Carrie was not pleased. Snuggs and an incidental glass of water with lemon juice went flying across the kitchen. Puck did his best to help and carried the disastrous cat into the basement in hopes of distracting him from the inevitable. Francis was absolutely out of it. No Puck volume could wake him from the deep nap in which he now found himself. Carrie covered the salmon with red onion rings.
It had been awhile since they’d set me up to help with the “big kids” at church on a Wednesday night. I guess they’re mostly still little, though. I haven’t seen any big kids around since Daisy-Jean left. I was warned before I arrived in email, though, that the volunteer staff had been significantly reduced this new year. So… once again, I prepared myself. I guess corralling fourteen kids into one room for two solid hours without disaster transpiring is actually pretty good. Music, goldfish [second rounds], sparkly crayons, and red heart balloons stuffed with flour… I’m not sure they entirely enveloped the intended concept of humility that night. But maybe something gets through that I’m-tired-after-a-long-day-at-school wall that isn’t always so transparent. How any kid survives into adulthood. It’s not as easy as it looks, I’m pretty sure sometimes.