Extremes

Yali sobbed about half the way from Manchester back to Weldon Spring that morning. After dropping Puck off at school by 8:20, for about thirty glorious minutes Yali had enjoyed a lavish playground all to himself, sweating through his dark head of hair while we waited to meet our social worker. She had suggested getting together at the park after she got our first post-adoption report notarized at the bank. At 9:15 she handed me two crisp copies ready for apostilling downtown at the Secretary of State. Just one more step done on the list of hundreds.

But Yali wasn’t so fond about the idea of leaving a child’s paradise. He was temporarily calmed by receiving a dab of hand sanitizer on his dimpled little brown paw. He loves using hand sanitizer; don’t know why. So that distracted him enough until he remembered that we had already left the park. Geysers of tears. I wasn’t moved.

My third project of the day was recording Podcast Episode 68 with Carrie-Bri in Dad’s office as always. Carrie usually leaves a calling card for Dad’s benefit, mostly just wads of chewed gum on index cards. At least he knows we were there.

When that was done, Yali and I hit the road again – always running these days – to grab Puck from school.

It was another blistering afternoon. You couldn’t tell by the temperature, but the air was thick and made it feel more like an oven than not.

While we waited in a cooler brick hallway, Mr. V stopped to chat for a minute about baseball. Then one of Puck’s buddies waited next to us so he could witness the daily after-school reunion between brothers as Puck walked out of the gym to open-armed Yali.

At home, I cut up cold pork steaks for the boys. They go through those things like candy.

Oxbear didn’t get home until after seven, even after leaving for work at 5:50 that morning. He had stopped by the funeral visitation for our state trooper from church, who passed away six days ago while on patrol. The line was reportedly endless; visitors were hundreds strong, flanked by vets and police of all ranks from all over the country.

Maybe it was already September, but I still caught a firefly blinking off and on in the black night out the kitchen window. I wasn’t prepared for summer to end.