Forts and Tents and Stuff
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Another rumble of thunder. This time it produced as promised. Thick violet rolls in the southwest lightly showered the street in splatters of late rain.
“Mama? I don’t think I really like it when you put this ‘St. Louis intolerance’ on me,” said Puck.
“The what?”
Puck lifted the small arnica tube, loaned by Gloria for his banged-up legs, from Collette’s book bag…
“This. ‘St. Louis intolerance’.”
Where he got that stuff…
Puck was busy brushing his hair with “Daddy’s brush”, the entire ride out, combing down one faction at a time.
“Look pretty rad, man,” Collette told him.
“Yeah! This brush can change my life,” he suggested. “I think it’s magic.”
“Pumpkin looks good today,” Puck noted immediately upon arrival.
“Well,” Mom explained, “Linnea and Gretyl gave her an apple cider vinegar baking soda coconut oil bath yesterday.”
Of course.
“It was a screaming giggling mess,” Carrie added later.
Mom had plans for the morning…
Because it was a rainy day, they were building a living room tent.
Because it was Naira’s birthday the previous day, they were picking up ice cream cones at the end of the morning.
Puck, meanwhile, was already tearing into a rice cake as he passed by Snugs meowing at the front door…
“I’m sorry, old chap,” he sympathized. “You just can’t catch bunnies. Alright?”
It didn’t take long for volcano-erupting noise to commence when Francis came into the picture. Something about “man-handling”, etc.
Puck and Naira – in ladybug-with-antennae wellies, raincoat, and umbrella with two big stick-up eyes – conversed profusely about important matters of life…
“But I’m a big girl.”
“Yes. But. I don’t think you should tie any knots in the tent.”
“But I’m a big girl.”
“Yes. But. I don’t want you to tie any knots because you will get your fingers tied in it.”
“But I’m a big girl.”
“Yes. But. You can’t tie any knots. That’s the way life works.”
Grilled cheese and sliced strawberries for lunch. Say what you will, but sandwiches always tasted better cut in triangles. Something about starting at a point. That, plus a waffle for Naira, who was really forking it down. Also the M&M mini blizzard on the way home. Her appetite had morphed over the weeks.
Joe called in on the drive to pick up German and a buddy from the airport in Trinidad that afternoon. He and his crew had served up a thousand staff members in twenty minutes the previous evening.
The later morning and afternoon had rolled in the sun once more.
Collette showed Puck the end of the street by the woods where she had once found a tiny meteorite. And the woods where they and the English kids had hacked out jungles of forts (Seven Pillar Abbey) and battle grounds over the years. All those afternoons biking up and down the street solo – imagining other worlds for hours and hours – planets suspended in space, hovering a hundred miles above the upper atmosphere in strange colors…
They – the girls and Puck – rediscovered the dollar store later in the afternoon, and a large handheld styrofoam plane at Carrie’s suggestion, for Puck, which he stormed around the yard and street with Linnea back at the house.
Carrie cooked up two large and tasty chickens for dinner while Linnea and Puck flipped on the Swiss family in the island tree house.