From Puck's Ears

So… a rather harshly demoralizing Wednesday night baseball game accompanied by highly unusual and less than exemplary behavior by the St. Louis crowd was consoled a little by the Noahic deluge and accompanying hail. I’ll admit it. I’m sure it didn’t comfort the boys in red too much. But at least there was something less dark to stamp out the evening.

Moving into a much brighter and less… interesting Thursday…
Before I could get around to officially beginning the day, I entered the kitchen where Puck was lounged on the floor with a fork in hand.
“Look, Mama!” he declared, genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know this was a pen!”
Basement door.
Silver swirly scratches.
“Oh, Puck…”
See – it doesn’t really bother me so much when I know he’s only trying to figure things out for himself. And you can see it in the eyes. When he’s absolutely guilty. Tom Sawyer Calvin & Hobbes guilty. Or when he’s just so carried away with a revelation, that he can hardly contain himself.
Puck sometimes finds temptations to distract himself from his reading lessons too, of course. This time, it was once again antique silverware, of which he asked me to read all the stamped backs – “Silver Plated Sheffield England”.
“Ok, Puck. Put everything out of your hands now.”
“I know, Mom,” he replied in deep concentration. “But my mind is just telling me to get something. Even my brain. My whole body is telling me to get something.”
“Well, I will help you.”
“You can’t help me. God will help me.”
We transitioned to Spurgeon, referencing matter of the Holy Ghost. Puck’s ideas were always rolling, with myself as theological moderator…
“But I did still exist, Mama, even when Jesus died, because His father was watching to keep everything together… Jesus gave up His spirit when He died. I didn’t get that spirit because I was only a twinkle. I was a star in space… He’s a ghost because He can walk through walls and in Heaven without even steps.”
Later he dug up an ancient candy cane from some forgotten time and place, which I helped him to unwrap…
“I had a bit of a close call, Mom. I got to the plastic and almost swallowed it.”
Ten minutes later, he asked for “hot chocolate”. What, is this January?
“No cocoa, Puck. You’ve already had sugar.”
“Well, Mama… see, the hot chocolate will make the sugar just melt away, you know? Melt away. I think it will.”

Quickly, it was lunch/dinner.
“Feet in front, Puck.”
“Mama. Didn’t you forget I’m going to be a Viking?”

Leaning over my notebook recently, I’ve been smelling some strange unacceptable piece of nonsense, which I realized today was coming from the ink of a scavenged Vantage Credit Union pen which ended up in my pen case, inexplicably. An aroma come direct from some demented powder sugar-dusted Italian cookie locked up in a tin box for three years too many. It offends the nose.

I plunked Puck in the shower by the late afternoon. Amongst other atrocities, his hands were plastered in dark pink magic marker, most of which was removed twenty minutes later…
“At least it cleaned off half my draws,” Puck observed later. “Now it will go down the drain to color the sea.”
A clean boy necessitated getting dirty again immediately, which most likely included plastering his jams with kitten fuzz. He gathered the little creature in his arms, looking sweetly at her…
“All her eyeballs are just little bubbles,” he observed. “She’s not anything but a little bubble. Floating around in the sea.”

As Puck got tucked in and requested that I flip on his regular routine of Bible stories narrated by deep British voice, he listened quietly from his bed. I heard one more thing he called out fifteen minutes later…
“Mama? God will have to save His children quickly so they don’t go to hell. But He will. Watch.”

My evening ended with the unfortunate news that Tyler Greene had been traded to Houston. Just can’t keep everyone together all the time…