Ghosts

“Can you hold this, Mom?”

Puck handed me one of Oxbear’s dress socks while he held a bag of brown rice in the other.

“Hold this?” Yali repeated.

I was already in a conversation with Oxbear on my phone while frying eggs for dinner, checking bacon in the oven, and slicing apples. So of course I could also open the sock so Puck could pour an entire bag of brown rice into it.

“It’s my fidget,” he explained.

Fidget = stress ball. That’s what they’re calling them these days. Of course an entire bag of brown rice becomes less of a fidget and more of a pillow, which Puck used to cradle his neck at the dinner table.

It was dark out by the time dinner ended. This meant the basement stairs were also dark. And, as he’s been doing for a couple of weeks now, every time Yali walked by, he wiggled “scary fingers” on both sides of his face with an equally scary, “Ooooooooh!”

Puck entered the scene. “It’s okay, Yali.” He flicked on the lights. “There’s no ghosts down here.”

Yali turned to me as he followed his big brother down the stairs. From the incoherent babble, sign language, sound effects, and the occasional understandable word that followed, I was pretty sure he was trying to tell me that Puck had taken care of all the ghosts for him.