Klondike

Sunday, November 7, 2010

During church, when Puck heard Sinai mention ‘God’ for the first time in the sermon, Puck immediately whispered to OLeif and Collette, “God is a spirit and has no body as we do.”

When they returned to the house, there was a dead mole on the front porch, a gift from the bad cats.

Not longer later inside…

“Mama, could I have a mole for a pet?” Puck asked.

“How about a cat?” asked Linnea.

“A red cat?” asked Puck.

“I could paint it,” said Carrie.

“You can’t do that,” said Rose.

“With vegetable dye.”

“I had Dad get me silver nail polish at Walgreen’s last night,” said Carrie later. “I knew it would embarrass him. And he couldn’t find it. So he called me up and said, ‘I’m standing by the Maybellines’…”

Carrie had also discovered for the women in the family: Moroccan oil and henna dye to pattern the hands.

“That oil just takes out all the wrinkles in your skin,” she said, “I rubbed some on Dad’s head too…”

Lunch…

Marinated pork and sweet potatoes stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach.

During the meal…

“Hey, Dad,” said Carrie, “I think that Moroccan oil is making the hair grow back on the top of your head.”

“That’s just four weeks of growth,” Dad answered, with the usual smile lines.

In the afternoon…

Klondike.

While they waited for Dad to get the keys to the van, everyone was out on the driveway together, watching Puck run around reciting something that he had obviously just learned at Sunday School that morning.

“No one does good; not even one!”

Then out to the silica sand and the lake and the rocks. There was no thing more that could be asked for a posse of boys. And all five of them immediately began to chuck every single available rock, and boulder, into the black-ish lake. Including Linnea.

“Boys, boys!” Mom declared.

“It’s ok, Adel,” Dad insisted. “That’s what boys do.”

“I can’t understand the fascination with throwing rocks into water,” said Carrie.

“Mom always took Mo and me down to the river when it was frozen so we could throw rocks into it,” said Mom. “She made us tuna fish sandwiches and we’d stay there all day.”

While the girls, Joe, and Francis stood at one lookout over lake, the boys scooping giant sandstone rocks out of the white silica sand, OLeif, Dad, and Puck surveyed another sector.

“Every time Puck found a rock,” said OLeif, “he’d say, ‘That’s a beauty!’”

Meanwhile, Carrie and Rose, who Carrie had now declared to be her ‘paid companion’, tossed small rocks down at Joe and Francis. They both nailed Joe in the back.

“Hey!”

“Rose and I have practice from throwing coconuts at Dad’s office window,” said Carrie.

“Coconuts!” Rose exclaimed.

Carrie laughed, realizing what she had said.

“I mean acorns.”

Meanwhile, the boys were showing off their skipping stone skills, particularly Joe, who managed several that skipped twenty times or more.

And Francis kept spinning chunks of rock skyward that fell apart in mid-air.

“Actually, Francis,” said Carrie, “you’re demonstrating very well what happens when Near-Earth Objects enter our atmosphere…”

Or some other sort of space-speak that Collette failed to note at the time…

“Glad I can help,” Francis replied with a grin.

And while Joe hurtled rocks nearly three-quarters across the width of the lake, Dad was busy, rather intent, actually, on hitting a certain floating branch far-off, that Rose had called a ‘porcupine island’.

“Why don’t you go over there and work out a mathematical calculation for hitting it first,” Mom suggested.

Rose was also distracted by a toad that OLeif and Puck had found for her. She grasped him around the neck so that only his head stuck out, and ribbit-ed him in Mom’s face.

“His name is Archibald,” she said.

“He’s not coming back with us,” said Dad, about to chuck out another rock.

“Oh, I think Joe hit it, Dad,” said Collette.

“No,” said Dad. “That didn’t count.”

Dad changed positions to another outcropping of rock.

“Luther,” said Mom, “we could be here for hours…”

Then Dad hit it.

And even Mom tossed in a few rocks before the session of destroying the natural habitat of all frogs, toads, fish, and other lake creatures, had ended.

When it was time to leave, Puck did not seem quite ready.

“I want to go ‘bonking’ again!” he declared.

On the way back, Puck had a question for his mama.

“Did you pray to God to give you a little Puck?”

“I did,” Collette told him. “And we got the best Puck.”

When they returned home, Dad turned on Robin Hood in his and Mom’s room for himself, OLeif, Joe, Rose, and Francis.

“Daddy? Could I go robbing too?” Puck asked.

But first, Francis had accidentally rocked the rocking chair over Puck’s big toe. It was certainly his weekend for bumps and bruises…

As they left to drop off Francis as youth, Joe was prepared for Magnus’ arrival where they were to arrange an art studio in the basement.

Back home. Puck down. OLeif resurrected the ‘play cube’ in the backyard that Luke and Leia’s family had passed on to him. Then Cheez-Its, sparkling strawberry pomegranate juice, and more Doctor Who.

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