Noise, So Much Noise
7:30 in the morning. I could hear Yali scream-crying from the other side of the front door as I hauled his carseat into the Big House. Mom was comforting him. Apparently he had taken a flying leap into the floor as soon as he came running into the living room. I sopped up a small mouthful of blood before leaving with Puck for school. By this time, Yali was smiling and completely over it.
10:45; school field trip. I had just finished supervising a tableful of boys at the Jewish school around the corner – one red-headed Catholic and his floppy-haired buddy, two Jewish boys – one wearing a cast, one wearing a yarmulke, one shy Muslim, and two bouncing-off-the-walls Presbyterians whom I kept separating because they wouldn’t stop fighting over a red ink pen.
They were all busy going to town on plates of half-bananas and Oreos. Way too little food for seven ravenous eight and nine year-olds. Mickey had already licked all the crumbs off his plate about ten times over.
“Careful,” I warned him, “you’re going to wear a hole through that thing.”
Next time I looked at him, he had poked his tongue through the center of the styrofoam plate.
4:00. By the time we got home late that afternoon, I sat in a heap in front of my laptop for a few minutes to catch up. Puck, sensing that I might be a little tired, had some encouraging words for me.
“Mom! You know how the creator of Vat19 is as skinny as you are?”
“Well, I guess he is kind of a skinny guy…”
“Well, he weighs more than you! BOOM!”
Then he disappeared into his room with his math homework, a giant tub of Legos, and two whole boxes of blackberries before I knew what had happened.
About half an hour later as I set the table for dinner, Puck and Yali were enjoying screaming contests in the other room, engaged in a full-out sword fight. Puck chose wood; Yali opted for plastic. Neither won; just a lot of giggling.
6:00. After dinner, I took a few moments in Oxbear’s office to find a little quiet and catch up on some more things.
“You know what I’d pay to have a little Blue Lagoon in our house right now?” I asked him, remembering that one afternoon in Iceland seven years ago.
Oxbear did the next best thing and pulled up a soundtrack of thunderstorms on his computer for me. Although it didn’t take more than thirty seconds for both boys to begin shrieking in the other room, including Puck demanding loudly:
“WHO CUT THE QUESO?!?!”
I love my boys.