October 18

Monday, October 18, 2010

Puck was three and a half years old, exactly.

The leaves of the trees continued to be shabby. Rain had come too early in the season, and not late enough. Yet there was still one great oak across the street that had half-plunged itself in fire-orange and reds.

After breakfast, Collette read old stories and poems to Puck: Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, of pancakes, and dragons names Custard, while Puck sorted through a box of flags that Collette had cut out of her first hopelessly holey Flags of the World t-shirt.

“Can you find Colombia’s flag for your baby brother?” Collette asked him. “It is yellow, blue, and red.”

Immediately, Puck put his hand into the pile.

“Is this it?” he asked.

It was, indeed, Colombia’s flag.

And he continued to find it over and over throughout the rest of the day.

Aside from their walk, he played with nothing else for the rest of the morning.

Then he listened to Collette finish reading her memoirs from Iceland while he clutched his flag box, and cuddled comfortably against her shoulder.

“You’re my pillow, Mama,” he said.

The weather was just October-perfect. Collette and Puck went out for a near two-mile walk under skies that were just being pushed over with a blanket of soft heather-purple clouds, where the light of the late sun occasionally dabbled through it and lit the little fields and neighborhood with that strange subterranean light. The winds played properly, fall of acorns and a few fiery orange-red leaves, pine cones, and pine needles, and the smoke of wood fires. It was still beautiful, despite the few colors.

That evening, Joe and Rose arrived for a Monday movie night. There were still Mint Oreos, Pringles, Queso Fresco cheese, and apple cider, left over from the previous evening, to accompany Seven Years in Tibet.

“Aw, there’s a spunky old Tibetan grandma,” said Rose. “I want to be a spunky old Tibetan grandma.”

She had also hooked Joe on an iPhone frog nursery game, which he could hardly put down throughout the course of the entire evening.

And earlier, when they had watched Brad Pitt walk across the desolate tundra, Rose had exclaimed, “That would be so cold! I would kill five bears and smash them together, and just walk in that.”