One Hundred Nineteen
“Dear Jesus, thank You for today, and for my syrup bottle, and my duck. A-men.”
Puck fingered the mini rubber duck sitting beside his plate of egg-in-a-nest. Sometimes he re-finds his little trinkets and becomes grateful for them all over again.
The Bear half-recovered from another headache and walked out the door – fresh spring air, and warming – grinning at Puck, still in his jams, running down the driveway after him.
When Puck returned to finish his breakfast, he carried a small plastic Folger’s tub filled with water…
“Here, Mom, this is to water the plants. I saved this water.”
I wondered to myself just where exactly – and for how long – this water had been “saved”.
“Thanks, bud. I’m sure the plants will appreciate that.”
“Good,” he set the container on the counter and ran off. “I have old bath water for them, too.”
His generosity – and ability to hide vats of liquid from me – was impressive.
Between mixing gluten free bread in the machine and Francis calling in about three or four times trying to schedule his math class at the community college for the summer, Puck ran in and out of the house in flip-flops and shorts yelling something about…
“Thank you! THANK YOU, LORD!”
The Bear mentioned that he had “squishy head”, which basically meant that he had a headache as a result of needing more sleep.
Finally I joined Puck outside. I had handed him two heavy-duty plastic zip bags from his new curtains, instructing him to sort his river rocks into them. Instead, he ringed the tree in the front lawn, which worked pretty well, actually. I helped lay them out closer together and out of the grass. In all those rocks he had found one shaped like a heart, and handed it to me – cold, gray stone.
“Beautiful. Would you like to paint it red for me?”
He nodded and grinned. So I brought his box of washable paints and brushes out to the porch and he got busy.
Also busy with cold water from the spigot, which he splashed over the cement and then waded, bare foot, in it.
“Come on, Mom. We’ll take turns,” he suggested.
So we did. Morning and afternoon. Then I boxed up the paints to bring back inside…
“You stay out and enjoy the sunshine, Mom. I will be a gentleman. I will take the paint for you.”
“Ok, bud. Thanks. Watch the bread in there. It’s rising. So be quiet and don’t slam anything.
“Ok, Mom!” he whispered, like a baby was napping in the next room. “I will be very quiet.”
Of course then all the plastic paint jars fell out the bottom of the box, but the bread was not harmed.
“I can smell the delicious bread rising already,” he informed me.
And it was delicious. Even with the signature texture of a gluten free bread, it was good and hot and spread with butter. Puck finished listening to “Charlotte’s Web” during lunch, then commenced to roll around on Crackers’ condo like it was a fat wheel, before helping himself to more Garfield and more bread, on top of the green pepper, orange cuties, purple grapes, and peanut butter sandwich. Crackers helped herself to the raspberry jam.
Thank you notes, four loads of laundry, dishes, veggie burrito bake – pretty good actually, and one hundred other small things. As the afternoon progressed, Puck found himself chastised for asking me the same question too many times after I had already answered…
“Sorry, Mom.” he replied. [Sigh.] “I just don’t realize that I’m doing it.”
He found his gold nugget bubblegum bag, a relic of the Puck and Grandma Box. Lifting it from the Wahoo board, he grinned at me…
“Can I dump the whole gum pack into my mouth? It’ll be an EXPERIENCE!”
“It’ll be an experience, alright.”
Puck and I settled on the couch after dinner…
“It’s suddenly quite cold,” he noted.
We had just been reading C.S. Lewis. Prince Caspian. The language translates.
