One Hundred Sixteen
Rain spit as I hunted down a new red ceramic skillet and apple red Eclipse curtains for Puck’s room. Plus onions and rice and gluten free bread machine mix and other things for the next week.
Gloria texted me:
“I love adventures with Puck. 7:40 BRAUMS ice cream for breakfast and 9:30 Hardee’s burger for… brunch?! Woohoo!”
I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty sure “Nana” had gone rogue.
Crackers stashed herself like a baby lamb on my stomach while I typed, and wouldn’t move. I couldn’t quite figure out this sudden display of affection, until I realized it – she must miss her boy.
One o’clock – Puck was back. Out the car, onto the bike, down the road…
“Tell Dad to come see me RIDE!”
So proud. Cowboy boots to pedals. Our big guy.
Gloria handed me a bright red plastic bag dominated with heavy river rocks. The kid wasn’t much behind the idea of fishing, but rock-hunting, yes. We sorted them together, looking for fossils, a few with holes that Puck especially prized, strung up a few with heavy thread and thumb-tacked them to the wall for a display. There had been burgers and the bike, of course, bought for $25 at the campsite cafe, heavy rain leaving that morning.
At four-thirty, we were back at the house for the official celebration of Puck’s birthday a week later. Dad had the grill going.
Grandma Combs lifted a frame wrapped in brown paper from the counter…
“It’s Christmas in April,” she told me.
Inside the frame – quilting pieced I had stitched together, probably twelve years ago now. Each octagon cut by my Great Grandma, Grandma Snicketts’ mom.
“Some of these were probably from Grandma’s high school dresses,” Mom added.
Funny the things you make when you’re a kid, you forget about them, and then they come back again. A memory under glass.
I braided another tight crowd for Linnea, who, for the first time complained about the pain, while Carrie and Grandma attempted to fix Mom’s antique rose lamp for the barbecue Saturday evening. It took awhile, but there was success.
Hot dogs, fruit salad, potato chips, chocolate cake. It’s predictable, it’s yearly, but Puck likes it. What six year-old boy is going to turn that down for his birthday meal? I carved up the strawberries while Francis plucked grapes. I’m pretty sure it was his first try at composing fruit salad. While Joe gnawed off the bits of berry left around the stems and attached the leftovers to his forehead…
“Oh! Oh! I have the smallpox!”
He opened the door and slammed a stem at Dad by the grill.
“Got him on the rear end,” he snickered.
Snickered until Dad turned around on the attack and Joe peeled out screaming away from the kitchen…
“Didn’t expect me to turn on you that fast, did you?” Dad laughed.
Francis had been enlightening us on his first flight Thursday, which included immediately spitting out his gum upon landing. On the tarmac.
“I can’t believe you did that!”
“Well it tasted terrible!” he protested.
“Stomach acid,” Carrie explained.
Rose made it just in time, took a seat by the buffet on a bar stool…
“I’m the main course,” she grinned.
“Let’s go out to eat,” Carrie teased.
[Photos courtesy of Joe. And… bad lighting.]
So we got our dinner and our laughs. Puck eagerly unpacked a remote control helicopter and railroad style camping lantern from Grandma Combs. Another Garfield Fat Pack [he already had Volume 2 from Kitts and Relevance], a fighter jet tee in turquoise, a vintage baseball uniform style long-sleeved tee, and Jenga from the rest of the family. The rewards were sweet.
And then too much chocolate cake. In the end, only Joe had to leave before we did. Something about F1 racing with Thunderbird and some form he had to fill out for the 5K Color Run in St. Louis tomorrow…
“They throw colors at you,” he explained.
I was only imagining India.
A very happy, sleepy, and fun-filled Puck fell asleep an hour after his bedtime that night, with a purr-y, fuzzy, very happy cat cuddled beside him under the old eggplant Costco blanket.