One Hundred Thirty-Three
“Good morning, stretch,” Puck welcomed his daily ritual.
As he tore into three more pomegranate leathers while watching part of Night at the Museum 2 for about the fourth time, we packed up to go. The Bear had an important final to study for on the drive home, and we all had things to do again.
We exited the hilly green of the outskirts of Nashville to Amish farmland – presumably – we saw a farmer ploughing fields behind two horses. To Puck’s consistent and often pining accolades of…
“I really wish I could go back to that pool.”
I had set the corsage on the dashboard to take in the sun and slowly dry on the road back. Puck had already claimed it for a memento. As he had already offered his own pink rose to the little girl with red pigtails, which had somehow ended up in the metal washtubs of ice and drinks, and eventually wilted. Although he had not been entirely rejected. When the little girl realized that Puck had left the wedding, she took off running on chubby two year-old legs after the golf cart in which we departed the grounds.
We tried a go at Arby’s again for lunch. Puck, who found his curly fries to be too hot, slipped the apple juice straw into the neck of the paper bag, and wrapped the paper tightly around the straw…
“Here, Mom. Stick this straw into the air vent and blast the cold air. It will cool the fries.”
“Genius,” The Bear complimented him.
“I’m homesick.”
“I thought you wanted to go back to that pool so bad,” I said.
“I’m… poolsick… and homesick.”
$1.99 at a gas station in Kentucky paid for Puck’s vacation souvenir. We hadn’t thought about getting him anything, really. But he saw it hanging there between the Circus peanuts and lemon drops, and he had to have it. His first bow and arrows set.
When we were kids, driving over the Illinois-Missouri border from family vacations, we would often blast triumphal re-entry music on the speakers of the old green van just as The Arch began sparkling in the sun across the river. So I guess it was an accident that The Bear began dazzling our own speakers with The Lion King’s “The Circle of Life” just as we zoomed into view of the glistening silver gate. The Bear thought it was pretty funny. I guess I did, too.