One Hundred Twenty-Six
Puck lounged on my bed beside his feast-pile of parade candies, making offers, counting costs…
“Here, Mom,” he tossed me a hard cinnamon candy, where I was writing insurance checks. “I presume you don’t want this, but just try it.”
“Thanks, bud.”
He thought about things a little more while I left the room. I heard him running after me in his bare feet…
“Not so fast, Mom. I want you to come into the candy room so you can make your choice.”
The selection was discussed…
“Mom,” he showed me the other little box of strawberry lemonade Nerds. “I really want to eat these, so you don’t get tempted. You know? You might get tempted.”
A pair of worried eyes watched me earnestly, hoping for good news. But we hadn’t even hit mid-morning yet. I had sat him down with a bowl of cereal and a banana earlier and told him to wait. He waited alright. By creating a catapult out of stretchy gold cord, a matchbox beach car, and a green apple Jolly Rancher. It worked well enough to clunk me on my hand bone during our morning readings…
“Sorry, MOM!”
Puck outfitted his own phonics lesson with the giant magnifying glass Rose had given him for his birthday. Sherlock-Holmes-worthy.
I sent him outside at eleven past open windows for fresh air and half-sun. We still had some gray and cool breezes. Upon examining our incomplete archaeology dig from last year…
“Mom! Mom! There’s a… a puddle in our hole! Maybe it will stay that way until Christmas time and then – valla! – it will be a SKATING RINK FOR THE ANTS!”
Then I saw him sneak back into Tasha’s yard for more wish flowers while I emptied the dish washer.
Puck had tracked mud on the floor. In a blink, he was back with the mop, telling me not to look until he was finished.
“Ok, Mom!”
“Aw, thank you, baby.”
“My pleasure.”
Thud – mop on floor.
Bang – out the door.
“Puck, what comes after 38?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t say that. Figure it out.”
“Mom, I don’t know. Sue me!”
Oh, there was talk. Fortunately for Puck, the talk was suspended momentarily when the ancestral results of the National Geographic DNA project turned up…
“Praise God!” Puck yelled, running from his math book.
As it turned out, the research matched the science ok. Ok. With the largest emphasis on Northern Europe from Dad’s side [Germanic], following with the Mediterranean [heavily Greek], Mom’s DNA contributed heavy amounts of Iranian and Iraqi descent, mixed with possibly some Ethiopian and Russian, and even Dad had some Egyptian and Moroccan, it looked like. No, there was no little Native American percentage that popped up, as I had hoped. But my sisters were happy. They got to keep their Persian blood. Even Rose, who texted me from work…
“You can’t send texts [about DNA results] when I’m at work! It’s like Jerry Springer!!!”
So the basic likely breakdown…
41% – Northern European
38% – Mediterranean
20% – Southwest Asian
Puck had fresh ideas at dinner…
“Mom! I want to make ROCKET ICE SKATES! I would put little rockets on them! Faster than cars and faster than bikes! And then I would be at Grandma’s in like – none minutes!”
The rain was in the southwest, not here yet, would be light in little lakes, puddles on the ground. Blue-green world, Jacob mowing the lawn, smoking his pipe. He left me cookies on the counter, those soft-baked kinds from Schnuck’s in gooey butter and chocolate.
