Persimmons

The morning was wet and cool, the skies nearly as diverse as the slowly falling foliage, whisked into oblivion by the late autumnal winds.
Carrie had Puck out in the backyard wrapped in her green and yellow Wallaby scarf, which for some reason, Puck did not seem to mind. He kept the tails tucked behind his chubby overalled shoulders, running around under the persimmon trees, adding ripe fruit to the bucket.
Once inside, he helped his Tante Carrie separate the seeds from the pulp. Then Carrie made two loaves of persimmon bread before joining an old high school friend, Clover Elzblackel, who was in town for the afternoon.
Carrie’s applications were still waiting at Boeing and other companies in her field. Carrie’s hopes were not strong.
“My field is becoming very limited,” she said. “Programs are being cut.”
And she still had weeks to wait before her applications would even be considered in some places. Which meant that Carrie was once again feeling the itch to travel south, before the cold really blew in.
Lunch was playtime for Puck that day. His precious Lila had arranged quinoa sandwich pieces for him, which he “vroomed” like matchbox cars around his highchair tray, before popping them into his mouth. After Collette brought in a dish of orange slices, he also morphed them into cars and swished them around his lunch table.
By the afternoon, Puck was covered in hot chocolate and green playdough, while Pumpkin napped in the white sunshine of the dining room, and Puck scolded her, until she left. Then he ran outside with Linnea, after begging a piece of toast off of her, buttoned up in his dark gray sweater with dark green trim, one of the gifts from his Aunt Rose.
After a treat of McDonald’s for everyone for the evening, Collette bundled Puck into the car, joining Carrie, Joe, and Rose back home to meet OLeif for The Office night.