Play Ball
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
So Kitts was turning 26 in Ohio.
The day carried over from the previous evening – sweet gray splotches of rain from the night.
Puck had been chugging the water at Collette’s direction that morning…
“Blistering buckles!” he declared. “I have to go again!”
Boys…
While a distracted Puck let his sandwich dry out and his milk turn warm over lunch, Collette finished Donkey’s shirt at the kitchen table, the final piece being an ironed-on lime green applique butterfly. Reward came in the form of happy laughter…
“You’re fun, Mama! You’re so fun!”
This “fun mama” next registered OLeif for all of his Greek classes which would take him another year through seminary.
Puck excused himself from the table momentarily. Two minutes later…
“Puck? What are you doing?”
“Nothing, Mama! But I found very exciting news!”
Collette never heard what, exactly, that exciting news was, because of further interruptions of the early afternoon, but she could assume it had something to do with the library and some forbidden object of interest.
Right about the time she bit a chunk behind her lip, Collette had been hoping for something interesting in the mail.
Another jury summons wasn’t what she had in mind.
Great.
The first time the court date had been, mercifully, canceled. Good thing too. Freezing February, 7 months prego.
The mail lady had handed the bundle to Puck again…
“I think I saw the Easter Bunny around the corner,” she told him.
“Oh!” Puck nodded.
When in the process of playing outdoors that afternoon – down to the street where the rocks and mud gave the illusion of spread natural chunky peanut butter – Puck haphazardly squashed a high bed of green… something or other…
“Puck. I don’t know if those are our plants or the neighbor’s, but if they’re the neighbor’s, you’re going to have to offer to replant them.”
“Oh,” he moaned dejectedly, plopping down in Collette’s lap. “I’m a robber.”
They returned indoors for a cup of milk with straw for bubbling, a “cafe of bubbles”, as Puck called it. But he was still upset…
“I just killed a plant, Mama! Do you know how much rob I done!”
He was consoled with a hot bath.
OLeif’s days were always packed.
But he took every evening possible to read or wrestle, or read and wrestle with Puck. This time, it was the Happy Hollisters in Germany with the Black Forest, apfelsaft (cold German cider), and cuckoo clocks.
And the Cards kicked off their first official day of the 2012 season down in Miami — a 4-1 victory. And… when Collette discovered that Kyle Lohse was Native American… she fell just a little bit more in love with the Cardinals all over again. O, it was going to be a long season…
And OLeif drooled over code, with a cover of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” to add to the nightly reading.