Puck
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Another not half-bad night of sleep. Puck seemed to enjoy stretches of four and a half hours between late night snack, midnight snack, and first breakfast. Collette had absolutely no problem with this. And there was something almost nice about sitting up late in the quiet of the night with a book, or just praying for people. It was a sweet time to spend with Puck and a little bittersweet to think about how everything was changing. Once again, Collette found herself strung a bit tightly, a bit stubbornly, to keeping things the way they always were. While she enjoyed watching the kids (and now Puck too) grow older and experience life, it still made her sad to see them grow so very quickly. It reminded her, too, of the hopelessness for people who didn’t know Christ. For them, their present life was all they had. It would pass in the blink of an eye before Eternity. And then, their loved ones would truly be separated from them for all time. But for those who did know Christ, they had that great hope of being with family and friends again. It was a concept still dreamlike, still far away for Collette. Perhaps as she grew older, it would become more real to her.
Outside, the morning was gray, pocked with white light and greening tree branches throughout the neighborhood.
In other news, Annamaria had plans to visit Budapest that summer – another one of the kids to embark on their first adventure overseas. This would likely take place in about the same time frame that Joe, Wallace, and Curly would be swimming in blue Hawaii waters with the sharks while Carrie-Bri and Eve would hopefully be barbecuing on Australian beaches and hiking the rain forests.
Sometime around lunch, Lucia and Carrie dropped in for Lucia to finish a box of French fries and for Carrie to hold Puck.
(Simon, from OLeif’s work, had decided to call him “Hockey Puck”.)
“Hey, dollface,” Lucia called to him as she came in the door.
“Oh ho ho,” Carrie giggled while she held him. “He’s holding onto my finger. He needs some scars now. No little boy is complete without some scars. We need to teach him how to ride a bike.”
“You want a cheeseburger, man?” Lucia asked him. “I think you do.”
In the afternoon, the rain came a tumbling down.
Come evening, Oluva Cross, from church, came over with a hot meal straight from the grill, complete with berry cobbler for dessert. She stayed a few moments to see Puck and briefly talked about her daughter, who would soon be leaving for Turkey to live there permanently. Her husband was in the Air Force. Collette could tell that Oluva was somewhat apprehensive about the whole idea of her daughter living in Turkey.
“Turkey has been in the news a lot lately,” she said. “There’s a lot going on over there these days. And Sinai and Rosie in Egypt too…”
Puck had taken to smiling a lot those days. It wasn’t a coherent smile yet, but his smile made Collette smile. Collette had come to find that there was something irresistible about a baby’s smile after all. Perhaps it was because she was a mother herself now; either way, it was good to laugh over a baby’s smile.
OLeif read Genesis to Puck that evening, about Noah – a good day for a story about a flood. The ground was still green and fresh with rain.