Rain, Peter Spier Style
It was about seven o’clock in the morning. I had just finished sweeping up the living room and glanced outside the big windows. Between the rain, the sun had decided to rise. Unearthly gold light striking just the east side of the trees against dark rain clouds in the west. That light is old light, something ancient, probably from Ireland, maybe older. Somehow always surprises me that it still exists. A few minutes later, and it was gone, like it had never been there. Right before the rain.
We were halfway to school and Puck decided that his Tic Tacs were no longer effective. Cherry Coca-Cola Tic Tacs.
“Mom, I need more Tic Tacs.”
“You already had two, bud.”
“Yeah… but my egg breath is taking over my Coca-Cola breath. They don’t really work to make your breath taste better anyway, you know? So how about I just eat the rest of the pack?”
Nine o’clock. Yali’s speech therapist coordinator arrived at our front door, ready to meet him for the first time. Yali decided to impress her by tossing marbles into the air.
“So, as far as which speech therapist comes over here to work with him, does he work better with males or females?” she asked me.
I watched my two year-old saunter out of the room like he was big stuff, towards the refrigerator hunting clementines, and realized that he simply wouldn’t care. Although he does seem partial to beards… I didn’t tell her that.
Heavy rain. Those almost ninety minutes of quiet in the middle of the day that I sometimes get if Yali takes a full nap when we’re at home. And with that rain, I almost fell asleep on the couch after reading some of the book Oxbear bought for me last week: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s annotated autobiography.
Before we left school that afternoon, Heidi decided to show Puck what he looked like to the rest of the world. Lying flat on her back on the floor like a starfish, she announced, “I’m a nerd!”
I think Puck was proud.
The skies were all wool carding on the drive home; spring skies. Cool winds. Broad stretches of green everywhere. In my rearview mirror, the boys were oblivious to this seasonal beauty. Yali was too busy grinning like a jester, somehow brushing his brother’s wheat blonde hair with his bare feet. Puck didn’t seem to mind.