Snowglobe
Thursday, January 2012
Puck threw open the shades.
“SNOW!”
Yes, indeed, indeed. Snow in inches, unsalted roads, unploughed highways, ice, black ice, canceled schools (which meant no Luke and Leia for the day), temperatures were in the teens… Even Rose, who had spent the night at the house to help with Carrie’s room revisions, was working remotely. And OLeif snugged himself away in the library for the morning.
As the morning continued in falling snow, lazy-like, fluff, Collette prepared pie dough. Puck practiced writing his letters in deep concentration at the kitchen table with tiny white board and red dry erase marker. He proudly displayed a collection of Upper Case B’s resembling shaky topiary with beaming dimpled grins. Collette bundled him into a proper five layers of clothing for about eight minutes of shuffling through the snow before he returned for OLeif’s hot cocoa. The Shoefly pie was made, Pennsylvania-Dutch. Molassesy-brown-sugary-crumb-topped interestingness. Orders checked. Lists made. Letters written. Grilled sandwiches and sweet potato fries with cinnamon for lunch. Collette was feeling a little too domestic for her own good… When the pie emerged 53 minutes later with a too-tough-to-be-completely-acceptable crust… she was set right again.
After Collette had finished her sandwich at dinner, she pulled the Bible out of the stack of books on the piano to read Revelation to Puck again…
“And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.”
“Is that Jesus?” Puck asked immediately.
And because Puck took an incredibly long time to finish any meal, compelling Collette to bring out The Help and finish the last chapters, he managed to find a way to distract himself further by tapping his fat carrot stick against the glasses and bowls to hear their various tones.
“Why does it make different sounds, Mama?” he asked.
And before Collette could answer, he was already switching out the wicker coaster for a metal one from Texas to change the tone. OLeif was busy wrapping up some work for Curly about his album. Puck never finished his dinner.
It was the first time in a long while that Collette and OLeif had sat down to a night of comedy together. And so that’s how they spent their Thursday evening.