That Makes Ten
Puck lifted an angry Crackers onto the red sofa this morning, in attack position to sort out a few issues of invisible knots…
“Oh,” he muttered, finally settling the feline beside him. “I forgot. I can’t use Dad’s brush on her.”
I offered him the loan of the silver-backed brush on my dresser. One of a set The Bear bought for me back in high school, I think, with scrolls cut into the back. Puck appreciated the temporary gift, and began carefully smoothing the motley gray creature…
“Every time she goes to Grandma’s she will get as slick as a fur ball.”
I’m not sure she’ll ever “go to Grandma’s” again, not with the mountainous crushing terror of Pumpkin guarding the keep. But it was a nice thought anyway.
I hit the mountain hard this morning. It wasn’t every piece of laundry in the house. Maybe scaled back about fifty percent. But that was enough. The attack was lethargic, but had to be done. Eight loads through the wash waiting for me to fold up sometime between… Puck’s lessons. Meals to pack the fat back on his bones. Arrangements for New Year’s Eve, which is my traditional evening to fall asleep right before the firecrackers and hooligan screaming. And putting everything back where it belongs; the endless jigsaw puzzle.
“Mom! It’s time for a snack! Could I have my cereal now?”
And life goes on.
Puck and I had things to discuss at lunch…
“I’m going to have a big box,” Puck said. “Someone will just think it’s a UFO. And it will have a button that is very high… and makes doors come… flinging doors down. But I will have slides that I slide down. You want to help me?”
“Always.”
“It will be hard work. We will have to work hard every day. It’ll take about a week. We’re going to have to find stones. And glue. And you can look for a button, Mom.”
“Of course. I have a question for you though.”
“What is it?”
“What will this button be made out of?”
“Steel.”
Puck scooted out from his room in roller skates and batting helmet, halfway through Quiet Hour, to switch on the cassette of “the boy who was afraid of the sea” [Call it Courage] while “reading” Farside.
I clipped a cat’s claws for the first time in my life. She didn’t take a bite out of my hand either.
Three times the smoke alarm went off that evening, even in the back reaches of the library. It’s not my fault. We have the most ridiculous smoke alarms. They go off if the toaster’s set to a Medium 3. Usually I pop the one off the ceiling in the kitchen before creating any masterpieces in the oven. This time it was only bacon. Then peppermint chocolate chip cookies for The Bear that night.
Pillsbury, of course.
Apparently on the other side of town, Joe and Izzy were somewhere shopping at a Goodwill, slapping each other high fives for being so healthy. Sometime around six o’clock I heard from Carrie that Izzy had packed up and moved out when Theodore, Gloria, and Curly succumbed to the madness of the plague that somehow just made its way around there. Puck was not so pleased. As I chatted with Carrie about this latest development, he took out a wrinkled pad of paper and one of my black pens to sketch a cartoon of the dilemma…
“Mom,” he said, after I ended the call, “please write what I say on the paper.”
He began his dictation…
“Everyone is getting sick, and I don’t know what to do. Because all the people are sick. And it’s Christmas! It’s the spirit of Christmas! And I don’t know what to do!”
I allayed his worries. Chiefly, that he wouldn’t be able to go to Grandma’s house tomorrow.
Finally able to bury the work load at 8:30, I sat down with a porcelain Christmas mug of pomegranate juice while The Bear dug into the Greek vocabulary for January [and newscast blooper reels] with a heavy plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and buttermilk biscuits.