The Artisan

Sometimes I blink and my house has been turned upside-down. Puck had already collected a mountain of old paint cans, a director’s chair, and a variety of cushions in the kitchen to build a house for Crackers.

“Mom? Could you go into the living rom to give Dad a hug? I don’t want him to come in here and scare Crackers. This is like her little ‘appetat’.” One could presume: habitat.

Puck has become the artisan. He completed another work at the edge of breakfast, complete with orange tree and off-colored rainbow.

“So where is that?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Maybe in New Mexico?”

Wasn’t it Tuesday, late afternoon, that he completed his first piece of the week saying carefully, “My art must be exact. It must be perfect.”

He interprets life at his own pace. A few minutes later, he listened to “The Final Countdown” on his playlist and commented, “Doesn’t this music just make you want to pack up and leave your home?”

Anyway, Wednesday morning, he was practically in tears – no, he was in tears – that he was going to miss “playing with Uncle Fran” that morning. His front tooth had just popped out a little on Tuesday and he made sort of a woebegone character.

At the Big House, Carrie told me that, “I was supposed to save a donut that Francis saved for Puck, but… I got a little hungry.”

I could live with that.

My dental visit was fast, fortunately. The hygienist who’s cleaned our teeth for the last five years now assured me that, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here before three.”

3:00PM.

Maybe this is why Bær feels like the post season lasts four months. A day might as well be three. And on days like that, it seemed even longer. I hoped for better things on Friday.

“Mom, I just want to let you know I have no underwear on. I took it off.”

We were driving home from church – in the dark, thank goodness.

“Why, Puck?”

“I don’t know.”

“You really have no answer for me?”

“Because I wanted to hang it up.”

He displayed a makeshift clothesline stretched between the two seats with a yo-yo string.

“Honey, why…?”

“Don’t worry, Mom. No one saw. I put my backpack over me.”