The Wait Game
I was tired. Puck popped his cheerful head into our room this morning…
“Good morning! Don’t forget, I need to swallow another pill!”
This “pill” of course, is basically just vitamins, ground bone, and vegetable extracts. But still, it made him proud.
Puck had gotten busy creating a new language, which he rehearsed with The Bear. For example…
“Lack” means – come here.
“Lack pook” means – get into bed; it’s time to read the Hardy Boys, apparently.
And…
“Frat” means – turn out the light.
Sometimes when I hear an abnormal and extensive round of clattering, pounding, and falling apart of things in Puck’s room during Quiet Hour, I still don’t ask questions. Maybe especially after The Bear gives him a fudge-covered mint crème cookie, which he never should have had at all. But what are you going to do about a dad who sometimes forgets he’s not a grandpa in an Hawai’ian shirt, straw hat, and a bag of black licorice in his pocket.
I married an old man.
Puck emerged early from his room with a huge buttery grin on his face…
“Mom. Why would we waste time with school today when it’s such a beautiful day outside? What?” he giggled. “You think I’m trying to get out of school? You think I’m trying to trick you? Let’s not waste our time on a beautiful day.”
I wasn’t fooled.
When The Bear completed work before five, we spent a family hour together shopping for healthy things like honey dew melon, salad, bananas, almonds, fish, needles, and thread.
We took the back way to the store, too. It was The Bear’s idea. We’re still right on that cusp between suburb and country. So all you really have to do is peek over one road, and you smell the smells of farmland. But you also see the colors. The colors of St. Louis autumn. The crunchy red crusty stalks orange fields soggy earth countryside, outside, our stupendous city.
I’ve been sort of dead-panned distracted the last few weeks. Well. That’s not a surprise. Fortunately my mind can take a tiny sabbatical tomorrow while the team gets their own break before Game 3. What can you do? It’s St. Louis.
We had peanut butter cups while I waited for good news and The Bear narrated Greek vocabulary orally at the computer after sunset. Puck repeated the endless string of meaningless sounds and their definitions from his bed.