To Each His Own

Six hours of sleep wasn’t what I had wanted, but life is life, and I welcomed my chubby-chinned son over to give me a morning hug. He obliged, but added further thoughts, or rather conditions of the future…

“Mom, you know, I don’t know what God has planned for me. I might grow too big for this house.”

[And by “grow too big”, he literally means, “grow too tall and hit my head through the ceiling”.]

“I might have to move away from St. Louis. I might have to live with Curly. I might have to live with Izzy. I just don’t know God’s plans.”

And with that fanfare, I woke up the day.

Because Gloria’s birthday had fallen on Wednesday, we were making up the slack by celebrating three days late with a bouquet of white hydrangeas and orange blossoms, and Puck’s gift to her, which he carefully wrapped in a soft fuzzy green blanket before departure. Once he had found the Native-American-print serving tray, he removed the handles [somehow, I’m not sure how], and washed it several times a day throughout the week, carefully and throughly. The result was a well-received fruit receptacle now sprawling with oranges, grapes, and bananas. Puck had done well.

Gloria also served breakfast. With the craziness of new clients, out-of-state meetings, house remodeling, etc., she somehow still managed to fit in plates of fried eggs, bacon, and biscuits with seedless raspberry jam, around decorating the living room. Mom and Carrie had also contributed two spiky green plants for an additional birthday gift.

While we spent an hour at the park with Puck, Gloria was taking care of important documents at the office, and Theodore had just returned with a load of lumber in the Audi. So The Bear sliced Brussels sprouts and butter into a pan on the stove for lunch. Sometime within these hours, Carrie joined Gloria for more shopping, noting on the side that Dad had signed up Joe and herself for flying lessons. The full extent of details can never fully be gathered until our weekly Sunday reunion. And The Bear disappeared someplace deep downtown with Theodore while I worked out the kinks of a baby headache that was slowly becoming an adolescent, with Puck at the house and forced a few more glasses of water on him. I think he gets that forgetting to drink water thing from two of his aunts, and an uncle.

I worked out my headache over a fish sandwich. Who knew that shy little six year-old girl who silently brushed all condiments off sandwiches would one day come to accept tartar sauce. And The Bear and I chilled over some light comedy, maybe a little Tina Fey… and learned that Hostess had declared bankruptcy. So many boxes of sad little cakes. What else can you say after another week in a drab November, where nothing is new and interesting, and everything is new and interesting.