We All Celebrate Somehow
Dream Account
I was involved in a major sort of swampy obstacle course. Freija Toast and Samantha Bee were there.
Running out of a shopping mall through the back halls with The Bear and Puck, passing a few homeless people sleeping in corners of the shipping docks. We ran out into the early gray evening, carrying two clear plastic bags of gourmet chocolate balls.
The Day, as it Happens
So just before midnight, last night…
SMASH.
Apparently now it’s not just the boys who break things, but the female cat as well. I swept up the water and glass from one of my heavy water glasses before she, helpless feline as was, managed to wedge any stray piece into her soft pads.
I guess it’s the right time of year to own a full beard. While The Bear waited for his chiropractic appointment on lunch break, Tuesday, a young girl stared at him in the waiting room, in a sort of awe.
“Mom!” she whispered loudly. “It’s Santa Clause!”
While I was preparing the morning studies for Puck, he played stories with the manger scene. Mary, unfortunately, was missing both hands, due to some tragic unknown accident over time. Puck narrated…
“…and her baby was God. One day she broke her two hands and then she had to go to the doctor, but there was no doctor in sight. And she soon died, and then Baby Jesus had to feed himself. Then God went up into Heaven…”
Oh boy…
While Puck wasn’t looking, I sneaked the last soft bakery pumpkin cookie from the bag of Schnuck’s deliciousness which The Bear had brought home for me the previous night, late. The solitary gooey butter cookie had already been polished off. [Oh, tasty goodness.] It was my single health-conscious sin of the day. And Puck was busy anyway. I turned around to the sound of too many things brushing the branches of the Christmas tree…
“What’s going on, Puck?”
“I’m playing drop the ornaments down the tree!”
“What?”
“I just drop them down the tree.”
“No, you’re not going to drop ornaments down the tree.”
“Ok. I’ll just drop my toys down the tree…”
“No!”
Sometimes… it’s less about trying to cause trouble. Actually, most of the time it’s not about trying to cause trouble at all. It’s about the cause-and-effect. The experimentation’s the thing.
Puck walked out of his room with the tape measurer extended into the air…
“Look how long my cat is, Mom!”
After I corralled him for a writing lesson, he did an okay job, if it hadn’t been for distracting himself sketching ice cream cone alien robots with mustaches.
While we mixed another batch of corn muffins in the afternoon, Puck sat on the counter [his own small luxury] and explained to me that the “people who take your money at the store” are called beggars. A mom’s explanations are never done.
In a cold evening, Puck and I left for church in the almost-dark. Already the semester was winding down into the last Wednesday rehearsal before the Christmas program. Puck insisted on toting along a lunch box bag stocked with pencils, antique flatware, and an ice chipper…
“It’s my preserve bag, Mom. I have lots of materials in it to do different things.”
Apparently it was also useful for storing edibles…
“I was thinking to myself that I should start stocking food in my room since I’m hungry all the time. I’m a very hungry little man.”
I didn’t hear anything too insane emitting from the children’s choir rehearsing loudly in the sanctuary next to the library where only Dad, Mom, Linnea-Irish, and myself sat in a ring to continue “The Truth Project”. Which meant that, in at least some small part, Puck wasn’t breaking any ear drums. Linnea, on the other hand, might. Well, ear infection. She pressed her right ear between her head and her shoulder during part of the presentation.
Mom and Linnea made a quick dash and change of clothing for Linnea after the lecture for a late evening volleyball practice while Dad and I waited around to chat with Mr. Giraffes about all of his former wild children’s Sunday School classes. Including trucking a crowd of kids over to the donut shop and encouraging the boys to pulverize each other when one of them answered a question incorrectly. Those were the days…
For once, the roles were reversed, and The Bear was the one waiting a return. He flung open the door to a very happy young man, eager to hang out with “Dad” for a few minutes before bed.