What Gets Done in a Day
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Puck lounged on the kitchen floor by the basement door with a powder blue book in excellent condition – dated 1910. One more of his treasures. He paraded the open pages delicately in front of Madeline…
“This book’s not about you, alright? You don’t need to know anyway. Madeline, see the cover? Madeline? It’s not about you. So just don’t think about you.”
A few minutes later, he was in trouble with OLeif…
“Stand in the corner by the trash can, Puck,” he ordered.
“Well, Dad! The trash stinks!”
“So does sin. Now, stand there.”
As the morning hoped for rain, Puck – rescued from wayward ways – sipped hot water with lemon between lessons and watching an episode of Mr. Rogers, afterwhich he joined the cat on the floor… again.
“Mama? Could you get Madeline a comb? Her hair is showing. That’s embarrassing.”
As a crest of storms stretched across the radar – which never quite arrived – noon to three sent Collette and Puck to the square of couches in the basement.
While the hot-day game commenced, Puck drew long hairy aliens with spindly arms and bunches of eyeballs stitched like beads straight across the square head on sheets of notepaper torn from Collette’s book. When he wasn’t doing that, he was enjoying ballpark snacks in the form of cocoa and popcorn – the first batch he spilled immediately all over the floor.
Or standing on his head.
He emerged from Quiet Hour for a few unexplained minutes of sluffing around in the kitchen. He walked out with the pepper mill, a piece of dried spaghetti in one hand, another sticking out of his mouth, and the non-stick frying pan filled with water. His eyes got big as soon as he saw Collette…
“No, Mama! I need it for an experi-ent!”
His largest experiment and triumph of the week, however, resulted in Madeline finally sitting in his lap on the couch as an established cat-friend.
“You were so patient, bud. I’m proud of you,” Collette told him.
“Yeah,” Puck replied with a big grin.
Meanwhile, OLeif had lifted himself off to work with a sore throat early that morning.
But it didn’t stop him from a full day of work, a youth retreat meeting in Kirkwood at one, and the usual Bible study/pizza.
Pretty quiet day.
But like any quiet day, there was always work to do. Moms were still cooks, janitors, disciplinarians, caretakers, entertainers, chauffeurs, counselors, accountants, life coaches, spiritual guides, health instructors, personal assistants, calendar coordinators, and – in Collette’s on rite – mild entrepreneurs.
So, yeah – quiet days were still busy days.