On Saturday Huck checked out a 300 plus page book at the library and spent the afternoon reading all of it. Since February is Book Hogs Month and we have to record all the minutes spent reading, I happen to know he read for five hours and 15 minutes on February 21st, a fact that made him giggle himself to sleep.  This was a break from his normal self-imposed rigid book-reading routine.  He usually starts each day at 6AM, reaching over and taking the bottom book from a pile of six on his desk. That becomes the book he reads for the day, even if yesterday’s book ended on a cliffhanger.  He reads in bed for a full hour, and then comes downstairs for breakfast where he continues reading. Sometimes he’ll stop to describe in detail something that just happened in his book, always something about mythology and wizards and prophesies and punishments. I nod and say affirmative things.  When we leave for our five minute drive to school, he reads in the back seat, and he continues that little reading session at the end of the school day. And when he climbs into bed for the night, he reads for one last half hour and then puts that book on the top of the pile, not to be read again for six more days.  As if that’s not enough discipline for an almost 10 year old, Troy and Huck are keeping track of their daily pushups, which means there’s lots of competitive talk regarding how many pushups they’ve done, at any moment one or both of them may drop to the ground and begin grunting without warning, and there’s some kind of Excel spreadsheet that Huck likes to check occasionally.

But father and son do have their differences.  While Huck has been letting his hair grow like crazy, Troy went and shaved his off on Saturday for the two-man play “Red,” which opens at Crystal Bridges Art Museum tomorrow, coinciding with a new Rothko exhibit as well as the 45th anniversary of his suicide to the day.  Along with changing his appearance, over the past few months he has read (or at least looked at) nearly every single oversized book ever written about Mark Rothko, filling our living room floor and dining room table, making Huck’s pile seem like nothing.  To prepare to play the 55 year old artist, he’s also let his extremely grey beard, my arch nemesis, grow out.  I am now the proud wife of a 60 year old looking man, who the other day was stopped by a 70 year old man worried Troy would slip on the ice and break his hip.  I think he has succeeded in making the world forget he’s in his mid-40s.  All this for two performances.  That’s m’hubby.

I hope you all see what I have to deal with around here: two sweet little goobers committed to their hair and their books and their art and their exercise and their lady, constantly interrupting their important work to help me with the dullest of tasks in order not to put too much strain on my healing ear, which is doing just fine, thank you, and we’ll know whether or not the surgery worked and whether or not my hearing has improved right around April 11th when all of the protective packing has dissolved somewhere in my head that the two of them lovingly pet and care for everyday.

I guess I’ll keep them.

Click here to get your tickets for “Red” on Wednesday, Feb. 25 and Friday, Feb. 27:

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More on the Rothko exhibit:

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