The Meeting of the Minds

Yali sat in a miserable heap in the middle of the living room floor in his red super hero cape, sobbing. His little brown face wrinkled in all the natural drama his wordless melancholy could conjure.

And yet I was unmoved.

After some prolonged tears, however, Puck decided it was time to intervene. “Yali, if you get your way all the time, you will grow up to be a bad man, okay?”

I’m guessing he’ll make a pretty decent dad some day.

Yali and I were home for the rest of the morning. In anticipation of getting the house ready to sell, the summer was already going to be its own kind of busy, so I was slowly removing and boxing whatever I had the time – and boxes – to get done.

Of course the pace of any chore slows down to molasses when your two year-old shouts at you every few seconds – “MA! MA! MA! MA! MA!” – until you stop working and watch whatever shenanigan he has planned to perform for you. Most of the time it was just a silly face followed by a huge grin.

Back up at school again around three o’clock. Twice, sometimes three times, a day. A move closer towards the old city was looking pretty welcoming.

So under more cool sunshine, the kids ran out their last dregs of energy on the playground after carpool. Between Yali-carrying sessions, Heidi sat on the picnic table next to me and asked questions that could only be phrased that perfectly by a 3rd grader:

“So how much was Yali?”

“So what kind of murders are there down in Colombia?”

If only the rest of the world was so to-the-point.

A little while later when Hans walked out to bring Heidi home for the evening, Puck and Heidi were involved in a very important debate around the monkey bars.

“Flubber is like fat.”

“No, flubber is like muscle.”

“No, flubber is just fat.”

“Flubber becomes muscle when you’re older.”

“If you have flubber, that means you’re fat.”

That’s when Hans cut into the party. “Oh, the meeting of the minds! Let’s go, Heidi!”