The Round Table

“So what does Yali like to eat least?” Mom asked.

We were all sitting around the dinner table with plates of Mexican lasagna. Yali was going to town on that lasagna.

“Fruits and veg,” I answered.

“I love them!” Puck announced, chowing down on a plate that resembled more a forest than anything else.

He wasn’t a fan of lasagna. Neither was Francis.

“Well,” Francis nodded to the buffet spread in the kitchen, “there’s bread out there too, Puck. That’s basically a vegetable.”

It was a very mild – extraordinarily mild – August afternoon, cool enough to wear pants, cool enough to sit in the sunshine on the driveway and still not feel warmed through.

Inside, the game was on: Michael Wacha pitching in San Diego. Mom and Dad were napping. Oxbear was repairing his Bible with glue and ribbons. Joe and Jaya weren’t over yet with their laundry. Rose had plans to play board games with Annamaria and Thunderbird that evening. Francis was letting Yali bounce up and down on his stomach. Irish was at the coffee house – again. And Puck was at his second birthday party that weekend in St. Peters, involving a pool.

Meanwhile, Yali was having very little trouble entertaining the troops. All he had to do was slip a baseball cap on his head and start dancing with a big chubby dimpled grin on his face. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, Rose was receiving an inspiration. Two, actually.

The first: “I’m going to buy Yali a conga drum. Do you mind?”

I didn’t.

“He’ll be like Ricky Ricardo.” She whipped out her phone. Two minutes later. “Ordered. He’ll look so cute.”

“You should get Puck one of those African thumb pianos so they can play together,” Carrie suggested.

Rose’s second inspiration: “I’m going to buy your old truck, Oxbear.”

There were protests heard around the room.

“Rose, you can’t buy a truck. That’s not very feminine.”

“But then I can haul stuff around.”

“You need to get a man to do that work for you.”

“I don’t need a man! I can do that myself!”

No deal was struck. Not that afternoon anyway.

“Aw, man, I shouldn’t have bought Yali a conga drum. I should have got him bongos instead!”