It’s a typical Sunday lunch at Pink Moss.
We all walk in from church, starving. Paper plates are being chucked on the table. Someone is carving their name into theirs with their plastic fork that makes a hideous, eye squeezing sound.
A cup of water spills. Dishes are being unloaded and the floor swept, as dinner, thanks to Mrs. Stouffers, is being served. A bowl of green beans here, a salad there, and some corn over there.
Usually not all of the members of the clan actually make it to the eating part. One by one, they fall by the way side, because they are fighting and sent to their room. Funny how it is shocking to them, every time. The people that decide they can’t make it to the bathroom to fart or burp, have to sit on the stairs for fifteen minutes – while the rest of us get to eat our whole piece of defrosted frozen lasagna, in peace.
It’s customary to review the day with each other. It’s called our “best, funniest, or worst”. We take turns sharing stories with each other. Over the years, we have come out with some really great experiences, that I believe would be otherwise somewhere in the past, forgotten forever. If it’s an especially good share, it makes it into our dinner book. Yes, I pull out a pen and journal that is kept right there in the kitchen, and write it down.
Best, funniest, and worst table conversations, happen every night we are good enough to sit everyone down at the same time. Sunday’s take a bit longer, because we share what each of us learned at church that day, assuming we must have learned something – somehow – even if it was that “so and so never listens” or “Brother so and so looks like ‘this’ kind of animal”.
This is how today’s talk went.
Halle: Mama, we talked about Jesus, and sheep – ya sheep – and I think some of the sheep were
*she’s cut off, and glares at everyone at the table* ya well, the sheep, I think for some reason they might have been lost, and they needed to look *again, someone interrupts* she stops and stars down everyone, with that death stare all my kids get when they are interrupted, which is an uncountable number of times every. single. day.
This goes on and on, for longer than I’d like to admit, so I change the subject.
Janae: Halle, did you have fun in your class today?
Halle: Yes, I liked my class because we got to go outside, and look for a sheep. Just the puzzle kind you know, but it was so fun.
Janae: Good! That is so great you got to go outside, I’m jealous.
Halle: But mama, why do you keep taking me to the wrong Sunday school classroom, EVERY time since January? They have to take me somewhere else when you leave.
Janae: You are saying, I’m taking you to the wrong class? Why don’t they tell me when they see me, and smile as you walk in – without saying anything?
Halle: Well, I think my teachers aren’t a little bit confused, I think you are.
Janae: Silence
That will teach me to be so helpful, and walk her to class every day.