table talk

Before it got too cold to dine on the back patio, we had most meals around the iron table.  Once Andy hung a strand of bulbs, we plugged them in when we went out.  Good lighting can make anything feel like a party, and the boys picked up on that pretty fast.  The first night with new lights Tucker proclaimed a simple meal a meatbulb party, and after that we had pizza parties and dance parties, leaf-raking parties and football-tossing parties.  I hope that as they grow the boys continue to grasp opportunities to reframe ordinary.

We're settling in to an indoor routine now, but our meals remain festive.  Tonight at dinner, in the dining room, Tuck said, You know Mom, these meatbulbs remind me of Mars. They’re shaped the same, and the meatballs are red like the planet.  And they're hot, too.  I can't remember if Mars is hot?  I'd like to go there and see.
At the same time, Tollie was hiding chunks of cheddar cheese under his dish.  Alligator no eat meem cheese.  Hide cheese.  I asked him where the alligator was.  Oh.  Alligator all gone.  He kept shoving pale orange cubes under the rim of the plate.  Fox no eat meem cheese.
They are a shifting alliance of talker and listener, performer and audience.

I realize I write these things that make it sound like the boys play with their food all day long.  

And they do, sometimes, but most of the time they eat it, too.  

Hearing Tuck ruminate over red sauce, I wondered whether all of the boys' imaginings and analogies around the table will someday spill into bigger stories, the ones they walk and the ones they write and the ones they tell.  Tollie ought to outgrow his tendency to personify produce, and Tuck's got a long way to go before he'll keep an entire room rapt with his joke-telling skills.  But I do hope both boys hang on to the inclination to clink milk cups and to make marinara less mundane.  And I'm pretty optimistic about being welcome at their tables when they're grown.  I can't wait to hear what they'll be talking about.