So, on
Friday night we had our annual cousins’ sleepover. That’s a big deal around here. Cailyn sees Jachin and Micah and Josiah and
Noa on occasion, since they live in LaMarque.
In fact they went to the library and then the Castle Park Playground
just yesterday. But at Thanksgiving Zak
and Caleb and Luke come down from Waco, and now that Luke has developed some
degree of efficiency with his toddling, all eight of them are running around at
the same time, with decibel levels changing constantly.
After
having some form of turkey on Thursday and through Friday lunch, we were all
ready for a Friday evening fish fry.
That’s Zak’s request, by the way.
You just can’t get good speckled trout in Waco. After the fish, the kids get really
anxious. For what, you may ask? For their parents to disappear so the real
fun can begin. Of course now that they
are old enough, the first item on the agenda is a pillow fight. They could quite wait for Moms and Dads to
head for the Black Friday sales though.
As a result the fight was drastically curtailed, and oft-punctuated with
a well-timed parental, “Not too hard” or “Watch out for … too late.” Our motto in those occasions has been the
same for as long as we have had children (particularly boys) running around here:
“If you’re gonna play rough, you gotta be tough.” Sadly, all wild and wacky fun times
eventually must end, and the time came for the sleeping bags to be unfurled and
the popcorn to be popped and the movie to begin. Kind of difficult to get everyone’s attention,
you think? Not with highly trained
teachers in our midst. This year it was
Aunt Christi who stepped up. Her
announcement preface won my PaPoCo Award this year (Parental Positive
Communication). It was certainly a
classic: “Attention Vaughan Boys and Princesses …”
Saturday
morning, after the donut man and his two apprentices (Micah and Zak) returned
with breakfast, outside play began again.
This time Zak and Micah removed their shirts and for some reason stuffed
a large lily leaf into the front of their pants. Very strange from a parental/grandparental
perspective, but obviously quite the norm in their world. Finally, Nani just couldn’t stand the
suspense. She had to ask. And from behind their controlled looks of
amusement (Ha. We pulled one over on the
parental units), and heads that slowly moved from side to side in – what was
that look? Pity? – they reluctantly
agreed to let her into their realm for the “briefest” of moments. See … the lily leaf was … well, it was their
loincloth. They were Indians, of course. It quickly became apparent that there was a
battle of historic proportions going on, and it would be better if we simply
stayed out of the way. More evidence of
the intensity of the struggle came later when Caleb stuck his head inside the
back door. Seems they had lost track of
the enemy – in this case Cousin Jachin. So
was this to be a silent, mysterious mission to locate said foe? Nay.
Not with Caleb. For that would
show no courage. One must call out the
enemy, demand his presence on the honorable field of battle. His challenge was epic … the stuff of legend …
the tiny bit of spoken history memorized for centuries to come by schoolchildren
and retooled by countless future coaches in pregame challenges to fire up their
teams. From that diminutive,
five-almost-six-year-old Caleb-body came this thundering cry of defiance: “You
better come outside right now. This is a
challenge to your people and even to your dignity.”
Psalms
25:21 says, “May integrity and
uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.
Father,
thank you that our dignity is wrapped up in our relationship with you. You can handle any challenge that comes our
way. Even one as frightening as Caleb’s. Amen.
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