Cheers for Cousins

Tonight, the night after Christmas, we reached another milestone: Kiernan's first seat at The Kids' Table.

Before I proceed, let us all just take a moment to consider personal history. When was the last time you really thought about The Kids' Table? As I loaded the pictures and worked the ideas for this post, I thought hard about it for the first time in a very long time. Tried to dredge up a few memories. Tried to nail down an overall impression from memory. It's interesting. I'm not going to expound upon all that I recall, but let's just say that I find it interesting how ambivalent I feel about the whole issue of The Kids' Table as I examine it in memory.

All that said, tonight was Kiernan's first time being seated at the smaller table reserved for the children while the adults ate at a nearby, bigger table. We are visiting Wendy's family in Arizona, as is clear from the last few posts. My sister-in-law Amy is also here, of course. Today Kiernan's cousins joined us as Rance's son, Thorsten, drove here with his wife Ceci and their kids, Kelsey, Thorstencito, Brandon, and Sebastian.

Kiernan was so excited about the arrival of his cousins. After his nap, he wanted to immediately go outside to play tee-ball (Gammy and Grance gifted him with a tee-ball set for Christmas). When it proved too windy and cold to play that, he wanted to go back inside, at which point he realized that the real reason he'd wanted to be outside, out in front of the house, was to wait for the arrival of his cousins. So he got Grance to head right back outside with him so he could be there, in front of the house, when his cousins arrived.

The ensuing hours were spent running. And running. And running. Here's a picture from after dinner:


This picture, as I said, is from right after dinner. Dinner itself went off pretty well. Kiernan comported himself fairly well, considering this was his first time at The Kids' Table. To be sure, he was his usual finicky self when it comes to eating. He's the second pickiest eater I know. But overall the experiment worked out. I think if we had to vote, those at the table of the adults would have chosen as their favorite Kids' Table Moment the moment of the toast. We had just all, finally, become seated. We naturally launched into a toast. As we drank our toast we heard, from The Kids' Table in the kitchen, "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!" We looked over to see the four boys raising their plastic cups of milk in a toast. The four-year-old holding forth with impressive gusto. It was, I think I will say, an iconic moment.

After the boys were all excused from their table, they started running laps. I'm not kidding. Before dinner the running was all crazy and chaotic, rolly polly and pell mell. After dinner the boys took to running around the mid-section of Grance and Gammy's house. They went around. And around. And around. I know there had to be some elaborate ritual, race, or scavenger hunt going on, something discernable only to those under the age of ten, but to us it looked like a mini-sized marathon.

Later Aunt Amy asked Kiernan what his favorite part of the evening of playing with his cousins was. His answer, word for word:

"The running and the running and the running around the house."

Noted, young fella.

Yes, it was a crazy evening. But still kind of beautiful in its wholesale abandon. The above picture kind of pictures it, in that sorry stark way that flash pictures capture moments. The next picture is the same scene, seconds before, without the flash:


Not as clear. Not perfect. But it pretty much captures how I will remember this night. This night with a house full of the gleeful laughter and screams of kids and the barely-able-to-compete din of adults trying to hold onto adult conversations. A blur. I will remember it as a blur.

And that's not because of the wine.