magical reunion

April 25, 2011 column
By Friday evening the last of our family converged for a mini-reunion in Branson, Mo. interrupting my evening of watching the youngest four grandchildren. In a flurry of activity, parents introduced their children to their great aunts and uncles, “This is Aunt Karen, Uncle Frank, Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Robin,” their daddy said. The adults smiled at each child. Uncle Robin gave his elfish grin and playfully teased the children a bit before we rushed out the door to a late night supper.
The next morning, the three-year-old came out of her bedroom, looked around and asked “Where’s Uncle Birdie?” She knew the playmate she wanted for the morning.
Uncle Birdie and the rest of the retired parents gathered for lunch and visiting. The weekend activity list included getting acquainted, catching up on family news, going to the Noah’s Ark Show at the Sight and Sound Theater, visiting, recalling childhood incidents and just talking around the table at the restaurant or at the breakfast bar in our room.
While the parents put babies down for naps or bedtime, the grandparents, great aunts and great uncles went out to eat at McFarland’s Restaurant. Having eaten there before, I rushed ahead of everyone hoping to snag one of the magical tables.
By the time they caught up with me, I directed them to our reserved table. My husband looked and grinned, “We have a magical table,” he said.
Our guests looked at him.
“The table goes up and down as you eat,” he said. In the past we watched it rise until the adults looked like they need booster seats. We seated ourselves and studied our menus, checking the table every couple minutes.
Uncle Birdie immediately hit it off with the waitress as he asked about the dishes, joshing her about the others who needed a bit more time to study the menu, “Could you come back later? so he can read everything on the menu.”
I knew we needed one item for sure: McFarland’s delicious, honey cornbread. One piece is really enough for two or three people, but who cares. It is delicious, especially with a lathering of fresh butter.
The waitress brought a blue porcelain plate of cornbread. Passing the dish around homestyle, we talked, we spread butter and we ate.
I checked the table height. Hard to tell if it had gone up any.
“It doesn’t look any higher,” I told the rest.
Then we forgot about the magical table and simply enjoyed the good food, good conversation and our spouses’s version of their shared childhood. We talked until we suddenly realized we could just about shove the food straight into our mouths from the plates.
The waitress who had stopped by to refresh water and share jokes with Uncle Birdie arrived with a handful of certificates. “This is a certificate that says you ate at one of our magical tables. As I am sure you have noticed it has gone up. The only way that it will go down is if you sing to it.”
We laughed. We thought she was joking.
“Yes, you all need to stand up and sing ‘You are my Sunshine,’” she instructed us.
We looked at her in disbelief. She never blinked.
So the dignified retired school teacher, the favorite neighborhood babysitter, the Hospice chaplain, retired caterer, retired quality assurance manager and this serious news reporter, all stood up and cheerfully, if a bit reluctantly sang, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are blue. You’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
We laughed at how silly we looked and sat down.
The table did not move.
“It takes as long to go down as it took to go up,” the waitress belatedly informed us. We groaned and slid more food straight into our mouth.
A while later, across the room we noticed the other magical table had hit its peak. Their waitress showed up with their magical table certificates … and left.
“Look, their table is up. They received their certificates, but they did not have to sing,” I pointed out to the troops at our table. We flagged our waitress.
“Hey, they are sitting at a magical table and they did not have to sing,” we protested.
She looked at us, “Well you didn’t have to sing. You could have said ‘no’.”
Uncle Birdie laughed. We shook our heads in disbelief and we left her a nice tip anyway.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)