One Yellow Plate

My brother Greg is past fifty years old now. I'm older than he, but I'm not telling by how much. Greg remembers 'the yellow plate incident' like it was yesterday. You will want the plate, too, when you hear the story. It happened at one of our big Sunday lunches when we were children. Mom set the table with Melmac, the hot consumer dinnerware item of the 1950's. Public bus seats were made out of it. Kids couldn't break it. You could toss it like a Frisbee. It wouldn't come back. But if it did, you could lose your nose. No cracks in the Melmac, though. Like its now higher brow vintage cousin, Fiestaware, it came in bright colors-coral, lemon, and turquoise.

At this particular lunch, at the place where Greg always sat, was a lemon-colored Melmac plate. Before this day, the yellow plate had no real value in our family. Greg raced to his place with great dispatch and announced loudly, "Ooh, I get yellow today!" We all fixed our gazes on him and searched our brains to assess what this could mean. My sister, Danielle, no slacker as a scorekeeper of our parents' love, grasped the monumental significance of the plate before Anthony, Marc, or I did. Though billed by reputation as indestructible, my mother had managed to burn and shatter all but one yellow Melmac plate. There were still multiples of the blue and red. You could see the horror on my sister's face as she realized that Greg, four years older than she, was given the only yellow plate in the house by Mother. My sister burst into spasmodic sobs, "he has the yellow plate!"

Mother snatched at the most expedient solution and barked, "Greg, switch plates with Danielle." Greg quickly seized control, "No, I want the yellow plate." Mother, wanting lunch to go on as planned, pleaded with Greg to give my sister the plate. Greg said "no" more defiantly this time. He was going down with the plate. Grasping the plate tightly against his chest, Greg decided Danielle should back off. Mother then gave Dad 'the look" we all know so well. It had "make it happen" written all over it. If Mother was the Court of First Instance, Dad was the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. He only stepped in when a grenade was necessary. While he rarely spanked any us, we saw him frequently in a military jeep, dressed in his uniform loaded with World War II and Korean War medals. We all assumed he was capable of barehanded assault on any enemy target. Dad moved to stand over Greg and boomed, "Greg, give your sister the plate." He then snatched the plate from Greg's clutch and planted it in front of Danielle. "The plate goes in this spot." My sister then did something no graceful victor should do. She turned to Greg with an impishly smug smile and waited for a reaction. Greg left the table and, as far as I remember, didn't eat that day.

We all recently gathered on Memorial Day for another Sunday lunch around the same table in my parent's home. This time, Marc, our youngest brother, told a story to the group about a recent trip to the hospital emergency room to be with Mom. My Dad fell unconscious from his chair to the ground at an outdoor barbeque cooked by the Mire Fire Department at their headquarters. After the ride in the fire department ambulance to the hospital, Mother called Greg, now our oldest living brother, to discuss what happened. She wrongly assumed that he would sense her panic and rush from Lafayette to be by her side. He, on the other hand, hearing no urgency in her voice, lay down for an afternoon nap.

My brother Marc, the recipient of the second call, hearing panic mixed with the disgust about Greg in Mother's voice, drove quickly to support her. Recounting this story at our Memorial Day lunch, Marc ended with self-satisfaction by saying, "After this, I'll probably get the keys to the safety deposit box." Greg fired back losing no time, "I already have it." Then he dangled the little gold key in front of us all. My sister Danielle, now registering the same expression Greg wore on the day he lost the yellow plate, sputtered in disbelief," I didn't know. I didn't even know there was a safety deposit box!" Later, from her home in Florida, she mailed Greg the yellow plate. Some people know when they've lost a war.