The Day the Stars Came to Dinner

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Mia who felt like today should be special. It was a day for her family to celebrate, but she didn’t know how. As she held her chin in the palm of her hand and thought, she heard a soft sound. It was her little brother saying, “Can I help you think of something to do?”

Mia smiled and said, “Yes, please, would you try to come up with a way to make our family dinner extra-special tonight?”

Her little brother thought about it and said, “How about some cool lightning or a bright star to record everything we’re going to talk about?”

While Mia considered this, her little sister came in doing a funny dance. “Isn’t it time to fix a delicious dinner?” she laughed.

“Yes, that could be something special for today,” Mia answered. “But what kind of dinner can we have? Nothing feels special enough today.”

Mia’s mother came into the room, and Mia shared her idea with her. “Goodness me,” said Mum, “I didn’t know we had any special things today. What do you mean?”

“It is fun to just sit quietly with one of your family and think about what you ought to make for dinner, isn’t it, Mummy?” Mia asked.

“It is indeed,” her mother said. Then she thought and thought and smiled. “Would you like mushroom soup, my darlings? It is just boiling on the stove. And this dish of lovely cake, I think you might very much like, too.”

“Ooh!” said Mia, looking where her mother pointed. “But do we get something extra-special to drink with it? I have an idea! Let us have real lemonade! But hmmm… Are we drinking lemonade to keep the dinner special, or will it have a very, very special taste and make us feel a bit funny perhaps, before we go to bed?”

“Oh no,” smiled her mother, “only real lemonade. In fact, I don’t know of anything special that we just cannot have tonight.”

Mia jumped up and clapped her hands. “That is decided then. We WILL have a special family dinner tonight.”

With that, they set to work. The mushroom soup was delicious. And after they had nearly finished, and the table was not hoping for very much longer, a nice dish of dreamy rice pudding and strawberries were brought in.

Still, Messengers of Mars did not come to have a chat, nor did one appear on the moon-house. Then Mum had another little dish of jelly brought in, and suddenly they all thought they saw the jelly quiver in a funny way.

“What is that?” the baby sister cried out.

At that moment another jelly dish was suddenly dropped on the table a whole foot away from where it had been put down. The moon-houses and the messengers quivered and jumped as if the whole earth were laughing.

More jellies and more stars then came tumbling in until they filled every cup and saucer, and holding up his drippy jelly-hand, the little brother shouted, “But how on earth did they know we were going to have this for dinner?”

Then, with red-hot meteors running all over his arms and hands, Dad stood at the door with a still bigger star and a dish full of sunshine that had a marvelous way of making even the soup a bit salty and shining. All the stars at once sang proudly together. It was delightful soft music from nowhere, though Dad said later on that it was made by different colored fires placed on the stars in exact patterns.

Jennifer, her little sister, climbed onto the table. “Now we ARE having a real family dinner,” she sang, waving her yellow hand in time to the lovely starry music.

They had meant to shake hands when their soup was done, but by that time, the stars could only jump up and down, holding out either a jelly-hand, a sunshine-hold right hand or a double-fisted towel in three different colors. It was nearly a quarter before ten and they never thought of the time until the breakfast-tidy was passed and nearly one of two apples was on the towel.

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