Tabling the Discussion

My lifelong struggle to clear a place to eat

2:30am and almost finished

I faked a real good dining room game for many years. We tried to make a point of having the kids around the table at least at dinnertime, no phones, all eye contact and talk of our day. Sometimes now, with just the two of us, I go buy flowers, put them in a vase, and set cups and silverware with determined purpose on a surface I just cleared of a fiscal quarter’s worth of medical bills and yard sale debris.

I never ask, because sometimes you’d rather not know, but I’m guessing my wife’s internal monologue is something along the lines of “great, we’re doing this again.” It’s not like it’s an unpleasant experience, or that we don’t have enough fodder from our workdays to talk about, but once you get used to eating meals at your desk, or in a big comfy easy chair with a British mystery series streaming, it’s easy to wonder why we’ve got this puritanical urge to re-enact the nuclear family supper of a 1950s daydream.