Tables

Breaking bread is a profound thing. It has always made sense to me that Jesus broke bread so often with those to whom he wished to show love, and that he chose supper as the foundation of his final demonstration of sacrifice before the crucifixion. Eating is primal, necessary. And eating communally, passing plates, noisily pulling chairs up to table corners, dropping silverware, slurping soup, pouring wine,...it feels no less necessary to me. Everybody eats mac and cheese solo over the sink at some point. But passing a dish down a table of loved ones feeds us more deeply, nourishing the connections that make life sweeter. 

In the process of planning a dinner party for tonight, I thumbed through some recently unpacked cookbooks. Inside Charleston Receipts, I'd tucked last year's Thanksgiving shopping list, written in my Uncle's handwriting, as he provided the shopping directions for a meal he'd shepherd from the couch, chemo exhaustion coming in waves. The bulk of the list is his, but there are small lists elsewhere on the page in my hand, my mother's, my dad's. Dad reminded me to get ice. I reminded myself to get squash. Mom covered everything we'd forgotten. 

We've made lots of grocery lists as a family. Dad makes an impressive one every year we go to Roan Mountain. And I remember a few Thanksgivings in Little Rock, barreling through Kroger for one forgotten item hours before the store closed.  But I kept this particular list because my uncle was sick, and because it was his handwriting, and because we both love to cook. And I'm sure I tucked it into Charleston Receipts because it was a gift from him.  It will be there forever, proof of one meal, one table, one happy mess in the midst of what still feels like a tenuous, if hopeful, battle. 

Tonight is just happiness. Just inviting my friends to see my new home, taste test three new soup recipes, drink too much wine, and wish me a happy birthday in the process. It's just warmth and the smell of butter and onions. Each of my friends are treasures, and of each I'm aware of large and small heartaches. Breakups, job shuffles, illness, family deaths, depression, anxiety, loneliness, boredom. And each of them, at some point, has known of the same for me. Tables seem to lessen the acuteness of those hurts, if momentarily. The lists in loving hands, the old cookbooks, the cake baked in a friend's kitchen, the help chopping potatoes,...it all feels like an echo of what Christ demonstrated to us. To carry each other however we are able, to feed whoever is hungry, to welcome all, to love in the simplest ways, to break bread and give thanks.