dining room narrative
When we lived in Alameda, our dining room was the center of everything, nestled on our ‘cozy’ first floor, serving as the connector between the living room and kitchen. Because the kitchen was too ‘cozy’ for a table, the dining room was where we ate all meals, big or small, formal or informal. It as also the multipurpose room - while still being our dining room it also functioned as a music / guitar storage site, baby changing station (no joke.. in the dining room), a kids play kitchen, toy storage and play room, craft room, homework hub, and so on. The dining room was always busy, usually cluttered, rarely relaxing, but the heart of the home. The two occasions when we ate elsewhere included: a) Thursday night burritos in front of the TV, often to Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin, or some other kids’ science show that Bart picked and the kids whined about before watching, enthralled, and b) hosted sporting & screen events, such as basketball, football, olympics, election returns, and movies.
When we moved to Lexington, our house was selected because of its proximity to town, its delightful book nooks, and the amazing feature of his and her home offices. This was important because at the time we were both working from our home. Bart had man cave office on the third floor, complete with dark wood, too many book shelves, and room for a comfy reading chair. I was drawn to a bright, windowful office on the second floor that overlooked the trees and the backyard.
The unintended delight of this new home was a dedicated dining room, nothing very big, but not in the main walking flow of the house. We declared the diningroom to be a clutter free zone, where homework and projects, mail and bills were not allowed to accumulate. As we began eating dinner in the grownup dining room, it quickly became my favorite spot in the house. It was delightful and calming to be separate from the stress and bustle. I found myself lingering at the table after meals, hesitant to get up after dinner was over to return to ‘busy.’ If you have had a meal at our house you may have joined us in this special space… almost a sacred family zone.
As B began having more trouble with eating and pain, he found himself in the living room more and more with meals. After his health crisis in July, he was eating at first only thin liquids, eventually expanding to purees, and briefly after another procedures, including some soft solids. Eating in the dining room became harder. I tried to find meals where we could overlap or share some part of the dinner, but it also became a difficult reminder of loss. Over time we began eating in the kitchen and living room more, often joining B for a show while we ate, distracted from noticing what he was or wasn’t eating.
When B could no longer walk up stairs, the dining room became a hospital room, with a loud inflating hospital bed, medications, pillows, indicators of illness as well as indicators of life such as books and glasses.
One of the first steps of returning to normal after B had passed was to reassemble our dining room. But furniture a room does not make. After months of meals on the go, with the kids at other peoples’ houses, with us at appointments or rotating through the hospital, or eating meals with dad in the living room, our routines were gone. Shortly into the New Year I stopped one of the kids walking into the living room with a bagel just before our usual dinner time; there was no expectation of a sit-down dinner in the dining room. It was a jolt to realize how our family routines would not automatically return, but needed to be willed back into place.
This is a long way of saying that, although I’m still not cooking the way I used to, each night now, without thought or complaint, the kids and I sit down to dinner in the dining room. The three of us. We still have a long road ahead, and we still miss the empty seat, but we are a step closer to the normal we hope to be.
Where is your favorite place to eat?