the dinner table.

Sometimes when we eat dinner together we do it a crowded dining room table.

A table no one has seen fit to clean before our meal.

A table that looks more like the beginnings of a yard sale than the location of a pleasant group dining experience.

Have you ever eaten at a table like this?

You find yourself pushing aside a roll of toilet paper and a stack of library books and two glow sticks, a matchbox car and a bill that you thought you’d misplaced.

That’s what dinner looks likes sometimes at our house.

And by dinner I mean – a bowl of cereal for one kid, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for another, the last of Kevin’s famous salsa for one person and two slices of toast for another.

Do your dinners ever look like this?

Do you have to swipe aside a sock hat, even though it’s spring, and move a doll out of your seat and wonder why you notice cake crumbs near your plate when you’re pretty certain the last time cake was served was at least two days ago?

Sometimes dinner is artful and inspired.  Sometimes it’s pretty and well-delivered. Sometimes it’s tuna with a side of carrot sticks served amid stacks of school supplies and wilted wildflowers a week past their prime.

We’ve done both at this house.

We will keeping serving up a happy mixture of each, I imagine. I kind of like it that way.

The nights when guests join us and an extra effort is put forth to locate sort of matching dishes. The evenings when friends share our table and we laugh over simple spaghetti and home baked brownies. The afternoons when Monopoly money and the neighbors next door and popcorn kernels litter the table’s lengthy expanse and no one feels compelled to clear it of its afternoon bounty before dinner time arrives.

 I like it all.

It’s what a dinner table was made for.