Food and fellowship

Meals have always had an unspoken sacredness to me.

By that, I don’t mean that my family approached them with a sort of “saintly” reverence. I mean, The Simpsons were frequently fighting in the background (much to the dismay of my Mom). Food was sampled off of other plates. We’d get up to answer the phone.

I’m sure much of my appreciation has to do with the fact I practically grew up in restaurants. My Mom comes from a restaurant family (my Grandpa started the Midwest franchise of Village Inn). All of my cousins, aunts & uncles have navigated serving platters through a packed restaurant during a rush. I dropped more than a few cups of ranch dressing on a customer once. After he’d finished eating and was on his way back to work. I wrote a note to his supervisor that apologized for his impending tardiness (due to a salad-dressing soaked uniform).

Outside of our professional travails (which is some ways makes you hate people who can’t appreciate all the effort put into a meal), there’s the unspoken marriage between big family meals and my Catholic upbringing. So many of these sacramental celebrations (communion, confirmation, weddings etc.) are treated with equal parts spiritual respect and familial reverie. We’d drive over to Lincoln (3 hours from Des Moines) basically to sit in church and then…eat. It was more or less accepted that any good meal took a few hours to prepare, so chip and veggie trays were in abundance. Grazing was key.

After years of attending these sacred feasts, I’m faced with an interesting scenario: How do I create them on my own without that family with who’s presence they are synonymous?

Now, my parents are 5 hours away. My brother is in the same town, but our schedules are opposite. My cousins and grandparents can’t “just get together” for birthdays when we’re separated by state lines. Although there is a new generation of great-grandchildren in the wings they are not ready for sacramental gatherings yet.

But community can be passed through blood lines or forged through who we choose to bleed with.

I find myself blessed with a new community to break bread with.

When I think about it too much, I’m flabbergasted by how perfect our imperfect allegiance has become.

We are family. Our laughter bubbles up out of joy. When a friend got a new job she so desperately needed and deserved, we confirmed her over dinner. We created a new sacrament to celebrate.

We know how to properly celebrate a birthday. We go to great places for dinner. (You know, those places where it’s better to not think about how much you’re gonna spend.) When we’re out we sit like hooligans at a country club. It reminds me of the Langston Hughes poem “We Real Cool.” I thought about that at Tasso’s a few weeks ago, “We real cool, we skip school, we lurk late…”

Sometimes when we go out like that, I feel like a 9 year old girl playing dress up – not quite out of place, but dreamy and content as time stands still around us.

These feasts are even more beautiful when they’re impromptu home gatherings.

Some of my happiest moments are when I get the urge to host a few friends for dinner. It becomes this beautiful ritual that blossoms out of a seemingly normal day: I’ll get up and grab coffee and steal off to the farmers market. Walking the rows of tomatoes, corn, strawberries and apples, my heart stirs. In my mind, I imagine the chopping, rinsing and organizing to come. Before I know it, I have five people crammed around my coffee table, on the floor and loveseat, breaking bread and having church.

It is a new season of sacredness. A new type of banquet.