I had a small dinner party last night. It was just my big guy, my mom and a couple from church. She and I have much in common, we’re both RN’s and we both keep and ride horses.
I spent the usual amount of time cleaning, baking, planning the meal. I usually make bread for a meal with guests and it takes all day to make my challah. And I try to keep the menu simple, meat, potato, vegetable, bread and light dessert with coffee, tea. Last night it was chicken baked with parmesan, baked potatoes, my canned green beans, challah, sugar-free cherry jello with homemade whipped cream. Every one loves that menu and it’s easy. (except the bread).
We ate soon after our dear friends arrived. We had a lot to catch up on since we hadn’t seen them for a long while. After some great dinner conversation and after the desert was served and coffee and tea were poured, mom excused herself to return to her suite. At 92 she gets real tired after an hour and really deserves her rest.
I began clearing the dining table, putting food away, cleaning up and stacking the dish washer. My friend came to the kitchen with me and began to copy the challah recipe I gave her and we talked. It was interesting talk: her patients and problems as an RN in home care. I shared some of my past experience in hospital psychiatry, cardiology. My big guy and her husband remained in the dining room to talk and I brought them coffee a few times. We usually all convene together, the men and the women after dinner, in the kitchen or the living room. But this time, with this couple we stayed segregated all evening, women in the kitchen, men in the dining room. It was different.
Got me to thinking how married people grow to become alike. It’s probably necessary for survival in a marriage. We each must give up some independence and desires of our own to become that ‘one flesh’. Some people say married couples eventually look like one another. That makes me laugh. Not sure that happens but I think tastes, opinions, interests, begin to meld in 2 people who love each other and have committed to remain together for life. And in that one of many ways the 2 become 1. My big guy and I always loved that we had each other; we always had one person on this earth that was on ‘my side’ in any situation. We always said it was “You and Me against the world”. I think that’s a song!
tannngl 