Our dining
room table is longer than most. It
stretches eight feet and can comfortably sit 12. It is the heart of our home, where secrets are
unveiled and life choices are debated. It is a solid piece, narrow in width which
only serves to bring its diners closer together. The long beaten planks of pine
have absorbed tears of grief and uncontrollable laughter. It bears the markings and scars of many a glass
of wine spilled and platter dropped. It
is where unsolicited counsel is given and joys are celebrated long into the
night.
But mostly,
it is where the members of our intercultural, intergenerational, blended and
extended family come together to break bread and mend hearts. We are 14 in all, our six collective kids,
their partners, biological mother and our new treasured grandbaby who is passed
down the chain of arms with the same ease as the bowl of peas.
Meals at
this table are far from elegant sit-down affairs. They are raucous and chaotic events where
steaming plates of food are carried over the heads of wrestling young men and
gossiping women. Where beer and homemade
wine flow as freely as the uncensored conversation that runs from wedding
arrangements to hemorrhoid treatments to the feasibility of time travel.
***
Sara* is a
long-time friend who recently spent an afternoon at this same table tearily
recounting the impending dissolution of her marriage. She had just given birth to her third child
and was in that all too familiar phase of readjusting marital expectations.
“But it
wasn’t supposed to be like this. I
didn’t know. It was supposed to be
different!” I take a sip of my coffee to quiet my tongue. I cannot help but wonder how she ever thought
a forty year old man whose mother continued to buy his socks and underwear
would easily give up his bachelor lifestyle to change the diapers of the
children he had reluctantly agreed to have.
But my heart went out to her as she sat there trying to reconcile the
life she had imagined with the one she had created.
***
I try to
remember my own visions of the future.
As teenagers my friends and I could spend hours talking about our dreams
of what our lives would become. We would run these dreams like reels of film in
our starry-eyed minds. I would leave
home to study journalism and would promptly begin a skyrocketing career, traveling
the world bringing light to the brutal humanitarian stories of those less
fortunate. (It was the 80s. I watched a lot of 60 Minutes….)
Later, I
would settle in some cosmopolitan city and quickly land a job as a columnist
for some well-respected newspaper. I
could picture myself strutting to the office every morning, latte in hand while
the theme from St. Elmo’s Fire played in the background. (Somehow in my adolescent imaginings I inexplicably became Caucasian
and full-lipped, a cross between a well-fed Angelina and a 1986 Molly Ringwald…).
I would rise in the ranks, passionately putting in long hours at a job I loved. After hours I would banter cleverly with
colleagues at the local bar like some rerun of LA Law.
I would
marry a man not unlike myself, a mirror of my own ambitions and interests, a
suit-wearing nine-to-fiver who would read the Times with me Sunday mornings before we
would head out to brunch and a new art exhibit with our equally hip young couple
friends, a man who amazingly knew every Indigo Girls song by heart and would
lead guests in a moving sing-a-long on his battered acoustic guitar at parties.
Once
established in our careers, we would go on to have a couple of children. On weekends, between driving the kids to
soccer games and ballet recitals, we’d host fabulous dinners. While my metrosexual-looking husband artfully
whipped up an impressive meal of leek soufflé and home-made crème caramel in
the kitchen, I’d copy Martha Stewart table settings that creatively reflected
the season and coordinated perfectly with our stylish home furnishings. (Note
to self: At next session, ask therapist
why in my dreams I seem to have married a character from Will and Grace. I’m also not quite sure how we
managed to get all this done in a twenty-four hour day. Interestingly in my
teenage version of my future, I had clearly managed to learn how to bend
time…it was a futuristic vision after all.)
(Obscure
aside: This reminds me of one of
my favorite jokes. How many Martha
Stewarts does it take to change a light bulb? None, because if you carefully
use an Exacto knife to score out a quadrangle from the front of the bulb, fill it with tufts
of tissue and chiffon and hang it with a silk ribbon in your garden, you can
turn it into a lovely birdfeeder...)
But life isn’t
a John Hughes movie. It’s a series of
karmic forks in the road that present us with choices. Sometimes the choices induce stomach–churning nausea
in their obvious life-altering importance.
But sometimes the seemingly innocuous opportunities are those which most
alter our paths- the day you opt to take the bus to work and end up meeting a
new job contact in the subway; the choice to buy a cup of a coffee where you
run into an old friend you thought you would never see again; the last minute
decision to go for an afternoon walk during which you end up meeting your future
husband. Each choice leads to another, like links in the chain of moments that
lead to your today.
My own
choices have brought me far from my Diane Sawyer imaginings, but I am proud to
own them as my own. I am neither journalist, nor sophisticated world traveller.
I did not imagine that after many stops
and starts I would choose an entirely different career path. That I would make professional choices that
sometimes led to doors opening wide and sometimes to inadvertently jumping off such
a career cliff that I’d scrape my shins trying to climb back up.
I did not
imagine a life where at times I would sleep-walk through the work day wondering
how the hell I got here, or that I would ever feel fortunate to have a job
where amidst the pendulum of stress and
boredom I would be happy for that occasional meeting or moment that has me
declare “Well, that was kinda cool.”
I did not
imagine finding myself at mid-life, faced with the choice of stepping over
decades of paying my dues to completely reboot my career into the teasing potential of the
unknown.
I did not
imagine being barely out of school and falling head over heels for an older
man. A man with four children of his own,
not much younger than me. I did not
imagine I would fall as hard for them as I did their father, or that I would eventually
find myself happily embracing their mother as family.
I did not
imagine that the only art displays I would visit would be those in my
children’s elementary classroom or that I could revel in the infinite possibilities
of macaroni sculptures.
I did not
imagine choosing to marry he who is at once my complete opposite and my
completion.
I did not
imagine I could be...
... so happy.
We are no
Norman Rockwell family. In fact tonight, as I carry out steaming plates of
chicken curry and gluten free tofu balls (NONE of which were home-cooked by anyone) over
the clatter of my rag-tag clan, I can’t help but think our eclectic menu
reflects the eclectic mix of characters gathered at our long table. There are groans and giggles as my eldest
daughter reads out puns from her smart phone.
“Two peanuts
were walking down a dark alley. One was
assaulted.”
I snort and
pull up a chair. Reaching over to grab a
nearby bottle of wine I scan the faces of this rainbow coloured Brady Bunch I
proudly call my family, and I cannot help but grin, not at the life I imagined…
...but at this
life I have chosen.
*names and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
