The Dining Table

They say breakfast has to be the biggest meal you have on a normal day but that has never been the case for me. It was always dinner. The best meat was saved for dinner and most of the fine culinary creations were always during dinner time. This also came to be the time when we always sat down together as a family, once we were all done with our busy schedules. Since we always moved around so much, we never had any furniture of our own. However we had a huge dining table set. I mean, really huge and it could easily seat ten people if enough chairs were put around it. It came from my grandparents house and I can remember that table right from the time I had my first memory. So now we had it, and it always managed to find itself a spot even if the house we stayed in was small. Sometimes it was a pain to look at it, just because it always seemed like it belonged in a much bigger house with a lot more people. We still ate at that table every night. This is where I developed a liking to talking and catching up on the days events long after dinner was done and even as the food began to dry around our fingers. Somehow I always wished that this particular time of the day would last and never end. All this was years ago. We eventually left home and went to college, left the country, moved to a new city and so on. Along with all these changes, I lost the habit of sitting around a dining table. Now dinner was always in front of the TV and sometimes alone. Even if there were people in the room, it felt like I was alone, because we all stared at the TV and did not talk. I missed the feeling of home. I missed the human connection. I missed scrapping off the the dry food around my fingers. No one to blame because where ever we lived as bachelors, investing in a dining table was the last of our priorities. Like all things that change, people began to get married and start families, and soon dining tables started to appear in every home. Hopefully it brought along the dry finger conversations too. Recently my brother got married and as a part of setting up the house, we got a cute four seater circular dining table. I made sure this one fit perfectly. A few weeks ago, we sat down for our first meal around it. My mother made us promise that we would not have dinner in front of the TV, and I see why. It did not strike me much but after the first meal, as we sat around a little longer, I felt the food around my fingers drying up. That same familiar feeling I had missed so much. It was all coming back again. Yes, it felt like home once more.