Sit down before the table is clear

Balance · Little Light original

Dinner is finished, and someone begins a story just as you start gathering the plates. You can listen from the kitchen, you tell yourself. Soon you are rinsing glasses, finding containers, and catching only pieces of the conversation you wanted to be part of. The dishes need doing. They do not always need doing before you sit beside the people who came. Leave the table imperfect for another ten minutes. Share the clearing later, or decide together what can wait. Being a thoughtful host does not require making every trace of the meal disappear while the evening is still happening. There is care in preparing a place for people, and there is care in letting yourself inhabit it with them. Your presence is not the reward you receive after every practical task is complete. It is part of what makes the gathering yours. Sit down while the story still has somewhere to go.

Little Light