We had two rooms in our house where all the serious conversations took place. If it was learning about our Great Uncle Jim’s Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, hearing about my sister’s new boyfriend (with the earrings), or where Aunt Sue and Uncle Vince told us they were pregnant with our sweet little cousin-to-be. Those were the kitchen table conversations. The ones consisting of larger audiences, carried weight - some heavy with “out of our control” and some heavy with “happily ever afters.”
Then there were the living room conversations. The room with the flowered couches, Mom’s television, and the biggest gazebo window that was perfect for starring out of (especially if you were being reprimanded for writing your name on the furniture). These were the conversations where I learned boundaries, what buttons to push, how to talk, how not to talk, how to “talk” without actually speaking, and you know - the room where the potter shaped the clay. These conversations carried a different weight, one that was specific to the individual, uncertain, unknown, and relying on the expectation we would communicate, hear, understand, learn and apply.
It was in these kitchen table conversations that I learned there was always someone who was the deliverer of news and those who were the receivers. The deliverer could be matter-of-fact, put things simply and allow the crowd to ask the questions; or the deliverer could be loaded with enough emotion to steer the recipients emotions right along with them. The receiver also had two faces - one who was immediately perplexed and trying to understand exactly what this means. Why? Who? Where? When? How could this be? This type of receiver also happens to be the same one who, five months later, is still wrestling with how this old news so quickly became the new norm. Receiver B is master of listening and applying. They are working off prior knowledge to know what to do next. Sad news? Tears stream. Happy News? Excitement and gratitude shared! Maybe their prior knowledge is what they learned from watching endless episodes of “Full House” or maybe they just have the emotional intelligence of a guardian angel - either way, this recipient is in the moment with the news. They are breathing the life of spoken words as if they have been reading this book for decades.
So you are standing in the living room, learning how to be a better person, because that’s what people do in the living room. You concoct the reasons you have for why you did what you did while at the very same time you respond to the emotions and questions of your own actions. You learn that your delivery of your own news collides with the recipient inside of your own heart and with the ears of the other person in conversation. You breathe a story and suddenly it has a shelf-life; the lies you’ve been concocting are available for a listener to accept or deny - the truths are spoken to ask for grace and forgiveness.
Then you are free, into your own world. The living room and kitchen table look different. It’s your Young Life community that asks why you run from problems, it’s your journal that reflects what beautiful things have grown from honest self reflection and application of new ways. It’s your tight jeans that tell you to cut back on the post-dinner whiskey and Happy Hour nachos, and its group texts that become the family table you sit down to when your niece just learned how to walk.
Suddenly, you realize that this life is not mirroring another Full House episode, it is writing itself and you are main character. Then, there you are, in your own apartment, eating on the love-seat, talking on the phone in the bed, and avoiding the kitchen table - because who sits at an empty table in an apartment of one? Hello 29, you are not the story I heard or the episode I watched.
You are not prior knowledge or answers to questions. You are the age from off the street - partly filled with adventure and partly stuck in orbit.
