We have a small drop leaf table that we inherited from Susan’s Aunt and Uncle. When they moved from their house to an apartment in a retirement village, the table was just the right size for their downsized apartment. When the leaves are down, two people can sit at the table. With the leaves up, there is room for four. They had, and we now have, two oak chairs with leather bottoms to go with the table. Most of the time the table now lives in our garage along with a bit of extra furniture. We’ve downsized our house, but we still have a bit of the excess furniture in storage. This table is one of the things we plan to keep. It comes in handy from time to time. Yesterday we got out the little table and set it up in the study next to the bookcases. We had ten for dinner, which is beyond the capacity of our round oak dining room table, even with both leaves in it. Our home has an open floorpan on the first floor, so it wasn’t like we had relegated three of our dinners to another room. We were seven around the big table and the three who ate in the other room, joined us for our table grace and filled their plates then carried them to the small table to eat. The family switched places for dessert and a different three sat at the small table.

Dessert was angel food cake with cherries from our trees that we had frozen when they were picked and apricots from the Wenatchee Valley. We don’t always have dessert at our house, but last night was a special occasion worthy of a celebration and a bit of cake was in order. Six of the ten of us had all been together eighteen years ago for another celebration. The other four were all born afterwards. We’ve had conversations in our house, when we look at pictures from events that occurred many years ago, about why certain family members are missing from certain photos. “Where am I in the picture?” necessitates a conversation about how some events occurred before you were born. In this case there is a picture prominently displayed on the wall of our living room of that day eighteen years ago. It was the wedding day of our son and his wife. The four who were not present at that occasion are their children.

In addition to their family of six and the two of us, our daughter-in-law’s brother and mother were visiting and joined in the celebration. We told a few stories and shared a few memories. Our son was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when they were married and we drove from South Dakota down to Chapel Hill for the event. Our car was full for the trip, including a cedar hope chest, which was too big to fit inside and was carefully tarped and tied to the roof rack. Inside the car was Susan’s sewing machine. It was the second time we had made that drive with the sewing machine. The first trip was when they moved to North Carolina. We drove down in a pickup truck and towed one of their cars. The sewing machine came along because Susan was working on a special dress for our soon to be daughter in law. It came on the second trip, along with that dress, so that adjustments could be made and finishing touches added. That dress is the wedding dress that she is wearing in the pictures of the occasion. I’ve always believed that our son played in hand in forging a deeper relationship between his wife and his mother by suggesting that Susan sew the dress. Whether or not he was conscious of such a motive, the result was a deeper connection.

We have two children and the dresses worn by the brides in both of those weddings have their own stories. Near our son’s wedding picture is a picture of our daughter and her husband at their wedding. Although they were married in the church we served in Rapid City, the dress came from England. She and our son in law were living in England when they became engaged. He has built his career in the Air Force and they have lived in different places around the world. We had the good fortune of being able to visit them in England. I had shopped for the lowest price tickets we could find between the two continents and it turned out that we were able to fly from Vancouver, British Columbia, to London. We drove out west. Our son was living in Olympia, Washington at the time and he gave us a ride to the Seattle Airport where we caught a short flight to Vancouver.

We have a gallery of family pictures on our wall and each of them has a story. Our grandchildren get to hear the stories multiple times as each becomes old enough to ask about the pictures.

After our guests left, Susan and I were doing a bit of final clean up and we paused to look at the pictures one more time. Eighteen years ago, we could not have imagined that we would one day move to northwestern Washington. We were happy in our South Dakota home and too engaged in our careers to think much about where we would live when we retired. Our son and daughter had not yet settled and we did not know where they would end up. It seemed likely that our son would continue to find adventures in what at the time seemed like far away places. He went to college in Oregon and graduate school in North Carolina. It seemed likely that his sister might stay a bit closer to home. We couldn’t imagine that one day we would move to a house down the road from our son’s farm where they raise chickens and cows and have a huge garden and that our daughter would be living in South Carolina with her family.

Our life has never been completely predictable. We’ve always had surprises and we’ve grown to love the surprises that come. For now it is a joy of our lives to have ten for dinner and to have our home feel full, not only with beloved people, but also with shared stories.