Empty Chairs

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Our family normally eats dinner all together each night.  I feel like this is important and have come to realize more and more that it is not something that happens everywhere.  Occasionally there will be a child or two missing, but for the most part the gang's all here to eat together and talk about what we've all experienced each day, and that's the way I like it.

Dinner was interesting tonight.  Allen was working late, ElemenoB, Thumbelina, Cowgirl and Princess went to see a play, and All-a-Boy and Hubba were off at scouts.  All that was here to sit around the table were my three littlest ones and yours truly.



I wasn't really sure what to do with myself.  Where was the happy chaos I am used to?  The most excitement we had was when Little O asked "If all of the animals in Charlotte's Web can talk, why can't the cat talk?"  It brought on as lively a discussion as can be had with this cute crew.  I think we decided that the cat was just cranky because it couldn't catch Templeton.

I had the thought enter my mind that this is what it will be like someday, all of the time.  Eventually everyone who is living at home will fit around the table.  And then one by one each chair will become an empty space until all that's left are Allen and I.  I know it's just a blink away.  How in the world will I cook for only two people?  Will Allen and I learn to eat in a comfortable silence, interrupted occasionally by pleasant conversation about how grand it was when all of the kids were still here?

As the boys came home from scouts, the sound level in the house rose by about a million decibels.  I'm reveling in the random chatter as All-a-Boy corrects everyone's words and Curly mothers the little boys.
A quote that I love comes to mind, and I think it sums everything up just right:

"Come what may - and LOVE it." -Joseph B. Wirthlin

pic found here
That is exactly what I intend to do.