Dinner with Susanne

Last night I had a guest for dinner. Since we moved to Tallahassee, we’ve only had one other true dinner guest (i.e., someone other than family), and that was last year.

My guest last evening was a wonderful lady whom I got to know last year during my RCIA process at the Catholic church. She was one of the teachers. Susanne is probably old enough to be my mother, but she herself is not married. She is third-oldest of ten children. Oh, how I would have loved to really get to know her and hear about her life and experiences!

However.

In the almost-three-hours-long stretch of time that Susanne was at my house, I probably got about 10 minutes, total, to talk to her. My children were over the moon to have company, and they LOVED Susanne! Her whole visit was monopolized by their requests that she look at Urban’s schoolwork, play “store” with them with Charlie’s cool new SpongeBob shopping book, and engage in a rowdy and draw-out game of “Sorry!”

It was fun—really, it was. It wasn’t what I’d hoped, though. You see, I confess I’d imagined us sitting together quietly at the dining room table, eating our brown rice and black bean burritos and chatting about life and faith. She’d brought me flowers, and an apple pie for us to have for dessert. But rather than leisurely enjoying the pie with coffee and conversation, instead I didn’t even have time to remember the coffee, and I had to ditch my pie early to go change a leaky diaper. By the time I got back to the pie, Susanne had gotten herself trapped into another activity with the boys and really needed to be getting hom, and all my ice cream had melted on the plate.

I imagine when she finally got out to her car, the silence must have been deafening. But glorious! I remember when we lived in Texas, Urban and I would sometimes go down the street to my friend Bobbi’s house to play with her three kids. She usually had another child there as well, whom she was babysitting. The chaos always just wore me out—we could never have an uninterrupted conversation, and the noise level was just not what I was accustomed to. I’d go home afterwards and sit in my quiet living room and think, “Ah, Silence!” And now here I am with my three noisy kids, and I’m sure it’s just as chaotic around here as it used to be at Bobbi’s. Except that I’m used to it now.

Used to it, yes. But it still wears me out. If nothing else, Susanne probably had no trouble falling asleep last night. I know I sure didn’t!