I had some friends over for lunch yesterday after church. Grilled chicken (bummer that it was dry), salad, rice, biscuits and a vegetable platter followed by ice cream and brownies for dessert.

We all sat at the table with a tablecloth. Seeing as how I eat most of my meals standing at the counter, reclining in the living room, or sitting in the car, and the food itself usually comes through a window or out of a polystyrene serving container (or both), this was re-new experience. I hope that guy at the Jack in the Box doesn’t mind, but it was lots more fun to sit at a table with people. [Update 9am: I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I had put the knife on the wrong side of the plates. I guess I need to do this more.]

I have two distinct memories when it comes to Sunday dinner. (In my vocabulary, dinner on Sunday is the noon-hour meal; dinner on any other day is the evening meal.)

First, back in the day: it was pretty predictable who came to join the family for dinner after church. It was either Manford and Helen and/or Jim. Manford and Helen were like our grandparents, since our biological grandparents lived far, far away. Manford was a real ham (some stories about him here). Jim was a bachelor in his mid-to-late 30s and early 40s who helped run a family business in town, lived alone on his farm where he sometimes reared horses, and played cello masterfully. I can easily single out Jim as someone who had a massive impact on my life, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to hear my siblings say the same thing. More on Jim another day.

These Sunday meals at home ended for me when I went off to college. At some point during my sophomore year, I started tagging along with Daniel who attended Sunday services with our Greek professor Kelly and his wife Janice. Normal for us became one of two things: 1. retire back to K&J’s house for whatever great thing Janice cooked up, followed by a yummy dessert and freshly brewed Twining’s loose leaf tea (with a cloud of milk) or 2. go out to a local Chinese restaurant and try to steal each other’s crabmeat rangoons. Being the college age, we’d sit around the table exchanging all manner of silliness with equal part seriousness, either belly-aching about some theological craziness on campus or trying to one-up each other in winning the “servant prize” for the day (taking care of dishes, setting the table, etc). I learned a lot around that table, including how you can make your host reel with giddiness when you say, “So what was your doctoral thesis on?” They are great folks. You should meet them.

For a long time I thought that I received the better end of the things. I show up, someone feeds me, we have a good time, I go on about my business. Pretty good deal, no? It turns out that Kelly and Janice loved our childish antics and thoughts as much as we (me, Daniel, Rachel, and later Peter) loved their life experiences and wisdom (and, um, their food). I know, too, that Jim must have looked forward to lunch with my family, since he wasn’t the type to stick around a place if he didn’t enjoy it. It took me some time to realize (and partly from talking directly with Kelly and Janice some years hence) that those Sunday afternoons may have been just as significant to Kelly, Janice, and Jim as they were to me.