Wednesday, April 4, 2012

There's more to eating than food.

This morning I sat across the table from Leif and realized something. I haven't eaten breakfast with someone on a regular basis since I was young.

Sounds impossible, you're probably thinking. It's funny how things happen sometimes. Work schedules conflict, children are born and sometimes people's internal clocks just don't mesh. I was married to a night person who felt breakfast was an assault on his body for 18 years. An aspirin, a can of coke and a smoke were breakfast enough for him, and luckily those can be consumed in the car on the way to work so no need to sit at a table and pretend to be sociable.

When the kids were little it was easier to eat my own breakfast first, then get them fed. As they got older the habit stayed with us, me eating first and then waking them up. Then, as children do, they grew up even more and moved out, leaving me to eat my solitary breakfast and then have no one left to wake up. Now I have a breakfast buddy every day. I imagine my breakfast manners need some brushing up after years of disuse.

Eating with Leif is one of the great joys of my life here. It may sound a little simple to most of you. But imagine years of eating alone or sitting on the floor (he sat in his chair, I refused to eat on the living room furniture!) eating in front of the television while your companion plays on a computer, reads a magazine, watches the TV and possibly even talks on the phone during the meal. All at once. Talk about multi-tasking.

So it has been refreshing to eat every meal without any distractions. No TV. No reading. No computer. No phones. Just the two of us sitting across the table from each other, eating and drinking and talking. He looks in my eyes, he watches my face. To me it feels as if we are the only people on the planet.

To go all Augsburgian on this...we are both fully present in the moment. I'm sure other people do this a lot, this focus on each other that's almost more moving than a kiss. It's just new for me and I'm enjoying it immensely.

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