dîner de famille

Last night was the first night I really got to feel settled in the new house. I had finished up the work at the townhouse and I had the evening off. Finally!! The four of them are a beautiful family to witness. A real sense of closeness amongst them that is especially admirable these days.

B and I worked in the kitchen preparing dinner. I chopped up yams and butternut squash while she prepared some salmon. When we were done the kids excitedly pulled out their Halloween candy and we began to play games to win some of the goods. After we’d all had our fill the kids needed to do some reading to L sat in a chair in the sitting room and I, a few feet away with my back to the warm fire thumbing through cookbooks I’d packed with me thinking of what kind of risotto I should try to make as my first attempt at this Italian staple. When we’d both read enough we put our books aside and played a game of war and then we arranged the cards and chatted about languages and counted to ten in various different languages and we laughed about how weird it sounds to say “the horse is black” in German and she told me a few French words she knew and I helped her to pronounce them. She asked if she could then read me a fairy tale so I sat on the floor, still enjoying the fire and sat like a good student listening to the librarian reading the latest favorite.

It was a wholesome night and a night that wasn’t rushed. It was the first day I feel like my lungs took in an entire breath since the whirlwind of the last couple weeks began.

Tonight I’m thankful that it’s Thursday. It’s prayer at Taberah. Always a good and soul refreshing night. I’ll be sad not to be able to bring this community with me to France but I hope that when my feet hit new soil the new things will be full of life and it will blossom into something just as beautiful as what I have around me now.