The Product

So here I am: Middle Age. Well, I didn't just arrive. I have been here for some time and I don't really mind, except for that whole "middle" part that  reminds me that the end comes on the other side of that. Somewhere. Which is okay too, since the idea of spending eternity wandering around looking at everyone I know getting older and slower makes me feel just a little more old and a little more slow myself.
And it occurred to me just the other day in the midst of all this middle that I am a product of all my previous relationships. I am very fortunate that I have had a box full of happy and nurturing relationships, starting at home when I was in my Beginning Age. More days than I can count, when I came home from elementary school, my mom sat down at the kitchen table when I came home and over a glass of Kool-Aid we talked about my day. When my father came home later in the evening, we would all sit around that same table and have dinner. Together.
What a surreal bit of suburbia that seems now. The five of us, mom and dad and my brothers and I, eating a casserole my mother had made from scratch while the dog waited with limited patience for his dinner. Up and down the street where I lived, the same thing was happening in my friends' homes. We moved through the day as a group, dads pulling out of the driveways in their race to the office, kids piling out the door on their way to the neighborhood school. Moms were at home, doing the things that moms did to make that cycle continue.
It wasn't until I got to junior high school that encountered children of divorce. It made me uncomfortable to think about these kids who were going home to kitchen tables without dads. They were spending weekends at their dads' kitchen tables. Some of these kids started making their way home with me. We would have a snack in the kitchen with my mom. Homemade cookies. Or maybe some of that chocolate cake. For a few minutes, they were living that dream with me.
When I moved out to go to college, I left the home I had known for my entire life. There was a store room full of boxes filled with my childhood. It was there for safekeeping. I went off into my twenties with the comfort of that kitchen table in my heart.
When my parents split up, I was already on my way to Middle Age. I graduated from college. I came home from California with my fiancee. We had those celebrations around that kitchen table. My brothers had wives. My niece was there. At grandma's house. That's where she learned to bake cookies.
Now I have my own kitchen table. It's where the cookies I bake sit while they cool. It's in the house where my son was born. Where he brought his friends. For a snack. The dream continues.