I have been seated at her table

This fabulous friend recently had a dream come true,

a book, published,

about what it means to know that you have a place at the Table.

Add to this accomplishment that in a few brief weeks 

she will arrive at 40 years of age,

and understand that a celebration was massively in order.

Hence,

those who love her gathered,

reuniting with each other,

in happy

and [cute cute] joy.

There was football in the basement,

there was karaoke in the living room.

The children adored it,

but so did:

the adults.

The love in the air was palpable.

For an extended moment in the course of the night I had to disappear, 

to take a phone call where I was placed on hold.

I sat in my dear friend's bedroom, 

curled in the chair where she seeks the Lord,

her cat curled on my lap.

I listened to the children banging around in the room above me, and remembered the early years of our friendship, when she and Ash would be downstairs with the grad students they love, and I would be upstairs with her children, laughing so loudly we had to be shushed.

I listened to the voices echoing from the hallway, the kitchen, the living room, and thought of all the stories, all the persons who have come in, sat down, walked out having been loved. I thought of all the lives that have changed in all of the years we have spent here, 

sticking it out, together.

I thought about that book she wrote, 

the stories included which I was privileged to witness first hand

in their beginnings, unfoldings, and ends.

I thought of the many days of sitting at her counter, crying tears of hurt and confused or just hearing all that's new, the many nights of sitting at her table, talking through places of wonder and need.

I sat in my dear friend's bedroom, 

curled in the chair where she seeks the Lord,

her cat curled on my lap.

And I thought: What a precious precious gift,

to be seated at her table.