Dinner for Six

It's not often that I can corral our two kids and their significant others for a night out but last night, I decided to take advantage of the fact that our son is leaving and guilt everybody into a dinner at Olive Garden. I know what you're thinking. "You had a chance to have a dinner out with your family, the last one you're going to have for the foreseeable future, and you picked Olive Garden?" Well, here's the thing. I knew I had to shoot for a place that would be relatively quick (for my son), relatively inexpensive (for my hubby), and relatively delicious (for my pregnant daughter). And I really didn't care. As long as we were all together for a couple of hours (and I didn't have to cook or clean up), I could have cared less about the menu.

We met up at six. The kids surprised me with a shadow box of three hysterical photos of the two of them holding large letters spelling out the word M-O-M. After I stopped crying, we drank some wine (at least I did) and ate our breadsticks. We talked. We ate some more breadsticks. And we laughed. A lot.

After a couple of hours, it was time to hand over our coupons and pay the bill. It was time for my son and his girlfriend to do some more packing and time for my daughter to go home and put her feet up. I wish it could have lasted a little longer but I was happy to take what I could get; happy that everyone had made the time to get together to share one more memorable evening with one another.

Hey, I know no one is dying. I know Denver isn't the other side of the moon; that there'll be many more chances to get together to share special evenings with my family. But I also know that things are changing.

And I have to be grateful for right now.

The New Normal

Another Friday night. This used to be my favorite time of the week. School and/or work was over and I could look forward to sharing a pizza as well as a weekend with my family. Now that the kids are moving on, Fridays are still great but they're not quite living up to their former glory.

Take tonight. I'm sitting here in my family room, completely alone, trying to run through a couple of online Italian lessons (Vorrei avere la zuppa del giorno - I'd like the soup of the day to you non-Italians) before coming up with a topic for this blog. The house is dark; my husband is watching some nature or history channel on the non-HD TV in the basement and my daughter is up in her room getting cozy with her computer. I know I must be getting old because all I want to do is turn off all the gadgets and blow the dust off the old Scrabble board. There are just some nights when 'Words With Friends' won't cut it.

I guess I shouldn't complain. The son we rarely see did manage to squeeze us into his busy schedule tonight. Never mind that he stayed just long enough to consume a quarter of the extra large pizza we ordered before hustling off to see a movie with his honey. Good thing I'm not proud; I'll dangle free food or just about anything else to entice my kid to pop his old address into his GPS and find his way back over here. For a few minutes we were all together. For a few minutes it felt like old times, hanging around the kitchen on a Friday night with a pizza. For a few minutes I forgot that we're all going in separate directions.

But now that I'm sitting here in a dimly lit, painfully quiet room; with nothing to keep me company but the words pouring on to my computer screen, I remember.