By Sophie Tuan
My perfect table isn’t an elaborate dinner with celebrities or dead icons, but rather a blissful moment from the past. What used to be an everyday occurrence now becomes something that I long to experience again: family dinner. Although I still frequently have family dinners with my mom and dad, it is no longer a table of four. Without my sister, the house feels a little less bright—a little less comforting. Our table of four morphed into a sadder, less energetic table for three the moment my sister left for college.
At my table of four my sister would sit on my left—the same dinnertime spots we had for 15 years—and my parents on the other side. We would dine in our dining room and share a delicious home cooked meal: steak and potatoes with caesar salad. Our conversation would be blissfully mundane as we shared every small detail of joy that made us smile that day. We would tell cringey dad jokes, cringe but laugh anyway, and share our roses and thorns of the day. No matter how plain or “normal” our dinner would be, it would be perfect because of the warmth, togetherness, and joy that would fill our home. My perfect meal would be a snapshot of a regular day from the past before my sister left for college; one where we talked about all the small details and laughed at nothing rather than broad updates and limited time every holiday she comes home from a visit.