Last Thursday, I accelerated my normal weekly dinner out and took it during the week instead of on the weekend. I was tired of eating almost all of my meals alone and so reached out to a friend to see if I could bring dinner for us to eat together. Meeting his family out is a logistical challenge as they have two young children, but that’s less of an issue when I act as both the delivery drive and guest. It’s such a simple thing that I should have been doing it much sooner, but in the whole time they’ve been here this was only the second time I’d been over for dinner. We had my favorite Thai place, which I picked up downtown after I finished my work for the day.

The older child knows me and so he came to the door to greet me when I arrived. He couldn’t quite get the door open and his dad still had to come help him, but in fairness the door does stick. He almost always smiles when he sees me, and he did so this time too. We jumped straight into racing his toy cars around on the floor after I took off my shoes and set the food down. I hadn’t seen him in a few months, so he was a little taller. We talked about all of the fun things he’d been doing at his summer day camp. Then it was time for dinner.

I hadn’t seen the younger child for an even longer period of time. He looked completely different, much more like a little human now that he’s almost a year old. He didn’t manage to get much of his food into his mouth, but he sat in his highchair and smiled while the adults had a conversation about life and work and near future plans. The older child ate well until he decided he was done and then refused to eat more. He went back into the living room and played more with his cars before he came back for dessert. For that dessert, I introduced him to the wonderful treat that is mango sticky rice. He was a fan.