I love making people happy. I love gathering people to my house, and feeding them. Helping people to connect, feel good and laugh. I have always liked to gather people, in groups large and small, and lay out a wonderfully fun and relaxing night. I bring food and drink, a warm comfortable place, and music, together with a large eclectic mix, and see what boils together. In a way, I do the same in the kitchen... mix a bunch of fresh ingredients together and watch how it turns out.
And so, this night was no different...
No knowing how this group would turn out... and yet, I did anyway. In some ways, after 40 no, 45 years in the kitchen, I knew how dinner would turn out. Instinctively. Same with a gathering... with 40, no, 45 years of putting groups of people together, I knew how it would turn out.
Some would be smiling, some not. Some would go home and maybe argue, and some, home to make love. Some new relationships would foster... and some, perhaps founder... That's what these nights were like for me. Seeing people, interact, and maybe find love.
Her
I mostly did it for others... but not tonight.
Tonight's dinner? I invited someone special, to hope and see where this night led... to Hope against hope that maybe something would develop, and maybe we might connect.
Over the course of the night, I found her in my kitchen,, laughing, watching, asking questions and even helping me. Oh, maybe I put a little more flare on my spins and my knife. Maybe a little showy in the spatula and pan, as the ingredients swirled around the sauce pans. And for sure, I may have been a little more free with my hand, on her lower back and I moved about the kitchen. You know that kind of night? Touches. Hips glancing, as we passed. ...reaching around, my chest, to her back...
I do not know the future, but I do know this... at the end of the night, we were off in the corner listening to the conversation of the living room, her in my lap, quietly, slowly rolling herself on my knee. Her purring.
