Sobremesa Stories

La Sobremesa: The time spent at the table after a meal; laughing, talking, and sharing stories with the people around the table.

Ever since I was a little girl watching the grownups sip their wine and share old stories around the dinner table, I have felt a certain magic in the moments after a meal:  crumbs of dessert scattered across plates, candles burning low, and conversation turning to laughter and memories.  I loved hearing my dad reminisce about his travels through Europe (complete with many spot-on accents), my mom’s loud and contagious laugh, and the back and forth of neighbors and friends discussing everything from the latest Angels baseball season to the brokenness and hurt in their homes.

In Spain, there is a specific word to describe this time around the table after a meal: la sobremesa.  Spaniards are accustomed to spending a long period of time in the middle of the day sharing lunch with friends, family, and colleagues, taking time to savor a meal and conversation before the work day continues. There is no direct English translation for this Spanish word that so beautifully encompasses a culture of lingering, a culture of spending time around the table with the ones who remind us we are known and loved and worth listening to.

Any time I have traveled, this cultural tradition has challenged my on-time, driven nature.  It reminds me to choose people and stories over to-do lists, even when my introverted self wants nothing more than to cozy up on the couch with some Moose Tracks ice cream and an old episode of Gilmore Girls.  When I moved to Kansas City, Missouri to get married and “settle down,” I knew I wanted to carry the tradition of sobremesa with me.

Our life in Missouri doesn’t always resemble the slow afternoons of my travels in college  or the summer evenings we spent together traveling through Europe for our one year anniversary.  My husband and I both work full-time as teachers, lead a church small group, and enjoy the process of turning our recently purchased house into a home. In the midst of the busyness, we are learning to create our own traditions of sobremesa.  We love inviting people into our home and our story, asking and answering questions that draw out the joyful and the hard and the real.  But much more than we love sharing a good meal, we love the time spent together after the meal is long gone, hearing the stories of our friends and soon to be friends unfold as the candles burn low, and our puppy falls asleep on someone’s feet under the table.

With each story that’s shared and each painful admission that things aren’t quite what we expected or hoped for, we are reminded that we’re not alone in our stories.  We’re reminded that life and marriage and walking with Jesus are really, really hard, and that joy almost always walks hand-in-hand with sorrow.  Our time of sobremesa, of letting stories and hearts unfold in the sacred space after a meal, defines who we want to be and what we long for our home to be: a safe, inviting space where people can share their stories – a place where hearts are listened to and nourished and held.  We long for our home to be a space where sadness and silliness, grief and gratitude, love and loss can exist abundantly, free from shame, judgment, and fear.

Just like our home, I desire for this blog to be a place of sobremesa, a place where we can sit around the table (or at least across our computers) and linger for hours.  I’ll share stories of our experiences as my husband and I navigate marriage, faith, relationships, and all the things that go into learning to love each other and other people well.  I’ll share stories of the practical things we do to transform our home into an inviting, beautiful, and joyful place.  I’ll share stories about and recipes for the foods we cook to nourish and delight the people we love.  I’ll share stories of our adventures around the U.S. and the world, and all the ways these travels bring us joy and challenge us to view ourselves as part of a much bigger story.  And lastly, I’ll share stories of how God continues to break and transform and heal us, each day drawing us closer to Him and to the only place we will ever truly call home. 

So even though I can’t hand you a plate of roasted spaghetti squash and Italian-meat sauce (my husband’s favorite) or offer you a warm cup of coffee with some homemade mocha brownies (both of our favorites), won’t you sit down and stay for a while? Will you lean back in your chair and sit with me as we share the gritty and the good, the beautiful and the bittersweet?  Our hearts and our homes have stories to tell, and this is a place where we can learn how to tell those stories together. May you leave our table nourished and reminded of a truth I need to hear over and over: you are not alone in your story, and you never will be.