Monday, February 25, 2008

I Met a Woman Today at TJ-Max

After an interesting morning with a missed appointment (I had the wrong day), I was able to get more of my Monday errands done: Trader Joes, garden shop for new flowers, etc. And since, I am in desperate need of new knives I decided to test the market over at my local TJ Max and to my utter delight I found two Henckels knives. Glory! Not the total best, but will do with our budget as I'm working on re-equipping my kitchen.

While there, I meandered through all the pretties and ended up chatting with an older woman in one of the pretties isles. She'd bought a set of mugs with a sweet looking pattern and was inquiring of the sales girl if there were any more of those dishes.

Since I'm always looking for an opportunity to chat and build a bridge (it's easy to do if you just speak "woman") I imitated a little conversation over the beautiful pattern on the dish. Her comment to me, "I have five sets of dishes and it's just me at home" threw me. Not literally, but emotionally.

I couldn't help but think how lonely this woman must be to have five sets of dishes and it be "only her" at her table. I wanted to ask about hospitality and opening her home to international students and I wanted to ask her if she's ever though about becoming a bridge builder with those five sets of dishes, but for some reason I just couldn't.

So, that brings me to a question for my readers, "Who else eats at your table and off your dishes?"

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2 comments:

Amy said...

That is incredibly sad- just breaks my heart. I love to open our home up to others and it is a rare night when we have just our own family sitting at the table. The main obstacle that I need to overcome is my own perfectionism with our home and our space. I think everything must be perfect, but in actuality, I am sure few people even notice except me :)

Great post!

Betsy said...

Gotta love TJ-Max. :)

God has blessed us with a home that has room for lots of guests...and more recently, our first foster child! Thanks for your post.