a place called glovebox

part four in a week-long series about the rituals associated with napkins...yes, napkins

one registration, signature smeared
three pens, one that writes
two pencils
one glasses case, empty
one throat lozenge, ricola
four pennies
seven napkins, crumpled but mostly clean

she flips the top open
tosses the glasses case on the passenger seat
and grabs the fistful of napkins

she blinksblinksblinksblinksblinks
not crying
defiantly
not crying
jamming the napkins at her shirt
at her lap
at the sticky sweet diet coke staining her favorite sunshine dress.

the paper tears and leaves little brown bits of detritus on the field of yellow.
she drops the napkins in her lap
she drops her head
she drops it all and sits there
knowing she will not be making the best first impression today.

the abundance of cloth

part three in a week-long series about the rituals associated with napkins...yes, napkins

i used to love having dinner at friends' houses who used cloth napkins.  the napkins weren't fancy, but for some reason they gave me a real sense of abundance.  it took a couple of years before i realized that i could have cloth napkins at my house, too.  somehow i had subconsciously associated them with an abundance that i didn't feel, even though a pack of four wasn't very expensive at all.  funny how we do that.

and now: i love my cloth napkins.  and you know what makes them even better?  our napkin rings.  metal napkin rings!  they were a gift, ordered from etsy, and they have our names on them.  it seems silly, but those cloth napkins in those etsy napkin rings make me smile.  they make me feel at home.  they are a mealtime ritual that reminds me how simple and personal and sustainable abundance can be.

i'm curious:  what rituals make you feel abundant?

torn

part two in a week-long series about the rituals associated with napkins...yes, napkins

i look in her eyes and notice
for the first time
how often she blinks.
she laughs raises her eyebrows lowers her eyebrows presses her lips together.
i start to speak and she is nodding
already
before i've gotten two words out
she is nodding.
her chin is tipped down
slightly
and her eyes are looking up at me
slightly
so that i know she is
righttherewithme.
what i do not know
is that she is sitting on her hands
because her therapist has suggested that she try it.
what i also do not know
is that if she weren't sitting on her hands
she would already be three rips into her napkin,
on her way to having 64 perfectly-torn squares in a little stack,
on her way to having six of those stacks in a row beside her fork before the entree is served,
on her way to arranging those six stacks in a three columns of two and then two columns of three.
what she does not know
is how long she can sit still.

i am ever-so-slightly obsessed with napkins

part one in a week-long series about the rituals associated with napkins...yes, napkins

i have a very tiny obsession with napkins right now, so i've done a very tiny bit of research about them.  i do believe that any amount--even a very tiny bit--of research into napkins indicates some level of obsession, because who thinks about napkins, really?

since i'm interested in ritual these days, i fell down a napkin-rituals-rabbit hole.  and here's what i learned:

1. see the tablecloth swagging down in front of the table in this painting of the lord's supper?  that's the napkin.  it's a communal napkin for everyone to use. and according to this blogger's first generation italian mother, the communal napkin stuck around for awhile, at least in italian families. she remembers growing up with a mopina at the table, "a communal dish towel set on table used by all greasy hands young and old." in our hand-sanitizer-tastic society, i'm not real sure the communal napkin is gonna make a comeback. we are too germ-conscious to be truly communal.
2. even when napkins made the move to individual, they used to be huge because eating was a messy, tactile endeavor.  then, along came the fork in the seventeenth century.  suddenly, eating became a neat, polite affair, and napkins got much smaller.  we traded fun and immediacy for refinement and politesse.
3. and finally, it seems there was a time in roman civilization in which, if you were invited to dinner, you brought your own napkin.  yep, b.y.o.n.  and when the meal was over, these roman napkin-bringers just wrapped up leftovers in their napkins and took them on home.  next time you spy your great aunt slipping a napkin full of wedding cookies in her purse, know she has history on her side.  these days, we use styrofoam and plastic containers with all kinds of toxic crap in them when often a cloth napkin would do just as well.  sigh.  we make things so complicated.

napkins:  who knew they had so much to say?