Sunday Dinner

Nobody sits where they're supposed to. The kids have colonized the living room floor. Abuela is in Dad's chair because she claimed it forty years ago and every father since has been borrowing it. The table is too small. It has always been too small. We add a folding table that doesn't match and cover the seam with a tablecloth nobody calls pretty but everyone remembers. Someone is already arguing. It might be about politics or parking or who forgot the rolls— it doesn't matter. The argument is the appetizer. Dinner hasn't started until someone raises their voice and someone else says "not today" and both of them mean it for about six minutes. The food arrives in waves: the dish that takes all day, the salad no one asked for, the thing the cousin brought that nobody trusts but everyone tries because family means eating suspicious casseroles with a brave face. There is a moment— after the plates are full and before the first bite— when someone says grace or someone doesn't and either way the room goes quiet and you can hear the whole history of this family breathing in one place. And that silence is the prayer. Not the words. The presence. The fact that despite everything— the distance, the disagreements, the cousin's casserole— we showed up. We keep showing up. Because family is not the people you choose. It's the people who keep choosing you even when you leave your shoes in the hallway and argue about parking and forget the rolls. And Sunday keeps coming. And so do we.