Janet Nordine and Community

Something wonderful happened last night.

I had flown to Las Vegas for this dinner, and I want to tell you something: IT WAS AMAZING.

Here’s what happened: Janet, one of the women in my writing group decided to write a book about hosting a meal once a month for a year in the effort of writing about both food and community. She’s a therapist, and she put out an announcement on her Facebook page connecting her to other Las Vegas therapists about her dinners. Almost immediately, all ten spots for the meals filled through May.

Each meal had a theme. January’s theme was community.

I came to Las Vegas because I wanted to see what happened. I wanted to watch a woman cook a meal for friends, acquaintances, and strangers and see how it all went down. I wanted to support my friend who, I thought, was doing something super cool.

The menu was chicken pillows (who knew a pillow could contain chicken?!), risotto, asparagus, with creme brûlée for dessert. No alcohol was served. No one talked about needing more than water to drink.

Janet started the meal with a prayer, and it felt so familiar, to be with a group at a table, to say thanks for food. It felt like a thanksgiving. Part of a good meal is having a nervous system in the parasympathetic state, rest and digest, so your body can actually deal with the food instead of trying to keep you safe in the jungle, and, unlike the times when I eat dinner and text at the same time, my breathing was slow and easy as I ate and listened to the women introduce themselves.

Everyone was interesting. Everyone seemed so engaged, so grateful to be with others, to be eating delicious food they had neither had to cook or buy. Janet, who had done both, bought the food and cooked it, looked satisfied at the head of the table. She looked womanly, loved, loving. As people introduced themself, a common element was to praise Janet in various ways, and Janet sat there and let herself take it all in. It was beautiful to watch, someone being loving and loved.

This was a meal served eaten in communion. People talked about how wonderful it was to be together like that. People also talked about being lonely, about living in the bubble of home and work and not having limited opportunities to make new friends. They talked about the desire to feel seen, fully accepted. I had the sense we could have sat there all night and talked and talked and talked, the onion peeling, peeling, peeling, but it was a Friday night after a work week for everyone there, and it was also time to go home when the desert was done.

I pretty much stopped feeding others five years ago when my daughter left for college, and I wanted to find the desire to have people gather at my home. It’s so easy to fall into habit, to get lazy, to think that have people over for dinner sounds more like work than pleasure, but this night made me remember how good it feels to be in community. How good it feels to eat food with others.

Last night changed me. It broke me open a little and reminded me that there is a lot more light and love outside the cave than in it.

I want Janet to write a book about creating community through dinners because I want to read it, to live it.

That’s the best kind of book—the kind that feed you.