This time of year, there are plenty of opportunities to gather with family and friends around food. It's a truly beautiful season, and also... it can sometimes feel stressful to know the best way to be a gracious guest.
This morning I found myself thinking of this essay, written by Beth Brown Ables and contained in the pages of A Place Here, Vol. 3.
Sharing here with her permission because it's a great time to think more deeply about the question that always gets asked: "What can I bring?".
I live in the South, where we never show up empty handed, even when you ask, “What can I bring?” and they say “Just yourself!”
Is this because we think bringing ourselves is not enough? Maybe we just don’t know what to do with our hands when we enter another’s home, so bringing something takes care of that. Here’s a bottle of wine, can I open it? Let me pour you a taste. Here’s a batch of cookies. Here’s some of that cheese I told you about.
Sometimes you’ll be given a job; my friend Jen is a master of this: you enter her home and she’ll give you a task. Chop the salad, mix this drink, take these bowls and napkins to the table. It’s familial and warm. To me, there’s no better welcome than that: true hospitality is allowing someone to work and use your place, not just perch on a barstool and observe.
Me? I’m horrible at this. Come to my house and I point you to the table and instruct you to talk to me while I bang pots and pans and fling ingredients into the sink, trash, and serving bowls. I can never find the wine opener. What sort of welcome is that?
But I’m learning from Jen, how the creating of meals is less showboat-y and more communal and comfortable. I want people around my table to know how wanted they are: Bring that salad that everyone likes. Bring your special peanut ginger sauce and we’ll make grain bowls. I miss that raspberry pie you used to make. Pick up a couple baguettes on your way.
Everyone contributes.
Granted, I’m always going to enjoy the gift of making an entire meal for people – for the delight of watching them take in a full table of homemade food. It’s a love letter to them, it’s me getting to share my deepest satisfaction, and we eat it all up.
Never know what to bring? Listen, nobody’s gonna be upset if you show up with a bag of ice.
Excerpted from A Place Here, Vol. 3 by Beth Brown Ables
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