The empty chair at the table

Where were you when the best toast of the night happened? Outside, maybe. Or in the bathroom, the parking lot, the side door by the kitchen. You'd slid your chair back with a "right back", and you were. Ten minutes, tops. Nobody noticed. Not even you.

Your chair sat there with a napkin on the seat while the middle of the evening went on without you. The toast ran long and somebody cried. Somebody's uncle told the story he tells once a decade. The cigarette kept pulling you out of the best rooms of your life, ten minutes at a time. You made every arrival and every goodbye. The good part lived in between.

It wasn't only the stepping out. It was the hum before it. How long it had been. When you could slip away. Whether the speeches would ever end. You can sit at a table without being at it. That hum is fading now. God seated you in rooms full of people on purpose, and you get to be in them all the way.

Next gathering, give yourself the easiest win of the night. Stay. Chair pulled in, all the way to the last goodbye. Watch what turns up in the stretch you used to miss. A joke that only works live. Someone you love saying the sentence you'd have wanted to hear. This time, when the glasses go up, you're in your seat.