Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER SIX // 69 & 70 days after the fall. DINNER PARTIES IN THE APOCALYPSE!
Ahhh, dinner parties in the apocalypse.
Nothing quite like it, right?
It's no secret that I always loved family dinners back before the fall. Even though they usually ended with Carmen being disrespectful towards someone and then getting in trouble and consequently storming upstairs and oh so dramatically slamming her bedroom door shut. Maybe screaming a classic "I hate you!" for us to revel in. Didn't matter. I still loved them.
I would come home from college every Sunday night just to sit around our big, worn out dining table. You. Me. Mom and Dad. Carmen, Gabriela, Nicole. Abuela and Abuelo. Most nights Sebastian too. We'd all hold hands and say grace. Watch hot wax drip down the side of the three taper candles that never seemed to fully melt. Stain the already stained 15 year old table cloth some more. Inhale Dad's ceviche. Talk carelessly over each other. Get our hands slapped away by Abuela if we tried to make our plates before praying. It was messy and perfect and my favorite night of the week.
Still though, as much as I loved those priceless nights, I have to admit that nothing beats dinner parties after the fall.
Perhaps it's because they're so scarce, and so when they happen, no one dares to take a second of them for granted. Maybe it's because it feels so normal, and we feel civil and connected to how we used to be. Maybe it's just because we're (for once) not going hungry, and that alone is reason to celebrate. But personally, I think it's a little bit deeper. I think to break bread with someone is to trust them. I don't think you can sit around, weapons on the floor, guard down and genuinely share a meal with someone you don't trust. Meals like that, where they're around a table or with actual utensils now days, is the closest thing to a family dinner. Meaning, you've got to be family if you're doing it right.
My favorite nights since the fall have come in the form of a meal with the people who we chose to trust and ultimately become a family with.
But at the time of Carol and Lori's big dinner at the farm, there was not a great sense of familial trust among the dinner party goers. Rick and Shane ( vomit. so glad you never had to meet him, ps ) were on the fritz and disagreeing about every. little. fucking thing. Hershel wanted them all gone, and his bad mood was even worse after Daryl had stolen and lost Nelly, his horse. He felt like everything was slipping from his control. Lori was keeping secrets. Sophia was still missing. It was a mess.
Needless to say, that particular apocalyptic dinner party was not very enjoyable, unlike all the ones that followed. Guess no one had enough blood on their hands yet to let go of petty things and realize what an absolute honor it was to sit safely around a table with people they cared about.
