A Seat at the Table

It's 3 a.m. and I just woke up from an awful dream. I was attending some sort of fancy function to honour a poet I'd never heard of. We all sat in a large auditorium and listened to a nice program. I was sitting next to a nice older gentleman in an amber-coloured coat, and we hit it off, chatting like old friends. After the speeches, we were all to go downstairs to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The gentleman I'd been sitting by went and joined a table of his friends, and I -- the shy introvert -- didn't feel I could presume to join their table. I didn't really know the man, after all, and had never met his friends. But there didn't appear to be places at any of the other tables. A handful of us lingered in a huddle near the door, unable to find a chair. 

Dinner was rolled out, an army of servers brought beautiful, Michelin-star type of food to everyone else, but we at the edges could only watch them eat. We weren't even given chairs or a glass of water. We tried flagging down waiters to let them know we hadn't been served, and they all said they would be right back, but they never did return. A few of the unseated wandered off and left. Dinner was cleared away and dessert brought out. Then that was cleared away, everyone left the room, and two of us were left, another woman and I, who had been ignored the entire time. 

Finally, feeling stupid and forgotten, I left. In the lobby, I met the gentleman again whom I'd been sitting by at the function. He asked how I'd enjoyed the evening, and I told him my experience. How, for an introvert like me, it had not been a happy experience. He felt terrible that I hadn't been served and offered to take me to dinner. But I wasn't going to sit and eat while he, who had just been fed, watched, so I declined. He offered to walk me to my car. I told him I'd come on the bus. I told him he shouldn't feel responsible for me since we'd only just met, and it wasn't his fault I got shoddy service at a restaurant. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I wasn't scarred for life. (Though I might not come to a function like this again.) So he went away, and I went and found a food court, had a fast-food burrito and a bottle of water, and then bussed home.

So...At first I lay there in the dark wondering what the dream meant. Was I feeling forgotten or lonely somehow? I'm staying up at the old church we use as a cottage, alone, for several weeks. But no...the dream had shaken me, nearly to tears, and I felt it deserved a deeper interpretation than that. 

Those of us who are privileged, who have a chair, who are represented, need to look around the room and see who is missing. To seek them out and invite them to have a seat at the table.