Dining Table Conversations

The recent events that have happened across the United States have created for me a whole new wave of emotions.  The anxious return to business and reopening of the country with Covid still a reality is now coupled with anger, frustration, sadness because our country still does not value all human life equally.  As I sat again around the dinner table with my children, for the first time in my life under a government mandated curfew, I could not help but feel a bit helpless. How do we move forward from this place of hurt and anger with assurance that we are moving toward something better?  How do we talk to our children and explain what is going on when we ourselves can not, do not even understand how this happens? What can I do to make a difference?

Some might say this is a furniture blog, so stick to furniture.  But I have always said that a home is personal and we at Century take furniture personally.  It is true, and as home is personal so are the people that live in them.  They are mothers and fathers, co-workers and teachers, nurses and doctors, the next Picasso or Einstein, the youngest among us, people of every color.  And all of us are important to the people in our homes, in our lives. Our furniture is meaningless without the families and people that use it everyday.  And so I say, that yes, this is a furniture blog, but furniture is at its heart about people.  I would even go so far to say that furniture at its heart is about bringing people together.

It is my hope that we can come together again and create meaningful and lasting change in this country.  It is my hope that we the people are more than party lines and red and blue states and black and white and brown skin color.  It is my hope that we are willing to listen and acknowledge.  It is my hope that everywhere around this country, families and friends are having conversations that lead to better understanding and more empathy.  For now, my contribution is to talk about it with my kids, my husband, my family and my co-workers. I will not shy away when I don't understand, but in those cases lean in and listen harder.  

And so tonight around my dinner table, my helplessness is now resolve.  Things I have assumed my children know, will no longer be assumptions.  My children will know that our family values equality. They will hear that our family condemns violence of all persuasions.  We will talk about the value of every life.  They will know that character and heart and only character and heart are how you judge another human being.