THE GATHERING TABLE
By Ronda Giangreco
On July 26th, 2008, I was a 53-year-old woman who considered herself very fortunate. I was
just back from my latest adventure at a cooking school in Italy. My husband, Michael, and I had spent the day wine tasting in Napa with friends. Life was good.
One day later I was a disabled woman. Learning that your wife has been diagnosed with sudden onset multiple sclerosis would be difficult for any man to accept, but for my husband it was a particularly cruel twist of fate. The disease had entered Michael’s life when he was just a child, taking away his mother when he was 16. Now it was back for his wife.
Worried that I might not be able to walk for much longer, I asked myself the question, “Then to where should I walk now?”
My answer: to the kitchen! An avowed foodie, I always loved to cook. My kitchen is my sanctuary, where I can dispense with aggravations while surrounded by the aroma of bubbling soups and the comforting familiarity of my pots and pans. What better place to face the fear gnawing at my gut? It might not have been a conventional treatment plan, but why not attempt to triumph over MS with steaming plates of pasta?
However, when I made the audacious vow to my husband that I would host a dinner party
every Sunday night for an entire year as a means of warding off this disease, he thought I had lost my mind. One would have to be a bit certifiable to think about cooking 52 dinners while living with a neurological condition, but a discussion about parties would be immensely more entertaining than one about motorized
wheelchairs. I would stare down MS with spatula in hand.
We began by inviting every friend we knew. The first six who accepted the invitation would join us at our home in Sonoma, Calif., for an evening of laughter, good food and plenty of great wine. Throughout the year, we added people we had met at events, through friends, and even a woman I had struck up a conversation with in a grocery store aisle.
Eventually, more than 130 people received our email invitation each week. As we sat around our big, square dining table (referred to in the furniture industry as a “gathering table”) we heard stories that made us weak with laughter and others that brought tears to our eyes. We were given fresh insights into the people we thought we knew well, while we also formed dozens of new friendships.
__________________________
I LEARNED FROM THE STORIES
OF OTHERS THAT THE
CHALLENGES WE ALL FACE HELP
FORM THE CORE OF WHO WE
ARE, GIVING US AN INSIGHT
INTO THE STRENGTH WITHIN.
___________________________
There was the sweet, older neighbor who joined us for dinner one night and informed us that he had been Bozo the Clown in his younger days. The entire table was awestruck when he burst into character. Then we
discovered one of our friends had helped make The Allman Brothers’ rock band famous. Another had been on a plane with the terrorists a week before 9/11. We had staunch conservatives sitting across from diehard liberals. We hosted Christian fundamentalists at the same table as a lesbian couple. And everyone learned there is more uniting than separating us.
By the time week 52 arrived, I had made gallons of marinara sauce, scores of ravioli and mountains of gelato. In doing so, I was able to conquer my fear of the future. I learned from the stories of others that the challenges we all face help form the core of who we are, giving us an insight into the strength within. The icing on the cake …
I was still on my feet. MS didn’t win. I did.
I could never stomach my story being touted as yet another example of how merely thinking positively can change the course of your life, though. Anyone who has spent time in a hospital bed looking up at grim faces knows that there are some hurdles you cannot clear just by employing a perky disposition. The last thing I want to do is add to anyone’s burden by suggesting otherwise. My tale is not about bucking up.
Simply put, it is a story about learning that I had more grit and resolve than I had imagined. I found that good friends are a powerful therapy, and I discovered that even though fate may shove you in a direction you don’t want to go, you can still find a means of traveling the road on your terms.
***
Ronda Giangreco has written a book about her year-long adventure called The Gathering Table - Defying Multiple Sclerosis with a Year of Pasta, Wine & Friends available at www.amazon.com. Sign up for her free monthly newsletter at www.thegatheringtable.net.
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