Dana’s worked with me on catering jobs for almost two years now, second set of hands on the bigger events, someone I trust enough to hand a whole course to without checking behind her, and until this spring she’d never once come to a Friday table. Work relationship, table relationship, two separate things I’d apparently kept carefully filed apart without even deciding to. Then in March she asked, kind of sideways, whether she could come sometime, and I said yes before I’d thought through what it would actually change.
What it changed, immediately, was the whole rhythm of the evening. My table had settled into a shape over the past couple of years, Marcus and one or two rotating guests, a specific back-and-forth I hadn’t noticed I relied on until a new person’s presence rearranged it. Dana’s sharp and funny and immediately good at reading a table, which you’d expect from someone who’s spent two years reading catering events with me, but she’s also competitive in a completely different register than Marcus, quieter about it, which meant the whole social texture of the games shifted without a single rule changing.
I felt strange about it for the first few weeks, honestly, some low-grade anxiety about mixing a work relationship into the one part of my week that’s supposed to be entirely off the clock. Kitchens run on a specific kind of hierarchy, even a small catering outfit like mine, and I worried that dynamic would follow her to the table and flatten something that’s supposed to be equal footing for everyone sitting there. It didn’t, mostly. If anything she’s better at leaving work at the door than I am some Fridays.
What actually happened is my table just got better, more voices in the room, a new person to teach things to who picks up rules faster than almost anyone I’ve taught, which has its own charm, since I don’t get to explain as slowly and lovingly as I usually do. Marcus and Dana have developed their own rivalry now that I mostly just watch unfold with some amusement, neither of them fully aware how transparent it is. I don’t have a tidy lesson here, just the plain fact that letting two separate parts of my life touch each other turned out fine, better than fine, after I spent weeks bracing for it to go wrong.