Legs bobbing, thumbs twiddling, I silently panic. Sitting here in one of the nicest restaurants in my small Montana town, I watch one of the most terrifying scenes unfold; my older sister conversing with my, relatively new and very anxious, boyfriend, David. My face has been carefully sculpted into a calm, pleasant smile, but the snowball of terror forming inside of me is growing ever larger. My sister, Maggie, looks like an Amazonian warrior queen. She makes her relatively small, cushy leather chair look like a golden throne…and David looks like her subject awaiting trial. Maggie has always been very quick to judge my new relationships, friends or otherwise, especially the guys, so no surprise I was anxious for her to meet David. All angular features and height that have made jealous for 17 years, Mags is nothing short of intimidating, but David is completely unfazed. He cracks a joke, and suddenly the regal intimidation that Maggie has built is broken by a brigade of laughter that leaves her face tomato red. Family points for David. Tonight, the dinner occasion is celebrating my sister’s return from college for the holidays. It so happened that David was over at the house and we had an extra seat at the table, so he got an invite from my mom and grandmother. Since I was conscious, this has been the love language of my family; food. Friend at the house? Stay for dinner! New partner? Stay for dinner! New neighbor? Dinner! New friend? Dinner! Old friend? Dinner! Dinner, dinner, dinner. I dread them normally because, normally, they are full of backhanded comments, fake niceties, and a whole lot of laborious work out of desperation to connect via the only thing we all have in common; our love of food. To distract myself from tedious exchanges after tedious exchanges, I take in my surroundings. Ew! Rude boy from school is dishwashing! Look the other way. There is not a single restaurant that is safe to go to in my small town, they’re overrun by highschoolers looking for some extra coin. Only moments ago we were guided to our table by someone who graduated in Maggie’s class. My eyes land on a small corner booth at the far end of the dining room. A memory flashes: Years ago, this restaurant wasn’t the swishy Italian restaurant it is now, but rather a pizza joint called Truby’s, owned by a friend of my dad’s. I used to walk two blocks to meet my dad every Tuesday evening after dance class for a pepperoni pizza. These were his weekly meetings with his business partner, Bryan, accompanied by his step-daughter, Sage. I went to school with her, played with her on weekends, and quickly made her my best friend. Every Tuesday for a year, I went from dance, to Truby’s, to home. It was my happy place, what I would look forward to…until disaster struck. One Tuesday, Bryan didn’t bring Sage. upon asking him why, he said she was hanging out with her other friends. This continued on for months, and at school, Sage made it increasingly clear that she no longer had any space in her life for me.  I stopped accompanying my dad to Truby’s. A month later, as if this small town that nurtured me from my mom’s stomach felt my grief, the restaurant I had loved for years shut down and, under a new owner, donned a new name; Abruzzo. This is where I currently sit. I begin to wonder if anyone else here tonight remembers Truby’s, or if it has become a long-time-locals-only treasure. My eyes land on David next. His eyes are crinkled in a laugh at something my grandma said, his tan skin glows in the dim lighting of the dining room, and his normally mussed mousey brown hair is controlled tonight. I smile, because in a desperate effort to find an outfit that would look good for a nicer dinner, I handed him a sweater of mine that belonged to my late grandfather. It looks stellar on him, his broad shoulders filling it out in its entirety. He looks nice, I smile, and suddenly the calm is not such a  facade. The conversations shift away from tedious small-talk and morph into something wonderful, something full of humorous banter and harmless jibes that have me nearly spitting out my water. Suddenly, this dinner has become easy. Anxious, quiet David dropped his walls like a ton of bricks and slid into the flow of my family’s conversational stream. We laugh. I get the sisterly thumbs-up. And suddenly it's time to leave. A thought I never ever thought would have crosses my mind; I miss the table talks. When we step onto the street, my home has been transformed into a winter wonderland in the time we were having dinner. Snow covers the road, the park (a glorified patch of grass in the center of town with a couple tables and a gazebo), and our cars. Like a Polaroid photo, a plan develops in my mind. I glance once at David and get a knowing smirk in return. “Hey, Mom, before I take David home we have a mission. I’ll be home by 10. The snow is wayyyyy too good to pass up absolutely destroying David in a snowball fight” She laughs once and agrees, and our quest is a go. I drag David to the little green square to meet his maker. “This is only my fifth winter, go easy on me!” he says. David moved from California to Montana five years ago. There, even one flake of snow was rare, but having lived in Montana my whole life, snow is no stranger of mine. When I listen to the way David talks about his life in the redwoods of California, living at the mercy of their prowess (literally. He had one growing out of the middle of his deck because it is illegal to cut them down) for years of his life, I feel the yearning etched into every word. When I listen to him tell me everything about his A-frame house with big windows with thick woods standing guard around the perimeter, I can feel that world so far removed from mine as if it is my hand that caresses the bark of one of those gargantuan cedars I’ve only ever seen in photos. The emotion in his words lull me into almost missing it with him. Despite the fact I have moved once, I never really felt the absence of an old home. I just moved from a little house to a bigger house in my same town. Sometimes, if I really want the nostalgia to seep into my pores, I drive down my old street and point out my old abode to whoever my passenger is for the day, but I can’t imagine the kind of cut-and-dry permanence David must feel moving to a whole new state. But this soft spot for him will not stop me from absolutely pelting the poor boy with snowballs. I send projectile after projectile flying at top speed his way, but my advantage quickly wannes…David can throw, and he can throw hard. A new strategy is needed if I'm going to uphold my status as winter guru, so I abandon my projectiles and instead go for the full body tackle…which results in me landing hard on the ground in addition to David falling slowly to the ground with me. Breathless and capsized like a couple of turtles, we lay in the snow, unspeaking, and watch the snow fall. My awareness heightens suddenly, and I realize where exactly we are in the park. Right in the middle. Another memory hits me: Mossy stone under my little fingers fingers as I peer over the edge of a raised pool filled with lilly pads and a pair of mallard ducks, creatively named Mr. and Mrs. Mallard by my family, swimming happily. My little hands clasp the spongy white bread we brought for them, unaware of the detriment it can pose to the birds. This was a monthly venture my family and I made. The ducks were our friends, and made me fall in love with the avian world. I slip back into the present. “Did you know there used to be a duck pond right here?” David looked at me like it was his first time on Earth. “What? No! I had no idea! Why would they take something like that out?” “Because it stunk like duck poop,” we laugh. I just bestowed him with a small piece of my past, like he had done with me so many times over. I smile, tonight it seems to be a little window to our pasts, an exchange of our individual “once was”. Our shared stories are braiding loose ends into a stronger relationship. Funny, how old and new simply slide into cohesive synthesis. I guess it only takes a good-natured dinner and an epic snowball fight to get my brain making a perfectly curated slideshow to offer to anyone else who may want to remember. I really did almost forget about that duck pond.