Nick Gaffney
“I’m full.” I once thought I’d hear those words at dinner from around a large dining room table, with me sitting where a father sits, my wife, Abby, in the seat where a mother sits, and those words coming from a child or children who looked like the better parts of both of us. But that is not my reality, and life looks much different. Abby and I eat dinner at the kitchen table that seats four, with two chairs remaining empty. Earlier this year, we remodeled the dining room, dismantling the large table that had been passed down through her family and storing it in a basement corner. Abby painted the white walls of the dining room a modern gray and replaced the chandelier with sleek lighting fixtures, transforming the room into a cozy space with two leather recliners and a center console—a perfect room for two.
Years ago, I would have scoffed at the idea of dismantling a formal dining room. It wasn’t because I was particularly fancy or traditional, but because my vision of home was shaped by Rockwell’s Freedom from Want, where a family gathers around a holiday feast with the patriarch and matriarch at the head of the table. Future generations of family members would smile as they looked toward what Abby and I built. But when years go by and the dining room remains cold, you learn to create and embrace a new vision of home. And once I did, the dining room went!
Take a moment and picture your home with all its furnishings and features. Now, go room by room, remove the furniture and the definitions of those rooms, and ask yourself: what does your house look like? When you walked through it for the first time, did you have preconceived notions of how it should appear and how each room should function? I did. There was a clear definition of what constituted a bedroom, an office, and a dining room. But the truth is now, if I were to roll out the blueprints across my kitchen table, I would see my house and most of its room definitions as suggestions. A family room can be a bedroom, a bedroom can be an office, and a dining room can transform into a luxury space for two. An architect designs structures for us to move within, but it’s up to us to decide how those spaces live and breathe, how they shine.
I can count on one hand the times we used the old dining room for its intended purpose. Most of those times were when my sister-in-law and her family visited, and we needed more seating than the kitchen table provided. Even then, we would eat in the dining room and quickly move to other rooms. The dining room didn’t exude comfort or togetherness. Now, the redesigned room is where my nephew and niece like to enjoy their Saturday morning screen time when they visit. Some of my favorite moments in that room have been with them: me in one recliner, my nephew in the other, and my niece nestled comfortably on the console between us.
It’s also where I lie on the floor to pet the dogs, write a poem, or wait for my wife to come home from work. It’s now a room that breathes warmth, purpose, and function—something the architect couldn’t have envisioned on the blueprints because he didn’t know the family moving in.
There was a time when my house wasn’t all that shiny, inside, or out. After learning that life wasn’t going to go the way I thought it would, I became angry and emotionally struggled with the fact that while others could easily have children, and seemingly advance their lives, it wasn’t in the design plans for Abby and me. The walls around me echoed with the silence of what wasn’t there—children. That silence was haunting, often torturous. And so, I felt justifiedin dwelling in those negative, empty spaces of bitterness and jealousy. After all, Abby and I had done everything right! We followed the life checklist we thought was handed to us: Fall in love.
Check. Get married. Check. Advance our careers. Check. Get our finances in order. Check. Ready? Go! But when it came time for children, the answer was “no.” And that “no” left an empty pit in my stomach that resentment couldn’t fill. I was starving, and there was no food in the fridge. So, I lived hungry, seeking sustenance in all the wrong places. And with that, my tongue sharpened and my eyes glazed over as I dreamed about a place where my relationships with others evolved in an alternate timeline.
Want to know a secret? There is no checklist. There are no universal blueprints we must follow to feel fulfilled. People can fall in love, not marry, and choose to have children. Others might select to be single and find family in their friends. My checklist is different—I’m married, in love, financially stable, and have two dogs with quirky names whom I love! That’s enough for me because my home now reflects my life, adapted to meet the needs of my lifestyle. To get here, I had to endure sadness, anger, and difficult conversations with friends and family, watching old relationships take on new perspectives as lives progressed in different ways. It took time to realize that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all blueprint for happiness. Instead, it’s about adapting the “house blueprints” to fit our needs and reshaping our lives despite what we initially thought they should look like.
The old dining room is gone, and the new room is here to stay. The modern lighting is for the modern times in which we live, where families take different forms than those in Rockwell’s paintings. The recliners symbolize my need for comfort and the idea that every part of my home should reflect what matters most to me. The freshly painted walls remind me that my life can look however it needs to be for my happiness. My home is a symbolic representation of all I cherish and hold dear, a fusion of imagination and reality.
Recently, I visited my hometown and caught up with my oldest friend. He has a son now, and as the three of us rode around the streets where we once talked about our futures, I watched my friend impart a valuable lesson to guide his son morally. I asked, “Do you ever wonder if this lesson, this moment between him and his father, will come back to him as an adult?” He said that he hopes so and that the most important thing he hopes his son remembers about him is his imparting in him a good moral compass. My friend wants to ensure the world is left a better place in his absence. We share that goal, but we've chosen different paths to reach it. I’ve come to embrace the opportunities in my life, using photography, poetry, and my roles as a husband, veteran, educator, and community member to bring light and joy to my home, both inside and out.
With that, I invite you to take a walk down my block and look through the front window. If you do, you’ll see something different, but no less valuable than what is inside other homes. You’ll see me sitting inside a gray-walled room in a recliner next to my wife, with our dogs nearby. I’ll be smiling, and saying with certainty, “I’m full.”
