Memories from the kids' table

I’m Molly, I’m 24 years old, and I’m still sitting at the Kid’s Table.
Seven of us are practically in a football huddle over a square folding card table that’s on its last legs. We don’t fit. We’re all in our twenties—I’m the youngest.
We’re sitting on the metal folding chairs that wobble back and forth depending on how you shift your weight.
The real adults are on upholstered thrones, gathered around an oak dining room table. Some of their seats even have arm rests. We’re there with them, just off to the side, wedged in the corner: an afterthought.
One of the aunts yells in her classic Brooklyn accent: “Alright time to say GRACE!”
Someone—always, someone jokes by responding “Grace!” and everyone laughs—except me because this joke is really old and we do this every year at every family gathering and do we really have to say grace right now because I still don’t know the words…
I bow my head, fold my hands in front of my mouth and pretend to mutter along with literally everyone else in the room. I wonder why I haven’t managed to learn this yet. I’ve had 24 years. I was an English major in college. I memorized sonnets. I got straight A’s. I know all of the words to Beyonce’s new album and I’ve only had a few months to do that. Am I going to hell? Is this that Irish Catholic guilt they’re always talking about?
“Amen” I blurt out a second after everyone else does.
Then the real adults get up and get their food first. We eventually follow suit, squeezing past one another and folding our chairs to file out of our designated corner of the room. We get our plates and squeeze back into place. Some of us keep them in our laps. We’re always holding something: either a beer or a dish because 7 plates, 7 drinks, and 7 millennials don’t all fit on a card table.
I would tell you what we talk about, but our parents, aunts, and uncles read this paper and I don’t want to be voted off the table. Or out of the family. I kind of like it here.
--MOLLY COLGAN