We were in the living room lined up on the lined-up sofa and chairs like dolls in the China closet.
"Let's go sit in the living room," Mom had said on Mother's Day.
"The living room?" we chimed.  "You mean the living room?  Why the living room?"
The living room in my growing up house fell into disuse decades ago after the kitchen was enlarged to the size of a Mess Hall, the family room was added next to the kitchen, and the loft was built above the three-car garage.  Amenities in all the newer spaces became stronger draws than the old living room where so much living had once been done.
There seemed no need anymore for Mom's living room, except to display her pretty wares, but it was Mother's Day and so we obliged and filed into the living room behind her.  A little shuffling here and there and then we were cozy if not crowded in the old gathering space.
In the kitchen and dining room spaces, you can hold a cup of coffee and nibble on relishes and desserts and make sandwiches out of the leftover dinner meat.  Eating is an all-day long affair at the farm -- it begins when we step in the door and lasts until we drive away, heading back to Victoria -- and we seemed sorta lost without forage in the living room.
How are we supposed to talk without eating?  And what are we supposed to talk about when the weather maps on the weather channel are not continually flashing in the background and steering conversation.  If we don't know what kind of weather is coming over the Rockies, how can we meet the next moment?
I recalled when last I had spent more than a moment in the living room of my growing up house.  It was back in the days when I called it a frunch room.  I think I was in the eighth grade before I learned it wasn't a frunch room at all.  It was a front room!  And it was in the front of the house if the driveway hadn't been put in the back of the house back in 1947. 
In fact, the kitchen was the frunch room and the frunch room was the back room, which came to be called the living room sometime during the modern era.
And so we sat like China dolls in the old frunch room, one of the few spaces that escaped remodeling over time, which is probably why it conjured up the days of my youth when we kids would  roll up in quilts and afghans and lie on the floor together like sardines, single file behind Dad, while we watched the Flintstones, Rawhide, or Bonanza, all eyes and heads pointed in the same direction. 
It was always after supper and sunset that when we turned to the television in the frunch room.  By the time it got dark outside, we were done with housework and homework.  In the old days, being together in the frunch room was like being together around the kitchen table.
During the first hour of commer-cials we'd take turns running to the refrigerator for an orange or a peach or whatever was in season and chase back to our spot on the floor hoping it hadn't been stolen by somebody who pretend-ed they were getting up for the bath-room but lied.
During the second hour of commer-cials we'd scoop ice cream from the big Schwann's can in the freezer and smother it with chocolate and peanuts or caramel or mushed up strawberries.  When we got back to the frunch room with our ice cream, we knew for sure we had lost our spot on the floor because frozen ice cream takes a long time to scoop.
Those big cans of ice cream came from our Schwans Milk Man every week along with several gallons of milk.  We didn't do cows on the farm.  We did chickens.
The only time we weren't in the prone position in the frunch room is when we said the nightly rosary.  Then we had to kneel as we took turns being the priest.  Sometimes we got the giggles during the rosary because some of my four little brothers were naughty and couldn't pay attention very long.  Maybe mischievous is a better word.
As three generations of women sat in the frunch room filled with memories on this Mother's Day, 2003, Dad nodded off to sleep just like in the old days after hours of field work.  I could see the old frieze couch that came to be shaped just like him, the heavy mirror above it, and the set of red World Book Encyclopedias that Mom bought from a traveling salesman.  I could see the black upright piano that was tuned every year by a blind man.  I could see the shiny oak floor that Mom would wax by hand, down on her hands and knees, and we kids would use old area rugs to polish by sliding from one end of the frunch room to the other end of the dining room.  I could see the oil stove that sat in the corner of the frunch room and kept us warm in the winter, especially after our Saturday night baths.  And, of course, I could see the Christmas tree in another corner, dripping with tinsel, and the big colorful lights shining in the dark.
A house without a Christmas tree is like a house without ... well, you know.  It'd be like a house without a frunch room.

                                                ~Sue