The Fisher-Paulson family gathered at their “new” dining table.

The poet Robert Browning wrote, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

He was not talking about me. Sadly, I am all grasp and no reach.

My arms are short. My sleeve length is not quite 31 inches. You’ll get different numbers from different sources, but the average man’s sleeve length hovers around 33 inches — and size indeed matters.

Genetics matter as well. When Brother XX passed on his winter coat to Brother X, the sleeve length was just right. When that well-worn garment got passed down to me eight years later, the sleeves were still the length of every single Paulson boy arm in South Ozone Park.

Aunt Mildred joked: “We’re descended from T. rexes.” But since I never played basketball and avoided stickball at all costs, having short arms didn’t seem to matter.

In this column, nature tends to trump nurture, and so it is no surprise that both of our adopted sons come from long-limbed gene pools. When they were young, we had the round kitchen table that Grandpa Hap bought us the year Nurse Vivian died. For years it did not matter that the boys’ arms elongated every day, and that by the time Zane was 12, I was asking him to reach for things on the top shelf. Our hands connected when we said grace and our arms were just the right length to clink glasses when we toasted “the best boys in the world.”

Things never remain the same. The boys became teenagers and outgrew the kitchen table. I bought my husband a dining room table, our first ever that was not secondhand. A Stickley “butterfly” table, with extensions that made it really long. We migrated to dinner in the dining room.

Size matters, but place matters as well. The Bedlam Blue Bungalow is located in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior, at just about 37 degrees 42 minutes 37 seconds north latitude by 122 degrees 25 minutes 58 seconds west longitude. The dining room faces north, roughly, so the table is on a north-south axis. My husband, Brian, and I never discussed it, but we put the captain’s chair at the south end of the table, making it the head of the table, and I sat there.

Hmm. Equal relationship, no gender roles and all that, so we got a captain’s chair for Brian as well, and sat him on the north side, thus making the table “two-headed.”

My arms, though, continued to shrink, while the boys’ arms continued to grow. Soon enough, by the time we got to the nightly toast, I had to get up from my chair and circumnavigate the table to clink each person’s glass.

If you recall a recent column, you know that we renovated the dining room floor. That meant we moved all the furniture out, and now we’ve moved it back in. As we were getting ready for our first dinner in the redone room, I asked, “Hey, this head of the table business is pretty arbitrary. Why don’t we just rotate seats 90 degrees? This way you boys get more leg room, and we old men can toast.”

Adoptive sons, I should know, do not like surprises. You can’t wake them up in the morning and startle them with “Guess what! We’re going to Disneyland!” You will face insurrection. Your son will stomp on Mickey Mouse’s foot. True story: Zane made Cinderella cry. I’ve learned to broadcast well in advance when we’re going to change brands of cereal.

But the next day, as Zane set the table, he put Brian’s fork — Brian uses a big fork; the rest of use small ones — on the western side of the table. “We’re all moving to the right,” Zane announced.

Technically, we all shifted one position counterclockwise, or anticlockwise, as the Brits would say. And for the first time in years, I didn’t have to stand up to clink my husband’s cobalt blue glass.

Queenie objected. For years, our dogs have begged from east to west, based on the higher probability of Zane and Aidan dropping their hamburgers. But you can teach a young dog new tricks. A quarter-turn anticlockwise is the same as a three-quarter-turn clockwise.

By the time the plates hit the table, Queenie was sitting at the corner, glancing at each of us, ready for the new adventure. And hoping that a quarter turn away, there was still a bite of chicken.

Note to readers: I will be speaking at the Tri-Valley Branch of the California Writers Club at the Four Points Sheraton in Pleasanton at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 17. Details at https://bit.ly/3eb90Ch

Kevin Fisher-Paulson’s column appears Wednesdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com

Kevin Fisher-Paulson is the author of "How We Keep Spinning" and "A Song for Lost Angels." Fisher-Paulson lives with his husband, Brian, their two sons, and pack of rescue dogs in the mysterious outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior. When he's not writing, he serves as commander of the honor guard for the San Francisco Sheriff's Department.