The Dinner Table

There is a time in every day that I look forward to, and not just because I am a highly food motivated individual.  It is a time when everyone that is home gathers and eats dinner.  Breakfast and lunch are largely free-for-alls, but dinner is on a schedule.  It isn't particularly fancy or civil, - I am quite sure that Miss Manners would have a lot to say about my son's occasional lack of a shirt, my husband's ball cap and my daughter's elbows, but it is all of us gathering around to discuss the happenings of the day and issues that happen to come up.

Growing up in a home with a mom that majored in home economics and a 1950s era mindset in the 1970s, we ate all our dinners around the table as many nights as possible with the classic 'pork chops and apple sauce' for dinner.  Those were some of the best memories of growing up.  Not that any of the meals were especially memorable, but the feeling that sitting around breaking bread with people that you love and that love you - it was a comfort that fills the soul. The feeling of being part of a group, part of a family.  Knowing that if you weren't there, you would be missed.  Discussing issues, ideas, problems, and funny stories of the day.  No matter where people had been, how good or awful their day had been... we came together, if only for a short while, and shared our happenings.

My husband and I bought a second hand table almost 16 years ago shortly after we bought our first house.  We liked it because it was a very wide table and we could each lay our section of the newspaper on it and not get in each other's way.  Slowly, kid by kid, we have included more leaves and expanded our table. It is now covered with any number of scratches, crayon marks, and paint splotches because it is the main hub of creativity for the kids, but every night it undergoes a transformation and achieves its highest potential as a gathering place for the family to eat.

A favorite thing is when my kids have friends over and we all sit down to dinner together.  It doesn't really matter how many people cram into my house, we always find enough leaves to extend the table as far as we need to.  Sadly enough however, sitting down to a family dinner is an oddity to many of my kids' friends, but they all take to it very quickly.  There are no cell phones allowed, no books, no toys.  You are expected to say "please" and "thank-you" and to ask for things to be passed to you.  Seconds are always allowed as long as everyone has been able to have firsts.  After the ground rules have been established, these kids take to family dinners and we have a blast.  You never know where the discussions may lead you - sometimes I ask the friends for some good blackmail material about my kid and that generally leads to very interesting stories and much discussion.  Sometimes we angle toward politics or religion.  There was one crazy night where the entire meal was devoted to coming up with silly jokes involving names such as, "What are the names of those two guys by the window?"....."Curt 'n Rod".  As I said, it isn't always sophisticated, but I learn more about my kids from the time spent eating dinner together than any other time time of the day.

I made a point the other night of keeping track of the flow of conversation...it went something like this:
Babies - new one in the family
Elizabethan collars for dogs
Fixing Washing machines
Vegetarianism
Medical field and what a complete mess it is
The definitions for the words 'meme', 'truffle' and 'sudoko'
The difference between a "truffle" treat and a "truffle" mushroom
Google's search engine verses all the others and what makes them so popular
High School computer classes and free college credit
College
Peccadillos
Cards and Gifts
Writing Cards
Interspersed with crazy giggling
The thought that we remember the past as being better than it actually was
South Dakota honey

What the segue was from one topic to the other is, at this point, completely unknown and often times there really wasn't one - someone would simply throw out a question or thought that popped up.  There are many times when my sister and brother-in-law come over for dinner and the conversations will extend well beyond dinner and involve a bottle of wine (or two) and the oldest kids sitting around trying to understand the complex threads of discussion that we sometimes end up having about government, religion, wars, economies, history, education, literature, societies.  We joke that we can solve the world's problems over a meal, but in all honesty, that is how many problems do get solved. 

It makes me wonder how problems will get solved when, for many, there are no longer meals that are eaten together, but in front of the television instead.  I know too many families where this is the norm - dinner hastily prepared and eaten in front of a television screen- often alone, based on the stories of many of the kids that visit our house. I know that most of them are generally good kids and happy, but I can't help feeling sorry for them never having this experience of togetherness with their family.  We have lost much in our society that is good, but I sometimes think that this is the worst.  I know that not every family is lucky enough to have jobs that allow them to be home at mealtime every night, but I also know that we find time for the things that are most important to us....what does that say to our kids when we can't find the time to sit down and share part of their day with them?