It happened some thirty
years ago, but I still remember Tony’s question.
He had come from out
of town to visit our daughter during their college Christmas break.
After two or three days,
he took my husband, Dave, aside. “Does your family always eat meals together?”
Dave assured him we
did, but he was struck by Tony’s strange question.
Tony must have
picked up on Dave’s bafflement so he explained, “I’ve never eaten dinner with
my family. At my house, when we’re hungry we look in the fridge and eat
whatever we can find.”
Both Dave and I were
shocked—we’d never heard of such a thing—and we were sad to think of all Tony
and his family missed by opting out of meals together.
I thought of Tony
when I read these words penned by Henri Nouwen in 1997:
“Today fast-food
services and TV dinners
have made common
meals less and less central.
But what will there
be to remember
when we no longer
come together around the table
to share a meal? . .
.
Can we make the table a hospitable place,
inviting us to
kindness, gentleness, joy,
and peace and
creating beautiful memories?”
(from “Creating
Beautiful Memories,” Bread for the Journey,
February 18 selection)
Did your family eat
meals together around the table when you were growing up? When you were raising
your kids?
 |
| Around the dinner table in Kenya, we became friends-like-family with John, then later enjoyed a meal with him on the Thames. |
If so, you’ll
enjoy—and maybe even applaud—the following Henri Nouwen thoughts:
“. . . Having a meal
is more than eating and drinking. It is celebrating the gifts of life we share.
A meal together is one of the most intimate and sacred human events. Around the
table we become vulnerable, filling one another’s plates and cups and
encouraging one another to eat and drink. Much more happens at a meal than
satisfying hunger and quenching thirst. Around the table we become family,
friends, community, yes, a body” (from “The Meal that Makes us Family and
Friends,” Bread for the Journey, February 15 selection).
 |
| My daughter's fourth birthday |
Jo Harjo also wrote
about a dinner table: “. . . The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set
on the table. So has it been since creation, and will go on. . . . At this
table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. . . . Wars have begun
and ended at this table. . .” (excerpts from “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems).
She’s right.
Sometimes dinner tables resemble war zones.
Henri Nouwen writes
about that, too—about husbands and wives refusing to speak to each other,
siblings bickering, and awkward silences. He says, “Let’s do everything
possible to make the table a place to celebrate intimacy” (“The Barometer of
Our Lives,” Bread for the Journey, February 17 selection).
 |
| My in-laws' 70th wedding anniversary |
Consider including
in your memoir a story about a dinner table—and the life-shaping experiences
you had around it.
Give yourself a day
or so to think back.
Maybe you’ll come up
with a story set at your childhood dinner table,
or at your
grandparents’ dinner table.
Or perhaps you’ll
write a story that took place at a cold industrial table in a hospital
cafeteria,
or with strangers
along a plastic counter at a fast-food place in the Rome airport,
or deep in an
African jungle,
or on foreign soil
in an Army mess tent.
Look again at Jo Harjos’swords:
“Wars have begun and
ended at this table. . . .”
If your dinnertime
resembled a battlefield,
write stories to
inspire an about-face
in the way your
readers do their meals.
Your story could
provide motivation
to break the cycle,
end the war,
and create a happy,
healthy, affirming experience
around the dinner
table.
Your story could be
the turning point
so that in the
future,
people will have
pleasant memories
to pass on to their
kids and grandkids.
Be sure to come back
next Tuesday.
I’ll tell you a
story
about a very special
table
that’s been in our family
for four generations, and counting. . . .
