As I was growing up, my family always ate meals together, around a table.
Today, people may say that I’m nostalgic for a time that isn’t relevant to our present moment.
After all, today our kids have classes, work, and a packed schedule. Parents arrive late from work, and microwaves really facilitate our day-to-day.
Family dinners weren’t always fun. That’s for sure. As a kid, I hated vegetables! Dinner was especially painful when I got bad grades or a bad report card. Today, most grades are viewed through the Internet. I know very few parents who actually get angry when their kids get bad grades. I know even fewer parents who bring it up at the dinner table!
Fighting is hard work. Life is so rushed. We feel we’ve got so little time together, so we might as well make the most of it. Of course, “making the most of it” doesn’t include fighting.
We always had dinner, when daddy got back from work.
Of course, he would return from work much earlier than parents today. Work hours were more reasonable back then. My father never got home much later than 7 PM.
I remember that the news would come on, promptly at 8 PM, because that’s when families would be done with dinner.
We had a rigid seating chart at the dinner table, and everybody would sit at their designated seat. Difficult to imagine today, right?
My mother always sat to my right. My older brother, to my left. When my cousin, came to stay with us, he got the spot next to my mom.
Still, this rigid seating arrangement taught us about priorities and values.
We engaged in a lot of political discussion at dinner. At that time, Brazil was going through huge problems with the dictatorship, and protestors were fighting against the regime. I learned a lot from those discussions.
Sure, I was very young, but I benefited from hearing and participating in the debates that took place. Politics, Economics, everyday life, and art. It seemed that our conversation knew no limits, and it was often extremely enriching.
Our dinner table provided the best “news program” because everything we didn’t understand could be translated into our “language” by our parents.
Several studies show the importance of having dinner as a family, and link this to better grades in school.
http://www.tribunadoplanalto.com.br/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5886 .
But besides better grades, did family dinners give us more? I truly believe so. It definitely gave us a tangible concept and definition of family, which seems so scarce these days.
The dinner table connected parents and their children. Dinner was a ritual for those living together, and made us understand what it was to be a family. I believe it also fed our soul, as it brought us closer together, and graced us with a true sense of belonging.
As each dish was served, we felt love, pride, indignation, and teamwork. Without a doubt, there was a strong sense of authority exercised mostly by my father, but we still benefited from an open dialogue between parents and children.
Desert sweetened our conversation, and softened our glances. Desert was the moment in which we digested all the new information absorbed. We sat in silence, licking our lips, quietly devouring everything we had gained from each other.
Time was clearly defined. There was a time to eat. There was a time to speak. There was a time to listen. A time to savor, and a time to distance ourselves again, and focus in on everyday life.
Today, when I tell my granddaughter that it’s desert time, I think about those dinners in which we “summed up” the dialogue, exchanges, and found union as a family.
For the most part, I remember the sweetness. It didn’t matter if there had been fights, disagreements, or sour arguments. In that moment, everything turned sweet. The sweetness, not the sourness, is what has remained, as a permanent imprint in my memory.
What about you? Do you have family dinners? What are they like? Is this moment valued?
