I once asked my friend Shari what, if anything, she felt was her family's anchor? That is, the one thing she felt brought her family together as her kids got older. Much to my surprise, she said, "Breakfast." Closing my eyes for just a moment and imagining the chaos that was my house early in the morning, I implored her to explain. She said that whatever time her two kids got up, she & her husband would simply get up 1/2 hour earlier and they would eat breakfast as a family.
As unfathomable as that was in MY world, I pictured a sleepy but warm gathering around her table and a lovely way to start the day. I know that each family is different but I do believe that families that tried to create some type of 'anchor' whether it was sitting together to watch baseball or football or eat Sunday brunch together, were families that felt close - even if it wasn't a daily or weekly ritual, but the attempt at togetherness often being enough.
Our anchor was always Friday night dinners. Loathe as I am to admit it, it was the one night a week that everyone was guaranteed a sumptuous, home-cooked feast. It's not like I didn't cook them dinner during the week, but with four kids, it was often a spaghetti (everyone go upstairs & put on a red shirt), grilled cheese sandwiches or breakfast-for-dinner. No one complained but on Fridays, I pulled out all the stops and the atmosphere just felt, well, different.
I knew everyone would show up. You only missed Friday night dinners if you were out of town, or had an inflexible event. But most Fridays everyone showed up and the ritual pandemonium was unleashed. In those few hours, we were connected to each other. Anchors are elements that ground us and ours did just that. The anticipation of seeing my kids around the dinner table was something I did look forward to. It helped create a feeling of belonging and a sense of rootedness for us and those are cool values to be able to impart merely with a chicken dinner.
Friday dinners created a forum for family debates, the sharing of experiences, listening to each others stories and laughing. Table conversation was not exactly deep or philosophical in nature, but touched on such far-reaching concepts like the hilarity of farting at inopportune moments or what Homer Simpson might say about a given subject. Man I miss those conversations.
With the four of them out now out and each living in different cities, I'm a little like a ship without its mooring on Friday nights - maybe a bit adrift, though not entirely lost, I find myself feeling pathetically nostalgic and wishing for the security, the weight of that anchor. But at the time, its role to connect a vessel and prevent it from drifting out to sea I think served its purpose for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment