Dinner Around the Table

By Danna Shirley

Writing assignment for Creative Writing Class...Dinner Around the Table...

            I grew up in a time when our family cooked a meal from scratch; no frozen dinners, boxes, or packages. The table was always set with a tablecloth, plates, glasses, napkins, knives, forks, and spoons, and everyone came to the table to eat and talk about their day. There were no distractions of television or radio. Dad sat at the head of the table, my sisters and I in the middle, and mom closest to the kitchen to make a few trips back for additional milk or iced tea.

Mom was a school teacher and able to be home earlier than other working mothers. She taught my sister, Nan, how to get dinner started by peeling potatoes and making a salad. As I got older, I took over the responsibility of mashing the potatoes and making the salad. It was none of those packaged salads either. I had to wash and tear the lettuce, cut up the tomatoes, strip and slice the carrots and cucumbers, and top and slice the radishes. I hated making the salad!

            Talk around the table was how everyone’s day had gone, homework questions, and what party or dance or movie was coming up on the weekend. After dinner Dad and Mom retired to the den and we did the cleanup. Nan washed, Paula dried, and I cleared the table. As we got older, our chores changed and when we got our first dishwasher, cleanup went even faster.

            Then television entered our lives and everything changed. I wanted to watch cartoons or the Three Stooges but Dad always won out with the Huntley-Brinkley Report or Walter Cronkite. The news was boring to me. Even now I can only take it for so long and then I give up.

            As the youngest I never really learned to cook except for the most basic dishes like tuna casserole, hamburgers, chicken, pork chops; nothing fancy that required more than three ingredients or a page-long recipe of instructions. One of my first meals after marriage was fried chicken. Ron was in shock as he watched me put two layers of chicken in a skillet. I was frying it just like my mother always did. He knew it would never crisp up like that but would just sit in the grease and be soggy. After that, he did a lot of the cooking, which was just fine with me.

             When our own family began to arrive, we ate in front of the television, either watching the news for us or Scooby-Doo for the children. Eventually, it was always Scooby-Doo.

As the children got older, I tried to re-institute my childhood dinner hour by setting the table and turning off the television. It was a pleasant memory for me and I hoped I could create the same atmosphere for them. Ron supported my efforts. Unfortunately, all they wanted to do was eat fast and get back to the television, Ron included.

Now I have an empty nest. My kitchen table is piled high with sewing material and my stove barely gets used. I do a lot of fast food, microwaving, and eating on my lap in front of the television. I don’t know if this is normal for every other household or just mine. I do wish for the good ole days when families did eat dinner around the table, have conversations about their day, and just stay in touch with each other.

I don’t have to contend with the hand-held screens the kids are glued to today but I’m sure it is as much of a conflict now as television was forty years ago.