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When I was a child, dinner was a mandatory event.  There was no television, no smartphones (geez, it was the 70s!), and absolutely no rolling of the eyes.  We were given a serving of meat, starch, and vegetable.  There was always a plate of sliced bread and butter on a dish.  We each got a full 16 ounces of milk, including my parents.  If we cleaned our plates, we got dessert.  It was a worthy reward after making it through canned spinach and cooked-within-an-inch of its life pork chops.  To this day, I crave dessert at the end of dinner even though my husband is a much better cook than my mother ever was.

The food was terrible but the conversation wasn’t.  My dad was of Scotch-Irish heritage and had learned the fine art of story-telling.  My mom wasn’t so bad at it either.  Every dinner was filled with tales from long ago or from even just that day.  Sometimes, there was even a serial aspect to it.  For weeks on end one summer in the early eighties, my dad would come home and brag about his waitress at a diner he was frequenting daily.  Nadine.  He regaled us with stories of her excellency in service, her friendly demeanor, and her name written in glitter down the side of her jeans.  My dad was smitten.  My younger brother and I used to look at each other across the table and send silent messages about our dad falling in love with Nadine.  My mother would look on, slightly annoyed, but seemingly not too bothered.

Finally, one evening, Dad said something about Nadine’s physical appearance that made our ears perk up.  I don’t even remember what he said, but I remember asking, “How old is Nadine?”  My dad replied, “I don’t know…like mid-70’s?”  That’s the day we realized my father really, really valued a good waitress.  He wasn’t in love with HER, he was in love with her serving him a good lunch.

I miss those days.  Dinner was a thing, it was important.  It was where we learned our family history.  It’s where we discovered things about each other.  It’s where we solidified our bond as a family.

I’ve tried my best as I raised my own children to keep that family tradition alive, but we live in different times.  We are obsessed with the 24 hour news cycle and can’t possibly turn it off long enough to share a 20 minute meal with each other.  We do manage to find time, however, to talk over the news, to tell stories, to laugh together.  As a new generation of my family is due to make his appearance this autumn, I have plans to continue this family tradition of sharing a meal and sharing memories.  I can’t wait to tell my first grandchild all about Nadine.

I welcome your comments on your favorite family tradition!