Family Dinner Time

"What's in this Mom?" my son would say as we sat down to the dinner table.

"Just eat it, I am not going to tell you what is in everything we eat." came the reply.

"I don't like it!" my daughter would add.

"We have never had this before; how do you know you don't like it?" I would chime in, not wanting to be left out of the nightly ritual.  My two year old would even make out the words, "Don't like this" before she had even seen any food.   Was I that bad?  It is then that I uttered those famous words that every parent has used at one time or another. "You just wait 'til you have kids of your own." 

You have heard the old saying "A family who prays together stays together;" or "A family that plays together stays together."  What is it they say about a family that eats together?  "A family that eats together can survive anything" may sometimes seem the appropriate phrase.  Some of my most vivid memories of growing up revolve around my three brothers, my sister and my parents around the dinner table with our two Great Danes wearing a path close by.

Do any of these things sound familiar:  

"Mom why do you always try these new things?" 

"Why do you have to put onions in everything?" 

"Why do you keep making these vegetables when you know we don't like them?" 

I just didn't understand what my mom was thinking.  Didn't she get it? We hated most vegetables.  Salad was gross and salad dressing made it even worse.  I am amazed that all of us survived the fried okra experience.  Yes, I did say fried okra.  Did she think she was being creative or something?  What possesses a loving Mother to serve her adorable children fried okra?  My brother hated fish.  Every time we had fish I could hear him say, with a quake in his voice, "Oh Flipper, they got you."  And what is it with putting tomatoes in everything?  God made tomatoes to be used for catsup, spaghetti and pizza sauce, not to go in salads, or exist anywhere as chunks.

Between the five of us, and our eating habits, we still left a few acceptable things for Mom to fix us.  What was she so worried about, us getting enough food?  We always ate all of our ice cream!  When you find the good things you gotta stick with them Mom!  No need to go to the second string. Or even worse, try something new.

Casseroles had to have been part of a communist plot.  They could have been more accurately called "disguisearoles."  Mom used them to try and pass certain things over as real food: onions, mushrooms...  you know how it works.  "If I disguise it with enough sauce and goo the kids will never know what is in here."  But we always knew what she was up to.  Sometimes we could find out through the interrogation process.  Mom was tough though, and would usually not crack under the pressure.  It was at this time that we had to rely on the science of food separation.  Us kids were skilled in this practice and could pick the green peppers, onions and mushrooms out of any casserole with our eyes closed (use the Force kids, you must rely on the Force).  When Mom finally gave in, she would usually come up with something lame like, "You can't even taste the onions."  Yea, right Mom, we have heard that kind of logic before from the Doctor's office; "You won't feel a thing" or my personal favorite "You might feel a little stick" as the doctor jams a railroad spike into your arm or butt.

Mealtime was often a traumatic experience, not a pleasant family get together.  "You are going to sit there until every one of those lima beans are gone if it takes you all night."  Luckily the dogs weren't picky, but Great Danes did pose some logistical problems.  They are not little yappers that could pass as large rodents (which can scurry under the table for a perfect hand off).  Feeding a Great Dane your unwanted brussel sprouts took careful planning.  A brother would plan the distraction -- a fight, a spilled glass of milk, a simulated earthquake -- and when the unsuspecting parents were handling the unacceptable behavior on that side of the table we quickly tossed the sprout to the awaiting canine disposal unit.  There were complications though.  Have you ever seen a hungry Great Dane slobber?  The mechanics of catching a flying brussel sprout necessitates a quick, jerking, head movement, which has the potential of launching a slobber wad.  You think slug slime is bad.  Try Great Dane slobber on the side of your face at dinnertime.

And then there are the table antics?  My parents always seemed determined to make meal time a serious, "No-goofing-off" affair.  Poor ole Dad never had a chance though.  We could usually get him laughing. Sometimes we had to break out the heavy artillery and resort to putting peas in our nose, dribbling mashed potatoes down our chin, or Kool-Aid out the nose.  And then there was the time that my Mom went to the freezer to get the marbled fudge ice cream. I can still hear her say in disgust "Alright, who put marbles in the ice cream?"  My brother promptly chimed in with "Mom, I just didn’t want any of the kids to feel ripped off by finding no marbles in the Marbled Fudge Ice Cream.” 

But, as I look back on those days I think that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that we took the time to eat together.  Maybe those were not altogether bad memories.  In fact, they are good memories.  The scary thing is that now, being a parent of three myself, my kids are like I was, and I am like my parents were.  Is this what they mean by the circle of life? Or is it just a cruel joke?  Imagine me, former president of the KAMWCYS organization (Kids Against Moms Who Cook Yucky Stuff) and a charter member of FEA (Finicky Eaters Anonymous), telling my kids to eat their casserole.  Don't they know that they really can't taste the onions? 

My youngest daughter has posed a new challenge around meal time that wasn’t really something my mom had to struggle with.  It’s called actually putting any food in her mouth.  It is not that she won’t eat anything, she is a bit finicky, but the real problem is that she is so busy talking, that she doesn’t have time to put food in her mouth.  This started when she was around 5 years old and continues to this day, although she is a bit better than before.  I mean she would talk non-stop, all through dinner.  At least everyone else’s dinner time.  Right about the time everyone else was finished with their meal, Tara would have polished off maybe two bites of food, but boy she sure told us every detail about her day.  Since we all had things to do with the rest of our evening, we would go off and do other things and 2 hours later there was Tara, just finishing up her meal.  Who eats that slowly?  Who talks that much?  We at one point thought of taking Tara to a doctor to see if maybe something was wrong with her mouth, it seemed to get stuck in the open and continuously flapping motion.  She is a human monologue, a veritable motor mouth, a one-sided conversation waiting to happen.  I would wake up with nightmares of when she was going to be a teenager and started talking on the phone.  Luckily now that she is a teenager there came this cool invention called a cell phone which would not tie up the home phone line and better yet there is also text messaging.  Now she spends her time texting and that is a bit quieter.  Tara recently tried to set a worlds record… Talking for the longest period of time non-stop, before realizing that nobody was paying any attention to her.  She didn’t quite make the record because I accidentally acknowledged her presence and asked her if that was spinach in her teeth.   She then tried for a different record… talking the longest time without taking a breath.  It was the weirdest thing, because after 5 minutes she was still going strong but MY face started to turn purple.  She had to stop, because I was ready to pass out. 

Might I offer a bit of advice?  To you parents, just remember you were kids once and you were probably worse than your kids are now, so MELLOW OUT!  To you kids I would only say "Just wait until you have kids of your own!"