Growing up, my mom worked fulltime as a librarian. She would take the bus for her hour long
commute. My dad, likewise, worked as a
biochemist at the University of Pittsburgh. His commute was also about an hour.
Despite their busy schedules, there was always breakfast and
dinner.
My mom would usually make a
simple breakfast like upma or mung dal and rice. Like a brat, I would turn my nose up at the
breakfast and opt for a bowl of cereal instead.
I was so foolish! We had dinner at
home every night around 6 o’clock. Dinners were traditional South Indian meals, involving
multiple courses of food. There was
always a lentil dish, a vegetable curry, a soup course, rice, a chutney, and
yogurt. Don’t ask me how or when my
mother did this. She just did.
Dinners were mostly about eating because we were all
hungry. But looking back, I realize that
there was some talking, some checking in about the goings on in all of our
lives, and at least one hour where we were all together. This must have imprinted on me because since
then I have always needed a real dinner.
READ MORE: Make time to gather around the table for a family meal
Even as a medical student, living on my own,
with hours and hours and hours of studying each night, I always cooked myself a
real dinner. After I got married, if I
wasn’t on call, I made dinner. Dinner
didn’t necessarily have to be the multiple course meals that my mother made,
but it couldn’t be some prepackaged, frozen concoction. Those precious nights when my husband and I
were both home involved a real sit down dinner.
It was as much about being together as it was about the food.
By the time my son was born, I became more aware of the
importance of dinner time. My husband
and I were working and our son spent most of the time with his beloved
nanny. I had the usual pangs of guilt about
not being around him during the day.
Dinner became the anchor of our family time. When the kids started school, I remember
getting upset when school functions and activities crept into dinner time.
I purposefully limited their extracurricular
activities because the kids’ overscheduling led to less time together as a
family. It was a very active decision on
my part to protect dinner time. Whatever
activities my young children were involved in had to be on the weekends. Most evenings when I wasn’t on call, I would
cook dinner, while my two kids watched Sponge Bob in the kitchen. While dinners together as a family dropped
off somewhat when they entered high school, dinner together still continued to
be the norm and not the exception.
In my
opinion, the habit of dinner together, as a family, in the home, is worth the
effort.
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