Sunday Night Supper ~ May 24, 2006

David Heiller

Our daughter, Malika, had a friend, Emily, over on Sunday. They made an interesting hot dish for supper. They put chips in a cake pan, sprinkled salsa and cheese and Cindy’s bean burrito filling on it, then baked it until it was a melted mass of something.

Seeing this concoction prompted me to ask Emily if she had a special Sunday Night Supper.

Malika's friends Emily and Kris with Malika.
(Kris didn't have Sunday Night Supper 
with us, but the three just go together. 
Like chips and cheese and Sunday Night Supper)

Yes, she replied, they fended for themselves, cleaned out the refrigerator, and her mom made a couple big bowls of popcorn as a side dish.

“We always had chips and cheese;” Malika replied. That’s true, we pretty much did. Chips with melted cheese, pop it in the microwave for a minute, then eat with a mix of salsa and sour cream. Simple and good.

Last Sunday’s meal must have been a combination of that tradition: Malika’s chips and cheese, Emily adding a touch of her own with beans and salsa, then actually baking it in a real live oven.

We sat at the table and ate it too, with our fingers. It was, like I said, interesting. Different. You’re from Minnesota, you know what I mean.

It occurred to me later that this was not a meal we would have made, much less eaten, on any other night of the week. Those nights are reserved for real hot dish, the kind with hamburger in it. Or a chicken breast, or pork chops, or fish, plus vegetables and maybe a salad. In other words, real food. Something from the freezer that we either grew, caught, or shot.

Sunday nights are different.

When I was growing up, we had tomato soup every Sunday night. Watch Lassie on TV and eat tomato soup. We didn’t have it any other night of the week. That was our Sunday Night Supper. It has to be capitalized.

It was a break from the rest of the week with its formal meals every night at 5:30 sharp, revolutionary almost.

Cindy had a Sunday Night Supper that was firmly linked to Bonanza. Watch Bonanza on TV, raid the refrigerator, eat supper.

My bet that most people reading this have their own Sunday Night Supper and its accompanying routine.

There’s nothing profound about all this. It’s kind of dumb to even write about. But I think there’s something to be said for traditions like that. Granted, I don’t stop and ponder the beauty of eating tomato soup with Sharon, Glenn, Kathy, Mary, Jeanne, Danny, and Lynette, and getting to do so while sitting in the living room watching Timmy and his dog.

But there was more to it than that. There was the cooking, and the smell, and the running in and out of the kitchen, and the words from Mom, and the familiar creak of the stairs and a visit from Grandma. All those little things that are woven as tightly as a rug from Selma Vοight. They add up to not so little things when it comes to a family.

Our kids have both moved away now. But I’m thinking those simple meals of good old chips and cheese maybe weren’t so simple after all. We were talking, laughing, bouncing off whatever the day brought, connecting for the upcoming week. We were together, and that’s what really counted.

It was good to be reminded of that again at Sunday Night Supper.