The family that eats together ~ October 24, 1996

David Heiller

A column in the Duluth News Tribune on October 10 got me thinking.

John Rosemond wrote that a family should eat a minimum of five relaxed evening meals per week where there isn’t the need to go somewhere immediately afterward.

Miss Emma joined us after dinner. (I never used my 
whole chair Emma found this habit of mine useful.)

His point in the column was that family values and strength of character are built around places like the supper table.

He writes: “Unfortunately, too many children these days are growing up in the back seats of their parents’ cars, talking to the backs of their parents’ heads and eating fast food while on the run from one largely irrelevant activity to another.”

I agree with his point of view. It’s something our family does every morning and most evenings. We sit down together and eat together.

At the breakfast meal, it’s a chance to see what the kids have going for their day, or what Cindy and I have planned. It’s a chance to air a problem, or to tell about what happened the previous day.

The supper meal is the same. We talk about our days, tell how school or work went, find out what homework we have.

The television or radio gets shut off, the phone gets hung up, we say or sing grace, and a little peace and quiet settles over the house. Everything seems a little more settled, a little more manageable, when meal time arrives.

Eating together is a good time to get a feel for how things are going. Sometimes not a lot of words are exchanged. Sometimes we aren’t all it good moods. Someone might be angry at something or someone. These things often get worked out during the meal, at least to a point that is better than when the meal began.

Often when the meal is over, I slide my chair back and pat my leg, and one of the kids comes and sits on my lap. So does our dog, MacKenzie. It’s an irresistible call to kid and dog, and sometimes to my wife, when I pat my leg. It’s a good way to end the meal.

A classic example of after dinner lap-sitting
at Randy and Therese's house.
(left to right: David, Rosie, Collin, Therese, Grace.)

I used to see my uncle Wilbur hold his daughters on his lap like that, and I always thought he was a sissy. What an idiot I was.

Our kitchen table is the same table that I sat at when I was growing up. We always ate supper at 5:30 sharp. It was never 5:15 or 5:45. We were a 5:30 family.

There were eight kids around that small table, plus Mom, which seems impossibly crowded. It seems plenty full with four of us now. We had a bench on one side, which was against a wall, and being the youngest, I got stuck in the middle, with my brother Danny on one side and my sister Jeanne on the other. We always sat in the same place.

My oldest brother, Glenn sat at one end. I always thought he was lucky sitting at the end. It was the place for a king, and Glenn acted like a king there. He would watch our manners closely. He wasn’t afraid to criticize eating habits and sometimes he would grab or hit someone who acted out of line.

Sometimes a brother or sister would retaliate, like the time Jeanne dropped a pie on his head. She said it was an accident, but no one believes that.

Mom sat at the other end of the table. Next to her was Lynette, whom Mom had to feed because Lynette had cerebral palsy and couldn’t use her arms. Then it was Kathy and Mary and Sharon. Sometimes one of the sisters would feed Lynette.

Supper was a time to say a fast prayer of “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed,” and then to eat. I could never figure out how food could be considered a gift. It was just food to me, and usually pretty good food.

The extended family version of eating together. 
No children's table for us!

I don’t know if eating supper like that built character, but it sure built muscle. I remember one time we had baked potatoes, and I wouldn’t eat the skins. Glenn knew that a girl in my grade, Ann Wiedman, was taller than me, and he knew it bothered me. I guess I had talked about it at the supper table.

He told me that if I ate the potato skins, that I would soon be taller than Ann Wiedman. So I started eating my potato skins, and the skins of the other siblings who didn’t want theirs. I really wanted to be taller than Ann Wiedman.

Lo and behold, pretty soon I did outgrow Ann Wiedman! It was a miracle, which I attributed to brother Glenn and not Mother Nature.

The supper table saw a lot of changes in our house. It saw Sharon leave, then Glenn, then Kathy and Mary and Jeanne and Danny. They all grew up and left home. It saw an empty chair when Lynette died in 1969. And finally I left, and the table had just Mom to keep it company. She passed the table on to me. I felt honored by that, and I still do. If tables could talk, it would have some stories.