In honesty, the truly “fixed point” was my consternation, especially when the children were six-under-seven. Was there a kitchen-martyr, anywhere, I'd wonder? I'd get exasperated that the chore of setting table by little children always produced an interesting configuration of spoons and forks. Lake Milk, with its spreading shore, seemed ever present, somewhere. Many bowls and cups became chipped or broken. In those days, it was nonstop reminders about manners: “don't eat before blessing,” “hold your fork correctly,” “take smaller bites,” “don't put your knees up to the table,” “thank your mother for dinner,” “ask to be excused.”
Maybe 500 times the food went uneaten or milk was spilled or the manners failed; but on the 501st time — it worked! All that effort in their early years paid off a hundred-fold by the time they were teenagers: cooperation, laughter, talk and singing. What wonderfully civilized meals we enjoyed — at precisely the age when the teenage reputation for sullen resentfulness and barbaric behavior was at its undeserved height!
When the children were quite young, my husband and I made conversation that was intended to draw them into it. By teenage years, the table talk had become natural, not contrived. While the food was the obvious Main Event, the “hidden agenda” was the conversation, and we found it wasn't unusual for such conversations to extend until well after the food was eaten.
In their teen years, sports and jobs and other activities scattered the children throughout the week but Sunday was never negotiable. These weekly family dinners expanded to include our children's friends and sometimes big cookouts. During the summer months, over an initial protest, we held Sunday evening “Dinner and Discussion” — or “Dinner and Dogma” as my friend Janet Smith called it. She was one of several who were kind enough to come as our featured speaker for “D & D” evenings and talk to a living room full of teens about chaste sexuality or other matters of Christian doctrine. One summer, instead of “D & D,” about twelve of us did a dramatic reading of Dorothy L. Sayers' radio plays, The Man Born to Be King.
I've sometimes thought that if I'm ever to get to heaven it will be with the offering of spaghetti in one hand and pots in the other! Wasn't it Brother Lawrence who wrote in his Practice of the Presence of God that, through interior attention, he could find God in the pots and pans, even as before the Blessed Sacrament? One thing is certain, the meals that we shared as a family then, and still have the pleasure of sharing now, have been an enormous privilege and a promise of heaven's board — a communion of persons in God. Indeed, “What a cloud of witness!”
More than thirty years have passed since Rollin and I, newly wed, sat down at our first rickety card table. Now, here are we, looking out at grown children and their spouses and grandchildren at the table! It's been a lifetime, yet the conversation has only just begun! Truly, we've only just sat down together! Yet, over and over again we've silently blessed them in the words of the prayer that my husband always uses to formally conclude our meal: “For these Gifts and all His mercies, Thanks be to God!”
Through the years, our children have joked that the delectable ham on yonder buffet is really a very fortunate pig! “After all,” the young theologians cheerfully assert as they pile high their plates, “this pig is about to be assumed into a higher life-form!” Chuckling in my own private gallows humor, I recall Saint Ignatius of Antioch who, on his way to martyrdom at the Colisseum, stated that if he was to be eaten for the sake of Christ he “wanted to be a tender little morsel.”
That's okay with me! Saint Ignatius of Antioch, pray for this little piggie!
Together we'll praise the Lord and pass the applesauce!
(Mrs. Lasseter is assistant editor of Canticle Magazine (www.canticlemagazine.com), where this article originally appeared. She can be reached at ruthlasset@aol.com.)
(For key tips on improving your family's communication click here.)
