End of an Era, Part I

Bella and I were sitting on the couch. I hadn't seen her in several days. Before now, travel-aside, I could count on one hand the number of times I did not see my oldest child for consecutive days. But those times have passed. Now, seeing her two days in a row is the unusual experience. As we sat catching up, she said she recently had a few tough emotional days. She said one of the realizations that stirred her was that our family's dinner table era had come to an end. Sure, we still have dinner every night, and there are still people in attendance, but these days, it is rarely occupied by all five of our family members.

I could tell you how protected this ritual was for us—the ritual being that from Sunday to Thursday, we ate together as a family every night. There would be months and months go by where this was the case. The fact is, someone missing a dinner was a big and rare deal. But this is no longer the case, and it just dawned on Bella we will never know that sort of togetherness again. She cried here and there for three days.

After I had a bit of time to reflect on this, the next time I saw her, I told my Baya that it was sad that we would never again have our daily moment but that we had it as consistently as we did, for as long as we did in this harried age is an absolute marvel. 98.7% of the credit goes to Marty. It was she that mandated this would be part of our family life, and I believe she made this declaration before Bella was out of cloth diapers. Then she, Marty, with her herculean conviction, held us accountable not just on the convenient or easy days but on all the days.

My contribution to our ritual was making dinner time a lively affair. I grew up eating at a conversationaless table. The only talking came from the ever-on television observable in the adjacent room. This was one of the items on my to-be-changed-when-I-have-a-family checklist. But when Marty and I started our dinners, aside from the please pass this or the meal is good exchanges, there was always a healthy serving of silence. This made me mental; kids today would call it a trigger, so I studied the problem (with one of my design windows) and came up with several conversational lubricants, namely Thankfuls and the Question of the Night. Both practices did loads to add carbonation and curiosity to our family's time together, which routinely lasted between one and three hours.

So yes Bella, our long-standing dinner ritual will never again be what it once was. But that it happened in the first place is a rare gift that we were fortunate to experience for as long as we did.

Part II.