Put Family on the Menu

Audio By Carbonatix

I have to admit, there’s something about processed meat in little Styrofoam containers that makes me feel nostalgic for the early days. When my wife Jane and I were newly married, we had a habit of spending our mealtimes chowing TV dinners in front of Magnum P.I. We’d get home from work, kiss each other hello, microwave our fine frozen cuisine, turn on the television, and then plop down on the couch for primetime.

I promise you, it started out with a little more romance than that. We had good intentions in the beginning. I was finishing school and Jane had just begun working as a teacher, so our days were full. Quick, easy meals and some mindless entertainment provided a welcome break from constant busyness. As time wore on, though, our little breaks from routine started to become routines in and of themselves. Jane and I were glued to the television some evenings—and when our shows for the night were over, we’d toss our divided Styrofoam trays and go our separate ways. So suddenly busyness wasn’t the only thing we were getting a break from.

Our mealtimes had always provided an automatic time slot for conversation, so when we began multitasking over dinner, we killed our best opportunities for good discussion. The two of us weren’t talking like we had talked in the beginning. It was a cheap trade—spousal chats for sitcoms. It wasn’t until we started having children that Jane and I made a focused effort to uphold dinnertime as a family priority. We set aside time each night to turn off the television, gather around the table, and let our world revolve around “family time” for a while. It sounds really charming, I know—but it wasn’t always a pretty picture.

At the outset of our new adventure, the kids still couldn’t hold spoons, much less hold a conversation. Every single meal seemed like a major production of applesauce and Cheerios, and Jane and I had all we could do just to maintain our sanity. Still, we kept at it. As the kids got older, we did our best to come together as a family at dinnertime, even when homework and sports and friends were beckoning from the sidelines. Sure, some days we were split up or on the go, but the majority of our evenings, you could find a collection of Seaborns around the table at six o’clock or so. And the tradition has served us well.

Over time, what started out as a mess of high chairs and projectile PB&J’s became one of our family’s most treasured daily appointments. We sat down together and talked about our days. We told stories. We laughed and joked. We worked through tough issues. We reminisced. At the end of a meal, we were just a little bit closer than we were before. We knew each other just a little bit better. We loved and appreciated our family a little bit more. Through the years, after tallying up literally thousands of mealtimes together, each day’s little bits accumulated until they’ve become whole lots. I’m using past tense verbs here because my kids are all grown and out of the home. So, “family meals” happen on special occasions now when we all gather together again—with grandkids—and create more family memories!

Dinner might not work with your family schedule, but I hope everybody reading this will find a way to have some intentional family time. Because if we aren’t intentional about creating it, it won’t happen nearly often enough.