For 18 years my family ate dinner together almost every night. We talked, we laughed, we fought, we told stories. Sometimes someone left in a huff. But still we gathered every night, most of the time at 6 o’clock, all of us in our same seats at the same table. In other words, family dinner was family life.
I made dinner for my family because I wanted to and because the world told me I had to and then, three years ago, I just stopped. I didn’t want to anymore, and I’m here to tell you that you can stop, too. Your family will remain connected and whole; your kids will still grow up to be well-adjusted humans. And you might even enjoy one another a little more.
I learned to cook the summer I was trying to become pregnant. My wife and I were on a vacation on Cape Cod and the house we rented had an entire bookcase of Gourmet magazines. I was 29 years old and more of a Moosewood Cookbook kind of girl. But those cooking magazines spoke to my overwhelming desire to nurture, to grow and feed a baby, a family. I must have read 20 issues during that week, and by read I mean studied. I learned how to truss a chicken, how to bake custard in a water bath and how to sear steak in a cast-iron pan.
When we returned home, I started cooking. Tagines and chili, pilafs, ratatouille, salmon in parchment. In a family, the person who learns to do a job well becomes the person who does that job. It’s a simple law of domestic life, one I didn’t know when I was copying those Gourmet recipes into my journal. By the time our first daughter was born, I was officially the family cook.
Over the years I kept recipe books and files, a dinner diary, master shopping lists. I amassed an enviable collection of pans and bakeware, cloth napkins, candles. I loved all the objects. But did I love family dinner? Did it feed me?
These were the questions I asked myself a few years ago when my older daughter was heading off to college. Yes, I did love family dinner, sort of. Sometimes. But I didn’t love the work. I didn’t love the daily obligation, the repetition. I didn’t like waking up in the morning when I should have felt the whole day ahead of me, full of promise, but instead thought about dinner.
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