Some of my favorite childhood memories have a common setting:
A sticky tabletop with mismatched, well worn chairs that scraped against the blue-and-tan flowered linoleum floor.
It was a good thing we are all so short of stature, because we wouldn't have been able to fold long legs under that table. It was tight.
I remember my sister falling asleep at the table nearly every night, occasionally falling face-first into her spaghetti, but more often, she would fall off the chair and whap her little chin on the edge of the table.
I remember asking my dad about what baptism means, anyway. I remember beef stroganoff (or, as we called it, "gray stuff"), and the no-singing-at-the-table rule, and family devotions, and reciting lines from movies- laughing hysterically until milk came out of noses, and bumping the table to make the wax drip down the Advent candles.
There
must have been fights. Conflict. Tension. I just don't remember any of that.
Somehow, in my memories, the kitchen table is always the center of everything being right in the world. The relationships were never strained. The laughter flowed, and I felt right where I belonged.
Food, shared together, smooths over all those hurts and the non-sharing sister and the parents who are overworked and overtired.
Meals have a way of doing that, don't they? Of bringing people together and making things right.
There's a reason people go to dinner together when they're dating. There's a reason that friendships flourish around pizza parlors and coffee shops.
Food builds relationships.
