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This week's prompt is: Family Life Continues
For 25 years, give or take, I stayed home and
raised the kids. Actually, staying home is something one rarely does while
raising children. I spent that quarter of a century volunteering,
chauffeuring, managing, doctoring, nurturing, encouraging, making priceless
memories, laughing until it hurt, praying, creating family traditions--a good
deal of which took place outside the home at school, gymnastics, piano lessons,
soccer games/practices, cello, band, dance team, competition dance, chorus,
softball, rehearsals, performances, and so on.
To say the least, our family life was active.
Busy. Never dull.
But, when I think of our family life when the lovelies
were growing up, I think of our dining/kitchen area…
The kitchen has always been a gathering place for my family for as
long as I can remember. The women in our family have probably spent over
half of their lives in their kitchens and I am no different. I spent
countless hours conversing with my grandmother as she prepared meal after meal-
three meals/day seven days/week and while she baked cakes and breads from
scratch. I also enjoyed listening to her sing while she worked in the
kitchen. Our family ate all of our meals at the kitchen table and, if
someone had football practice or a meeting, we waited for them to get home and
we ate together.
People are always pushing togetherness during meals at the family
table--like this is something new or perhaps they believe families have strayed
from this particular type of family quality time. Meals at the table with
everyone around are the only kind I have ever known (and not just during the
holidays) so it is no surprise that I would continue this tradition with my own
kids. Certainly our kitchen table saw thousands of meals over the
years. Sometimes we were even a bit creative with our meals- candlelight
dinners; no manners night; dessert first night; etc. However, saying our
table only satisfied family time during meals would diminish the importance and
quality of the times our family shared while sitting there together.
Our kitchen table provided space for creating school projects;
ginger bread houses; Christmas cookies; Easter eggs; colorful art work. The lovelies
also studied and read books there. Many a game of telephone has been played at
the table as well as hundreds of hours of playing board games, card games and
putting together jigsaw puzzles. The laughter still resounds if you listen
carefully. This table has seen more than anyone’s fair share of Girl Talk, both
serious and silly- the sharing of the deepest secrets and fears that young
girls harbor as well as the silly thoughts and stories of a day in the
life. Our kitchen table has witnessed the tears and anger brought on by
disagreements as well as the tears, hugs, understanding, and smiles the
resolutions brought. It heard the intense discussions of the injustices
of the world and the ways to make changes. It heard us telling our girls
that they could be anything in the world they wanted to be. The table has
been the meeting place for friends both young and old as each of their friends
sat and discussed their lives with me as well. How amazing it was to know their
friends almost as well as I knew my own girls. They all knew that there was no
judge or jury at the table, only listening and an attempt to understand.
While I was growing up, the kitchen table was the center of our
family life. It was the same while I raised the lovelies. The
kitchen table is still a meeting place for the living-at-home-lovelies and
myself and it remains our center when everyone comes home as it stirs past
memories, and encourages the sharing of present goals and future
dreams. And those games and all that laughter? Yep, it still takes place
right at the kitchen table.
