When I was a boy, my family routinely gathered for dinner each evening, normally around six o’clock. My Dad, who was a physician, would arrive shortly after five, grab the evening newspaper—we had such things in those days—while my Mom would finish preparing the meal.
The table was always set beautifully. Silverware was properly arranged with forks on the left of the plate, tines facing up. The salad fork was placed on the outermost left next to the dinner fork closer to the plate. Knives and spoons were to the right of the plate, with knife blades always facing inward and spoons placed to the right of knives. Dessert utensils were placed horizontally above the plate, with the fork handle pointing left and the spoon handle pointing right. Etiquette guru Emily Post would have been proud.
As teens, our mom would sometimes tell us to arrange the place setting, and we did according to standard. Doing this didn’t make the food taste any better, but it taught us that life involves standards and routine. Both are necessary to order life, I suppose, and there was a certain comfort in it.
Table manners were also important, and our parents were keen on instructing us. Once you cut one piece of food with the fork in the left hand, you set the knife aside and switched the fork to your right hand before taking a bite. They never told us why. It was sufficient for us to believe that our parents had a good reason for these gastronomical gymnastics, and we happily complied.
Napkins, we were reminded, were not handkerchiefs. They would lie in the lap, not tucked into the collar like a bib. Asking “please” was expected when you wanted the salt, pepper, or butter, and such was not handed across the table like a lifeguard reaching for a struggling swimmer. These were passed around the table person-by-person, each pausing between bites to hand the item to their neighbor until it arrived at its intended location.
After my Dad said grace and the food was passed around, there was light conversation at the table, and we learned not to interrupt others or speak with a mouthful of food. The conversations covered various things. We talked about what our Dad did at the office, events of the day, and sometimes reminders of school and dreaded homework, a chore I found difficult and boring. Sometimes we would delve into family lore. It was always interesting to hear a tale from the past, sometimes humorous ones that had been shared previously, but the story was just as funny when retold and further embellished.
Occasionally, new information would arise, maybe about future travel, or something that needed fixing or addressing in some fashion. It was a combination of small talk and emerging news, all around the table without any of the distractions of technology. Today, many families sit at a table and do not say a word while riveted to their cell phones. Our conversations in the past were our “social media.”
Sadly, the family dinner is an heirloom. To be sure, people still have dinners on occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and birthdays, while seated around the table. But the daily family dinner, as I recall it growing up, is a thing of yesteryear. We can thank the advent of television for that. When the evening news began at the dinner hour, modernity teed up the TV dinner: small portions of bland, processed food in an aluminum tray placed conveniently before the diner so one could eat and focus not on one another, but on some TV personality who had little family lore and wisdom to impart. Cellphones at dinner today accomplish a similar distraction from humanity.
Soon, pizza delivery and fast food restaurants added additional competition for formal dinner arrangements. In time, table manners and politeness were no longer required. Grab-and-go has supplanted “May I be excused,” the proper departure for youngsters from the dinner table after everyone has finished eating.
All that has changed with both parents working, hectic commutes, and kids engaged in abundant after-school sports and other endeavors. Post-activity stops at a fast-food restaurant to feed everyone in the car as the family rushes home have replaced the time-honored and routinized family dinner and all that entails. I suppose that’s why McDonald’s, Burger King, and Chick-fil-A restaurants dot the landscape across America today. Fast food pit stops have become the modern family dining room.
With that, we have lost an important moment in the day when families can come together to not only be nourished, but to nourish important relationships. If there is any institution that should be revived today, it’s the tradition of the family dinner, even if it entails plasticware, paper towel napkins, and pizza boxes.
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