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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 5, 2021 14:31:37 GMT
I think that quite a few of us always thought it was completely normal for the whole family to talk at the dinner table. I know that my brother and I never needed to be prodded for information for what had happened at school, nor for my mother to give her views of a school day from the teacher's point of view. My father, and later my stepfather, also had plenty of things to say about work. It could be because I was younger, but I think my biological father did not talk quite as much about work but he had plenty to say about other members of his family or projects that he was planning for the house or garden. All of us knew the names of classmates, friends, colleagues, supervisors and jerks for every member of our family. I never met some of these adult colleagues but I felt that I knew them intimately.
And yet what struck me today in the Sunday magazine supplement of the newspaper was an article entitled "how to make them want to talk during meals." Of course, one of the main problems of modern times are smartphones that cannot be abandoned for even 10 minutes apparently. But not so long ago, there was also the time of "children should be seen and not heard." Some families have never spoken at dinner, which is something that is hard to imagine for me, even though we see it in movies and series all the time.
What was/is the experience in your family?
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Post by htmb on Sept 5, 2021 15:59:38 GMT
When my own children were growing up, we almost always ate together in the evening as a family. However, as a child, only my brother, sister and I ate our dinners together. Since we ate our meals in the kitchen, my mother hovered over us while she cleaned and prepared a plate for my father to eat when he came home from work. His hours as a farmer were very long and he would usually walk in the door sometime after we’d long finished our meal, sit in his chair awhile and have a scotch, then proceed to eat his meal and drag himself to bed. I’m not sure when my mother ate, but suspect she just picked at food as she prepared ours.
When we had large family gatherings for holidays, and we invited aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, we often used more than one table. I always made sure my seat was with the most talkative adults because I’d found I could learn the most interesting family stories by sitting there quietly and listening.
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Post by bjd on Sept 5, 2021 16:51:04 GMT
The only people I know of who had the policy of children not being allowed to talk at the table was a rather snobby aunt of my husband's. When my sister-in-law went to visit with her kids, they were all shocked that the children were not allowed/expected to participate in the conversation.
We ate family meals together when I was a kid, and our kids grew up having family meals together too. Of course, they grew up just before cellphones became ubiquitous and there were no smart phones,so the problem didn't come up. So, as parents, we knew what was happening at school or with their friends and they knew what we were doing, even if my husband used lunchtime meals as a way of getting away from work and didn't talk much about it.
Nowadays, family get-togethers include grandchildren and everybody talks.
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Post by questa on Sept 6, 2021 1:31:17 GMT
Dinner time was the only time of day that the family got together and it was generally a pretty lively time. Mum had a real estate business which employed Dad as sales man and the face of the business so they would be reporting on the day's doings. My brother and I would tell of our day's doings and our housekeeper would be keeping us informed about in life in the neighbourhood.
Dad used to set us puzzles to solve...like the man crossing a river with the dog, the rooster and the bag of corn etc. Mum would answer any phone calls and my brother and I had kicking fights under the table until one of us had to finish our meal in the kitchen.
Then...magic...the orchestral fanfare of the ABC 's Major news report of the day and we all go silent as we listen to the Public Radio reporting from all around the world. I hear reports of cities and people with strange names, USA, Moscow, Churchill, de Gaulle and think I'd like to do a job travelling to these places and sending reports back to Australia.
Dinner is over. Kids go off to do homework, housekeeper clears the table etc and parents "talk business".
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Post by tod2 on Sept 7, 2021 8:33:49 GMT
This is a very interesting subject Kerouac. Having only lived with my parents as a family when very young, scant images come to mind. At my grandparents house when I first started school. The supper, cooked everyday by my grandmother, was served with all of us sitting around a big dining table that had been shipped with the chairs and sideboard from Scotland. I still have that sideboard in my home today. Nothing was discussed that children should not hear so it was mainly about the weather, work or pigeons - my grandfather had an interest in racing pigeons.
Then as both my parents worked , my sister and I were shipped off the boarding school for two years. Then changed schools and came to live at home in a small apartment. Those were happy times, as children were safe playing and riding bikes in the area. This is when I realised my mother was an excellent cook. My father being Afrikaans or Dutch loved certain ways vegetables were cooked, like stampot, but because he was a ground engineer for BOAC, we got a lot of exotic foods left on an aircraft as it remained grounded for servicing, and brought home by my dad. I distinctly remember Turtle soup, and tiny little round potatoes from the UK. This meal could have been off the aircraft that brought the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret to South Africa. I reckon so because my father and a colleague worked late into the night and eventually my father went and slept in Margaret's bed and his mate crept into Elizabeth's bed, to rest for a few hours. I was overwhelmed with pride as I listened to my dad tell mom where he had cuddled up for 40 winks.
Then the era of real family dinners came to be as my parents moved to an orange farm in the Eastern Transvaal. Every night was dinner cooked by my mother and her numerous kitchen staff on a hot old Aga stove. (This was a curse in temperatures in the upper 30C's.) As dinner was brought to the table my father would light the oil lamps . We ate by the flicker of firelight every night, but it was a not good light for homework. By this time I had become a teenager and could pay more attention to my fathers complaints about the goings on in the area as he was also the Water Bailiff controlling the sluices and canals of water for irrigation.
This is where our time with our parents came to an intermission for a very long time. We went to live with my aunt, my mothers sister, to carry on with our high school education. What a different world. This was Elvis and rock 'n roll, big puffy skirts and bop sessions at the local MOTH Hall. At dinner each evening we sat down with my two younger cousins and my aunt and uncle - he was the local pharmacist - and conversation was around riding horses which my aunt and cousin rode, and dancing lessons for my sister and I. Sometimes after dinner we would fold customer accounts into envelopes for mailing. My aunt had a cook who was always drunk by dinner time, so our meals were nothing like my mothers. We did have tinned steamed puddings from England quite often which made up for the burned roast beef at times. When holidays came we went back to the farm - Little did we know these family dinners during the holidays were the very last we would ever have as children. As soon as I finished school I left for the bright city lights of Durban to work as a typist.
I'm glad I at least had some experience of what a family meal all together around a table felt like. This feeling of belonging is uppermost in my mind as I encourage my son and his two boys to come and have a family meal together whenever we can.
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 7, 2021 9:47:14 GMT
That’s a great story tod. Thanks!
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 7, 2021 13:35:19 GMT
Yes, indeed ~ what Mick said!
Wow, Tod -- not only was your young life different and interesting, your talent in condensing and conveying it in words is extremely impressive. Thank you for treating us to this insightful piece of autobiography.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 7, 2021 14:24:45 GMT
My favourite detail was this one: My aunt had a cook who was always drunk by dinner
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Post by questa on Sept 7, 2021 23:22:31 GMT
What marvellous pictures you convey, Tod! I can just see snippets of the girl growing up in an ever-changing world from pigeons to "big puffy skirts and bop sessions". You and I share many experiences, we both did the "sending out the accounts" for the family business...mine included recording the details in a petty cash book "in your best writing". The riding horses and dance lessons and boarding school also bring back memories.
Thanks for your lovely piece of writing.
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