Food tastes better when you eat it with your family.
I enjoy having my children with their feet under my table to share a meal. I like sitting down with friends to share a meal. While the food is good, the conversation is better. For several years, we’ve gone on what we call a sibling retreat with my husband’s family in the fall. It’s a great way to catch up with all our individual families. We share pictures of the grandkids. We might even brag a little about how cute this or that one is, especially when somebody can show off a new grandbaby’s picture.
But the best part of the trip, for me, is when we gather to put our feet under the same table and enjoy meals together. It’s no tray in front of a tv program. Phones are there but it has to be extra important for anybody to be checking messages. We do have one who is fast on looking up facts when the collective brains can’t come up with specific details on whatever we’re talking about. Sometimes he fact checks us when we say something and sometimes he finds out we’re right. 
It’s fun to talk about what’s going on in the world, but the best thing to talk about when we do gather at that table are the memories they have of growing up together or of the good parents they had. The in-law members of the group get to throw in a few memories too. Some of the stories have been told time and time again and yet, we still laugh about them at each new telling.
Good food ends with good talk.
One of the stories my husband likes to tell is about visiting his grandmother who would cook up a feast for them. He says he would eat until he was stuffed and she’d pass him more. If he told her he couldn’t hold another bite, she’d say, “Don’t you like it?” So, of course, he’d take another dip of whatever it was. I remember visiting her after we married and she didn’t really think the visit counted unless you put your feet under her table and ate some of her food. I don’t know how many of those grandmas are still around.
I’m always glad when my grandkids sit at my table. So, maybe I’m a little like those grandmothers although my kids will tell you I had a different saying about the food on my table. “If you don’t like it, don’t eat it.” Seemed sensible to me. There was always cheese and crackers or bread and butter to keep them from starving.
Family gathering for meals makes me think of the dinner bell ringing to call the workers in from the field. That’s nothing I’ve ever actually heard, but I’ve read about it and seen it on movies. In my own childhood, somebody just yelled that dinner or supper was ready and we all came running to put our feet under the same table and share those family moments. I remember my place at the table when I was a kid. I sat in a white wooden chair on the end next to the window the end of the table was pushed up against in the small kitchen. Dad sat across from me. Mom sat by him. One sister sat at the other end of the table and my other sister by me. We ate food we grew on the farm. Potatoes, all sorts of canned vegetables and fruits, eggs, chicken, pork and beef. Nearly always there was a dessert – pies, cakes, or cookies. My dad had a sweet tooth. He must have passed that on to me.
I let my fictional families gather around tables to eat too. Of course, those stories are set back in the years before television or other electronic interruptions. In the Hollyhill books, Jocie complains about the cabbage dishes on the table. Not out loud, but silently. The Merritt family share many meals in my Rosey Corner books. Throughout those books, I have that brown sugar pie. It first shows up in Angel Sister when Evie invites the new preacher to dinner when they don’t have anything much to put on the table Kate thinks is good enough for a visiting preacher, but Evie points out they have that brown sugar pie in the pie safe. Then when Jay makes his appearance in the stories, starting in Small Town Girl, he loves those pies and the pies stick around through the third book, Love Comes Home. So much that my editor asked me to put the recipe in the notes at the end of the story. Not sure how many readers have tried the pie, but it was a fun addition.
Thanks for reading. And wouldn’t it be fun if we could all get together to share some talk and good food around a table?
Do you have great memories about putting your feet under the family table to share a meal? Or maybe you’re making new memories with your families now?