I have been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and thinking a bit about the choice I have to view food differently. For as long as I can remember, I have called the hour of homework and cooking the dreaded ‘bewitching hour’. In Kingsolver’s book I was challenged to look at dinner with new eyes. (Granted, with toddlers underfoot it is a meal miracle to plop some grub down on the table. In those years if some creature wasn’t yelled at or burned I counted the dinner a raging success!)
I wonder why I held on to the emotion of dread as the clock strikes the bewitching hour today. After all, 2008 is about seven years after my boys entered elementary school. Why do I still foster the mindset that cooking for my family is nothing more than zookeeper’s duty?
The Great Hoodwink of this Generation-
I think I know why I have stayed with the negative ideology about our dinner hour. Kingsolver calls it the great hoodwink of my generation. I guess I succumbed years ago to the propaganda that cooking was “slaving at the stove” and far beneath my rights as a liberated woman. Really? She says that when parents stopped cooking this way for their children they received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. What if I looked at “slaving” differently? What if it became inventing? What if I changed my perspective about it? Kingsolver reminded me (pg 127) that the fast food that looks like salvation in the short run is an imposter. She suggests that maybe the marketers of fast food are the ones I am enslaved to, and my real liberation might look more like an alternative and creative way to view food. Creative? Joyful? How can that happen at 5PM? Like you, I hear it and I do a double take. It’s funny though; it is only my language and attitude that needs an overhaul. My verbage is what is outdated. It doesn’t match my actions. I have never been one to zoo keep: to bring bland, industrialized food to my loved ones when the bell rings to herald the dinner hour. I have always been a mad scientist with spices and fresh food. If a marinade is involved, Lookout! In that case I view anything as fair game!
I have created years of dinners that tell a better story than drive through ease at McDonald’s or the predictability of a set menu at Burger King. They show my small strivings for beauty much like the creative approach Kingsolver outlines. Last week I made a Thai dinner with ingredients that stretched my sons’ exposure to a culture across a continent. It was full of color and variety in texture and taste. I found them more than willing to love the flavors in the Lemongrass & Rice Noodle, Garlic and Ginger Surprise. So, I guess I’m not a liberated woman after all but a homemaker. Somehow I want to write an apology for that.
The Measured Pace of Nourishing Routines
Yet, Kingsolver is retro as well. She believes it is a noble thing to take up the art of “molding our families’ tastes and zest for life.” I agree. I just didn’t know it yet! She speaks of the “measured pace of nourishing routines.” This seems similar to musical orchestration. The composer has a reverence for arrangement, he works within the limits of each instrument’s range and yet there is boundless variation possible within the musical notation. Routine is the calendar on my fridge. It is the alarm clock that tolls for waking and the bell that rings the kids in from playing outside at dinnertime. Nourishment is within the tradition but it must be a form that carries an intangible; the element of surprise. It is the spice you cannot name or say you have tried before. As parents we are part of the shaping of taste and setting our children up for a zest for life. We give them this crazy gift, even at 5 pm! It is hard to come in from the busy day and find a way to give, yet it is nourishing at fifty as much as it is at fifteen.
Traditions Arrest Time
Gina Bria, a sociologist, studied the ethos of the family unit in many different cultures and found that traditions arrest time. I love that! Family traditions have the power stop the ravages of time. Sometimes I wonder what my sons will feel decades from today when the lift the candlesticks (that have been at the center of our kitchen table) out of a U-Haul cardboard box to place in their home. Will they remember their hallowed position as artifacts called in to service for our daily tradition of eating by candlelight?
When chaos is surrounding the outside of the house. When loss, change, and the grief of beginnings and endings feel like back breaking burdens, I hope that the extra chives and the sour cream dollop on the mashed potatoes gives a solace to my sons. I hope they ponder the secret hidden in the white lumps: that in one corner of the world beauty will win. Love can taste familiar for years not just minutes. Comfort food is good in a crisis and food prepared tastes far superior to food manufactured.
This is beautiful, and true to my experience as well. I always enjoyed the ritual of cooking dinner, but also felt embarrassed that I did–as if it meant I was “just a housewife.” Now, with only a 15 year old at home and my illness, my husband does much of the cooking. Now, I miss terribly the regular ritual of preparing food every night, but I’m also grateful that dinnertime continues to be an important ritual for our family. My son recently told me he was shocked to learn that a lot of his friends didn’t have a regular dinnertime. I’m glad it is “normal” for him!