| PAH! |
| Toddler car seat manufacturers have a problem. Little kids in America aren't so little anymore. They're so fat they are squishing uncomfortably into the seats. For the seat makers, it's back to the drawing board. For the kids, it should be back to the dinner table. What? Isn't the dinner table part of the problem? No. It's the solution. America has a weird energy problem. We idle away gas in mini-vans parked waiting for kids to finish school or other lessons and activities. The kids themselves idle away while on the go, eating unhealthily on the run instead of moderately at a table. You'd think with our national flabbiness we'd be glued to the dinner table. The problem with that thinking is that The Table is all about food. It's not. It's about togetherness, and while it is touted and desired as a philosophy, we think of family time around the table with the same wistful nostalgia as longing for Currier & Ives pastoral sleighrides while honking our way out of mega-mall traffic jams at Christmas. So if the Table is not about food, what is it about? It's the round table. While seated around the table, we face each other. While eating in the car or in front of the TV, we're all facing away, focused on something else. I don't blame TV. I blame the family calendar, an air traffic controller on paper that turns even the most modest modern families into little human airports. The gobble-gulp-and-go of fast eating on the run is not only physically unhealthy -- that's been told a million times -- but it denies us the great opportunity to learn all we need to know about people by watching them at The Table. The Table is about hospitality. Please, sit, let me fix you a plate. The Table is about old-world hospitality. Try my wine. The Table is about conviviality. What's the best thing that happened at recess today? You can do this in the car except the only eye contact is through the rear-view mirror. The Table gives us opportunities to silently show love and affirmation. Just watch Michael Corleone and Apollonia eye each other across the table at the heavy-chaperoned dinner table during their Sicilian courtship. It's about Grace. Not the prayer, but the courtesy and humility of accepting food that others have spent precious time preparing. Courtesy, when a sweet no thanks replaces a yuck! Also, watching someone waste food at The Table tells you how they feel about Mother Earth. It's about the continuity of life...knowing that the one who bolts from the table leaving the mess misunderstands how the meal isn't complete until the dishes are cleared, washed and put away. The Table provides a daily grounding, a sanctuary from the calendar that is oppressive not only in meting out daily errands and activities but also in reminding us we don't live forever. |
| by Mark Morelli |
| Everything You Need to Know You Learn at the Table |