We are family - hear us roar

"we are family"

[Peanut's creation from Sunday night]

My passions do extend further than my treadmill.

I'm a family girl.

I love my family. I love to cook.  I love traditions.

I am lucky blessed.

Truly.

I grew up in a Glendale, AZ home where, every week night, we ate dinner. Together. My Dad would walk in no later than 5:05pm every week day.  If 5:15 ever rolled around and Dad was a no-show . . . . panic.  Instant panic.  Hey, he was a banker with [mostly] bankers hours.  My mother was, and is (except for the time she tested a new recipe "wheat meat" - oh yummy) an exceptional cook. I guess this is what comes with the territory when your mom has published 6 cookbooks - bring on the  t e s t i n g !  People covet her roll recipe. I've spent years trying to do her pie crust justice. Her soups are a Rx for mending a broken heart & healing the soul. And I know my dad lives for her rump...um roast.

                                                  [the sweet table]

I recall vividly, as a young girl, we’d all gather to kneel in prayer and eat around that faux wood octagon table, with its horrible wicker stand {which is NOW very chic}, and wait, watching, anticipating each bowl/platter we'd soon be handed to partake of.  always feeling something important. And meaningful. Something bigger, and stronger, than our yearning for food. Something beyond my childish understanding. Something deeper than my appreciation could have ever understood or recognized at 8 or 18 years of age.

I was safe. I felt safe.  I belonged. I felt comfortable.  I was valued. And adored.


I mattered.

Fast forward to 2010 . . . me.  here.  with my family, with my child and my own home.  my own kitchen table. And after a sometimes exhausting day, with work, volleyball, running, tennis & karate lessons, working out, homework, chores and [some days] frustrated tears, we all plop down, around our table (which TODAY is sadly HUGE for the three of us) for dinner. Together.

After a few tastes of homemade goodness has reached each tummy, the mood always changes, the noise somehow fades & smiles randomly begin to appear. An unspoken happiness passes from face to face. I watch as Peanut, relaxes, and opens up. She giggles through unimportant details of her day, the funny joke her friend said at lunch [which we rarely "get"], who’s feeling were hurt today at school, which boys her dad may need to scare away slightly, in some way. The silly "then SHE said", "then I said" conversations between her friends that really never quite end in a "normal" or understandable fashion. She rattles off insignificant thoughts about everything from pencils to pandas.

But as she speaks, with such enthusiasm, candor and ease, nothing that she says feels unimportant. Or insignificant. Or silly even in the slightest. The Pita & I listen, intently, to every word we can understand. We smile. We laugh. And suddenly, it will hit me.  a familiar emotion will settle inside me. A feeling I felt my whole childhood.  A tradition kept alive. In these moments, her words, our laughter, the food...it all seems so important. Even, vital.  to us.  to our happiness.  to us being a family.

It matters. traditions matter.  Peanut matters. We matter. Families - big & small --- matter.

So now, I do what my mother did for me. I tie on my apron [which I adore], turn on the jukebox - when time allows, and cook. For my family. I invite them, without words, night after night [ok more like every second night], to leave the outside world, if for only twenty, sacred minutes, to come together, around our GINOURMOUS table, and feel safe. Welcomed. Valued. And, especially, adored.

A "Family Anniversary", was planned a few months back. While I was at a store shopping, for work ……. an employee asked why I was so rushed. I explained I was planning a "family anniversary" tonight and had to hurry home to finish the cooking. She informed me that, cooking was "degrading". While I could present a whole post just on that [the answer I gave her] - I will just say - -It is NOT degrading. Or brainless. Or pointless work. Rather, it feels like, maybe, the most important thing I get to do on a regular basis.

Trust me.

It matters.

Dinner matters. Family matters. Traditions Matter.

Traditions are like spiritual and emotional cement in the foundation of a happy home. They create fond memories, and these memories bond us together as nothing else can.

I can only hope & pray I am helping to make Peanut's childhood even 1/10th as happy as mine was.

I am so thankful.