eating around the table

Something that has been a sore spot in my world is that our family rarely sits around the table and eats together.  I have been depressed about it for about 6 months now and never talked about it. 

Tonight, everyone was home and I was trying to have everyone sit down to dinner and eat together.  It wasn't happening.  Well, Rich was at the table and so was I and I stated something I have never openly admitted out loud.  I said, "I am eternally sad".  Rich stopped and wanted to get to the bottom of my statement.  I explained how not having dinner together as a family was making me feel sad.  Rich said, well we are all here.  If you want I can make everyone sit down together but then no one will really be happy.

So, we hashed it out a little and I realized this sadness is only on my side.  No one else seems to care that we don't have dinner together.  We are all in the house together at dinner and mostly we eat at the same time.  We are just watching TV and milling around the kitchen and dining room.

I know for quite some time I have been comparing myself to other people and never measuring up to them.  Or even worse and more realistically I compare myself to the ideal model that I create in my mind of some one else's life and world.  I will never measure up to this ideal person and I will constantly put my self in this eternal sadness that I like to call HELL.  I feel like lately I have put myself in this HELL and locked the door and thrown away the key.

Tonight however I found the key and unlocked it.  I spoke the very thing I had been keeping a secret for so many years.  This dark secret that said you are not a good mom because you are not mandating family dinners.  This unsaid feelings of our family is growning older and we are not spending time together the way we used to in the past.

Rich is always level headed and said. you have to remember how you felt when you were our kids age.  Well I smartly said I was just trying to survive.  But I know what he was saying.  I wanted to just be on my way doing things with my friends and family times were not so important.

so I spoke it out loud and I feel like I don't need to hide my shame now.  I spoke it in front of everyone to hear and I don't need to be ashamed any longer.  If we eat together around the table; then fine.  If some of us are there... good enough and if the food is just put out on the table and everyone grabs and sits in the living room.  Then that is fine as well.

So I am resolved to make a dinner once in a while and leftovers to be reheated on other days.  I guess I don't have to have it all figured out.  I am just a mom doing my best to raise my family.  With the ages of our children, 21, 19, 17, 15 and 13 things are a changing. and it is going to be this way.

Comments

  1. As Brit entered high school, she joined us less and less to where I doubt she ate with us more than a dozen times her final 2 years of school. During this time I worked harder to make incredible, well-rounded meals. When she would join us, I couldn't disturbed her fragile emotions with challenging conversation like how are your grades. The tension was unreal. And never resolved. Hoping she gets hungry in college.

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