The Ritual of Eating
My daughter is tugging at my sleeve. “Daddy, we’re hungry.”
I quickly do some calculations in my head. The “we’re” in that sentence is Little Bean and four of her friends. Or is it five? I remember that one of them has some sort of food allergy.
The other, I’m quite certain, can’t eat dairy.
Or is it that she just doesn’t like cheese? The boy in the group will eat anything, and a lot of anything.
They are five kids (or is it six?) between the ages of 7 and 10, and they will soon be storming my kitchen. I have maybe 10 minutes to pull it together. This Sunday has been hot, too hot for outside play, so the gang has been tearing apart our sun room or doing crafts in the basement.
My wife is at her mother’s, so I’m steering the ship this afternoon.
Amid the chaos, I recall the wise words of a woman who served as my adoptive mother when I was a surly teenager. Whenever my group of friends would descend on her kitchen to play cards or watch TV, she’d get that grilled cheese grill smoking and she’d feed us without question. She’d say, “I don’t mind the work because I’d rather you be here where I know where you are.”
I’ve never felt that to be truer than these days with my daughter and her friends in our kitchen. Despite the mess, the noise and the spills and, yes, the occasional breaks.
And despite the fact that I am a terrible cook. Because you see, when you cook spaghetti, or dumplings, or make sandwiches for kids, they understand that it’s not the food, but rather the ceremony of eating together that matters. They may not be able to voice this, but they feel the magic.
Eating simple food with your friends matters. I’d argue that it is, indeed, one of the most important things. And as the hungry kids charge up the stairs, I’m happy to oblige. I warm up some sausage and rice for the kid who can’t eat gluten. One of them says she’s not hungry, so she gets some sliced-up fruit. For the other three, I steam up a whole package of pot stickers.
I toss some condiments on the table, along with a roll of paper towels and top it all off with a couple cans of cherry-flavored sparkling water.
The children eat. They talk and laugh, and yes, some things are spilled. There’s rice on the floor. Hands become sticky. They ignore me. And the afternoon passes, as it should, not with a gourmet meal, but with memories made and hunger satiated.
There’s a scene in Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse” where Mrs. Ramsey is reflecting on her successful dinner party and Woolf writes, “Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.” She’s describing the psychological permanence of ritual, of the imprints of eating in a safe space with people you love.
Say that again; eating in a safe space with people you love. Has such a thing ever been more needed than today?
Those moments are ingrained in my spine and in my senses, like muscle memory. Even in the act of writing this, my brain smells those grilled cheese sandwiches, feels the leather of those kitchen chairs. My surrogate mom is still alive, still welcomes me into her kitchen when I’m in town.
Still has a can of Pepsi and lunch sandwiches ready for me, just in case.
The living room doesn’t leave that mark. The office or the den, I barely remember.
But I watch those kids around the long island in the middle of my kitchen, and I begin to understand them.
This is a place where they can truly be who they are, before adulthood sneaks up, before there’s pressure or self-awareness. They know I’m there, but they also know there are no limits and no judgements. Just a bunch of friends right at the beginning of their humanness, while the rain falls outside, and dumplings steam on their plates.
“Can I have more, Daddy,” my daughter asks, and all the kids pipe up, “more, Daddy,” they shout and laugh, “more, Daddy!”
I fill their plates and they dig in. Of all the places they could be, they are here, in my kitchen. Of all the childhoods they could be having, they are together and warm and safe, in a small home filled with flowers and books and looked over by a dad who prays that someday, these moments, and this kitchen, will become their own core memory. Until then, I have a whole bunch of kids to feed. NHH
BY DAN SZCZESNY | ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLYN VIBBERT
