Zooming with my parents for Thanksgiving was not the same as having dinner with them, especially since I could only see half of my Mom's face (slide 10). Dinner was mandatory in my home growing up. I especially remember the conversations at my last childhood home where we ate dinner together every night in the breakfast nook. Even though we had a large dining room, our parents and the four of us kids, each as big as full-size adults, gathered around a small round table in the kitchen and shared stories of our day. We could do whatever we wanted after school until dinnertime, which was 7 pm sharp when my Dad got home. Mom worked full-time as well but got home earlier and consistently made us one hell of a good dinner. Sometimes we discussed tough stuff like when I had to admit that I hadn't been to Spanish class for diecisiete days and would no longer have the privilege of hablando español until Escuela de Verano (summer school). Whether by chance or parental design, we shared things like this at dinner time. Fairly often one of us kids was in trouble for something and while they were getting ‘a talking to’ by our parents, the rest of us devoured any chance that troublemaker had of seconds. I was in the hot seat another time for my Dad discovering a 6-pack of Magnum Malt Liquor in my closet. In my defense I drove that sixer all the way to a University of Oregon football game and back and never drank it. The more to that story is I got pulled over on I-5 and my very Catholic friend Kat thought it was divine intervention that my car didn't get searched and we should spend the rest of our road trip thanking Jesus for not getting arrested. I went along with this and then hid the beer in my closet. My Dad made me pour it out but then asked if I wanted to share a Henry Weinhards with him on our back deck and said he was most disturbed by my taste in beer. These nightly gatherings were essential to our family bond and I'm positive the reason we're all still close, live near each other, and support one another through it all is because of these spirited dinners. Nice work you old hippies.
