This is the season for Christmas and New Year’s. It is the Eating Season. It’s this time of year that most of us hope our pants still fit when we finally emerge on the other side – mid January or so. As I considered what to write about, food kept coming to mind. I decided to write about a meal I survived… I grew up in a small house on the corner lot of Swarthmore and Academy in the West University area of Houston. The dining room table in our home was between the living room and kitchen. We had family dinner every evening; some of the meals were great; and some weren’t.
Whatever was for dinner would be eaten. That rule even applied to canned spinach. Some of you more fortunate readers won’t know that spinach even comes in cans. Perhaps all you’ve ever known is fresh spinach straight from a garden. Lucky you.
Whenever I saw canned spinach on the table, heated on the stove, and piled into a serving bowl, I shivered (just a little, invisibly). I knew I couldn’t eat the spinach. I'd have to fake eating it, then take steps to remove it, and it wasn’t going to be comfortable.
My mother would serve me the spinach, and I wouldn’t be permitted to leave the table until I had eaten all of it. Our wire-haired terrier, Ginger, was no help; she would have nothing to do with the warm green slime and left me to deal with it by myself.
I would pretend to eat some of the spinach, little bites. Mom or dad would remind me of the rule at least a few times. They would eventually tire of watching me squirm and leave the table. They would go into the living room and turn on the little black and white TV and start watching whatever was on.
I was always the last one at the table, and the spinach was always the last thing on my plate. I had to be careful no one was watching. I would begin putting the spinach in the front pocket of my jeans, little by little. It was uncomfortable, the wet warm glob of spinach growing in my pocket, but it was my way out of table prison. I eventually went from the table to the bathroom and the glob disappeared with one flush.
As I write this, I’m realizing some readers might misunderstand. I don’t want to give children any ideas that might result in any dishonoring of parents. I believe the Ten Commandments are for our benefit, and one of the commandments is to honor our parents. Even when they’re wrong, especially about food. Even then.
Remember that boys and girls.
Speaking of dinner tables, I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer families are holding family dinners every day.
Family dinners are possibly the most important part of family life; one has to wonder if not holding onto that tradition might be contributing to the breakdown of family bonds and even the wider breakdown of the nuclear family in our great nation.
They say hospitality among friends and strangers starts at home, and probably most specifically around the dinner table.
So is it possible the schisms that have grown so deep and wide between people in the last several decades is happening in part because the tradition of having dinner as a family every day is slipping away? And all because of canned spinach, which has caused so much dishonoring of parents? Maybe….
Paul Trapp grew up in Houston, spent over four decades in New England where he and Elaine raised their three children, and retired to Colorado Springs in 2018. Paul spent most of his career working in corporate America as an IT training manager for several companies in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He is also a singer/songwriter and has put a number of his songs on his website, www.ptrapp.com, where you can also find his memoir, “Life Changing Decisions”.