An AI generated image of America's first long table--
or so they would have us believe.
Not much diversity or inclusivity1
Whoa! Did I get in bigtime
trouble for my blog post last night. I who am wallowing in the care and love
and support of my family, apparently offended them because they interpreted my
post about no dinners in the cottage as whining that they—specifically Jordan
and Christian—don’t come to see me anymore since I’m not serving dinner. That
wasn’t at all what I meant—and I did say that Jordan is out here several times
a day checking on me. My point, if I had one, was sort of sociology, a comment
on the fact that food draws us together—as families, as neighbors, as community
groups. We are closest to others when we gather around the table. I just
happened to use my family’s current circumstances to illustrate.
That does not at all mean that
my cooking, sometimes wonderful and other times appalling, was the only thing
that drew the Burtons out here for supper. If they didn’t care about me, even
Julia Child couldn’t have gotten them here for dinner—and mostly on time. I
know that well, and I thought they did. They came so we could gather
together—and food, specifically dinner, provided the reason for the gathering.
No that there’s no food—well, I do offer yogurt, etc.—there is no gathering, no
set time and reason. And everybody’s busy.
I hope it’s clear that no one
could ever do more for me than my children, with Jordan as the captain of the
army. She keeps track of my medical appointments—time, place, diet
specifications, etc., if there are any. Because I don’t hear well on the phone,
she has most calls directed to her and asked me the other day just to tell
people to call her. She has a separate folder for each specialist we’ve seen,
with notes on the visit. She has, in effect, become my personal assistant, and
I don’t see how anybody goes through a medical crisis like this without her.
Christian, too, spent many days going with us to various appointments, until
Jamie arrived and took over his duties. Jordan is doing this while dealing with
her own luxury travel clients—and tonight they are both worried because they
have decided they will have to put their remaining old dog down next week.
Their lives go on, but they have put them on the second burner for the time
being to take care of me. It’s ten o’clock at night and Jamie is sitting in his
car right outside my door, taking a business call from Hong Kong. He’ll likely
be there until two in the morning.
No, they were not the subject
of the blog. In fact, they were no more than illustrations of an idea. A story
that seems to fit here: in one office recently, I introduced Jordan and Jamie
as my daughter and son. A few minutes later, the tech, filling out one of those
endless forms, asked me how many pregnancies I’d had. When I said, “none,” she
whipped her head around and stared at the three of us. What I think happened in
that minute was that she felt the love between us and couldn’t believe me.
Jordan explained that they are adopted, and she seemed to accept it. It made me
think of when I had a hip revision—my kids were all four gathered in the
surgical waiting room when my brother walked in. Later, he said, “You could
feel the love in that room. It was tangible.” That’s what family is about.
Gathering for dinner is an entirely different thing.
All my
adult life, I have loved cooking for a crowd. In a hunting cabin in Missouri,
where the bedroom was a check coop that had been cleaned (thank goodness) and
attached to the house, I had dinner parties for my friends and my
then-husband’s fellow medical students. One night I fixed those good Jewish
boys stuffed cabbage and, following the recipe, topped the dish with
gingersnaps. One by one they walked through the kitchen, lifted the lid, and
sniffed, “That’s not how my mom did it.” That may have been the beginning of my
cooking for others. In subsequent years I cooked in big houses and small
houses, fixing holiday dinners for twenty, Sunday supper for at least fifteen,
dinner parties for eight and Christmas parties for sixty or seventy. It all had
to do with bringing people together to eat.
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