The Family Dinner
Our family sat at the dinner table, napkins in our laps, fiddling with the silverware and staring at the walls of our Upper West Side apartment. It was New York City in the 1970s. Sounds of the city wafted up to the 8th floor—sirens, car horns, random yelling—but we were silent as we waited for dinner to arrive. Musing about homework and melted Starburst candy in my pocket, I lay my hand on the dark grained wooden table, purchased from Gumps in San Francisco by our parents on their honeymoon and shipped to their rambling, prewar apartment. The story goes that as the workmen positioned the massive 8-foot table, a leg fell on someone’s foot, creating a bloody mess and a trip to the ER. But the table was intact and sat in the middle of the dining room, the site of countless childhood family dinners.
Suddenly, my mother burst through the swinging door from the kitchen, cheeks flushed with alcohol, holding a platter of tomato aspic.
“Let’s eat!” she declared, waving her hand like an opera conductor. My two brothers and I sat motionless in a stupor of dread, helplessness and hunger as she scooped up the gelatinous molds with one hand, the other outstretched toward West End Avenue, awaiting a plate. After serving the family, she sat heavily in her chair, triumphant, shaking out her embroidered napkin like a toreador then laying it on her lap. Dinner could now begin.
Dinner began with salad. My preferred green was Iceberg, but of course my mother never served such a lowly lettuce. Even in the ‘70s when we ate white bread and canned vegetables, Iceberg lettuce was considered lowbrow. Aspic was the most dreaded salad she served—a gelatinous mound that sat on one’s plate in a clump, partly translucent with bits of tomato and carrot floating inside, like a slug left to die. The consistency was akin to Jell-O, but with none of the joy or sweetness, only the horror.
Next came the main course, pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. Midway through dinner, my mother looked expectantly at us, hoping for some conversation. “So, how was everyone’s day?” We might mutter “good,” “fine,” followed by a pause as she searched our faces for signs of life. ”Is that it?” she said, stabbing a piece of meat with her fork and holding it in the air like a cigarette, swaying back and forth, lubricated with wine. My brothers and I shot looks at each other, silently prodding the other to speak up. “Does anyone have something interesting to say?” Nothing. My father buried his head further into his plate, refusing to meet her gaze. My mother sighed loudly, exasperated at our failure to have a simple conversation. ”Let’s talk about the news! School! Something!” In her desperation,she threw her hands in the air, toppling her glass, sending waterstreaming across the table. Someone ran to get paper towels. The rest of dinner continued in silence until she gathered up our plates and returned to the kitchen. I stayed at the table long after everyone was done, forced to finish my cold and flaccid broccoli alone. I stuffed some of the offending vegetable behind the radiator and threw the rest out our 8th floor window, oblivious to anyone walking below.
My mother liked to drink, mostly in secret. She would sneak one in the kitchen while cooking, then enter the dining room with a flourish—the bigger her gestures, the drunker she was. It’s hard to say how often she drank. Every day? Every other? It was often enough that our dinners were a misery. My brother once said that she was great until 4:30; after that, things could get ugly.
Despite the drunken theatrics, my mother was a wonderful cook and produced over 4,000 family dinners with virtually no help from us. I am still amazed at the outlay of energy, planning and love. She did it all: shopping, cooking, cleaning up. If cajoled, we children reluctantly set the table, then prayed to a God we didn’t believe in for dinner to end quickly.
This family ritual was deeply important to my mother. I see now that she was trying to recreate the family dinner tradition she grew up with. Dinnertime in her childhood home was a formal gathering, a time for serious discussion about issues of the day: politics, government, the approaching war. These gatherings, I imagine, were reminiscent of the 19th century tradition of using the dinner table to educate the children in morality, religion and manners. There was little chit chat and everyone was expected to contribute. She talked about these dinners with reverence.
But as her children, we hadn’t gotten the rulebook. My father, tired from a long day of work, was of little help. I have almost no memory of what we actually talked about. School projects? The rampant crime in the neighborhood? The recent blackout? What remains in my memory is the feeling of being trapped in a bizarre ritual I had not chosen. That and the food: the juiciness of the steak, the gravy atop the mashed potatoes, the unbeatable fried chicken—layers of crispy skin and the burst of tender meat inside.
Things livened up when we had guests at the family table. There was actual conversation, and my brothers and I would listen to the adults, fascinated by the talk of big ideas, but also sex, drugs and depravity. I recall one guest discussing how he would lose his erection when his girlfriend had to put in her diaphragm. “But,” he said with a wink, “it’s always fun to get it back.”
I’m sure I exaggerate. I’m sure there was laughter and fun at the family table. But I didn’t even realize the bizarre nature of our childhood dinners until a high school friend who was a frequent guest shared her observations. “You realize, Phoebe,” she said, “this is crazy.” I was genuinely surprised. Didn’t all families have dinners like this?
*
When I became a parent, the family dinner was a measure of a close-knit family. Friends would proudly announce that in spite of everyone’s hectic schedules, they always made time to eat dinner together. My husband and I tried to corral ourselves and our kids to eat together. But I didn’t try very hard. Mostly, we ate at different times, depending on soccer practice or a late night at the office. Occasionally my son sat alone in the kitchen eating Cheerios for dinner while the rest of us rushed here and there. I can see him hunched over his bowl, slurping and chewing, watching YouTube videos on his phone.
Although I rejected the assumption that close families must eat together, I couldn’t lose the feeling that I was a failure if we didn’t. Our haphazard family dinners were by design a far cry from what I experienced as a child—no salad course or cloth napkins or performative closeness. But the picture of my son, sitting alone in the kitchen, brings to mind what might have been. With a little effort on my part, could we have remade the ritual, molded it into something that had meaning for us?
As I look back on my childhood dinners, the formality of cloth napkins and aspic jiggling on our plates makes me shake my head in disbelief. What were my parents thinking? My memory of those dinners is shaped by having a mother who drank. Alcohol was the cloud that hovered over my childhood. But my heart breaks for her. She wanted to remake this ritual into something precious for us. She tried so hard, and it was so wrong.
*
Last summer, at the age of 92, my mother died sitting on the toilet, gasping for air. Her caretaker Saundra had given her a shower, and coming out my mother said she wasn’t feeling well, then collapsed. Saundra guided her to the toilet, my mother’s head resting on her stomach like a baby.
“The body just keeps going,” she said one afternoon earlier that spring, pondering the brutal reality of losing her memory yet retaining her beating heart. With my mother’s head nestled against her stomach, Saundra called 911, then called me. By the time the paramedics arrived, my mother was gone.
Food is memory, a way of resurrecting culture and tradition, reliving the past with each mouthful. During her final decade, my mother ate like a bird. My brothers and I coaxed her with spoonfuls of mashed potatoes or meatloaf. She often refused. “I don’t WANT IT,” she’d say, pushing the plate away. We tried to nourish her but were only an annoyance. After all those years as the maestro of our childhood meals, she now had no appetite except for sweets. She loved ice cream and ginger snap cookies. She’d make nightly trips into the kitchen at 3 AM and take out a tub of ice cream, stand at the counter, spooning butter pecan into her mouth.
What did she think about as she held the coldness on her tongue? I picture her, leaning her frail body against the counter, digging her spoon into the dense sweetness and savoring the simple pleasure of ice cream melting in her mouth.
Cover photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash
About the Author
Phoebe Farber is a playwright and co-founder of Swan Dive Theater Collective, based in Montclair, New Jersey. Phoebe’s plays have been seen at Dixon Place, The International Fringe Festival, Emerging Artists Theatre, Luna Stage, The Depot Theater, The Bickford Theater, Jersey City Theater Center, The Irvington Short Play Festival, Up Theater and Nora’s Playhouse. Playwriting fellowships include Writers Theatre of New Jersey and The Ground and Field Theater Festival at UC Davis. Commissions include Luna Stage and Vivid Stage. Psychodrama was part of the 2019 season at Vivid Stage. She is the recipient of a NJ State Council on the Arts fellowship award.
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