There's a saying that my mother loved to repeat to all of us when we were all quite younger in order to get us to see the importance of praying together as a family and the saying goes thus:
“A family that prays together stays together..”
She'd repeat this every time to remind us of the importance of doing things together and not just praying alone but other activities like eating food together.
I grew up with the tradition of everyone having each meal of the day at the same time. My mother is someone who loves to have some form of order in every thing she does and she brought her sense of order and ability to foster togetherness to her household.
In the mornings, she'd prepare breakfast for everyone and she would make sure that everyone ate breakfast at the same time before we all went about our activities for the day.
Do not get me wrong though.
It is not as if she would stomp her foot and force us to eat together even when we didn't want to, no it was not like that. Instead, she developed a pattern over time that seemed to work for everyone in the house and soon enough it became a habit that we all adopted. This routine applied for breakfast and dinner only when the whole family would be gathered before the day's activities and after the day's activities.
I always looked forward to having dinner with my family because it was always a reminder of how blessed I am to have a wonderful mother and wonderful siblings. Whenever the food was ready to be served, my mother would instruct me to go announce to everyone in the house and immediately everyone would abandon whatever it is they were doing and they would all assemble in the kitchen while my mother dished out the food according to our status in the family.
I was always the last one on the line because I was the youngest and my mom did not believe that it was correct traditionally to serve the youngest child first while keeping the older children waiting. So, I always had to wait my turn.
After my mom would dish out the food, everyone would sit in the living room and eat together. While eating, we'd share with each other stories about our day and sometimes my mom would tell us all a story about her childhood and she'd teach us a thing or two about where we come from.
Family dinners for me were a lot of things. I learned a lot because I got to know my siblings more and I got to understand my mother more. Family dinners only helped to bring us together to the extent that whenever one family member was absent during dinner time, it always felt like a part of the family was missing.
As we grew up and began to spread out, the habit of converging together in one place to eat the delicious meal cooked by my mother became a rare occurrence. Some of my siblings went to school, married and are living in their various houses, others are still out there hustling, trying to figure out life and I am also out there in school trying to make sure my future stays bright so there really isn't time for us to have such warm dinners as often as we would like to.
Everyone is occupied with several things now and the only times now we get to eat together as one family is during festive occasions like birthdays, Christmas and the likes. Though on other days especially during school holidays or public holidays that aren't during the festive season, my siblings show up and we all get together, talk, catch up and have a wonderful time together with each other.
Eating with my family is an experience that I look forward to all the time.
