#78: "Family Meal"

Another Sunday night. The big kid is asleep, the little one sitting in his chair next to me kinda watching me but also kinda watching the television. He's starting to get tired and I'm trying to eat so I can put him to bed.

Amy and her mom went out to dinner as a night off/thank you meal. I'm glad they got to take the time to go out and have someone else cook and clean and make them a drink (or two). What it means for me is getting the opportunity to have something that is really a guilty pleasure these days - Chinese takeaway.

When I was growing up the only Sunday ritual we ever had was my parents driving to the next town over to pick up my brother and I from my grandmother's house. They used to drop us off every Saturday and pick us up after my grandmother would drag us to church and then usually out for barbecue. It was during these formative years that I discovered my love for vinegar based barbecue sauce, why a potato cake is always the best move, and how much I really hated Lawrence Welk.

Sometime in their thirties my parents found religion and we started going to a church closer to home. It was one of those massive brick buildings that takes up an entire city block, and honestly no matter how hard you try you'll probably never really know everyone there. I had a few friends from middle school that were also dragged there by their parents, and it became ritual for us to try and find new and inventive ways to either escape from or sleep through the service.

Past the terrible boringness of the entire church experience, there weren't many complaints from my brother and I about going. It wasn't really because we were brainwashed in to it listening - we weren't - we were thinking about lunch. The only thing that kept us focused on how we could improve the rest of Sunday was the midday meal.

I'd love to tell you that we had something akin to the British Sunday roast at home. I'd even love to tell you that we had something akin to a roast out at a restaurant. We didn't. I'd even like to tell you that we changed it up and went to all sorts of restaurants around town/the area. We didn't. What I can tell you is that our one guaranteed weekly dining out experience (while dressed in shirts and ties, no less) was the local Chinese food restaurant. 

Of course it was buffet style. You know you saw that coming.

But going to get Chinese was exactly what my family needed at that time on a Sunday afternoon. My mom didn't have to cook or clean. My dad didn't have to wait for food to be ready. My brother and I got to choose whatever dish we saw that we wanted to try, and if we didn't like it there were others to sample. It wasn't amazing food, hell it was barely good food, but it brought us together because it was one of the few cuisines we all liked, even if each of us always ended up with the same dishes and we never, never, never learned how to share Chinese food (to this day my parents still won't sample what other people order - you get one dish, that's your dish, that's it don't touch my food).

I'm lucky now that my family not only eats together more often, but also likes different cuisines so we can go out to most anything, share it with each other, and have a great family meal. Sometimes, though, I just want to sit at home and have takeaway.