Embracing Imperfection at Family Mealtime

Miguel and Zeca play soccer year around and both did martial arts until recently. Now,  Zeca goes twice weekly without him. She also takes guitar lessons and Miguel has a ton of homework every night now that he's in junior high. Luisa travels for work and is gone for big chunks of time during which I'm taking the kids to activities, supervising homework, preparing all the meals and - the worst part - doing all the dishes while trying to manage my life as a freelance writer. We are busy which is part of what makes family dinner time so important to us. It is the one time each day we know we'll connect with each other. We feel closer to the kids when we know what's going on in their lives and the kids feel closer to us because they have our full attention. Our phones are tucked away in a different room and we are fully present in a way that I'm ashamed to admit is more the exception than the rule.

It didn't surprise me then to learn that families who share meaningful meals together are happier and more emotionally connected. Parents are less likely to feel stress. The kids do better in school and have more confidence. They are hardworking and independent rule followers.*

I think my kids missed the memo about the rule following part of this deal.

It's clear that shared meals are important but family life is also crazy and most of us struggle to find balance between work and family. Plus, there are so many things parents feel bad about when it comes to meals. Maybe you plunge into despair if your chicken isn't free range because "Oh my god! What am I feeding my kids?" Maybe you get pizza more often than you'd like to admit. Maybe your kids bicker over  who gets the "special fork" and while it escalates to the point that you worry someone might actually get shanked, you ponder moving to a yurt. Alone.

We need to let go of the idea that every family dinner has to be idyllic and cut ourselves some slack. We are not perfect. Our families are not perfect. Life is not perfect.

So, how do we embrace the chaos of our busy lives and still sit down together for dinner?

My family does not eat dinner at the same time every day and we do not always eat meals that would look fabulous on Pinterest. Sometimes, we eat dinner at 7:30 p.m. on a weeknight. Sometimes, Luisa is out of town and we have to eat without her. Sometimes, I make pasta and use sauce from a jar and cut up some fresh mozzarella for a little protein and only realize after dinner that I forget to serve a vegetable. Sometimes, we're tired and crabby and still - we sit down at the table together. And if for some reason we can't, we don't dwell on it and try again the next day.

My advice is to be flexible and treat yourself with compassion. We are all works in progress.

I've shared my tips with you. It's your turn to share yours with me. You don't have to tell me to ditch the "special fork" because we dealt with that - nobody gets the special fork!

You can share your tips here but remember that if you use #sharethetable on Facebook or Twitter, you join the greater conversation and Barilla donates 10 meals to Feeding America. Sharing is good.

*This information taken from Share the Table: Benefits of Family Dinner for Parents and Children, a study by Dr. William Doherty

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Barilla, however, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive sentiments towards Barilla or their products.

A Place at the Table

I didn’t start this blog with a particular purpose in mind but this place has become more than a series of stories about everyday life, more than vignettes about taking my kids to school in pajama pants or dropping muffins on the floor. The words I’ve shared here are about family, about my imperfections as a mother and my struggle to be better but my story is more than that.

I continue to share my family with you because I believe in the power of visibility to change the world. This may not be The Gay Agenda but it’s certainly mine. When we come to know those who are different than us, we want the best for them and their families. We want the world to change for them, even in the tiniest of ways. This is when we are at our best, when we find that we can love across difference, when we begin to speak up for each other.

In September of 2013, Guido Barilla said that he would not include a same-sex family in the company’s ads because the company valued the idea of the traditional family. Many in the GLBT community were outraged and many families – families like mine - were hurt by his comments. Anger and sadness led to a call to boycott Barilla pasta.

I was hurt but I wasn’t angry because I wasn’t surprised. His words were simply a reminder of how much work is still to be done on the road to equality.

Since then, Guido Barilla issued an apology and met with GLAAD, GLSEN and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Barilla created a Diversity & Inclusion Board and elected to participate in the Corporate Equality Index created by the Human Rights Campaign. They are re-launching their Share the Table program which reinforces the importance of shared family meals and invites all families to share their stories around family mealtime.

And they invited me to participate, invited my family to share our experience and our story.

I talked to Luisa, to trusted friends and – finally – to my kids. We have some of our deepest conversations over dinner so, one night, I brought up Barilla and told the kids about the comments that had been made. Zeca shook her head, “That makes me sad and it’s wrong.” Miguel slammed his hand on the table and said, calmly but with resolve, “Boycott.”

I turned to him and said, “Do you believe people deserve a second chance to do the right thing?”

He stared back at me, his voice quiet, “I don’t know.”

There is so much that he doesn’t know.

My mother never wanted us to have children. She felt it was wrong, an unfair burden for the kids. I had to work hard to set her hurtful comments aside but I did and Luisa and I created our family despite her disapproval. We maintained a relationship with her and were patient and watched as our children brought more joy to her life than any of us could have imagined. My family – Luisa, Miguel and Zeca – brought me closer to my mother and, before she died, she told us that we were good parents, that we had a beautiful family. I will forever be grateful for that peace.

I know the power of second chances. I believe that from deep hurt comes the possibility for great change and that is why I have decided to partner with Barilla on the Share the Table program.

Family mealtime has always been important to me and some my best memories are of meals shared with family, in the many ways I define it. In the coming months, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on family mealtime and telling our story as I always have. By using the hashtag #sharethetable, you too can tell your story and every time you use that hashtag, Barilla will donate 10 meals to Feeding America.

We can be visible. We can learn from each other. We can give back.

And maybe – just maybe – we can be a part of change.

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Barilla, however, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive sentiments towards Barilla or their products.

The Things We Do

I heard Zeca crying in her room. I went in to find her lying in bed, covers pulled up to her chin, tears on her cheeks. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she'd messed up her Rubik's Cube. She'd gotten it for her birthday and had been carefully twisting and rotating it for a week, figuring out how it worked. She had told me she wanted to understand it. But that night, she had made a wrong turn and couldn't get it back the way it was. I got a Rubik's Cube for Christmas when I was in high school and turned it every which way and was never able to solve it. So, I told her that, told her that I had messed mine up and survived. I told her that thousands of people probably have messed up Rubik's Cubes lying around their houses. This was no consolation to her and she cried herself to sleep.

Later that night, before going to bed myself, I went into her room to tuck her in one last time and I looked at her sweet face and then looked at her Rubik's Cube and thought, "I can fix this."

There are so many things we can't fix. We can't take away loneliness and we can't erase a bad test score. We can't keep them from disappointment or pain, can't always make things easy for them. I know all this and struggle to make peace with varying results.

But a messed up Rubik's Cube? Surely, I could fix that.

So, I took it from her desk and settled into bed. I googled "How to solve a Rubik's Cube," found an instruction sheet and went to work. Even with instructions, I was having a difficult time and stopped for the night after about an hour - I had only completed the first step.

For the next several nights, I stayed up way too late, peering at the instructions on my phone and working on that damn cube. I got it to the final step - solving it was only a few twists away - and I did something wrong and wrecked all that I had done and had to start over.

Each morning, Zeca looked at me hopefully and asked, "Did you solve it?" and each morning I said the same thing, "No, baby. But I'm going to fix this."

Last Wednesday, I sat with the instructions and the cube during the kids' martial arts class and found myself mumbling to myself, "Red edge blue center to the outside" and wondering how to make that magical move happen. I'd stayed up way too late for way too many nights and I realized that it might take me weeks to figure it out because my mind just doesn't work that way.

Miguel came over and sat down and said, "There is a kid in my class that can solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute. Let me take Zeca's cube to him and let him do it."

I wanted to solve it. I wanted to fix this one thing. And then I realized that I still could by handing it over to someone else.

So, the next day, Miguel took Zeca's cube to school and his classmate solved it in under a minute as promised. He came out of school with the perfect cube in his hand and gave it to Zeca who lit up.

As a parent, I can't fix everything and maybe I'm finally learning to accept help fixing the things I can.