I was reading the comics this morning, and saw a Family Circus one. It was basically pondering what had happened to the old Sunday Dinner. I looked up and Bart and said "Did you used to go to your Grandma's to eat every Sunday?" He did, and so did I. We rotated between 2 grandma's houses, but every Sunday we went to Sunday Dinner.
What happened to that? Do you know ANYONE who still has or goes to a Sunday Dinner? I don't. Maybe it's because families are so spread out now. We don't have any grandparents within about 7 1/2 hours of here. Maybe it's because s many people get divorced, remarried, etc. and there are step-grandparents and step-parents and half siblings. Maybe it's because the entire freakin world is on a diet, and I'm pretty sure Nanny's home-made creamed corn and buttermilk biscuits don't make the list.
It's a little sad when you think about it. At least twice a month when I was a kid, I went over to Nanny Padgett's house. We helped Paw Paw pick the butter beans for lunch. Dad brought over tomatoes from his garden. We ran and played with the 8 or so cousins that were always there (the inside of the giant Camellia bush was the best place to hide...) Then we came in to eat. The kids all sat out on the porch, while the grown-ups sat in the kitchen or the dining room. Sometimes the men sat in the living room if good football was on. Sunday dinners consisted of sweet, SWEET iced tea (no wonder we ran around so much...), bread/rolls/biscuits, Roast beef/Turkey/Ham, creamed corn, butter beans, green beans, tomatoes and cucumbers, the best Mac & cheese you have ever eaten, fried okra, and sometimes collard greens. On holidays we had sweet potatoes too. Dessert was home-made vanilla ice cream, or the cheesecake cherry pie that no one has the recipe for. It was heaven to a kid. After dinner we'd play horseshoes, or play house out on the concrete patio beneath the giant Pecan trees. We knew when Amy got her hair cut, or Jamison broke his arm. Everyone knew that I had just cut all the hair off my new hair-styling barbie, and that Courtney busted her lip riding her bike that week.
On other weeks, we'd go to Nanny Satterwhite's house. It was a little more subdued, because we were usually the only kids. We'd go outside and watch Poppy feed the squirrels. We'd play with his dogs and collect acorns. Lunch was either Pot Roast and potatoes, bread/rolls, squash, gravy (Nanny S. makes the best gravy - you could eat it on anything), potato salad, OR we'd have spaghetti and meatballs. Dessert was usually ice cream or cobbler or something from the bakery around the corner. (Sometimes we went to church with Nanny, and on the walk back we'd stop at the bakery. We'd pick out dessert for dinner, then each get a doughnut or petit-four. It was awesome...) We watched TV sometimes, played hide and seek in Nanny's old antique furniture (the chiffrobe was the best place to hide), and played with Nanny's huge box of buttons and beads. It was always fun too.
Nobody does that anymore. All of our grandparents live hours away. My cousin and Aunt live in Alabama. Aunts Uncles and Cousins on BOTH sides of our family are a little nutty, and some of them we haven't seen in years. Bart's sister and her kids live 2 miles away, but we hardly ever see each other. My sister is an hour and a half away - too far to drive for a meal.
I guess it can't really be helped. It just never occurred to me before today that those Sunday Dinners were a staple of my childhood - for almost 18 years plus. And no one does them anymore.
Sad.
No comments:
Post a Comment