Today I made dinner for my family. Of course I found the recipe on pinterest, where else? Chicken Satay, but skewerless because we already went to the store about 4 times before realizing we didn’t have any, and asparagus.
Steps 1-4. Mix a strange series of ingredients together. Soy sauce and peanut butter? Brown sugar and rice vinegar? Stare at bowl. Stir ingredients. Marinate.
Which turns into:
We’ve all got the lives we’ve lived up to today, and they’re all different. We’ve all been a part of some things and missed out on others. I never learned how to ride a bike or do a somersault.
So many of the things I missed out on are mostly because of my only-childness. Like family meals. I love being around families who sit and have meals together. It’s one of the things I love the most about the Birksfam. Eating dinner together. We never did that in my house.
I was at daycare into the evening and often was picked up from daycare to be taken straight to dance or piano lessons. McDonalds it was.
We inherit a lot from our families, but not just in things we acquire from them. We inherit a lot in what we desire because of them. So I have a small list.
- I want to really know my children, beyond the convenience of family relations. Even if they grow up to hate me, I want to know their quirks and their tastes in things. I want to listen and understand them.
- I want to have an open house, where friends and family and visitors and friends of friends can come and stay, even if it’s just on a couch. Maryann Covert is my hero of hospitality.
- I want traditions, traditions beyond me putting olives on my fingers every Thanksgiving regardless of age. Traditions that are unique and meaningful and can’t even be exampled now because they have to organically develop.
- and I want to have family meals. Jesus often ate with people, and I want a family that can gather together and eat and laugh and share, just like in commercials and in tv shows. I guess no matter how old I get, I’ll never really let go of my mental image of what a surviving family looks like.
So that’s that.
The other day I got to have dinner with one of my fave families of all time: the Markhams. I would take an evening with these boys over most anything else you could offer me.