Rare Family Dinner Gives the Microwave a Rest

“But this is 1990,” Beverly Beyette wrote recently in this section, “and, popular wisdom has it, family dinner time is all but extinct. Blame it on the women’s movement, or Little League, or pizza-at-your-door. . . .”

To the contrary, the body of her story pointed out, of 500 families with children studied in a Times survey, 86% said the family dinner hour was “very important,” a finding borne out by a current UCLA study.

Of course my own household would not qualify for this study, since our children have long since gone, leaving us alone. I don’t know whether a dinner for two persons can be called a family dinner, but even if it could be, I doubt that ours would qualify.

I don’t blame the women’s movement, Little League or pizza-at-your-door for the decline of our dinner hour. True, my wife is in the work force, and comes home late, but she always has time to pop a microwave dinner in the oven; Little League is no longer a factor, and I have never ordered a home-delivered pizza in my life.

In our house the culprit is television. For years now we have been eating at television trays. Each of us has an easy chair pointed at the TV set, and the trays are in front of the chairs. When my wife comes home she asks me what kind of microwave dinner I want and gives me two or three choices. While the dinner is in the oven I check the TV log to see if their is a movie we can watch. I check the movies out in Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies and Video Guide. Its thumbnail reviews are usually very reliable.

Of course the movies last two hours, and the only time one has for conversation is during the commercial breaks. Usually, though, we just stare at the commercials, mesmerized.

We never eat at the dining room table anymore. It is hopelessly covered with correspondence, bills, magazines, catalogues and indescribable junk. Once a year, at Easter, it is cleaned off for a family dinner.

Recently we moved the table out of the dining room into the living room, to make way for the remodeling. We did not, however, clear it of its debris.

Then the other evening our French daughter-in-law called to say that she had a large batch of leftover lasagna and wondered if she made a salad and brought the two over, with her husband, we would like to have dinner with them.

“You mean here ?” my wife said, not used to having guests to dinner. But of course she agreed. My daughter-in-law’s lasagna is famous.

My wife cleaned off the table and when our guests arrived my son helped her carry it back into the dining room. The workers had already removed the overhead light.

“I guess we can use candles,” my wife said, necessity forcing her return to an old custom.

“Why not?” my son said.

She got out the candles and lighted them and my daughter-in-law heated up the lasagna and I opened a bottle of red wine--that being my function. It was an idyllic, old-fashioned, stay-at-home dinner. At one point I said, “Shouldn’t we have some music?” The idea was met with general enthusiasm.

I looked through my pile of compact discs, realizing I hadn’t played one in months. Just because it was on top I selected the music from “Gone With the Wind.” It was showy and colorful and nostalgic. For some reason we couldn’t remember the name of Scarlett O’Hara, though Vivien Leigh gave us no trouble. Finally it came off the tip of my tongue, and everyone was much relieved.

The conversation sailed along at that level. My wife and I couldn’t remember where we had first seen the movie, though she thought it must have been the Fox theater in Bakersfield. Recalling our Bakersfield years gave the talk a romantic turn.

I remembered poignantly the years when our two boys were still small and we had dinner together every evening--that is, when I was home. Sometimes I had to work late and sometimes I was late at the Press Club. But I remembered that when the boys sat at the table their feet didn’t touch the floor. That always dramatized for me how small they were, and how dependant on us.

The lasagna was excellent. The wine was dry and of good vintage. In the candlelight we all looked human and civilized. If it was not brilliant, the conversation at least was not vulgar. The music reminded us that life is a bonbon.

We’re thinking of trying it again some time.