Sunday Dinner at The Safehouse

Every family has their traditions. A family favorite of mine is Sunday night family dinner.

When I was a kid my grandparents lived only a few miles away. For as long back as I remember we went to my grandparents’ house every Sunday. Yes, every. As a wee tyke this entailed breakfast. I still remember grandma’s huge pile of pancakes on a platter and her complaining to my mom that the kids (me and four siblings) weren’t eating enough and that my mom should make us eat more. At some point this changed from breakfast to lunch. In the late 1970s the final incarnation became Sunday Night Dinner. When my maternal grandparents passed away Sunday dinner tradition moved to my parents’ house.

We live 30 miles from my parents’ house, code name The Safehouse. On account of the mileage Sunday dinner tradition has been modified to every other Sunday. Sunday dinner entails my parents, my team with two kids, and my older brother’s team and their two kids. It’s always a nice bonus when out of town siblings or aunts and uncles join in. A few weeks ago my younger brother was visiting from Alaska with his two kids. Good times getting all the little cousins together to cause a jovial ruckus.

I look back on my youth going to grandma and grandpa’s every Sunday. I didn’t appreciate it at that time fully as time with the grandparents and family. When I was in college, and occasionally still attending Sunday dinner, grandma regularly issued me extra homemade sauce and boxes of noodles to take back and share with my roommates and friends.

As I got older I became aware of a grander sense of what I had gained from this weekly get-together and knowing who my grandparents were and what their experiences were at different stages of their life.

The memories I have as a kid horsing around on Sunday at the grandparents’ have taken on a new perspective. The younger generation of my kids and niece and nephew now occupy the former role of myself and siblings, while my siblings and I have bumped up to my parent’s former role, and so forth.

Importance of family has been thickly and delightfully entrenched. I like that the kids have so much interaction with their cousins. Over the years seeing each other with such regularity will carry on into the future in a significant way.

Tonight’s dinner was a pre-July 4th barbecuing of burgers and hot dogs with beans. The nightcap included cake and ice cream, on top of the Drumstick ice cream bar I snaked out of the freezer before dinner when nobody was looking. My belly is flush with good times.
-klem