Shannon Honeybloom shares an excerpt from her book Making A Family Home
The Dining Room
Mealtimes offer families and friends an opportunity to gather together, to be with each other. In the dining room, the presentation and sharing of meals offer opportunities to express our love for one another. The attention paid to the presentation of the meal the carefully placed plate, the lov ingly folded napkin, the bouquet of flowers at the table—shows love and respect for our guests and family and for the food we share. What we see with our eyes can nourish us. This makes the presentation of the meal important—a table that is set in a pleasing and orderly manner, a place mat set with care under the plate, is beneficial to our senses. It is a way to honor those at the table and a way to give thanks for the meal received.
The tradition of breaking bread together, of sharing a meal, helps in community building. In these busy days of unceasing distractions, mealtimes can be a moment to pause in our day, to come together and converse. In present times of endless interruptions and diversions, a meal is an opportunity to share food, life, love, laughter, tears. It also offers the family a sense of rhythm in a day that otherwise may be chaotic and disjointed. Rhythm in turn offers children a sense of security and well being.
A meal can be an opportunity for healing through rhythm, nourishment, and sharing. A meal is an important social activity. Families gather to share a meal and to connect with one another. At times, it can be difficult to gather for a meal, requiring an extra force of determination and cooperation to bring everyone together.
In addition to our daily meals together, celebrations also take place around a meal. Parties and celebrations can be opportunities to mark the special moments in the year and in our lives, candles are lit and crystal is polished. A holiday celebra¬tion marks a certain time of year and a certain occasion; often extended family and friends are brought together to mark the occasion. These celebrations can be very important for the young child. They acknowledge in an outward celebration what a child is experiencing inside the change of the seasons, for example, or the excitement of turning a year older. The child feels recognized by the world.
Festivals are important for children and for the family. Many of us today feel isolated and alone our work may be solitary, our motherhood lonely. Festivals help to alleviate some of that solitude.
When I had my first child, I had never felt lonelier. Suddenly I was no longer working, thereby losing the social companionship of the workplace. It was difficult to leave the house, what with nap schedules, inhospitable weather, discomfort and unfamiliarity with public breast-feeding, and all the equipment of babyhood strollers, diapers, and wipes. I was completely in love with my baby, yet completely alone and even helpless as a new mother.
Motherhood can be an intensely isolating experience. The needs of our babies and children generally take precedence over everything else the diaper must be changed, the baby must nap and be fed. Our own needs and desires are by necessity often placed on the back burner. It took time to figure out how to get out into the world again as mother and baby.
Festivals, both personal and cultural, are opportunities for gathering people together, offering support and friend¬ship to each other. Fear, doubt, and anger sometimes pervade our days and nights. We are bombarded by news from the radio, the inter¬net, the TV, newspapers, and magazines, and more often than not the news is tragic. Bringing people together for a festival is an opportunity to foster warmth, hope, and love within our communities. Entertaining can be intimidating, however bringing people together does not have to be difficult. Sometimes when I invite people into my home, I ask for each family to bring a dish to share. Most people want to be able to help, and they want to feel they are contributing. Entertaining in a way in which everyone contributes, benefits both the hosts and guests.
The presentation of the meal, the set table and the flowers, the thankfulness surrounding the meal, the wholesome¬ness of the meal, and the taste of the meal are all important elements. Incorporating different tastes, such as salty, sweet, sour, and bitter, and different colors and food groups, help to make the meal nourishing. The sense of taste is developed in a healthy way when the wholesomeness of the food, the quality of the food, is emphasized, as well as a variety of tastes presented in a pleasing, reverent way.
Mealtime can be a well-balanced activity, nourishing the body (healthy food), the soul (a loving atmosphere), and the spirit (sharing, offering).
Shannon Honeybloom is a blogger, writer, and speaker on good, green, and slow living, and the writer of the book, Making a Family Home. She is a Waldorf graduate, the daughter of Waldorf teachers, and a fourth generation educator. To learn more about Shannon, please visit her at Honeybloom at Home