You know there are a lot of things that we would all LIKE to do every day. I would love to be able to find some time to write blogs and communicate with people, write and answer emails, and generally find out what’s going on in everyone’s world.
I would love to visit my family more. I can’t remember the last time I went and visited either of my son’s, at their places. My daughter lives closer..so I “pop” in and out or run by to pick up something. But to REALLY visit? Gosh, I am ashamed. This past Sunday all of our family, and my Brother’s family with the exception of my Nephew got together at my folks house to draw names for Christmas. It was the first time in AGES that our families have really gotten together for a while. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. I was going around snapping photo’s of everyone, especially my Niece’s new little baby boy who everyone was taking turns holding. It makes me think back again…back to the old days when visiting was really an art!
On Sundays back when I was a kid, sometimes my Grandmother would invite the preacher over after Church to eat. Everyone would gather around the table (yes, that’s right, we ate around a table back then) and would all take place in conversation while passing the fried chicken (FRESH fried too…like as not this fowl had probably been foraging for a meal the night before when he got a RUDE surprise!) and the fresh biscuits made with Lard. Now for those of you who don’t remember, Lard is pig fat that has been skimmed of the top of boiling water which has pig parts floating around in it, and has been allowed to cool in order to use in which to cook. Now, I never really thought I would see the day that I would hark back to that process with found memories, but I guess it’s here. And, to beat it all, now we are being told that it’s probably better for us to use Lard then to use the stuff that they came up with back in the forties and fifties, which was so full of palm oil, and all that other dangerous stuff that it clogged up all our arteries!
Well, I digress. But in any case, we sat around that table sometimes for an hour, or hour and a half. People would take their TIME eating, and in between they ( I say they, because we little kid’s didn’t get much of a turn at talking…and back in those days the old saying about kids being better off seen than heard was in full force!) they would discuss things. Religion of course. Politics, hunting, fishing, gardening, and just about anything you might be able to think of to talk about. By the time you rose up from the table, your meal was well on it’s way to being digested. Contrast that to what we do now. Some days I go eat NOTHING but stuff from dang fast food places! If I don’t bring my lunch, it’s a trip out at noon to get some “nutritious” deep fried greasy fish, or a double helping of barbeque at the local bbq joint. French fries by the ton, and Frosty’s. Oh yes, there are always those! It’s no wonder I got stents sticking in my arteries! I am surprised that all of my generation hasn’t keeled over from the way we live. If most of them are like me, they get up long before dawn has cracked, leave the house and drive to work for an hour, work all day, drive back home for an hour and if you got anything that needs to be done that night you go through the fast food joint again that night!! Arggh!!
I long to sit down at a table for a meal, and not have to feel like I have got to wolf it down like a pig and then get up and be on the run doing something that I really don’t need to do. After all, when you think about it, how much do we REALLY NEED to do? We think ALL things that are going on are important. “Gotta catch that kid’s soccer game.” “Gotta get on the computer and get some work done…need that extra money” Yada Yada. I tell you, I don’t even ever remember my Grandfather doing any work much, besides getting out and raising the food they needed to get by, and tending a garden and some bee hives. Hey, I know that their “standard” of living certainly wasn’t up to the Rockefellers…but really, what did it matter. When you can find the time to sit around a table at a meal for an hour and a half without you’re britches getting so itchy to get up and do something that you can’t stand it, then..maybe then…you have accomplished something.
You know, I would really like to turn things around. I am so, so tired of the way that we have to live that it just get’s frustrating. I think back to when I was young and wonder where it said that I HAD to have some of the things that I’ve got. I think a lot of the way we live has been forced on us, especially we “middle class” people by the system and the government. We really have gotten caught in the MIDDLE. We are in the middle of paying the most money for taxes of any class. We are in the MIDDLE of being the class that all the retailers and drug companies depend on to rip off for their profits. (not to speak of our friends in the Oil and gas business) We are in the MIDDLE of having to support everyone who can’t, or more likely WON’T pay their hospitals bills, so WE have to pony up to the bar and pay the bill through higher deductibles on our insurances, and higher charges if for some reason….God forbid…we have to go into a hospital or an emergency room. I tell you, next time I go, I feel like going somewhere first and buying me a fake i.d., and telling them I am indigent, or faking a Russian accent or something. (I can’t do a Hispanic accent, and besides I don’t think they would buy that one!)
Yes, the MIDDLE has to do it all, and the only time we get any attention is when the politicians want us to go out and vote them back into the office so they can sit on their fat rumps and get rich through the offices we put them in. ( I hope I am not sounding too frustrated!)
But, back to the dining table. I think I am going to rearrange my wife’s house so that we are using the bigger room which is NOW our living room for a dining room. I want to get a table big enough for 8 people or more to sit around, and then on Sunday’s and holidays I want to invite my family to my house. We can sit around the table and take as long as we want to eat. NO TV!! Maybe everyone can relearn to talk to each other and have conversations over the course of time. We can discuss what we need to do in order to get out of the MIDDLE of things!! ( I guess I don’t have the answer for that one yet)
In any case, it would be nice to get back to the old days, if only for a few days a year. Maybe it would help….I think it’s worth a try!!
Writing for Sanity's Sake 