Come to the Table: A Celebration of Family Life

Chapter 1
Celebrations
Like most people my age, I have a hard time remembering what it was like to be six. I have an equally tough time recalling how it felt to be four, or eleven, for that matter. But ask me what it was like to turn six, and it's a whole other story. On the topic of my sixth birthday, I can go on at great length.
I can tell you, for example, that on June 2, 1951, at my request, I had calf liver for dinner. And, much to their dismay, so did my two older sisters, having failed to talk me into asking my mother to make something--anything--else. Since I wouldn't eat a piece of liver today to save my life, I suspect I chose it precisely because my big sisters opposed it so violently. When you're the baby of the family, moments of power are rare. They're also addictive: I requested the same exact menu for the next three birthdays in a row.
We still laugh about my "liver years," my sisters and I, but in retrospect I think those dinners speak volumes about what it was like growing up as the junior member of the Ted Kelley family in Oak Lawn, Illinois, during the postwar years.
Birthday memories are like that. They're shorthand, in a way, for a bit of our personal history, a blast from our own distant past. A faded snapshot is all that's required to send us hurtling back through the decades. To this day, I can look at a picture of my family taken long ago and re-create my place in the universe as a child. It may have been at the bottom of the pecking order, but it was a wonderful place just the same. It was there that I learned all I needed to know about security, love, and belonging. It was there that I learned who I was.
The universe of my childhood no longer exists. But bits and pieces of that lost world remain with me: the meat grinder I inherited from my mother; my Aunt Anna's recipe for baked beans; the sense of well-being that still warms my heart at the sight of my family gathered around the table.
And when I close my eyes and let my mind wander into the past, I can picture us still, drifting one at a time on a cold winter evening into my mother's kitchen, five separate souls merging into one family, in a timeless celebration of what it means to belong. Back in my "liver years," of course, family meals weren't endangered. They were simply what families did. Whatever else our lives brought, here was something to count on, something to anchor the day. These celebrations of kinship and closeness always started with blessings and ended with sweets. Casual interruptions like phone calls weren't acceptable, either, although the phone seldom rang. When it did, my family would be startled, bewildered. Now who could that be, at this hour? It was suppertime, after all.
For the most part, the suppers of my growing-up years were fairly routine. We took our seats at the table between five and five-thirty and shared the events of the day over practical, easy meals that were hearty and economical, if a bit unexotic. Mind you, nobody ever complained; our daily bread was satisfying and tasty. But on birthdays and other special occasions, we would take a welcome break from our routine. On those evenings, "supper" became "dinner," a fancier-than-usual meal made all the more festive by the addition of a guest or two, along with a tablecloth and maybe even some hors d'oeuvres beforehand. The mere act of eating these tidbits in the living room, a place where food and drink normally were forbidden, heightened our anticipation, setting the tone for the dinner to follow. Our conversation was more animated and our laughter more frequent. We ate later than usual and we lingered a bit longer. Tomorrow, we all knew, we'd be eating Swiss steak off our everyday Melmac. But now, over roast beef and pie, we were happy to bask in the glow.