Sunday Dinner

I cried over my dinner tonight.

It wasn’t that it was horrible. In fact, it was quite good.

Roast beef cooked all day in the slow cooker until it fell apart with just a touch of the fork. Fluffy mashed potatoes with real butter and real milk whipped up just so with the electric mixer. Sweet corn with just a touch of butter. Homemade pan gravy from the meat juices. Good old-fashioned Sunday dinner. Perfect.

It tasted just like my Grandmother’s.

Sunday dinner at my grandparents’ house was a weekly event in my childhood. No kidding, right? Well, maybe not for everyone. I knew lots of kids who did not see their grandparents every week. I thought that was strange. And not only did we see my grandparents for dinner every Sunday, but all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and any extra friends who came along. It was crowded. It was loud. And it was wonderful. There was just something about Sunday that was…Sunday. It was special. It was like a holiday in some ways. It was slower, sunnier, longer, and sweeter than any other day.

Sunday seemed to last forever then. The morning was filled with grandparents’ House time, too. A crew of us would show up for breakfast, help my Grandmother get the roast in the oven, maybe watch some cartoons. Mid-morning, we would go to Mass with whatever group of the family was ready to go at 10:15 AM. Some of the teenage aunts and uncles slept longer and would end up making a sprint up the road to the noon Mass just in the nick of time.

After Mass, everyone gathered at my grandparents’ house – those who lived there still, those who had moved out long ago, and those who hung out so much it was hard to tell the difference. After the last group had returned from church, dinner wasn’t far away. People spilled in the door while others squeezed in between them and their hello’s to clear off the last round of breakfast, set the table, or help put the last touches on the meal.

Dinner was very often that same meal – roast beef cooked all day in the way that only my Grandmother ever made it, potatoes whipped to creamy perfection with milk, butter, salt and pepper, sweet corn kernels, maybe a salad for the side, and homemade gravy from the meat juices. Sure, there were other meals and plenty of variations over the years, but that was the staple meal, the favorite. That was Sunday dinner.

After dinner was play time with the cousins. We played for what felt like forever until suddenly we realized it was getting dark and someone was calling us to supper. Sunday evening supper took many forms over the years – cocoa and toast, takeout pizza, coffee with donuts, crescent rolls, and shoo-fly pie. It was always the “smaller” meal, though, and always the sadder. For after supper, it was time to say goodbye again. Never mind that many of us would be back on Monday evening for hot open-faced roast beef sandwiches or that some of us would probably see one another in school or after school by about Wednesday. We were lucky to have one of those families that lived and stayed close all the time. Even as the youngest of my aunts and uncles grew up and started families of their own, we all still made it home for Sunday dinner for many many years.

But time changes all things and Sunday dinners became more occasional than weekly. Aunts, uncles, and cousins added new spouses and children. They had other places to spend time and people to visit as well as those at my grandparents’ home. Children have grown, married, and have children of their own. The cast of characters has changed due to these and other additions as well as some bittersweet and painful losses.

My grandparents are both gone for several years now. While our family still gathers for dinners and other occasions, there is a part of it that is never quite the same as it was all those years ago. The smell of the roast in my kitchen today was not quite the same as hers and the potatoes may not have been quite as creamy…but it doesn’t need to be. The effect was the same. The comfort was just as good. And the memories that are tied to that meal are everlasting.

And so I cried over my dinner tonight. Perhaps a few of the tears were ones of sadness. Even after several years, I miss my grandparents terribly. Not many people are blessed to have grandparents in their lives for nearly forty years of life and perhaps fewer still are blessed to have them near enough to spend time with every week of those forty years. Sometimes I forget that we won’t see them next Sunday. But the tears tonight gave way to sharing some of the story of those wonderful Sunday dinners…stories I can share with my daughter. Stories she can hear from others in the family when we get together and sit at the same table, talking about all those Sunday dinners we knew.

Sunday may be different now, from the food to the things we do. But when those memories touch today, Sunday will always be just a little bit slower and sweeter. It will always be just a little bit special.