Continuing our Family Night theme, Family Room friend Kym Cross has agreed to share her thoughts with us. Mum-of-three Kym is a people person who loves to gather friends and family around her. She loves life and loves to laugh. Sit back and enjoy her enthusiastic take on Family Night …
Family dinner has existed in the Cross family for many, many years. When I started dating my hubby at age 16, I knew that there was always a place for me at the table at number 12 on a Tuesday night at 6pm.
All these years later, it has ended up being three long tables pushed together with 15 to 22 people. There have been high chairs and, as the Crosses have adopted children with disabilities, wheelchairs as well. We share jokes, stories of our days at school and work and we plan holidays.
As the ages of the kids have changed, the dinner has changed to suit them. The spare chair can be filled by a friend from kindy, an interstate work colleague, a new girlfriend or an old one. It’s not a long night, but everyone contributes. If you’re a working mum, it’s a blessing to come home to a cooked meal on the table. It’s a time for everyone to express themselves.
From a young age, you learn to set the table – and count up to 22. My niece in high school has now taken to making the dessert with Pop and my brother-in-law doing coffee and tea at the end of the night. On your birthday, you get to pick the meal and we light the candles a few times so all the kids have a turn to spit on the cake!
We have always made this a priority and it’s often the children in our families who will remind us how special this time is. It’s important enough to avoid soccer training that night or to make sure the last meeting of the day is a quick one. To leave the office before the traffic and to fight between brothers and brothers-in-law to pick up Narnie (our 92-year-old great grandma) just so you can have her all to yourself on the drive. Narnie only comes on birthdays now, but with a large family that can be almost every second week!
There is an open heart, open house, open mouth policy. There are lots of memories of babies falling asleep at the table and one even planting his face in his ice cream. Conversations can be misheard by hard-of-hearing elders.
Sometimes we laugh so hard we can’t breathe or we just wet ourselves! We wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Kym
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I love the kids spitting on the cake! I love the competitive bids for Narnie too. Beautiful!
This is a great read…I’m right there at the table. I too come from a large family, so I get the number of ages, tables and hearing levels present. Thanks for the laugh Kym.
Love it….Who Doesn’t wet themselves when they laugh so much……Thanks Kym…..What beautiful memories you have and will have in the future.
Kym it was lovely to read and even more lovely to know that Dan and i have actually had the privilege of being ‘ring-ins’ to a cross family dinner before. It is everything you have written. You have an amazing family.
HI Kym – thanks for sending that on – what a beautiful picture you paint. I hope I can have evenings of my own like that one day around my own family dinner table. xPenny
Oh I love that!!! It’s really what family is all about hey!!!
This is fantastic!
You must log in to post a comment.