Family Dinner Handbook

A friend of mine was recently working on putting together a family medical history. She wanted to know what her relations might pass on to her. She was concerned about cancer and heart disease. My relations have definitely passed a few things on to me and I have to say that I’m far less concerned about the possibility of cancer than some of the other traits that roll around my family tree.


For instance, we all have hot tempers that are firmly anchored to our strong opinions. This makes for some pretty interesting family dinners. When any of us girls brought a boy home to have dinner with our parents, we had to give them a study guide and urge them to cram for the exam. Bringing up certain topics was considered ill advised while others were basically the kiss of death. It was “ill advised” to bring up politics, but since the conversation would eventually come within hitting distance of that topic anyways, then it was considered the “kiss of death” to speak kindly of a Democrat in front of Dad and complete annihilation if a boy actually admitted to having a relative who was a registered Democrat. Complete annihilation was roughly translated as “there’s no way on earth you’re taking my daughter to prom, Tree Hugger!”

Using phrases such as “woman’s work” or “that’s a woman for you” was also ill advised for an entirely different reason—you would be castrated by four women and finished off by my dad. My dad may have thought that he had raised devoted Republicans but he never questioned where feminism landed in the political landscape. Despite living through that confusing transition between marrying a woman who was a wonderful, traditional homemaker and retiring with an independent, and equally opinionated woman, he is fiercely proud of his accomplished daughters and wife. He always expects the men in our lives to recognize our value and respect it.

With a ridiculously lengthy list of topics to avoid, bewildered dates weren’t sure what topics were safe. That’s because no topic was entirely safe when thrown into the den of lions known as my family. I recall a time when my future husband was eating with my family and my dad and sister got in such a heated discussion that they wound up standing up and shaking their dinner rolls at each other. They went at it for a few minutes. My husband was staring, wide eyed while the rest of us calmly scooped up our peas. Once the discussion was over, they sat down and acted like nothing unusual had happened.

To me, this was the norm—a legacy passed down to me without me understanding just what I was getting into. It made those first years of marriage pretty interesting since I was used to arguing and my husband was used to letting me talk at him. But eventually we found our groove and now we’re passing bad habits on to our kids. I have the most opinionated five-year-old you have ever met, and my eight year old has a bright future as a con man or car salesman since he won’t take no for an answer. I’m not sure how I feel about this legacy, but it’s pretty difficult to fight genetics.