#tbt - sister sister

Today was a sad day because I had to say goodbye to my sister Lauren as she packed up to fly north for the winter.

I tried unsuccessfully to convince her to simply transfer down here and start going to UH.  She cut me off before I could explain that she could crash here.  The walk in closet is already occupied by Katelyn but I was pretty sure Lauren would be comfortable sleeping on the couch.  She could fall asleep to the soothing sounds of any of the five TV stations we receive.  We can't offer much in the way of social attractions but last night Dave and I played a pretty rousing game of Scrabble in which, at the end of the game, I flung the game board into the air, laughing hysterically as the little wooden pieces rained back down on us.  As I was cleaning Kate's toys this afternoon, I was almost certain I would find a lettered tile or two.

My family is historically bad at goodbyes.  We take it beyond a normal level of tearful sadness.  I think it's an anxiety thing.  The whole last day gets turned into a dismal "party" that we are trying to enjoy.  Each hour grows weepier than the last as the number of times the phrase, "This is just so sad" increases.  We really don't like saying goodbye.

Sure enough, as we stood around in my kitchen next to the front door, things got even more pathetic.  Saying goodbye in my family is like trying to remove a stubborn bandaid.  We each have our own method of choice.  When Jack went into the MTC and we knew we weren't going to see him for the next two years, he chose the "rip it off quickly" approach.  When the time came, we each got one quick hug and he was gone.  My goodbyes always seem to be drawn out.  I was the kid who was convinced that the easiest way to remove a bandaid was to slowly and painfully pull on the adhesive, bit by bit until you got to the end.

Kate, of course, was running around completely oblivious.  She kept trying to goad a tearful Aunt Lauren into another game of chase.  She was blissfully unaware and had no concept of a longer term goodbye.  All she knew was that Aunt Lauren was asking for three times as many hugs and kisses as usual.  When Aunt Lauren finally did walk out the door, I'm sure Katelyn's innocent toddler mind was expecting her to walk right back in tomorrow morning to go swimming with us.  Somehow, her complete ignorance of time and her inability to understand missing someone made the situation even more sad.

So forgive me if I'm a bit melancholy tonight.  It seems fitting to devote this Throwback Thursday to sister memories.

My first memory of Lauren was before she was even born.  I was five years old when my parents found out she was a girl.  I was so excited and imagine playing dress up and Barbie dolls with this new "baby" in just a few months.  Imagine my surprise when all the baby did was sleep.

When she finally did get old enough to play Barbies with me, my parents bought us a Barbie Fold n Fun house that I'm sure they deeply regretted every time we asked them to set it up.

At some point in our childhood, it was decided that we were going to share a bedroom.  This made for some epic late night screaming matches.  We slept on a blue metal bunkbed and I somehow was assigned the top bunk.  (To this day, Lauren claims that she falls out of bed frequently.)  Lauren would put her feet up on my mattress and kick me in the back for sport.  Sometimes I would laugh about it and think it was funny and sometimes I would be annoyed.  Sisters can be loose cannons like that.  The bed was pushed up in the corner of the room against one of the windows.  Once Lauren very quietly and very sneakily climbed up the side of the bed so that she was standing on the window sill and her face was right above mine.  There have been few times in my entire life when I have been that badly startled.  We laugh about it to this day.

When I was sixteen, I broke up with my first boyfriend.  I found out that he had lied to me so that he could secretly hang out with some other girl behind my back.  It was one week before the Homecoming Dance so I had no date.  It was very dramatic.  I remember sitting with my mom in the upstairs loft of our old house crying my teenage eyes out when I heard little ten year old sniffles and realized that Lauren was crying just as hard as I was.  I had no idea why she was crying because she hadn't been dumped.  I realize now that it was one of those rare times when you get to witness someone who loves you so much that they experience your pain and feel sad just because you are.

Years later, when I actually experienced a more serious and life altering break up, Lauren was crying alongside me with a fierce loyalty I have rarely ever seen anywhere else.

One time, we were watching TV and the most stupid show came on with some joke about two women who brought in the same coffee mug and kept yelling, "Coffee twins!"  As if it was some weird sisters dog whistle, we both picked up on some crazy strain of humor that no one else in the room could detect and we laughed, as my mom would say, like hyenas for days.  We still find humor in some of the same things that almost no one else laughs about and we have a nearly identical sister chuckle so that, when we really get cracking up about something, it sounds like one person laughing in stereo rather than two goofy girls.

Of all the people I told about the impending arrival of Baby Kate, Lauren's was the most extreme.  She immediate burst into tears and not the quiet one-tear-rolling-slowly-down-your-check kind either.  She nearly collapsed into a puddle of sobs and it was then that I knew that Aunt Lauren and Katelyn would always have a special bond.

I think that's what made Lauren saying goodbye to Katelyn the saddest part about today.  I am forced to remind myself to keep this in perspective.  She is going to BYU for four months, not crossing the Pacific on a sailboat, not boarding a shuttle for a moon landing, and not being exiled to Elba.  It has just been nice having her around.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a sister.  No one but me is lucky enough to have one as good as Lauren.

the family table

When I was growing up, sitting down to a family meal each night was the rule rather than the exception.  My mom cooked dinner almost every night and we would all sit down when my dad got home from work.  We talked about school and friends and other various topics and we couldn't leave the table until everyone was done.  When the meal was finished, we each had to do some chore to help with the cleaning.

(If you were lucky, you got to take out the trash.  If you were unlucky, you were stuck doing the dishes.  Luckily if you complained that "nobody ever helped you," my dad would help until the chore was done.)

My childhood evenings were filled with classic meals like spaghetti with garlic bread and chicken with rice.  We ate things like meatloaf, shepherd's pie, and soup.  On Saturday mornings my dad fixed pancakes (although not in a fancy dress shirt like in this picture).  No one was forced to eat anything but there was always something on your plate that you liked.  Family dinners were a happy time that we all looked forward to yet took for granted at the same time.

For the first few years of our marriage, Dave and I were both either working or studying full time.  At home, we were tired and worn out and cooking a meal just didn't sound fun.  Most nights were spent rummaging for ready to eat food and sitting on the couch bathed in the glow of a TV screen, surrounded by the din of commercials rather than family conversation.  I always planned on having family dinners.  It just made more sense to wait until we had children and I was at home to prepare our food instead of out in the workforce tired like everyone else.

And then we had Katelyn and Dave started working and life went so fast so soon.  He never gets home until seven and by the time we get up the stairs and into the house it just made more sense to put Kate in bed and eat something from the fridge, or worse a fast food restaurant.

Lately, I've been watching a show on BYU TV called The Food Nanny.  At first I started watching it because I will watch any cooking show.  I continued to watch it because I couldn't take my eyes off the show's hokey gimmicky antics and the annoying timbre of her voice was like passing a train wreck.  I just couldn't take my ears off of it.

Eventually though she grew on me.  I realized that past that obscenely chipper Utah accent and frosted hair was a woman who actually felt strongly about family dinners and genuinely cared for the families she was helping.  Episode after episode, she tries to help various haggard parents at their wits end about family meals.

(Only a cooking show produced in Utah would prepare recipes designed for eight to nine servings, by the way.  It is so Utah.  She helps families of multiple blonde children with last names like Christensen and Young.)

So I made the commitment to cook at least five family dinners a week.  On Fridays, we have a date night and go out to eat and Saturdays would be spent eating leftovers from the week before or in the absence of leftovers, breakfast food.

At first, it was difficult.  That first Monday evening as I drove to pick Dave up from the bus stop, I briefly considered driving through Wendy's for some side salads and chicken nuggets.  Instead, we went home and I threw frozen chicken and broccoli into the oven.

Gradually though it got easier.  I planned ahead and wrote down the menu on my calendar each week.  I found that by briefly thinking through what we would eat the next day before I went to bed, I saved myself time and effort the next afternoon.

I learned that I actually enjoy the half hour it took me to put dinner together in the evenings.  Dave sits with Kate in the living room and I get to prepare our meal serenaded by the sounds of squealing laughter and books being read.  It has given Dave and Kate a chance to spend time together before she goes to bed for the night.

We sit down together and have a prayer before we eat.  Katelyn has learned to fold her little arms that are so chubby she can't even fold them completely.  Dave tells me about his day, I recount our adventures at home, and Katelyn laughs as we try to keep her from dumping her plate on the floor.

Family dinner has become my favorite part of the day.

Family dinners have become a part of our nightly routine that I look forward to.  The social, emotional, and financial benefits of eating together as a family are countless but what I think is overlooked is the health benefit.

I have found that I'm eating less throughout the night.  First of all, I'm eating a healthy balanced meal with ingredients that I have chosen and prepared instead of a processed or fast food meal with a high starch and sugar content.  I know what I am feeding my family because I purchased the food and put it together myself.

But perhaps more importantly, by making our family dinner an event instead of an evening of grazing, I am telling my brain that I have eaten.  I prepare the food, I sit down and enjoy eating and conversation, and at the end, I help clean up and put Katelyn to bed.  The entire process takes well over an hour.  By the time we sit down for the night, it is almost nine o'clock and my brain has processed that fact that I enjoyed a meal, am full, and am pretty much done eating for the day.

I hadn't realized it but by eating small amounts of even healthy food over a long period of time in the evening, I wasn't allowing my brain to comprehend the fact that I had eaten.  Enjoying a healthy meal with my family causes me to stop and focus on the food I am eating.  When I am done I know it.

So I guess I should have been less annoyed by the Food Nanny and more grateful.  She saved family dinners at our house.