bringing dinner back

“And thank you for Poppy’s birthday.” — Sawyer, during last night’s prayers.

Clyde's dad, Kenneth, a few months before he died

Noah and Sawyer never met Clyde’s dad, who died of cancer when I was four months pregnant with Noah. The night he died was the first time I felt Noah move.

It is one of our family’s greatest tragedies that our boys never knew him. Sure, they know of him. They know the stories. But they never sat on his lap, never had him show them how to carve wood or plow a field. Never shared a family meal — one of his favorite times.

Monday was his birthday. Although we miss him at random during the year, there are always days — holidays, his birthday, the anniversary of the day he died, his wedding anniversary — where it feels more acute.

Here’s a piece I wrote for The Dallas Morning News back in 2005, inspired by Kenneth and one too many school shootings. As I read it, I realize this was the first tiny glimmer of an idea that turned into this blog and my obsession with the family dinner so many years later. So for that, and so many other things, I thank you Kenneth.

Eat Together, Talk Together, and End the Violence
The Dallas Morning News, April 5th, 2005

Want to know why kids are killing each other at school? It’s not because there are too many guns (although I’d certainly like to see them off the streets). It’s not because kids are watching movies about school shootings. It’s not because they’re playing Grand Theft Auto.

It’s because there aren’t enough family barbecues.

Why aren’t we as outraged about the recent shootings in Minnesota as we were with Columbine? Why are we becoming more like Israel in our acceptance of violence and less like, say, Sweden?

Same reason. It’s all about the barbecue.

The fact that a teenage kid can get to the point where he brings a gun to school, shoots another person and another and another, then shoots himself, means that kid wasn’t going to any family barbecues. That boy’s family – be it over a smoker in small-town Texas or a reservation in Minnesota – should know what’s going on inside his head. A child bringing a gun to school is not the first symptom that something is going wrong in that child’s life. It certainly often is the last, however.

My father-in-law was part of the family barbecue tradition here in Texas. Several times a year, he’d fire up the barrel smoker, invite his family and friends over whenever they wanted to arrive and spend the evening eating a bunch of meat, drinking a fair amount of beer, laughing and talking with those closest to him. At the end of the evening, everyone smelled a little smokey and had told just about all they had to tell about their life and what was going on in the world.

My father-in-law died eight years ago. But my husband’s brother, who still lives in our hometown of Waxahachie, carries on the barbecue tradition every now and then.

About a month ago – with sick kids, deadlines I didn’t think I could meet and our school’s largest annual fund-raiser to plan – I had a craving for one of those barbecues. And not a carnivorous craving. A social craving. Lucky for me, some cousins came into town, and we spent a recent Friday night inhaling that smoke and catching up.

Maybe this is a simplistic view of how to turn around our increasingly violent and apathetic society. But I don’t see bad parents at these barbecues. I see parents I don’t always agree with. Parents who raise their children differently than I do. Parents with whom I differ on politics, religion, even whether we should be eating that meat on the smoker.

But I see parents. With their children. I see grandparents. With their children. I see aunts and uncles. With their children. I see friends. With their children. I see a yard full of people who would know a child well enough to see – and do something about – that first sign of trouble. Because that’s when we, as a society, can do something about it. It’s too late when it hits the news. Kids are dead.

We are headed down a road of more school shootings that we will be less shocked by. The road we should be headed down is one that includes more family barbecues.

You name any one of our infamous list of school shooters. If you had dropped them into my father-in-law’s family – or another family where parents knew their children and extended family knew those children, and where family was the most important part of the day – these kids would not be dead.

It’s all about the barbecue.