Home by Five

When I was 8, we roamed the square mile or so that was our neighborhood the entirety of every long day of summer. Our parents rarely saw us during those days, usually only long enough for us to grab a snack or some Koolaid and head back out. Always, the admonishment from Mom was, "Be sure to be home by five to set the table."

Having all five of us seated around the table as soon as my dad walked in the door from work was an unwritten law. Nothing got in the way. The schedule was sometimes a few minutes either way of 5:30 depending on the Pittsburgh traffic my dad had to juggle or how complicated my mom's menu was, but family dinner was family dinner, a long-standing tradition that provided so much more than physical nourishment.

Many years later, we established the family dinner in our own family. The world was yet to see a 50% divorce rate and most of my kids' friends also had family dinners. But by the time they were in high school, organized sports had bred the Soccer Mom and the family dinner began to fall prey to drive-through fast food lanes and microwave single-serve entrees eaten over a smart phone or tablet.

The first dinner on our new table back in 2013

I recently wrote a post about how we're managing to survive having seven people on our 42-foot sailboat over the summer, three of whom are my grandkids. In it I talked about manners and how important they are when cramming a lot of people into a small space. One reader observed that maybe the increasing size of houses might be contributing to the lack of manners I see every day. While that might be a possibility, I believe that the death of the Family Dinner has contributed to so many of society's ills. We are an increasingly lonely people, struggling to find some place to connect in a wholly connected society. In our effort to chase satisfaction through endless scheduled activity, we have given up the one thing that could offer it. The plain, old-fashioned family dinner.

Dinner was The School of Human Behavior. We talked about our days in school during the school year, or the forts we built in the woods during the summer. We learned manners by being taught to ask politely for something to be passed. We learned to respect each other by listening and not interrupting someone's story. We learned responsibility by participating in the preparation and cleanup. We learned to express gratitude by appreciating my mom's hard work to prepare the meal. We learned to participate in effective conversation. We laughed together, we got angry at each other, we learned to appreciate each other's feelings. We felt connected. Not too bad for an hour a day investment. So whether you live in a 400 square foot boat, an apartment, or a McMansion, try hollering, "Be sure to be home by five!" to your kids as they go out the door. You won't regret it.

Collaboration or the fine art of working together

If you frequent very many sailing blogs you will notice a fairly prevalent theme centered around playing nice with others in a small space. Sailing couples frequently decry the lack of private space and the abundance of differing opinions, especially when working together on a Boat Project.

If you frequent this sailing blog, you may have perhaps noticed that we've accomplished a lot of Boat Projects on Kintala, most of which have been done together, and without much fighting. Two of these projects occupied the last few weeks on the boat, the mainsail cover (mine) and the ongoing bulkhead table project (Tim's). I was thinking about this whole issue because on both of these projects we sought the other person out to "help me walk this through", a phrase that seems to inhabit our married vocabulary a lot. The one doing the project will begin talking out the plan of whatever step is troubling, and bouncing ideas back and forth we come up with a revised plan that is always better than the original.

I believe the reason that too many couples find it difficult to work together is that they are married to their project, not their spouse. They have a plan that they feel is perfect already and any new ideas, being a threat, are soundly rejected even if they might be better. Tempers and hurt fly freely in this situation.

When Tim and I work together on a project, ideas are not puzzle pieces that come whole and fit into a certain spot - my piece then his, each maintaining their own integrity. They are springboards to new ideas - ideas that get blended and cut and twisted together into the final project, one made better by the infiltration of new creative thought by someone with a different way of seeing the same thing. I don't want to imply that we don't each own a project sometimes; we do. The V-drive replacement was his deal, the cushions and dodger mostly mine, the bulkhead table has been completely his, but all through each of these we needed help to form an elusive idea into a solid project. (Well, maybe not the V-drive...my contribution on that one was to stay far away in the clubhouse :)

The next time you find yourself deep in a project and are feeling a little...well...put off by someone's suggestions, stop yourself and listen. It might be just the spit and polish your project needs.