Dinner Time

When Amanda got old enough to actually converse with her dad and me, we had our first "family dinner." Our little toddler answered some simple questions, Brian and I told each other what we did during the day, and we also ate some food. An uninterested observer would label the event as fairly typical, perhaps a little dull, even. But for me, that seemingly mundane meal is the precise moment that the degree to which my personhood had been irrevocably altered by my motherhood became glaringly apparent to me. You see, the simple act of sitting around a dinner table at the end of the day and talking to my little nuclear family had made me undeniably, deliriously happy. It felt like a balloon of contentment was actually inflating inside my chest. It was startling, especially for a person like me, who prides herself on keeping sentiment to a minimum.

I sat through a heck of a lot of family dinners as a kid. My parents were pretty good about having us all sit around and eat together. But it never felt like this. I am pretty sure that family dinner euphoria is only available to parents.

And I know it's not just me. A friend of mine confessed at book club a couple of weeks ago the lengths to which she would go to make sure her kids could wait to eat dinner until her husband could get home from work. She'd give them chocolate and ice cream; let them play more video games than their daily electronic device allowance permitted; anything to allow her to experience the sheer joy that came along with sitting her boys and her husband around a table and talking to each other.

Luckily my husband understands how happy it makes me to have dinner together (perhaps because it has the same effect on him), and as often as he possibly can, gets home in time for us to engage in our now sacred ritual. We start by asking each other what our favorite part of the day was. Amanda usually goes first. Elizabeth used to follow with, "My fav-it paht, goin' gym," whether we had actually been to the gym that day or not. By now she seems to have gotten a grip on what a "day" is, and changes her answer accordingly.

Tonight, it was Amanda's turn to go first. We had gone to the pool today, and she wanted to jump off the diving board, something she had never done before. At our neighborhood pool, parents are not allowed anywhere near the diving board area, so in order to jump off of it, the child must be able to both jump into the pool and swim to the steps completely unassisted.

"I can do it, mom," Amanda stared into my eyes and confidently, matter-of-factly said at least a hundred times while we were safely in the shallow end of the pool. I wanted to respect my daughter's confidence. But I also didn't want to end up watching her get mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a tanned, teenaged lifeguard whose mouth had been God only knows where before touching my four year old's lips.

So we practiced. I made her jump off the side of the pool and swim back to the steps without help from me. I made her jump off these huge, plastic lily pad things in another area of the pool and swim to the steps from there. "Now can I jump off the diving board, mom?" I could stall no longer. I took a deep breath and tried to hide my fear from her. "Okay, my dear, go for it."

We walk over to the diving board area. She climbs the steps to the board while Elizabeth and I stand as close to the steps as we can without actually getting into the water. As Amanda walks the plank out to its edge, I shout, "You don't have to do this! You can walk back if you want!" "I'm can do it, mom," she says.

And she jumps.

She disappears below the surface, then turns her body and swims to the steps, not coming up for air until she has her hands on the rails flanking the steps. She climbs out of the water, and I can breathe again. I think it took about twenty minutes for my heart rate to return to normal.

"My favorite part was jumping off the diving board!" she exclaimed to Brian at dinner, who was elated at his daughter's accomplishment. She recounted, with the details important to her four-year-old brain, exactly what she had done. "It looked like a high dive! I swam and swam and swam. I did it!" While she talked, I pantomimed to Brian the terror of the occasion, grabbing my chest and widening my eyes as though I were having a heart attack. Not much acting was necessary, because he knew exactly how I must have felt. Just listening to the story scared the sh*t out of him.

"My favorite part was when you reached the steps," I offered when she was finished.

Elizabeth had spent our time at the pool safely cocooned in her life jacket, so she could float around the deep end feeling free without actually being free. "My fav-it paht, goin' swimmin'!"

Brian's favorite part was easy too. "My favorite part is listening to you guys tell me what you did today."