My Inner Carol Brady is AWOL

Last night my family sat down around our dinner table and enjoyed a nourishing, home-cooked meal while we lovingly and supportively talked about our respective days. But then I woke up. As I rolled over in bed -- onto the soggy, half-eaten Teddy Graham that made up the “grains” portion of my four-year-old’s dinner -- I checked off yet another mark on my robust maternal guilt list:  Our family dinner hour masquerades as the family drive-thru 10 minutes.

I think I feel guilty because I grew up with an unrealistic model of domestic bliss, a family in which Mom served a piping hot meal every night out of a magically uncluttered kitchen and Dad eagerly cleared the table. No, not my parents: The Brady Bunch. Carol and Mike really screwed the rest of us -- no nut allergies or aversions to leafy greens in their perky little blended family. No one in the Brady family ever flung themselves to the kitchen floor in the throes of a tantrum, screaming, “Not grilled-cheese sandwiches again!” (Which, I confess, I did just the other night).

Our family does eat together sometimes – but usually only when we’re trapped in the minivan. Recently I confessed to another mom at my kids’ school that my aerobic exercise routine occurs at the stroke of 3:30, when teachers deliver kids to the cars lined up in front of the school while I frantically twist around in my seat, trying to grab Nutrigrain wrappers, banana peels and raisin fossils off the van’s floor before a teacher busts me.

“Oh please,” the mom scoffed. “Our family could eat off our car floor for a solid week.” She confided that her kids get most of their meals served in Ziplock bags as they’re hustled out the door. I trumped her: Last spring, I discovered a trail of ants going into my minivan.

Turns out I’m not the only one. I logged onto the “Mom’s Network” website, which stated only 50 percent of American families come together for a nightly dinner (the website also offered suggestions for “celebrating” the end of the school year, which I found even more disturbing).

And the other day I stumbled across an article from Better Homes & Gardens magazine that bemoaned the demise of the family dinner hour (I’m pretty sure Carol Brady ghostwrote it). Among the practical and mouthwatering suggestions it offers up is this little gem: Have dinner earlier – say at 4:30 – and serve up a hearty bean soup, which can simmer for hours, presumably while you re-fold the sweaters in your closets into perfect rectangles. Hmmmm…. I’m imagining calling my husband Glenn at his downtown office at four o’clock – usually the time he’s gobbling lunch at his desk-- and enticing him home with this seductive whisper: Bean soup night, baby!

I console myself by telling myself our lack of a family dinner hour probably won’t damage our kids too deeply (and Harvard is probably overrated anyway). And it’s really not my fault, considering the raw material I have to work with: I’m a vegetarian; my six-year-old, Jack, seems determined to follow an Adkins-approved diet of meat, cheese, and peanuts; my four-year-old, Will, loves lettuce and carrots dipped into Ranch dressing (he may be training to be a supermodel); and Glenn only likes hearty bean soups.

Another mom recently complained that her underweight 20-month old twins had little interest in eating. “ she e-mailed me, desperation seeping into every line of type. “If I thought it would do any good, I’d act like a mama bird and half chew their food.”

In other words, she does everything the experts tell you not to. A woman after my own heart!

My own parents – blessed with three-high strung, picky eaters as offspring -- didn’t seem particularly fazed by our mealtime piccadilios, even when my brother was reduced to near-hysteria when the peas and carrots touched on his plate. My parents simply shrugged their shoulders, whipped out their VIP McDonald’s card, and took us to their version of the food pyramid: The golden arches. 

Don’t tell anyone, but I think I saw Mrs. Brady sneaking in and ordering a McValue meal -- with extra fries.