Eating together

[cerealjoe]

It's been a tad less than a week and I still feel like I'm in Marseille on holiday. I guess the realisation that I'm here for a year will come when I start commuting in September and when I'm back from Canada. Still, so far, it's been good to be back. I know that my parents are making efforts to feed me varied food but so far it's a good thing, a bit overwhelming but still good. I will admit that I sort of miss my simple dinners and my miso-paste based "soups", I bet that in a couple of weeks the three of us will be back to that.

The best part, obviously, is also being able to eat together like in the good old days. For me, sitting down together at the dinner table and just talking about nothing and everything is what's normal, I was really surprised when some others told me that their parents just gave them food and went to do other things or just watch telly. Maybe that's why I have problems eating standing up. Some habits are hard to get rid of. The other good thing is that we can eat outside. The other day there was a storm that was announced, in the end we only got about three five-minute showers, and the sky had the most amazing clouds. There were at least three varieties... and hey, I'm an official cloudspotter, that's exiting!

Comments

[abbichicken.livejournal.com]

Beautiful, beautiful sky!

I really don't like eating standing up, or whilst moving around. I've never understood people who can walk down the road eating a sandwich, or something... We never had a table to sit around, but we did all sit down together to eat when I was a kid, and it was always the idea that food was for mealtimes and should be reasonably structured and organised...I like that. I still try to get back to that!

[cerealjoe.livejournal.com]

I don't understand people eating sandwiches or other things while walking either. It really doesn't take that much more time... and well, I'm usually clumsy, if I were to walk and eat I'd probably end up with half of the food on my clothes!

U.S. rant

[pnolan.livejournal.com]

In the U.S. eating on the run is all part and parcel of our unhealthy obsession with junk food and disrespect for really caring about what we eat. Rich and poor alike over here "just don't have enough time" to prepare healthy food and sit down together. So . . we have lots of fat people (kids included), and lots of families that don't do family stuff. Everyone is too busy making money and being selfish!

By the way, please forgive me, but I'm confused by where you are living now. School in France? With parents or on your own? You are such a traveler!

Re: U.S. rant

[cerealjoe.livejournal.com]

Right now I'm back in France for a year and I had the choice between staying with my parents (which is ok because their house has two non-communicating floors and they're rather cool about me doing whatever I want) and commuting to Toulon every day or finding a flat in Toulon (and having to deal with getting electricity/internet/etc. of which I have painful memories of when I moved out years ago).

So yeah, basically I am willingly "moving back" in with my parents but if something goes wrong, I can always move to another flat.

[pnolan.livejournal.com]

I think it's cool you are living with your parents, as it indicates that you all get along well.

When did it become requisite for children to move out at a certain age? In the U.S. it's college age (18) or sometimes earlier if the family is not getting along.

I liked the Japanese model in which kids stay at home until marriage or if it becomes necessary to move away for school or work. This wasn't true everywhere certainly, as Japan is in constant modernization mode, but still it was common. Also, it is generally presumed that the eldest child will help take care of the parents when they get old, and many married children move their families close to the parents when this occurs.

[cerealjoe.livejournal.com]

We get along in our own little way. I think that in most families children want to rebel and that's why they leave, I moved out because of school. My parents are infuriating in that way that they don't really shout, I've never heard my father raise his voice and that's why rebelling would have been rather stupid, so yes, in the end we get along.

People these days don't seem to want to talk. They just expect things to happen, they get medicated and never really talk... that could have kept quite a few families together, imo.