One of the important things about family is food, members of every family has a common preference of food; even if there are differences, it would not be far. I know children that do not like certain food because they were not familiar with it such foods since they never ate it at home. In fact, certain families has their unique way of cooking some food. For example, I never knew seasoning cubes can be added to beans, salt alone to cook yam, etc. Eating together can be therapeutic because there will definitely be presence of peace, love, strife, grudge, offence which can be a perfect time to discuss important issues too.
I have never given family dinner it a deeper thought until recently and, the prompt also made me thought about it more. Family dinner in my home is usually based on everyone's preference and agreement to eat. We have a bad habit of eating late and our body system got used to, we usually eat around 9pm (crazy, right?). This is because my mom owns a shop that's attached to the house and we close around 9pm so that's the time we start eating (my mom or sisters would have made dinner ready before 9pm).
Eating together has its strange way of binding people together, it doesn't start obvious but gets noticed over time. My siblings and I barely ate in the same plate except times when either party had to take some share from the other. My mom and dad always eat together unashamedly, so lovely. We always eat together when we were less younger, everyone sits round the cushion chairs to eat and watch movies together ( I think that's how I got addicted to watching movies whenever I want to eat) we eat more in the parlour than at the dinner table because of the TV.
Later on, things changed. My immediate sister started it, she no longer enjoys sitting in the parlour to eat with us because she just got to know about Korean movies, days of City Hunter, Boys before flowers, etc. She only comes to eat with us when she has no Korean movie to watch, we couldn't force her to join us because she would refuse to eat (very stubborn human😂). I was the next to break the usual dinner settings. I don't know the cause but I started eating very late at night, sometimes midnight like 11am, 12am, 1am and worse ever was 2am. My parents tried every way possible to make me eat early but nah it didn't work. I no longer enjoy my food when I eat around 8,9pm.
I tried to adjust when my dad was posted to a far distance and doesn't come home frequently. It was obvious that my mom missed eating with her man, so I decided to be her man. I ate with her for long and it was always fun, kinda. My older sibling were jealous 😂😂. Eating with my mom for about a year made me know her more, extremely free with her that I know what to do to get her to do what I want.
Here in school, eating with my guys made us close and bond better. I plan dinner with about 3 others in my hostel, we eat together and that had made us become closer, like a family because we have been doing that for more than a year now.