Dear Friends,
I was going through a box, no make that a storage bin of old family photographs and trying to organize them into years and remember who everyone was, and found myself getting distracted. Who is that with the cat? What year did we go there? Did anyone really dress like that? Then I noticed the one Uncle that stood out from the rest of the family, he wore a three piece suit and liked to eat. He was overweight. Then I noticed that he was the only overweight in the family, why? He was well to do, single, ate out, and ate what he liked. At a Sunday family dinner he would end his meal, while he awaited dessert, with six slices of bread and ladle or two of gravy. As I pulled more pictures out of the bin I noticed my own weight journey, I was a skinny child. I remember eating three meals a day in our kitchen, together. Like many homes back then, the kitchen was the hub of the house, when neighbors came over they gathered in the kitchen to drink coffee and tea and visit. Children were outside playing if it was early enough, or in the basement or their bedroom. If the “adult’s get together” was planned mom made a cake or cupcakes (if we were lucky there would be enough cake left for us to have a piece for dessert the next night), our kitchen cabinets were not stocked with snacks. Chips, cookies, cakes, ice cream were not staples. We ate what we had and it wasn’t a lot, but if a friend stopped by there was always “room for one more” at our table. We played outside, riding bikes, swimming, running through sprinklers, hiking in the woods, exploring, playing ball, or just running around with our cap guns yelling “bang bang” when we ran out of caps.
Today I see kids that are definitely well fed, not out riding bikes, swimming, running through sprinklers, or playing with cap guns. I see them with a cell phone in one hand and fast food in the other. The cap gun has been replaced by a video game on a cell phone. Coffee and conversation around the kitchen table is now hanging out with 32 ounce Slurpees, cans of energy drinks, pizzas, tubular cans of potato chips, burgers from a fast food restaurant and the conversation is now texted messages to the person sitting next to you.
I noticed that in later pictures I too have put on a bit of girth, I don’t eat fast food, potato chips from a tube, or drink sugary energy drinks. I do not text my conversations, we carry on actual conversations. Admittedly much of the conversations now consist of words like “What?” and “Huh?” My added pounds are a result of eating out at restaurants and lots of home cooked meals eaten at the kitchen table. Oh and six slices of bread with gravy.