How does one sort through the hundreds---in a year, the thousands---over a lifetime, of dinners that families eat together to know which were the ones the made the family? Which ones made the difference? Which ones strengthened the family?

You'll remember some spectacular meals, such as the Thanksgiving feasts that took nearly a week to prepare, or the dinner celebrating your daughter's engagement, or the surprise birthday dinner you pulled off for Dad. You might have taken photos of eating Dutch-oven fare while camping in the mountains or of the extended family gathered around your festive dining table last Christmas, or your son's middle school graduation dinner with his friends devouring pizza nonstop. You'll recall the Sunday dinner when your shy six-year-old revealed that she had borne her testimony in Primary for the first time or the day your teenager complimented you on a talk you had given in sacrament meeting. Or the time that your grandson insisted on saying the blessing for Sunday's dinner, during which he announced, “Bless the baby in Mommy's tummy.” Memories of failed meals might also surface, such as time the new recipe you thought sounded so enticing turned out to be a flop or when bickering prevailed or someone left the table in anger.

Nevertheless, most meals were probably pretty ordinary and not remarkably vivid in the collective family memory bank. Yet their routine, the uniqueness of your own dinner table, the kinds of dishes that your family prefers, the traditions that your family has developed all have a cumulative, profound effect.

Doris Christopher, in her book Come to the Table: A Celebration of Family Life, said:

“As you sift through the moments, there'll be a handful of things that you'll find yourself able to track, like the steady improvement in your kids' table manners, or their progress at getting along. . . . You'll recall the miraculous day your young vegetable phobic agrees to try ‘little trees' (a.k.a. broccoli) and decides—saints be praised!—that he likes them.

“But there'll be no way to pinpoint which of those three hundred meals helped raise your kids' reading scores or improved their vocabularies. Nor will there be any way of knowing which ones taught them to take turns and be patient, or to eat wisely for long, healthy lives. At what breakfast did they finally acquire a strong enough sense of themselves to stand up to peer pressure? Over which dish of spaghetti and meatballs did they decide they trusted you enough to come to you for help with their problems?

“And, for that matter, which of the countless plates of meatloaf kept you happily married while other people's marriages fell apart? Which Sunday dinner was it, exactly, when your mother and father transformed themselves into your friends? When you found yourself wishing your siblings lived closer, and that your grandparents could live forever?

“Those are but a few of the questions you'll never be able to answer. . . . Isn't it worth the investment of effort and time to summon your family to the table?” ²

What happens when the collective family meal memory is not of eating together but a haphazard, on-the-run, eaten-in-front-of-TV, everyone-on-their-own-schedule fashion?

It is indeed worth whatever it takes to create a memory bank full of good family meals—not just ones that “make” individuals as well as a family unit, but ones that nurture, fortify, and strengthen them.

¹. Emma Lou Thayne, “Recipes by Heart,” in Saints Well Seasoned (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1998), 195.

². New York: Warner Books, 1999, 191-92.