Dinnertime

Several times a year, usually on Sundays but sometimes on Saturdays, my mother makes a big dinner at home to celebrate birthdays, both her kids’ and her own, and holidays. I think she does this because she feels guilty that we hardly ever go out to restaurants or throw nice parties so she makes up for it by cooking our favorite foods the weekend after our respective birthdays or holidays if my oldest brother isn’t working.

These family occasions used to be really difficult to coordinate because my oldest brother lives in New Jersey so it had to be during a weekend, but my older brother used to work full-time so sometimes, we either had to push the dinner back two or three weeks or celebrate it without the whole family. Nowadays, my older brother no longer works full-time but the struggle is getting my oldest brother to come to New York at all, since he works longer hours. Despite the trouble with scheduling, my mother still does her best to make sure that we all get a birthday dinner at some point during our birthday month.

Since my oldest brother’s birthday was last week, I started thinking about the dishes during each of our birthday dinners and how they (hardly) differ from each other, which led to this list:

Brother #1, 28 years old: He’s concerned about his weight, so for his birthday my mom usually makes at least one vegetable-based dish, salmon, yellow rice, and potato salad. His portions are much smaller than the mountain of food he used to serve himself in his early 20’s, and because he doesn’t live with us anymore, my mother worries he’s not eating enough and will put more food on his plate, even as he insists that he doesn’t want anymore.

Brother #2, 22 years old: He’s also concerned about his weight, but not enough to actively try to eat healthier so his birthday dinner is pretty similar to mine. Sometimes my mom makes pernil, but if she doesn’t she makes ribs, along with rice and potato salad (I hope you’re seeing the pattern. This a rice and potato salad family). He’s still in his early 20’s so he continues to serve himself a mountain of food.

Me: I have a deep, unending love for carbs, so, along with ribs and potato salad, my dinner usually consists of some kind of pasta, rice, and, on a few occasions, garlic bread.

Brother #3, 14 years old: He’s a picky eater so for the most part, my mother makes fried chicken and rice, with potato salad and some vegetable-based dish for the rest of us. She usually tries to get him to eat something besides just chicken and rice but it never works.

Even though the dinners are almost all the same and make my mom more stressed than anything else even with our help, it’s a nice family tradition to have and gives me a chance to spend more time with my brothers than I normally would.

-L