21 Siblings by Helen Miller

Author:Helen Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Helen Miller
Published: 2018-03-20T18:54:49+00:00

In order for half a dozen kids to finish practicing their music lessons before Dad sat down to read, us kids learned to block out noise around us. We ignored extraneous sounds and focused on taking advantage of every available minute that we weren’t pre-occupied doing farm chores. Each kid would get out their sheet music and start practicing. While one girl set the table for supper, someone would be playing piano, someone else guitar, and a third person practicing violin.

To an outsider, it sounded awful, not unlike a symphony orchestra tuning up. However, each of us heard only our own instrument. That way, multiple budding musicians could successfully practice different songs, on different instruments, at the same time, in the same house, all within thirty feet of each other. After music practice, we ate supper.

When I was growing up, mealtime meant family time. Meals were served on a regimented schedule (dinner at noon and supper at 6PM) and everyone ate together unless they had permission to arrive late from a special event. With the exception of an after-school snack, eating outside of meal times was relatively rare. Every afternoon around four o’clock, Mom chose helpers for that evening’s meal: someone to set the table, one teenage girl to serve the food, a pre-teen to feed the baby and a younger person to feed the toddler.

Our kitchen table (always covered with a flowery vinyl tablecloth) seated fourteen, five to a side and two on each end. When Damien was born, four teenagers had already left home; we still needed to seat seventeen or eighteen people for each and every meal. We had outgrown our kitchen table. To make space, we simply moved the two high chairs away from one end of the table and abutted a small diner table with a gray Formica top, ever after known as “the little table.”

Ordinarily, we had assigned seating. The baby’s high chair sat next to the refrigerator. Around the two tables we arranged the piano bench on one end, six kitchen chairs, six dining room chairs, two bar-height square-seat stools for the toddlers, two shorter, regular-height round stools for little kids, and unmatched folding chairs for the rest. By the time I can remember, what had once been various complete sets of dishes had become a mismatched assortment. Our spoons, knives and forks came from at least a half a dozen different patterns.

Every single meal required a pitcher of milk, one creamer, one sugar bowl, one honey and one jam jar, two salt and pepper shaker sets, (one glass/one tin), two cafeteria-style napkin holders, and two plates of sliced bread. We also used two butter dishes. When we placed these specific items down the center of the table, we called it “setting the center dishes on.”

Shortly before mealtimes, Mom would assign one of the big kids to “call supper.” He or she would step out the back door, yell SUPPPP-rrrrr as loud as possible, then come indoors and yell SUPPPP-rrrr down the basement

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