Saturday Night Dinner

You know how smells can just hit you and bring you back to a place and time - either good or bad? It seems like Christmastime and Advent are prime time for those good aromas to come back to us. I love the smell of our family's Hot Punch on the stove, the fresh cut Christmas tree, the crisp evening night air, scotch tape and wrapping paper (oh, yes, there is a smell), and so many other things.

Last night I was outside right after dinner - probably hiding something from the kids in my trunk - and I walked back into a house of aroma. Instantly it brought me right back to Saturday night dinner. Now I don't mean dinner last Saturday night - I mean what we knew in our childhood to be the standing arrangements for every Saturday night, dinner with the whole family at Grandma and Grandpa's. This was no ordinary event. This was the weekly family tradition steeped in strong family ties, hilarity between siblings, hilarity between cousins, glass glasses that spilled when you bumped the card table, nights of "programs" put on by the third generation, dress up clothes and quilt forts, trampoline coffee tables (serious here, folks), rolls that were always forgotten in the oven, malts for desert, arms resting on top of your head (a common familial position), and usually going home so tired you pretended you were asleep just so someone would carry you in. Sigh... Those were the times.