Soul Food

When I was a kid, come hell or high water, I was to be home by 5:30pm to make sure the table was set for dinner at 6:00pm.  My family would pray and we would eat together.  We would share our day’s events, sing, and make jokes about my dad’s Volunteer Fire Department Pager Test that went off every night at around 6:00.  There was no T.V., the dishes were out of sight, we just enjoyed an always amazing home cooked meal, and each other.  Later in my life I discovered not only how rare this is anymore, but how valuable it is to take a meal with our loved ones.

I had dinner last night with my team.  We haven’t been together for around a year and a half, and it was a family reunion of sorts.  There are new babies, new chapters in our lives, new goals, and a new appreciation for each other.  We made abstract plans and spoke about philosophy.  We laughed.  Everyone stayed later than we intended and it was wonderful. 

There is something about sharing food and company that changes when you remove the food… then it is a meeting or a training session.  What would Thanksgiving Dinner be without food?  How long would your whole family sit at the same table and talk?  If you’re playing a game the game would be a distraction, food is an addition to the conversation somehow.  Food is an expression of culture.  My family has its own traditional foods that most people have never heard of (jello salad with cheddar cheese…YUM!), and I don’t even know where the tradition started.  My mom makes the best gravy EVER and I’ve learned enough to pull off a close second.  Good company and the building of traditions brings us together and solidifies an experience that feeds the soul, not just the body.

I’ve been training for over a year without this kind of love and support, without a coach who is willing to change his whole program for training that day because he knows the look on my face means we need to start with some hard conditioning.  I don’t know if it is the meal that brings the closeness, or the closeness that makes us want the intimacy of the meal, but I know it’s important, and I know I’m happy to have my training family together again.

www.KatieCasimir.com