Family meals are important, interesting experiences. They are not only a physical gathering of the persons but a gathering of all that each of those persons is and represents. They are a gathering of beings, ideas, experiences, and memories. It is important to have gatherings of the family around a meal, whether it is your immediate family or the extended family of which you are a part. Family meals make a difference.

I love to sit around the table after a meal and hear one after another of the family say, "Do you remember...?" and then tell something out of the past, out of their own experience, or of some event, some person, or some place. As one after the other begins to say, "Do you remember...?" something else is triggered, and someone will say, "Yes, and do you remember...?" and it …