Yours Truly, Country Mouse

Oats and beans and the grand old days

About to sit down to dinner the other night and our six year old, Ben, asked if we could light the candles “like the grand old days.” I laughed and said of course, we light the candles most nights in our house anyways. The phrasing he used, “the grand old days” stuck with me, partly because it’s something right out of a Ludwig Bemelmans’ account of eating and dining during the invention of good hospitality. But more so because it proves that something about our family dinners, chaotic as they might be for a 6 and 8 year-old, a baby, and working parents hell-bent on cooking most things from scratch, holds reverence for Ben. It’s possible he’s just a pyromaniac or that he wants the chance to blow them out using his signature extinguishing helllooooooo (where he blows out by saying hello very close to the flame) or it might be, that some part of him likes the insistence of a little ritual and romance at dinnertime. This thought is especially comforting considering that Rae and Ben, disli…