Please pass the peas

 

I guess a quarantine leaves people open to reminiscing. 

I look at pictures from 45 years ago, pictures of people I don't even know, and see things that make me homesick. The black and white china, tablecloths, good silverware, big tables full of friends and family. It was a way of living that seems mostly gone now that people eat on paper plates with plastic silverware in front of televisions.

I miss the style of living based around people entertaining people with conversation and not just setting up social networking pictures, or grandstanding for show. I have seen pictures of people laughing, eating, even sleeping again and again, but the words are always small, or replaced by emojis.

We seem to be forgetting that life is an experience, not a photo op. That those balanced forks, knives and spoons, are about sensual joy not just shoveling food into our mouths, that fine napkins and a few manners give us a sense of stability lost when the Kardashians set the pace for so called reality.

I've been to homes where people feel that putting serving platters and bowls on the table violates the restaurant atmosphere of one plate per person sparseness. It is more about how it looks, than how it feels or tastes. Free flowing conversations interrupted by please pass the peas has become a luxury no longer afforded the masses. 

Graciousness has been sacrificed to more mundane things, which I guess some people define as more real, but for me nuances are the spices that make life exquisite.