Daddy's Grace

The enclosed dogtrot hall in our old farmhouse was our entry, dining room and kitchen. Twice a day during the week and three times a day on weekends, our family gathered at the little table for meals. Breakfast was always eggs (fried, scrambled or boiled) with grits, toast or biscuits, homemade jelly and jam, bacon or sausage. Dinner and supper would have two meats, four or five vegetables, bread and in the evening, dessert. Most of the food we ate was grown, raised and butchered on our land. Chickens for eggs and meat, a huge vegetable garden, beef cattle with one cow set aside for mama to milk, a pond for fish and all we had to buy at the grocery store were the staples... tea and coffee, sugar, bananas and vanilla wafers (man does not live by bread alone because there must be banana pudding), fruit, salmon for Saturday night supper and canned asparagus for mama.
In the summer time we canned and froze vegetables for the coming year while enjoying the “firsts”. The first potatoes were always so tender and sweet with melted butter dripping over them. Sometimes mama would cook them in the new green beans. The first tomato often was eaten standing in the middle of the garden with juice running down our chins as we passed it back and forth or as a sandwich on light bread with mayonnaise or salad dressing. And the first ears of sweet corn, pulled from the garden minutes before we ate, shucked and silked than dunked in boiling water so the sugar didn’t have time to turn to starch... it was a taste of heaven on earth.
The table was set with the four remaining Blue Willow plates that didn’t break when I pulled the china cabinet down on my head at the age of three. Mama lost most of her wedding china and crystal but I did not get even a scratch. She tells me that we both sat and cried amidst the wreckage. As we sat at the table, we bowed our heads and daddy prayed. With his right hand held to his forehead, his eyes closed, he prayed “Our Heavenly Father, We thank you for these and all thy many blessings. Forgive us for our sins, In Jesus name, Amen.” Every day of my life growing up, at home, in a campground or (very rarely) in a restaurant, this prayer of thanksgiving, grace and pardon was the first course of our meals together as a family.
When our children came along, we tried to have our evening meals together. By then supper had become dinner and breakfast had become cereals and toast. Thanks to my parent’s generosity with their big garden and an annual two week trip home in the summer, we ate the same canned and frozen vegetables I grew up with as well as beef daddy gave us. But one other custom remained the same... grace before meals. The words were different but the meaning was the same. Life and the food that sustains our bodies is a gift from God. Taking time to say thank you gives us perspective, helps us take time to savor and taste the goodness of the food and the goodness of God. Asking pardon for our shortcomings and sins reminds us we are not perfect but all can be forgiven if one just asks. The shattered china and crystal of our lives can be mended and made whole when we acknowledge our need.
I was always grateful for daddy’s grace. It was short, sweet and to the point. My hungry self did not have to wait long for the good smelling food and my soul was shaped by the gratitude and grace in those few words of prayer day in and day out. I hope there are still families sitting down to share meals together everyday that begin with grace. Michael and I do. It is a ritual with great meaning for us. Somehow I believe God hears us when we say thank you and smiles a little as we begin to eat, graced and pardoned, pass the purple hull peas, please.