Who decides what is for dinner?
By Delia Marchetti, Staff writer · · 2 min read
Who decides what is for dinner in your house?
I asked seven women this at a table in a church basement in April. All seven said "I do." Then six of them laughed. The seventh did not.
The six who laughed went on to explain, in various ways, that they decide in the sense that they make the final call, but that the call is made inside a set of rules they did not write. He will not eat fish. The grandson is off dairy. Tuesday has to be fast. Nothing with a smell, on nights the daughter brings the boyfriend. Inside that fence, yes, she decides.
"I decide the way a bus driver decides," one of them said. "I pick the lane."
Another one keeps a list of what each person will not eat. It is on her phone. It has fourteen entries for six people. She read some of it. No mushrooms, him. No fish, him. Nothing with cilantro, the daughter. No onions you can see, the grandson, which means the onions are in there, chopped small, and he eats them, and this is not discussed. She said the list is not what she decides. The list is what she decides around.
The seventh woman, who did not laugh, said she decides, period. She makes what she makes. People eat it or they do not. She has done this for forty years and she has never once asked anyone what they wanted, and she said this with a calm that quieted the table for a few seconds.
One of the six asked her what she makes. She said she makes what is on sale and what is in the garden, in that order, and that she has never in forty years served the same thing two Sundays running, and that nobody has ever asked her to. The six were quiet again. I think they were doing the arithmetic on forty years of Sundays.
Then the argument.
One of the six said that was all very well if you did not care whether people came. The seventh said people came. Every Sunday. The first said they came for her, not the food. The seventh said that was the point.
Nobody won. We cleared the table. The woman who runs the basement kitchen, who had not been part of the conversation, said from the sink that she decides what is for dinner by looking in the refrigerator, and that everyone else at the table was describing a luxury.