The evening meal. Some folks call it dinner. If you’re an Englishman, you might call it tea. Or maybe you just call it a down home, folksy kind of way – suppertime.
My parents always called the evening meal supper. Lunch was called dinner, don’t ask me why. It wasn’t until I became a young adult that I began calling the evening meal dinner instead of supper. But the two terms are always interchangeable in my mind.
Whatever you call it, the word dinnertime brings up memories. Of gathering around a bountiful table of food. Joining with family to eat a meal together. Maybe an outing with special friends. Dinnertime.
It’s the topic of this week’s WordPress photo challenge and it conjures up several memories for me.
When our three were growing up, we tried eating this meal as a family every night together, gathered around the kitchen table, not glued in front of the TV set in the family room.
It’s true that some evenings, Papa was absent because those were the days when he traveled often in his sales job. But dinner time was important to us as a family, a time we wanted to spend together.
Even as our kids started playing sports and joining numerous activities, we endeavored to eat together, waiting until the family was gathered, no matter what the time, just for dinnertime.
When I was a youngster myself, I played outside almost every day, even in the rain (unless it was storming) and in winter’s cold as well. Most of the time, I was in the company of my neighborhood friends as we raced our bikes, sledded down a wintry snow-covered hill, or played make-believe under the shade of the apple trees.
As suppertime approached, we would hear our mothers calling us home.
Those memories prompted the tune and chorus of a very old song from my childhood to waft back through my thoughts. The song, Suppertime, was performed by a country singer named Jim Reeves and was popular in 1958. You can listen to the song here.
As in all of those old tunes rambling around in my mind, the lyrics soon flooded back as well.
“Many years ago in days of childhood
I used to play till evenin’ shadows come
Then windin’ down that old familiar pathway
I’d hear my mother call at set of sun.Come home, come home it’s suppertime
The shadows lengthen fast
Come home, come home it’s suppertime
We’re going home at last.
[Spoken]
Some of the fondest memories of my childhood
Were woven around suppertime
When my mother used to call
From the backsteps of the old homeplace
Come on home now son it’s suppertime.Ahhhh, but I’d love to hear that once more
But you know for me time has woven the realization of
The truth that’s even more thrilling and that’s when
The call come up from the portals of glory
To come home for it’s suppertime.When all God’s children shall gather around the table
of the Lord Himself and the greatest suppertime of them all.Come home, come home it’s suppertime
The shadows lengthen fast
Come home, come home it’s suppertime
We’re going home at last…”
While I was considering a photo to choose for this challenge, I could have selected the obvious, my family seated at the dinner table enjoying our dinner/supper and each other.
But instead, I opted for a sunset photo, which seemed to fit those old long remembered lyrics to a song.
Come home. It’s supper time. Or dinner, if you prefer.
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