MEAL TIME RESPONSIBILITIES – Both my parents worked outside the home during the day. My dad would kiss me goodbye in the morning before he left for work around 7:00am and wouldn’t be back from the hospital until dinner around 6:00pm. My mom was an administrator of nursing homes and was busy ensuring all the elderly were taken care of until she came home at 5:00pm to start dinner. But she was tired. And no doubt would’ve rather collapsed on the couch with chocolate and ‘Knots Landing’. But we had to all eat dinner before my dad would start to help us with our homework. So my mother made us a team. Of the three kids, one would chop up the vegetables to make the salad, one would set the table and one cut the ends off the green beans. My mother would prepare the hot dish, which was usually spaghetti and meat sauce (from scratch), veal parmesan, which she would let me help with before it went into the frying pan, or roasted peppers filled with rice, beans and tomato sauce. She cooked every night. Once the meal was over, my mother and father sat at the table while the three kids were responsible for cleanup. One cleared the dishes from the table, another was responsible for washing and the third would put the dishes in the dishwasher and dry the larger dishes. It was truly a team effort. It taught us the value of teamwork, the value of appreciation for our mother who worked all day, and the value of responsibility. And THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!