September 24, 2004, 8:25 a.m.
Regimen Change Begins at Home

“Is the smallest dog in the world about the size of my skateboard?" Paris asks on a morning that is like no other. He speaks as of a generally acknowledged and specific dog: the Smallest Dog in the World.

"Smaller," I reply, and pour orange juice for Phoebe.

"About the size of a little skateboard, a practice one?"

"Even smaller," I guess, putting waffles on Violet's plate. "For instance, a Chihuahua — "

"The size of a skateboard wheel?"

"No, no." I pass the platter of bacon to Molly. "More like the size of a very small loaf of bread. With legs," I add, to make him laugh. Paris laughs.

"Like...English-muffin sized?"

"Like five English muffins, stacked together and laid on their side." My husband silently removes my coffee cup and goes into the kitchen to pour more for both of us.

"Dogs can be pretty small, Paris," Molly observes maturely, sitting up straight and cutting into her waffle.

"Smaller than cats," says Violet.

Phoebe brightens. "I'm a cat. I'm a cat who licks people!" She bends towards Violet, pink tongue lapping, and I quickly interpose my arm. "No licking people's arms at the table."

"The size of a license plate?"

Molly and I laugh out loud. "It depends — " I begin, as she is saying, "No dog is that thin," when I say, " — but in general, if you're measuring from nose to tail — " at which point she asks, "Why do you want to know, anyway?"

He shrugs. "I was just wondering." And that, really, is that. Paris is bouncy and curious but so far as we can tell he is totally lacking in introspection. This seems to me very healthy and linear and manly. Pick him up from school and ask, "So, how was your day?" and more often than not he will answer, "Great!"

"Great how?" you may pursue, "Socially great? Academically great? Was there a great snack?"

"I don't know," he'll say, shrugging genially. "It just was. Great."

"You'd better hurry," says my husband.

Looking around the table I cannot believe my good fortune. This morning is different from all others because...after ten years of Balkanized mealtimes, with children eating at this time, in this room, and adults eating at that time, in that room; and worse, of breakfasts wherein children sit around a table being served by adults who stand and gulp their cereal from bowls held in their hands or turn their backs to the chewing throng to read the op-ed pages — well! After all this time, a foot has been put down. A line has been drawn in the oatmeal.

"If our family does not start eating together at least once a day," I told my husband a month ago, "I will explode." He gazed apprehensively at me. "Since you are not home early enough in the evening," I plowed on, "I propose that we eat a proper breakfast together. In the dining room."

He took this as well as could be expected of a man who is about to have his early-morning newspaper reading interrupted. "I'm sure," he sighed, "it will be very nice."

Warm family breakfasts with informed, lively discussion about current events! Cheerful back-and-forth about what's happening at school! Steaming hot chocolate! Cereal with berries! Bacon, melon, juice!

Constitutionally I am inclined to wear rose-colored glasses anyway, but I tell you, for the first two weeks of the new regime I was so totally engulfed by a rosy miasma that you could only see my feet. Up at dawn, slip into clothes, nip downstairs. Put the coffee on, retrieve the newspaper, set the table, pour the juice, remove some baked good from the oven, and call up the stairs in a sparkling voice, "Children, husband, breakfast!"

"Wow, home-made muffins!" the children would say one morning, and "Gee, chocolate-chip pancakes!" the next. "Oh, boy, cantaloupe!" and "Is that sausage?"

Through it all, my husband has maintained his dignity. There was one spasm of rebellion, early on, but thankfully it was suppressed without casualties.

"You didn't — " faltered my husband, upon arriving in the dining room. He was looking at the glass-and-pewter jam jars purchased by me at absurd cost from a "gourmet" catalog with the purpose of introducing 19th-century elegance to the table. There was pity in his tone. "Meg, the only place you see these anymore are in faded hotels in seaside towns. In England." His mien as he looked at me was tender and meaningful. I could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes, like cherries or lemons in a slot machine. "Can't you return them?"

"If we're to have elegant sit-down breakfasts we can't just have jars," I protested. I waited a moment, and then fired another round. "Which reminds me, in the same catalog I saw the most beautiful milk pitcher, with toile — "

"But we already have a pitcher — "

"Oh, of course we do," I conceded, as if I had forgotten, and thus neatly put a stop to talk of returning the jam jars. This is how wives operate. It is terrible, but it is true.

So it has been a month of splendid breakfasts.

Alas, things fall apart, the center cannot hold. The Martha-Stewart mania that roused me at dawn each morning has waned. Once again I must struggle to get out of bed as under the ancien regime. The crisp discipline that had me putting fresh linens and silverware on the table each evening before bed has deteriorated, too. Often now there has to be a hasty sweeping-off of textbooks and watercolor sets before anyone can eat.

Worse, the dissidents are growing bolder. "Some day can we just have plain cereal?" said one the other day, as she dolefully contemplated a table groaning under the weight of sliced nectarines, Greek yogurt with honey drizzled on top, and toasted English muffins. The next day, someone else actually complained, "Do I have to have French toast?"

To maintain my grip on power under this new arrangement, I begin to perceive that I will have to allow for more diversity of opinion and appetite, for the sitting-down-togetherness is priceless. The other day, after Phoebe had sung everyone the teapot song, with realistic pouring actions, Violet announced that she had a song for us, too.

"It's from The Sound of Music," she said, beaming, and began: "How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a clown and pin it down?"

As I say: Priceless.

— Meghan Cox Gurdon, an NRO columnist, lives in Washington, D.C.

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