The house I grew up in was built with two accessories we seldom used as intended – a dining room and a large, porcelain bathtub.
So small by today’s standards that such homes aren’t even built anymore, our house had one bathroom, three tiny bedrooms, a stand-up kitchen and a living room just big enough for a modest sofa and an easy chair.
The bathtub and the dining room were the luxuries of the place, but we had little time for them.
We ate in the dining room only twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when mom would empty its glass-paned, corner cabinets of the china and delicate glassware saved for those occasions.
To feed four children three times a day, mom and dad knocked out a kitchen wall to make room for a table, and we took meals there a few feet from the stove. The idea of a separate room for meals and the scheduling and formality that “dining” required was over by the time I grew up in the 1960s.
So was bathing. With a sloping back, our tub made for reclining, but there was no time for that, either. Once we were grown enough to stand in a shower, we were expected to. Showers were faster, and consumed less water. Our lives, even as children, were busy and businesslike.
But the design of the house, built in the 1940s, spoke of a time that people lived there differently, or expected to.
The dining room evoked meals that took time to prepare, with family members arriving neat and prompt for conversation about the day and the world, talk that during an evening meal might continue through two or three courses carried in from the adjoining kitchen.
The prominence of the bathtub suggested that a long soak at the end of a difficult day was at one time not so much a reward as an expectation, a regular ritual to recharge, to let one’s mind go, to absorb comfort fully and deeply.
How was it that 80 years ago – before the advent of the Internet, toaster ovens, and mass car ownership – did working people find time to bathe and to dine?
Here’s another terrible time-waster that featured prominently in that house, one that continued through my childhood: A Sunday newspaper.
Dad would stop at the newsstand after Mass, and along with a stick of Bazooka Joe gum for us youngsters, he’d buy the Philadelphia Inquirer, a bread-loaf sized roll of newsprint that recapped the week’s news with photos and analysis, an editorial section, sports columns and reports from foreign correspondents.
My brothers and I would fight over the funnies or the sports section. Mom and dad would read the news. Much of what we needed to know was in the Sunday paper, including coupons for sales at area department stores. After an hour, sections would be strewn across the living room floor, or atop one of my parents sneaking a nap on the sofa. Mom would eventually work her way through the crossword.
The Sunday paper was not so much a product as a mid-day activity, enjoyed often in a reclining position. Similar to the bathtub and the dining room, the Sunday paper said: “Slow down. Take time for yourself and for your thoughts. Enjoy the company of your family.”
For the life of me, I’m trying to identify what parts of our daily, physical lives today provide that message and opportunity, the household elements or rituals that invite us not to become excited but to relax and put the world into perspective.
I’m trying.