Joy’s Dinner Swap story
Anne and I were worried that we weren’t as close to our kids as we should be anymore. They were growing up so fast and we didn’t want them to drift off without doing something about it. Together with three of our friends, who had the same problem in mind, we talked about what we could do and we decided that we should start off with having dinner every night, together with them. At first, we thought the idea was nice but it seemed unrealistic for us because we were all working moms. Then Anne came up with the idea of swapping dinner every night. That’s how our dinner group came about.
When we started our group, it was with the idea that we were the first ones to actually have this kind of group. We were giddy with excitement. It was like uncovering gold in your own backyard. But just like the latter, what to do after the discovery proved difficult. We made a schedule on who will cook on this particular day in a week but problems such as having chicken casserole every day and at times having none at all (on the precept that they were just too tired or too busy) on some days began to surface. After a month, we were at our wits’ end and our friendship was in jeopardy. When we sat together for a meeting, we couldn’t even look each other in the eye! Then somebody came up with the idea of having a meal calendar.
Our life became decidedly easier after that. It was a huge sigh of relief to have a meal calendar. We felt so dumb thinking that we only thought of it after a month but then again you learn from your mistakes. We also had a laugh thinking about what happened during that time. The meal calendar truly is one very crucial and important tool before going ahead with having a dinner group!
