My daughter, Kate, was chatting in the kitchen with me. My husband, Mike, and our son, Andy, were on the couch, watching college basketball. But Aaron, my son-in-law, stood off to the side, petting our dogs. “Don’t you want to watch the game?” I asked.
“I’m not really into sports,” he said.
He feels left out, I worried. All I wanted tonight was to make Aaron feel at home and impress him with my cooking. But I was already failing at one, and I doubted that the back-to-basics roast chicken in the oven would be good enough to please a graduate of the restaurant and hotel school at Cornell University like Aaron.
Our Family Fun Night was off to an awkward start.
Family Fun Night was a tradition when our kids were growing up. One evening a week we’d sit down to dinner and then play Scrabble or Monopoly. Even after the kids outgrew board games, the four of us loved to do things together.
We hadn’t had one since Andy left for college and Kate married Aaron and moved to Washington, D.C. But now Andy was working nearby, and Kate and Aaron had moved just 25 minutes away. “How about a Family Fun Night, Mom?” Kate suggested. “It’s been too long.”
“What about Aaron?” I asked. “Does he like games?” His bright red hair fit right in with my family, but that’s where the similarities ended. We just didn’t seem to have any interests in common.
“Don’t worry, Mom, he’ll be fine.”
Now, though, I really was worried. I spied a newspaper on the counter with a half-filled crossword puzzle. “How about we finish this?” I said. Kate grabbed a pen, but Aaron just shrugged. I forced a smile. “I’ll go check on the chicken,” I said.
We sat around the dinner table and I served roast chicken, a green salad and rolls. “Delicious,” Aaron said. Still, I wondered what he really thought.
Afterward, I took the entire chicken carcass over to the trash. “Wait!” Aaron cried. “Aren’t you going to save that for soup?”
“Homemade soup? Sounds like a lot of work to me.”
“Not really,” Aaron said. “If…if you want, I can show you how.”
Cooking was not really big in our family. Still… “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“First we have to get all the meat off the bones,” Aaron said. His fingers deftly separated the chicken and dropped the bones into my slow cooker. “Here, give it a try.” Messy, but I got the hang of it. We reserved the meat and gathered the other ingredients.
I washed some carrots and celery. Aaron chopped them up, his knife moving as rapidly as in one of those cooking shows. “The trick is keeping the point of the knife down, and chopping using the fat part of the blade.” Huh. I gave it a try. Not too bad. Aaron was a good teacher!
“Do you have any rosemary?” he asked. “How about sage and thyme?” I dug the herbs out of my cabinet. Soon we were chopping in sync. For the first time all night, I breathed easily. It wasn’t Scrabble, but we were having plenty of fun.
I added the veggies and herbs to the pot. Aaron filled it with water. “We’ll let the stock simmer there for a while. Pretty soon the house will smell great.”
He was right. Mike, Kate and Andy were lured into the kitchen by the savory aroma. Everyone dipped a spoon into the broth. “This is amazing!” Kate said.
“We’ll have to make it again next Family Fun Night,” Aaron said, clicking his spoon against mine.
Since then, he’s taught me how to make focaccia, special macaroni and cheese, honey ice cream and pear pie—all from scratch.
Turns out I didn’t have anything to be nervous about. Aaron might not be into games or crosswords or sports, but we have one important thing in common—our desire to be a family. With that ingredient, everything comes together.
Try making Aaron's Mac and Cheese at home!
Download your FREE ebook, The Power of Hope: 7 Inspirational Stories of People Rediscovering Faith, Hope and Love
