Late for Dinner

Now that spring is in full bloom and the sun isn't setting until after 7 p.m., dinner time is getting pushed later and later. This happens to my family every year. We tend to eat our meals based on the sun rather than the clock. This transition begins when we hit fourth quarter at school and the daylight hours make a marked move toward the summer solstice. Breakfast and lunch are still dictated by the clock because we still have to get to work/school and run on a bell schedule. (It's funny that I never really want to punch a time clock on my job, and now my entire day is dictated by hours and minutes tick, tick, ticking by.) By this time of year, the routine runs like a well-oiled machine and we can wolf down a meal in ten minutes flat, which cannot be good for us, but is indeed a fact of life. But dinner brings a reprieve from that hustle-run-gulp schedule.

With longer daylight hours I don't even begin to think about fixing dinner until 6 or 6:30, and the ragamuffin doesn't come in from the park until 7 or 7:15. During the winter, dinner is usually eaten and cleaned by 6 p.m. After all, the early darkness seems to rush the night forward and make me feel like I should be feeding everyone almost as soon as I get home from work. So when spring comes and we start stretching that time out, dinner feels more relaxed. Several times this week we have put the meal together and taken it to the theater for movie time since Jeff and I heard the low down on our son's day long before the meal.

This non-schedule will continue to draw itself out into summer break when we all stay up well into the night and sleep well into the day. It's sort of a defense mechanism of living in the desert. As the heat grows during daylight hours, more and more activities are given over to the darkness. The bright light of a central Arizona July is only fit for watching movies in a cool basement, swimming in a shaded pool, shopping at the mall where the AC is cranked up, and sleeping with room-darkening shades. But, when the sun's rays begin to wane, the neighborhood and our house comes alive. We cook, play games, ride bikes, drive around town with the top down on the convertible, and stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. (A few years ago the entire family even took tennis lessons at night and practiced under the lights until 11 or 12.) So the coming of spring and summer changes us into vampiric night dwellers. If we eat breakfast at all, it's usually around noon. Dinner time seems more like lunch and is often comprised of something cold in the fridge or nuked in the microwave to keep from turning on the stove. We reserve cooking for late nights when the temperature and the electric rates have dropped.

Truthfully, I'm glad to see the hours drawing out. My son spends more time playing ball at the park than playing video games downstairs, and the twilight offers more opportunity for us to ride our bikes through the greenbelts. So, if dinner is a little late or ends up being a fast fix (tonight we had cheese ravioli with some yummy homemade quick bread) that's alright. The season of cold salads and cut up fruit in the fridge is drawing near once again.