Sunday Dinners (Part One)
The tragic death of a family and the four letter word called HOPE.
Warning: TV Spoilers ahead!
Huck’s Family and #FamilyGoals
If you ever watch the television show, Scandal, then you can recall the earlier seasons, particularly season two when everything made sense. One of my favorite episodes involves the character, Huck, a hired for gun killer, finding hope in the most peculiar and unconventional way. He latches onto strangers: a mom, a dad, and their children. These strangers live in a two-story home in suburbia that he casually calls “his family.” Unaware of his presence, every evening the family opens up the window panes at 6 pm, sit around a table, eat dinner and discusses life’s trials and tribulations. He watches them on game night and keeps tabs on each member individually as a silent guardian angel with it’s own agenda. Huck even goes to make story-lines for each family member. This unit is ideal for him, they love and support one another and they live to show him that this type of bond exist and is possible. Aside, he murders without reasoning, this is his cling to humanity. This is how he retains hope.
…until one day someone finds out about his family and kills them. He drives to their home and finds each member tragically murdered, over by the window pane and on display. Everything has now changed. There is no source of hope…
Relevancy and point? (Other than I watch too much TV)
PREVIEW: It will almost 5 years ago, next month, that I remembered logging into my bank account and realizing it only had less than five dollars in it. I was homeless, working part-time, attending college and I just acquired a brand new car. You can read all about drowning in debt here. I had just moved in with my aunt and uncle, the tears flowing down my eyes when she offered me a place to live free of charge and I never had to ask.
“Your mother says she’s moving. I think things aren’t going good with you and her,” my aunt muttered to me one day.
I brushed it off. Told her everything was fine and that she and I were doing great, even humored the situation by laughing and disregarding how my own mother was dragging my name through mud as something that mothers do when their child is to old to live at home. Things weren’t good. We had lost our leader, my father. He died that same year and we also managed to lose my childhood home. My mother and I were living in a two-bedroom apartment pretending that grief wasn’t overtaking us. She couldn’t stand to look at me. I reminded her of her husband and I was too broke to afford a new face.
My aunt offered me a place to live and I respectively declined, even talked about being a partying young person with my own set of rules that her and my uncle weren’t going to like. She dismissed it, known me all my life and still left the offer on the table.
…and I needed it. Two days later I took her up on the offer and they became my family. My uncle (dad) my aunt (mom#2), and the kids were…well, the kids.
My life was coming back together. I was working full-time, I had a place to live, I graduated college, and I even gained a few happy pounds. We were all like the black version of Full House minus the hugs and money. There was 7 of us, 4 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms so you do the math. Yet, somehow it worked.
On Sunday, we had dinners. Much like Huck’s family, we sat around a square glass table with all the fixin’s in the middle. Right after church, we’d get out of our Sunday best and into our normal street clothes. Each person was responsible for a task or dish. My aunt would scold at the kids to quit their banter, I had salad duty, and my uncle was tasked with clean-up crew, meanwhile Grandpa sat around and reminded us how good we have it now compared to his days. This is how a family operates much like moving parts to a steel mill or an assembly line, a family is only as strong as all its members. Much like Huck’s family, we were the ideal nuclear family, sharing, caring, bickering but always loving one another but…much like Huck’s family, my family would soon find their demise.