TV Dinners

“Mom. Why can’t we have TV dinners like everybody else? Are they too expensive?” David asked in his typical demanding manners that never really felt like a question.

“Yeah. Why can’t we have TV dinners mom?” I was only eleven but was q quick learner; if it worked for David for fifteen years, why not try it myself?

Her face turned red, her head tilted a little like it does when she doesn’t like the conversation or people. This time it was the conversation. “Because they’re no good, that’s why.”

“But we want them! Why can’t we have them just once to try them?” Again he used the question that was a demand more than a question. “Just one time and then we won’t ask again.” Not remembering when “we” became a “we” in this plan of his but I sat there silent to see if it would work.

Mom hesitated for a moment. Her face got redder, her forehead got all squished up and she was shrugging her shoulders, “OK. You want TV diners, we’ll have TV dinners tomorrow night for supper.”

“YAY!” We both yelled in harmony.

Thanks mom,” I said as David walked away with that smirk he has after successfully bullying somebody, especially adults.

All day in school all I could think about was having TV dinners tonight. What are TV dinners I wondered? Do you eat them while watching TV? Why would anybody want to eat while watching TV? Do you eat them differently than regular food?

When it started getting dark, I stopped playing kickball at the cul-de-sac at the bottom of Berkeley Terrace with my friends to see what a TV dinner looked like. I had already three times seen commercials on TV about them, since I really only watch Saturday morning cartoons on TV, three times was a lot. And, we were going to have one for dinner tonight.

I threw open the front door, ran up the steps through the living room to the kitchen and asked out of breathe, “Are the TV dinners done yet mom?”

“Don’t run through the living room, use the steps from the hallway! David will be home any minute and the TV dinners are almost done. Go wash your hands and set up the den for dinner.”

I ran down the hallway steps to the bathroom on the right past the laundry room before the den and washed my hands. I noticed the only book we ever had in the bathroom was Race Riots, which was jokes about everybody from Micks to Spics, whatever that meant. I ran back up the steps to the kitchen and asked, “How do you get ready to eat TV dinners in the den mom?”

She handed me three plastic trays with cups, forks, knifes and spoons for the three of us. I guess dad isn’t coming home for dinner again tonight, too bad he’ll miss out on TV dinners. I slowly walk down the steps to not drop and break anything and through the hallway to the den with the colorful, shag flowered carpet and black leather couch. We had a color TV, so the TV dinners will probably even taste better than when we had just a black and white TV.

David came barreling through the front door slamming it as he ran up the living room steps to the kitchen and again my mom yells, “David, don’t go through the living room to the kitchen, use the hallway steps!”

“Are the TV dinners done yet?” not even acknowledging mom spoke.

“Yes, we were just waiting for you.” She opens the door to the oven with both of us staring wide-eyed, grabs her oven pads and takes out these little bendable metal trays with three little compartments that separated the Eggplant Parmigiana from the Linguine with Marinara Sauce and applesauce in the left hand corner compartment. “Go get the three trays your brother left in the den and bring them back with you, hurry.”

David was back in a jiffy. We each carried our own TV dinner down to the den and sat on the black leather couch that had the Afghan my mother crotched last winter. We were so excited we didn’t even notice the TV wasn’t on for our TV dinner. My mom turned on the TV with its cool remote control device she held in her hand that was able to turn the TV on and off, and change channels without even getting up. She put on the evening news with Walter Cronkite on CBS but we didn’t care because we were eating our TV dinners. After a few minutes, I noticed that our TV dinner was identical to what we ate last night and most nights in our home. Eventually David got mom to confess that she borrowed the little metal trays from The Graifmans and just put last night’s leftovers in the three little compartments and heated them up in the oven. “I just can’t feed my children frozen TV dinners!” she said.

Like with everything and everybody else in life then and till the day he died in 1997, David wore her out and she gave in and bought “real” TV dinners for us the next night. We had Swanson Hungry Man Turkey Dinner with dried out turkey with a boring gravy, fake mashed potatoes and awful peach cobbler. They sucked. We all went up to the kitchen, threw them in the garbage and raided the fridge for some Rigatoni in the white Corner Ware dish and my mom made some fresh salad in the big dark brown wooden bowl we always ate salad in.

It turned out David was telling the truth when he said if she would let us try them once we would never ask again, we didn’t. But my mom wanted us to feel like we were like the other kids in the neighborhood, so she would make a real meal in the soft metal trays with three little compartments about once a week and eat in front of the TV in the den together as a family. It was the only time we didn’t talk, laugh and have fun during dinner in my family because the TV was on.

She filled up the big downstairs freezer with these TV dinners for “Whenever I am too busy or tired to make a fresh dinner.” They lasted in that freezer for quite a while until my mom got breast cancer, whatever “cancer” was and my grandmother stayed with us while she was in the hospital getting “chemo”. My mom wanted to be sure we still had her food even while she was on the verge of death herself. My grandmother used to walk around complaining, “I don’t know why your mother wasted all that time making you kids these frozen dinners when I can make you dinner myself.” That was my mom, always seeing dinner as how you show and share love. It worked