The Dinner Party

A symposium sounds so serious, the kind of thing that one tries to avoid on a university campus, knowing that it will probably be staid old men talking about something you know nothing about.  The word comes down to us from one of Plato's best dialogues, called "The Symposium" in most translations, but which really means "the drinking party" (sym being "together" and posion being "to drink").  Similarly, the central rite of Christianity, the eucharist, is also originally a drinking party, where Jesus and his disciples came together to drink wine, tell stories, and think together.  Eating, drinking, and thinking have long gone together.

(photo by David Shaw)

You can see, then, why I have been so excited about the day that Helena would begin to eat solid foods.  I had no expectations that she would suddenly burst forth with reflections on Diotema and Alcibiades (two of the guests at Socrates's symposium), but there is something wonderful about eating together, about sharing food and a table.

One can imagine my sadness when she not only made a face at the apples that Rita had carefully prepared, but then threw them up, together with all of her milk that morning.  And a houseguest -- Barbara, the wife of my mentor in politics, Scott Armstrong -- had to catch the vomit in her hands.  Not exactly the conviviality for which I had been waiting.

In fact, Helena likes the social practice of eating.  She likes to sit with us, take a spoon in her hand, coo in response to the dinner conversation, and even ask Rita to bring the lip of a water or orange juice cup to her mouth.  Perhaps it is a little like speaking, where she mastered the social conventions of talking and listening long before there is any content to her words, she has learned the social game of eating, the dinner party part, long before she has learned the joy of chewing and ingesting food.

We'll see how she takes to eating over the next couple of weeks.  For now, I'm content that she's good company at our daily symposia at the dinner table.