The foilbles of frequent communal meals

Last Sunday, we held the family celebration for Amanda's birthday over at her apartment. Jill and I brought low fat strawberry and low fat caramel ice cream and waffle cones and sugar cones. Amanda had some sherbe(r)t and some low fat other kind of ice cream I've forgotten . Probably chocolate. With my chocolate allergy, I tend to block its presence out of my memory. She also bought some cake cones that turned out to be kid size. Which is good for those on diets. Also, Lilliputians.

The appropriate party epoch for ice cream distribution arrived, so I got all the ice cream out of the freezer, opened the cartons, got out spoons for each kind of ice cream, opened the cones, announced that ice cream was ready, waited a few minutes, and then piled my strawberry on my waffle cone to get the ball rolling; people sometimes have hangups about being the first in line, so if no one jumps in, I'll sometimes just start things off so people will feel comfortable getting food. Feel more like they're at home.

I sat down on the couch with my cone, and both my mom, and my grandmom (Omi) commented more than once that I hadn't served anyone else. It took me a second to realize what they were talking about. I'd opened the cartons, got everything set up. It's not like I got the ice cream out, made a cone and put everything away. That'd be rude. You leave dessert out for a while so people don't have to go rooting for it when they're ready for it. I announced the ice cream was ready and didn't jump in right away even, although it was fully within my prerogative as person who set the food out.

Then I realized that at Omi's house, when there was ice cream, everyone sits around and waits for the host to serve them. Aha, cultural differences at play.

See, at our house, the food sits on the peninsula, and everyone grabs what they want and makes what they want and eats how and where they want. I usually get plates out for people, but the silverware and the cups in the drawers on the peninsula, you can get what you need. Most people who come to our house more than once even know where the pots and pans are.

It never crossed my mind to directly serve the people at Amanda's party their food. I mean, wouldn't that make them feel less at home? Wouldn't it make them feel like I was dictating to them the manner in which they should eat their food ? That they are less capable?

The answer is obviously no, but this incident does highlight two different schools of hospitality: Make the guest feel at home, and make the guest feel like royalty. Both of these serve people, I think. One says, let me serve you directly. One says, let me serve you by making you feel at home. Yeah, I could have gotten them cones. And maybe I would have thought about it if we didn't frequently eat similar meals at Amanda's that we do at home. Heck, I'm sure I should have gotten them ice cream in order to be hospitable to them. Just didn't occur to me. Whether that's unintentional rudeness, or unintentional cross-cultural sensitivity, that's up to you, I think.

The nature of hospitality is an easy place for cultures to clash and feelings to get hurt.

We had some friends at OBC, the Hoskins, who totally fell into the royalty category. Parties at their house were like catered affairs. There were particular times set aside for various planned events. They even pre-planned dinner conversation topics. All to make people feel special. It was very impressive, but not really my bag. I'm a pretty laid back person, and that sort of hospitality always felt too rigid. I appreciated it for sure, but it sometimes felt stilted. I know they didn't feel this way, but almost like they didn't want us to get close, so they put up structures to keep it from happening.

There are a number of households like theirs I visit on frequent (or occasional) occasions, where all I want to do while I'm there is sit on the couch. Houses that do the royalty style hospitality. Omi's, for example. Anything else I do besides sit, I feel uncomfortable, out of place. My guest status places me outside of comfortability and familiarity.

But there are other houses (hi Guys' House) where I sometimes even naturally take up doing the dishes when they're dirty. I take more ownership of post-dinner cleaning because I feel more like their home is mine.

I'm not saying one is good, or the other is bad. One's clearly easier for me to live in. But it is another example of how very easy it is to unintentionally cross cultural boundries with people even in your same culture. Almost worse than full-on cross-cultural faux pas because we don't realize the other is Other.