Steak in Switzerland
By Stephanie Kemp
Every parent (or at least the one that is me) knows how easy it is to fuck up your kid/s:
Love them too much or not enough
Give them too much independence or emotionally suffocate them
Be around a little or a lot
Embarrass them in front of their friends, even if it was by accident, just that once
Force them to play sports or go to summer camp
Don’t force them to play sports
Tell them that summer camp is too expensive this year
Demand that they finish their hot breakfast
and/or
Make them pour their own cold cereal
Get them a kitten when they wanted a puppy
Marry someone who is allergic to kittens
Give them chores
Enforce the chores
Advance the chores
Enforce the advancements
Take away their allowance if they forget to do their chores
(Or worse - pay it anyway!)
Say something you didn’t think they would ever be able to hear through that closed door
Schedule a preemptive meeting with the teacher “to make sure we stay on track”
Skip the corrective meeting with the teacher “to make sure we stay on track”
Miss Back to School Night
Attend Back to School Night
Call the bully’s parents and rip ‘em a new one
Call the bully’s parents and cave
Buy the wrong shoes
Lie about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy
Take away the prize attached to negotiations over the afikomen but keep the rest of the four (to five) hour seder intact
Offer to make cupcakes for the mean girl’s birthday
(She used to be so nice!)
Get divorced
Don’t get divorced
Say no to the slumber party
Hire the mean babysitter even after you learned s/he was mean
Pick the wrong middle school (or the right one)
Make all day family plans on a sunny (or any) Saturday
Get Cancer
But don’t despair!
There is one surefire, foolproof, relatively easy (if you are relatively lucky) way to save your children (and their grown ups) from doom:
FAMILY DINNERS.
Yes, dinners - plural.
It can’t just be a once in a while one-off, or your kids will sniff the fraud.
(But they likely won’t call foul, because most kids don’t think they want family dinners as a general course of action or nutrition.)
Old school sit-down dinners may be the quality not quantity solution to many of the challenges today’s families face. (Quality not quantity because the dinners don’t have to drag on forever, especially on weeknights, as parents are people, too.)
Now, I know that I am really lucky to be able to say this. That I (and/or my husband) have been able to provide home cooked meals (him) or take out dumplings (me) for our daughters for as long as they have had teeth and been able to sit upright in a chair.
A shared meal at the kitchen table is where we sort out the Tough Stuff, steeling ourselves for (or, when/if possible, laughing ourselves into) another day, ready to go again in an increasingly complicated world and time.
We talk about everything, starting (and sometimes ending) with everyone sharing the BEST/WORST details of their day. I don’t remember how we started this ritual, but I do remember that once we all got the hang of it, there was no stopping us.
We covered it all:
Girl friends and cat fights, cool boys and k/idiots, the fun jobs and the soul suckers, spelling bee victories and botched talent show auditions, the mean teachers and the life changers, dance solos and art shows, things we wanted but didn’t get, things we hated but had to do, the myriad challenges of roller skating backwards, hiking in the heat (when we just wanted to skip school and go to the beach), skipping school (and going to the beach), favorite ice creams and dying beta fish, movies in the theatre during the good old days of popcorn and trailers……..
Songs we heard on the radio.........
Things we watched on tv...........
Stories we read in….........
Books.
(Books, books, books, books.............books!)
At least for the mom that is me.
After a few years of enjoying and/or forcing consistent family dinners, my husband and I knew we were going to make it. And more importantly, that our daughters would too, as they were nearly cooked and would come out ok (or maybe even perfect!) in the end.
(Does it scare you that I said that? That we would make it and that our daughters might even be perfect? It scares me……especially because I know better.)
We had all come so far that I felt I could share a story about the book I had just finished - Amy Bloom’s In Love - a heartbreaking and often surprisingly funny memoir about Amy and her husband Brian Ameche, as they figured out how he could end his life “by choice and in dignity” (I explained somewhat pompously), after his early on-set Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
I told my daughters all about Amy and Brian - how they fell in love when they were both married to other people, how funny and perfect they were (both on their own and with each other), how hard it can be (even with your perfect partner) to move through a new life after you’ve blown up an old one.
This was hardly a shocking dinnertime share. By this time (and this dinner), our girls were 17 and 14 and had years and years of living life (not to mention excellent parenting) under their belts. They even ate vegetables by choice sometimes and often utilized strategic swear words when sharing the BEST/WORSTS of their own teenaged Monday through Fridays.
Plus, at this point, we had already held several major dinner discussions about assisted suicide via my memories of living in suburban Detroit during the Jack Kevorkian “Dr. Death” days, as well as our recent obsession with (and heartbreak over) the brave journey and “Death with Dignity” battle fought by a beautiful young woman (and new bride) named Brittany Maynard.
So on this night (over my husband’s homemade french bread pizza and a glass of pinot noir), Amy Bloom’s In Love it was. I launched into a rather verbose BEST/WORST/ Stephanie Edition that could not (and would not) be stopped.
My husband (who hadn’t read the book but knew all about it because I talked about it every morning over coffee in bed for all of the one day it took me to read it) gamely forked over his BEST real estate to Amy and Brian (what a love story they had!). He also then forked his WORST, because at the end of the book, Brian and Amy traveled to Switzerland, where they had found a (lovely!) place called Dignitas that agreed to help Brian end his life on his own terms. (I included “lovely!” here because there is often some BEST mixed in with WORST and vice versa…...another important lesson for the children and their parents.)
The girls listened to us explain that Amy and Brian were “heartbroken and scared, but also determined and ready.” Brian did not want to live out a brutal, prolonged end to his wonderful life in the hands of his hateful Alzheimer’s disease, and Amy was determined to make sure he didn’t have to.
We held back our own tears, explaining that Dignitas was an amazing solution to an impossible problem. (How lucky Amy and Brian were to have found it!)
We spun In Love into the best kind of evolutionary death story: From Jack Kevorkian (going to prison for eight years) through Brittany Maynard (having to uproot her life in California to end it in Oregon because California would not become a right to die state until after Brittany’s fearless advocacy), to Amy and Brian being able to fly together to Switzerland, steering the end of their love story to a finish worthy of its hard-earned beauty. (”It was a romantic trip abroad that included window shopping and walking cobblestone streets arm in arm....candlelit dinners where they could share a glass of wine and eat a delicious steak before retiring to their beautiful hotel room as they prepared to make their way to the cozy Dignitas apartment......where Brian would hold court under a warm blanket, regaling his attentive nurses with stories from his athletic glory days during high school and college, while Amy held his hand preparing for her impossible goodbye,” I somehow managed to explain in a single sentence.)
I could hardly keep it together at my own dining room table as I went into even more detail of Amy and Brian’s Ending. (”Amy was a little miffed that Brian didn’t tell the nurses any stories from their life together, until she realized that he would soon be unable to tell any stories ever again and that she would be heading home the next day without him, forever.”)
I looked at my husband to see if I was going overboard, only to see that he was clearly (maybe?) trying not to cry himself as he got up to wash the dishes. I realized that everyone’s pizza was long gone and that both girls were staring at me with love and anxiety, worry and sadness, fear and facial paralysis, all because of too much adult information from this night’s edition of my BEST/WORST contribution to our family dinner.
My mind raced through all the thoughts I knew they must be thinking:
What if you die?
What if I die?
Why do you get Alzheimer’s?
How do you get cancer?
How do you know if it’s right to end your life?
Was Dr. Kevorkian a good guy or a bad guy?
Did he have kids?
Did Brian?
Did Amy? (She did, he did not.)
Could Amy go to jail for helping Brian die?
What if you don’t have enough money to go to Switzerland?
What does Canada say?
Which stories do you think you would tell at the end of your life?
What do you think happened to Brittany’s husband and mom?
Do you think they’re ok?
(How will they ever be ok?)
No one spoke for what seemed like forever, until……..
Finally, one of my brave daughters (who shall remain nameless, because both of them are very brave and neither one of them will probably want to claim this) found the courage to ask through a shaky voice and nearly invisible tears:
“But Mom………………If any of us ever had to to do this. ……………Would we have to eat the steak?”
It was the best/worst thing she could have possibly asked.
Clearly my job is (not) done.
![]()
(Special Thanks to Din Tai Fung)
Love them too much or not enough
Give them too much independence or emotionally suffocate them
Be around a little or a lot
Embarrass them in front of their friends, even if it was by accident, just that once
Force them to play sports or go to summer camp
Don’t force them to play sports
Tell them that summer camp is too expensive this year
Demand that they finish their hot breakfast
and/or
Make them pour their own cold cereal
Get them a kitten when they wanted a puppy
Marry someone who is allergic to kittens
Give them chores
Enforce the chores
Advance the chores
Enforce the advancements
Take away their allowance if they forget to do their chores
(Or worse - pay it anyway!)
Say something you didn’t think they would ever be able to hear through that closed door
Schedule a preemptive meeting with the teacher “to make sure we stay on track”
Skip the corrective meeting with the teacher “to make sure we stay on track”
Miss Back to School Night
Attend Back to School Night
Call the bully’s parents and rip ‘em a new one
Call the bully’s parents and cave
Buy the wrong shoes
Lie about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy
Take away the prize attached to negotiations over the afikomen but keep the rest of the four (to five) hour seder intact
Offer to make cupcakes for the mean girl’s birthday
(She used to be so nice!)
Get divorced
Don’t get divorced
Say no to the slumber party
Hire the mean babysitter even after you learned s/he was mean
Pick the wrong middle school (or the right one)
Make all day family plans on a sunny (or any) Saturday
Get Cancer
But don’t despair!
There is one surefire, foolproof, relatively easy (if you are relatively lucky) way to save your children (and their grown ups) from doom:
FAMILY DINNERS.
Yes, dinners - plural.
It can’t just be a once in a while one-off, or your kids will sniff the fraud.
(But they likely won’t call foul, because most kids don’t think they want family dinners as a general course of action or nutrition.)
Old school sit-down dinners may be the quality not quantity solution to many of the challenges today’s families face. (Quality not quantity because the dinners don’t have to drag on forever, especially on weeknights, as parents are people, too.)
Now, I know that I am really lucky to be able to say this. That I (and/or my husband) have been able to provide home cooked meals (him) or take out dumplings (me) for our daughters for as long as they have had teeth and been able to sit upright in a chair.
A shared meal at the kitchen table is where we sort out the Tough Stuff, steeling ourselves for (or, when/if possible, laughing ourselves into) another day, ready to go again in an increasingly complicated world and time.
We talk about everything, starting (and sometimes ending) with everyone sharing the BEST/WORST details of their day. I don’t remember how we started this ritual, but I do remember that once we all got the hang of it, there was no stopping us.
We covered it all:
Girl friends and cat fights, cool boys and k/idiots, the fun jobs and the soul suckers, spelling bee victories and botched talent show auditions, the mean teachers and the life changers, dance solos and art shows, things we wanted but didn’t get, things we hated but had to do, the myriad challenges of roller skating backwards, hiking in the heat (when we just wanted to skip school and go to the beach), skipping school (and going to the beach), favorite ice creams and dying beta fish, movies in the theatre during the good old days of popcorn and trailers……..
Songs we heard on the radio.........
Things we watched on tv...........
Stories we read in….........
Books.
(Books, books, books, books.............books!)
At least for the mom that is me.
After a few years of enjoying and/or forcing consistent family dinners, my husband and I knew we were going to make it. And more importantly, that our daughters would too, as they were nearly cooked and would come out ok (or maybe even perfect!) in the end.
(Does it scare you that I said that? That we would make it and that our daughters might even be perfect? It scares me……especially because I know better.)
We had all come so far that I felt I could share a story about the book I had just finished - Amy Bloom’s In Love - a heartbreaking and often surprisingly funny memoir about Amy and her husband Brian Ameche, as they figured out how he could end his life “by choice and in dignity” (I explained somewhat pompously), after his early on-set Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
I told my daughters all about Amy and Brian - how they fell in love when they were both married to other people, how funny and perfect they were (both on their own and with each other), how hard it can be (even with your perfect partner) to move through a new life after you’ve blown up an old one.
This was hardly a shocking dinnertime share. By this time (and this dinner), our girls were 17 and 14 and had years and years of living life (not to mention excellent parenting) under their belts. They even ate vegetables by choice sometimes and often utilized strategic swear words when sharing the BEST/WORSTS of their own teenaged Monday through Fridays.
Plus, at this point, we had already held several major dinner discussions about assisted suicide via my memories of living in suburban Detroit during the Jack Kevorkian “Dr. Death” days, as well as our recent obsession with (and heartbreak over) the brave journey and “Death with Dignity” battle fought by a beautiful young woman (and new bride) named Brittany Maynard.
So on this night (over my husband’s homemade french bread pizza and a glass of pinot noir), Amy Bloom’s In Love it was. I launched into a rather verbose BEST/WORST/ Stephanie Edition that could not (and would not) be stopped.
My husband (who hadn’t read the book but knew all about it because I talked about it every morning over coffee in bed for all of the one day it took me to read it) gamely forked over his BEST real estate to Amy and Brian (what a love story they had!). He also then forked his WORST, because at the end of the book, Brian and Amy traveled to Switzerland, where they had found a (lovely!) place called Dignitas that agreed to help Brian end his life on his own terms. (I included “lovely!” here because there is often some BEST mixed in with WORST and vice versa…...another important lesson for the children and their parents.)
The girls listened to us explain that Amy and Brian were “heartbroken and scared, but also determined and ready.” Brian did not want to live out a brutal, prolonged end to his wonderful life in the hands of his hateful Alzheimer’s disease, and Amy was determined to make sure he didn’t have to.
We held back our own tears, explaining that Dignitas was an amazing solution to an impossible problem. (How lucky Amy and Brian were to have found it!)
We spun In Love into the best kind of evolutionary death story: From Jack Kevorkian (going to prison for eight years) through Brittany Maynard (having to uproot her life in California to end it in Oregon because California would not become a right to die state until after Brittany’s fearless advocacy), to Amy and Brian being able to fly together to Switzerland, steering the end of their love story to a finish worthy of its hard-earned beauty. (”It was a romantic trip abroad that included window shopping and walking cobblestone streets arm in arm....candlelit dinners where they could share a glass of wine and eat a delicious steak before retiring to their beautiful hotel room as they prepared to make their way to the cozy Dignitas apartment......where Brian would hold court under a warm blanket, regaling his attentive nurses with stories from his athletic glory days during high school and college, while Amy held his hand preparing for her impossible goodbye,” I somehow managed to explain in a single sentence.)
I could hardly keep it together at my own dining room table as I went into even more detail of Amy and Brian’s Ending. (”Amy was a little miffed that Brian didn’t tell the nurses any stories from their life together, until she realized that he would soon be unable to tell any stories ever again and that she would be heading home the next day without him, forever.”)
I looked at my husband to see if I was going overboard, only to see that he was clearly (maybe?) trying not to cry himself as he got up to wash the dishes. I realized that everyone’s pizza was long gone and that both girls were staring at me with love and anxiety, worry and sadness, fear and facial paralysis, all because of too much adult information from this night’s edition of my BEST/WORST contribution to our family dinner.
My mind raced through all the thoughts I knew they must be thinking:
What if you die?
What if I die?
Why do you get Alzheimer’s?
How do you get cancer?
How do you know if it’s right to end your life?
Was Dr. Kevorkian a good guy or a bad guy?
Did he have kids?
Did Brian?
Did Amy? (She did, he did not.)
Could Amy go to jail for helping Brian die?
What if you don’t have enough money to go to Switzerland?
What does Canada say?
Which stories do you think you would tell at the end of your life?
What do you think happened to Brittany’s husband and mom?
Do you think they’re ok?
(How will they ever be ok?)
No one spoke for what seemed like forever, until……..
Finally, one of my brave daughters (who shall remain nameless, because both of them are very brave and neither one of them will probably want to claim this) found the courage to ask through a shaky voice and nearly invisible tears:
“But Mom………………If any of us ever had to to do this. ……………Would we have to eat the steak?”
It was the best/worst thing she could have possibly asked.
Clearly my job is (not) done.
(Special Thanks to Din Tai Fung)