<p>Here I am, shamelessly pasting my essay for all to see. It is too last minute, I know, but I need some second opinions badly.</p>
<p>Please excuse the its unpolished feel. I would really appreciate it if some one can just quickly look at the general ideas and critique how it flows.
Also, in trying to describe a significant family affair in limited words, I’m worried that the result is choppy, shallow, and overall bland. So please look at it in terms of that. </p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
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<p>Option 2. A community is defined by its table. Tell us about your table.</p>
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<pre><code> When Mama and I first moved to America, Dad invested in a large rectangular table of mahogany.
In celebration of the family. He said. Looking at the lovely table, I entertained romantic notions of expensive napkins, candles, and soft rising steam.
However, dinner soon proved to be a most depressing affair. After the initial intimacy stemming from years of separation, my reunited family deteriorated with an insidious subtleness which was only too apparent on the dinner table. Mama would fuss for hours over a dinner that would be finished within twenty minutes, for everyone ate with a ridiculous single-mindedness. The resulting silence was horrible not in its awkwardness, but instead in its accepted habitualness.
There were particularly bad days, when Dad would approach the table with documents and highlighters in hand, and then offhandedly complain that the meat was too tough, or the soup too plain. It cruelly irritated me, how Dads initial appreciation of a family had quickly evolved to an assumptive tyranny. I would retort with scathing words, feeling self righteous in my defense of Mama, and the atmosphere at the table always spiraled into an ugliness. Then Mamas chopsticks would hit the table in a resounding clank, and the table would fall back into silence at the force of her conflagrant misery.
There was something essential missing on our table. Dad would blame the food, while I would blame the table. But retracing my memories of other meals, I realized how naturally laughter and conversation would come to other tables, regardless of those elements.
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<p>In China, Granpa in his stinginess merely stacked a makeshift board atop the tea table on family dinners. The wobbliness had always been a source of complaint, but no one seemed to mind too much. Around that make shift table, dinner was a cultural and social event. Chopsticks would clack above popular dishes, and anecdotes would circulate amidst the rising steam which softened the whole scene into a gentle haze.
Even in school, the unpalatable cafeteria food never dampened the heated discussions. While the turkey crumbled like dust in our mouths, conversation would shift from witty insults, to gossip, to philosophical debates about the latest prose assigned, then spiral into bouts of laughter.
In the end, the table and food really were insignificant factors. For what was the purpose of table but to provide an occasion and space to gather a community? And what
was the purpose of the food but to provide an incentive? In comparison, ours was but a mockery of a true dinner, reflecting a mockery of a family. The table was a mirror of its community, and our failure to reap some benign experience from the table stemmed from our own failures. </p>
<pre><code>Somewhere between that understanding and a new maturity, I gained an intense urge to please, to return some essential sentiment to our table. I picked up cooking then. My first attempt was received with boundless appreciation. The potatoes were more chunks and strips, and the meet a touch too tough. But Mama glowed under the lamp light. Even Dad, known for his picky appetite, gulfed down extra portions of my less than excellent cooking. Even then, I could almost feel my self going through one of those proverbial defining moments in life. I was empowered. By doing something that could have easily been taken for granted, I gained an influence over my family, and a responsibility.
From then on, house chores held a ridiculous attractiveness to me. Despite Mamas weak protests, I would often hang around the kitchen, chopping vegetables or beating the eggs. After dinner, I would half wheedle half coerce Dad into washing the dishes. Amidst Dads grumblings and Mamas protests to Go Study!, I felt a conceited pride that something has returned to the family.
I wish I could wrap up this chapter of lifes lesson with a heart warming description of how our family dinners are now festive and exciting. But sadly, reality works around the perfect endings in devious ways. Keenly in tune with the rapid pace of life, the dinners has regressed to a random assembly of heated half finished products and mixed leftovers, which were, sadly, often engulfed in twenty minutes. However, after dinner, the entire family would crowd into the kitchen. Dad would be grumbling at the dishes he was forced to wash; I would tease him mercilessly while cleaning the stove; and Mom would flutter about, dogmatically directing our chores, even though it really was unnecessary. There would be that particular festiveness amidst our bustling activities, and Id like to think that we have bonded beyond the need of a table, found an occasion and incentive to be together.
Of course, things were not perfect; but it felt like family.
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