Susan Hines-Brigger

Before my husband, Mark, and I had kids, one of the things we agreed on was that we would try to always eat together as a family. We both had great memories of time spent with our siblings and parents around the table. It was cherished time, so we wanted to continue that with our own kids.

Fast-forward to when we actually had kids, and we quickly learned that those idyllic dinners of our childhood and adolescence had a dark underbelly that our parents never warned us about. And that was the hard work that went into pulling off those dinners.

“Why fit in when you were born to stand out? ” You could say that quote from Dr. Seuss summed me up when I was growing up. To say I had a very individual style is an understatement.

At an age when most girls were busy playing dress-up and fixing their hair, my hair was covered with a baseball hat. While my friends were playing with Barbies, I was outside tossing a tennis ball against the side of our house. And when my friends covered their walls with posters of the latest teen heartthrobs, I was putting up posters of football great Walter Payton.