Download Dinner with the Smileys: One Military Family, One Year of Heroes, and Lessons for a Lifetime AudioBook Free
The week before Thanksgiving 2011, Dustin Smiley left for a yearlong military services deployment. Soon after, his boy Ford, 11, asked Senator Susan Collins to complete his dad's couch at dinner. On January 3, 2012, Senator Collins came to dinner...and helped bring brownies. So began Dinner with the Smileys, nationally syndicated columnist Sarah Smiley's 52-week commitment to complete her husband's place at the family dining room table with interesting people - from schoolteachers to Olympians, professional athletes to famous authors, comedians to politicians - and unique role models on her behalf three sons, even as she is aware Dustin's seats cannot truly be "filled" until he's home again for the 53rd dinner. Why dinner? Because dinnertime is often the loneliest time for folks living exclusively. If homes and apartments rentals were like dollhouses with one aspect totally exposed, Sarah says, we'd see a lot of men and women eating exclusively to the glow of a television. That was the destiny Sarah feared for herself and her children during Dustin's absence. So she opened her home, and she and the kids sent invitations. And they found that a surprising number of people are actually available for dinner. You merely have to ask. In a period when popular culture leads us to think that the family dining room table is deceased, Dinner with the Smileys shows people that time spent with family, friends, and neighbours is still a lot area of the American lifestyle.
