In Cameron Stracher’s book, Dinner With Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table, the opening line quotes the Talking Heads’ song Once in a Lifetime: “And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife… and you may ask yourself—well, how did I get here?” Apparently, working 80-hour weeks and driving a daily two-hour commute left little time for Stracher’s home life – until a shared meal of burritos brought together his disconnected family. The book chronicles Stracher’s decision to commit to having dinner with his family five nights a week -- sharing equally in shopping, cooking, and cleaning. He describes the challenges and ultimate joys of joining the family dinner table.
Cameron Stracher is the author of Double Billing: A Young Lawyer’s Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies, and The Pursuit of a Swivel Chair and a novel, The Laws of Return. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His essays and articles on family life (and other topics) have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Parents, The American Lawyer (where he is a contributing editor), and many other publications. During the day he teaches at New York Law School and practices media law, and at night he rushes home to his wife and two children in Westport, Connecticut.
More of Cameron’s family adventures from the dinner table are on his blog, Dinner With Dad.
Music Break -- I Keep Losing Heart -- Electrelane