'Children growing up in an atmosphere where beauty is considered an important part of daily life cannot help being inspired to develop their own original ideas in these areas, nor can they help being prepared to live aesthetically themselves. There is a togetherness in sharing a prepared table that even very small children feel. Instead of saying, "Oh it doesn't matter, its only the children" when you are alone with a child for a meal, it is important to say to the opposite to yourself. "I wonder what the children would enjoy the most?"
When bringing someone a tray (when they are unwell), a candle on the tray brings light, warmth and aliveness of movement into the drabness of being shut away. A flower in an egg cup or tiny vase, or a piece of ivy, will lift the meal.
If you never have time to enhance moments together by making some preparation for beauty as well as for meeting necessities you are apt to miss altogether the spontaneous response and opening up of the personality which this would bring... I feel that the 'caring' for others in the family, can be expressed over and over again in ways which bring a very warm chain of memories, through transforming an ordinary meal table into a place of surprise and beauty.'
The hidden art of homemaking by Edith Schaeffer
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