I was honored with the opportunity to have a Skype call with one of my favorite authors, Roseanna M. White ( Y'all should check her out!). Anyhow, I was able to ask her a lot of questions and pick her brain a little bit. She gave me a lot of good feedback and a lot of help. 

I struggle to keep the dialect going in my stories sometimes, and her recommendation was to record my family at the supper table for about ten minutes and then type it all out. So, one day last week, I recorded some of our supper time conversation, and as I typed it out today I decided to let y'all read it. 

I get a lot of questions on what it's like to be in a big family, and my main response is this, "I love having a big family, it's loud, crazy, fun, and you are never bored." After writing out four minutes and nineteen seconds of our conversation, it is so true haha. I got a few laughs out of this, and I hope you enjoy! 

“Ama! Mama, mama, mama!” the cry of Mae Ellyn rises above all the other voices at the table, demanding the attention of mama, while Morgan laughs and Maleah and Mercy ramble.

“What, baby?” Mama asks Mae Ellyn gently, who is sitting right next to her in a highchair.

“How old is she?” Stephen demands, about a little girl the family knows.

“That doesn’t help in here,” Mallory gives her opinion at the end of the table, sitting with the rest of the older girls, about some other topic that was being discussed beforehand.

 Everyone is in his or her assigned seats. No set rule has been given on who should sit where, but it is an unspoken rule amongst the children. With nine kids in the family, you better have a seat, or you might have to sit next to the messiest eater or the child that chews like a cow. Choose your meal buddy carefully.

“What is that called?” Mama asks Mae Ellyn. She must teach her the names of her food, for it is what every good mother does.

“Fifteen months,” Madison answers Stephen’s question about the girl.

“What?” Mama questions Mae Ellyn, wanting her to say it clearly.

“I thought she was a year,” Stephen replies.

“She’s so cute,” Morgan voices.

“I wonder why they all have curly hair,” Madison wonders. All this is said at once, everyone making sure their thoughts and questions are heard around the table so they can be discussed amongst one another.

“What is this?” Learning time with Mae Ellyn is not over, and mama has moved on to another object of food on Mae’s plate.

“I’ve thought that too,” Morgan replies to Madison’s wonderment. “All of the grandkids do.”

“Say bread,” Mama says slowly so that Mae Ellyn can repeat it back to her.

“Bread.” Mae Ellyn says proudly.  

“They don’t really—“ Madison begins,

“Her hair is so pretty though! Ringlets. So cute.” Morgan interrupts and exclaims.

“Your welcome, baby.” Mama can be heard saying at the other end of the table.

“Not all of us have straight hair,” Meghan adds her thoughts to the conversation with some sass in her tone, unknowingly changing the topic.

“Mmhmm.” Morgan hums.

“Ms. Breanne does.” Madison insists,

“What?” Meghan asks, eyebrows raised.

Madison pauses before asking, “Oh, wait…who are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about us,” Meghan replies. Shouldn’t they have caught that? She did say us.

“Oh,” Madison laughs.

Morgan hurries to give her input. “Madison has wavy hair, it's not really—“

“You and—“ Meghan tries to begin, but Madison butts in.

“Mines the curliest outa y’all all.” Who needs good grammar when you live in the south?

“Mercy and Maleah,” Meghan is still talking.

Morgan scoffs at Madison’s remark. “Not really, it’s not that curly.
            Mae Ellyn yells out in her baby jibber.

“Uh-huh,” Madison argues.

“Not really, y’all don’t have curly hair.” This, Morgan says to Meghan, as someone bangs the fork against the bowl.

`Chang! Chang! Chang!

“I know, it’s wavy but—“

“Mama, Melissa sent—mama, mama, Melissa sent—“ Stephen begins, but his voice is drowned out by Mallory, who finally decides to join the conversation.

“My hair’s not curly—“ Mallory is saying.

“It’s not wavy.” Morgan pipes.

“—It’s not straight,” Mallory finishes.

“She exactly said this, ‘Mr.—hey, misses Nichole—“ Stephen is heard at the other end of the table, still trying to tell Mama what Melissa said.

“She exactly says this,” Morgan mocks.

“—Can I text Meghan for a while?” Stephen finally gets out.

“For a while?” Madison mocks Stephen’s southern drawl with a smile.

Someone dips more food onto their plate.

“For awhile,” Morgan replies to Madison.

“Can I, mama?” Meghan pleads, wanting to text one of her best friends.

“In a minute,” mama answers, “When we get done.”

“I wanna see!” Mercy says.

“Nooo,” Maleah warns, about something only they know they are talking about.

“I wonder what Melissa would say,” Mallory can be heard saying.

“Mama, I haven’t talked to Melissa in awhile!” Meghan insists, her voice drawn out in a slight whine.  

“We’ll get done in about five minutes,” Mama replies to Meghan in her motherly tone.

“You shoulda said—“ Stephen says,

While Meghan says, “I’ve only talked—“

But Madison drowns them out while saying, “A friend came to see me yesterday.”

“—After we eat—“ Stephen is continuing.

Morgan scrapes at her plate with her fork.

“Mama, mama,” Mae Ellyn calls.

“No, we’re—“ Meghan tries to say,

“How do you know he came to the right one?” Morgan asks Madison.

“No! Don’t say anything!” Meghan calls to Stephen.

“They work right across the street,” Madison replies to Morgan.

“Mama, tell him not to say anything,” Meghan asks.

“I wasn’t going to say anything!” Stephen insists.

“Mama, tell him to get off the phone,” Meghan commands.

Mallory places her fork down on her plate, and daddy sets his cup down.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Joshua asks.

“Are you supposed to be doing what you’re doing?” Madison asks the child making lemonade.

“Um…” Stephen replies.

“Can’t have two limes,” Morgan tells Joshua.

“I wonder what Melissa would say about what you said to Darcey,” Mallory says.

“Shhhh.” mama says to a child that is too loud.

“What did you say to Darcey?” Madison asks, dipping food into her plate.

“What did you say to Darcey?” Meghan voices also.

“When Morgan said—“ Mallory begins.

“Ohhh,” realization dawning on Meghan.

Mallory waves her hand in thought. “—something.”

“In a hot minute,” Meghan says, remembering.

“Or no. No.” Morgan says, trying to remember.

“Or, ‘No, butt. In a hot minute.” Mallory guesses, laughter lacing her voice.

Meghan chuckles.

“Or something, “ Mallory ends in a small laugh.

Daddy clears his throat at the other end of the table.

Stephen laughs, and Maleah pushes her plate away from her.

“Stephen, you are not making any more lemonade until you eat more of your food,” mama rebukes in a soft, but warning tone.

Meghan hums as she eats.

“I’ve already ate some,” Stephen says.

“Guess what man, your watching time is slipping away,” Daddy addresses Stephen, who earlier, wanted to watch something after supper.

“I don’t understand how you can eat food throughout the day, but not supper,” Mama tells Stephen.

“I was looking through pictures the other day, Madison, and guess who I saw you with?…Eliza, like five years ago.” A smirk in Meghan’s tone.

“Oh, yeah,” Madison says with a mouthful of food, remembering that day and picture, perfectly.

“When you were watching her and that little boy,” Meghan continues.

“I know,” Madison replies, food still in her mouth.

“Remember when you used to take sewing lessons from Ms. Brooke?” Meghan asks Madison.

“We’ve known them a long time,” Morgan declares with a smile.

“We really have,” Madison smiles back.

“And she gave us a headband for Christmas,” Mallory remembers the headbands Madison had sewed for her sisters as a gift one Christmas.

“I guessed it, I guessed it,” Meghan says, feeling quite proud of herself, having figured out that it was headbands before she had opened the gift.

“That is terrible,” Mama can be heard at the other end of the table talking to daddy, about another topic.

“What?” Morgan asks mama.

“What is it?” Madison also asks, forever nosey.

“Biting on something hard, and it hurts so bad,” Mama replies to her girls.

“Or when you think you’re biting your tooth,” Morgan adds to the conversation.

“No. Or when you bite something, and it hurts your teeth,” Meghan expresses loudly.

“That’s exactly what she’s talking about,” Morgan explains.

“No, when you bit into something, and it hurts your teeth.” Meghan expresses further.

“Ohh. I almost punched doctor Williams at the orthodontist the other day, cause he was shaving it right there—“ she points to a tooth. “—and it was like I was biting—it was worse than like I was biting into something cold. It was so bad. So bad.” Morgan remembers none too fondly.

“Oh no,” Meghan dreads, thinking about when she has to get braces.

“Yeah, I almost started crying,” Morgan dramatizes.

“It wasn’t that bad for me,” Madison encourages.

“Okay, maybe it’ll be not that bad at all for me.” Meghan hopes.

“Like at all,” Madison continues. “It was a little uncomfortable, but other than that it was fine.”

Mama taps a fork on a dish, trying to get the food off of it.

“It was when he was fixing my retainer,” Morgan explains.

“Um, don’t you hate when you have to go get the—“ Mallory says, but the rest cannot be heard over daddy and the little girls.

“I got three shots,” Someone says.

“It honestly did not take it look at all to get my braces off,” Madison says.

“It doesn’t.” Morgan agrees.

“It just—what took so long is, pictures, the molding of my teeth, blah, blah, blah,” Madison shares of her experience.

Forks scrape up against plates as the family tries to finish there supper, and for just a second, no one says a word.

“Yeah, before and after pictures,” Morgan says.

“Do you mind?” Joshua asks Stephen who is rolling his cup.

“Man, when Melissa got her braces, she got sent home with a ton of stuff,” Meghan exclaims.

“I can’t cut this off,” Mercy says...

Thanks for reading! 

~Madison Suzanne