I made the mistake of asking what time lunch was.
Not when we needed to leave. Not when people were arriving. Not when food would be ready.
Lunch.
A simple enough question, I thought.
“About two-thirty,” said JC’s mother.
Perfect.
I planned my day around it.
Albert knew we were having lunch with the grandparents. I knew we were having lunch with the grandparents. Everyone seemed happy.
By three o’clock, we still hadn’t eaten.
Not a problem, apparently.
People were standing around talking. Someone had opened a bottle of vermouth. Plates of olives appeared. Then crisps. Then anchovies. Then little bits of cheese.
I quietly asked JC if this counted as lunch.
“No,” he said.
“What is it then?”
“Aperitivo.”
We had already eaten enough food to qualify as lunch in my family.
The actual lunch was apparently still coming.
I’ve written before about The Catalan Family Sunday Roast: A Tradition Reinvented, and I thought I understood the rhythm by now.
I did not.
At around three-thirty everyone finally sat down.
Or at least I thought everyone had sat down.
Then someone disappeared to answer the door.
Another cousin arrived.
An aunt I hadn’t seen in months appeared carrying a cake.
Two children materialised from somewhere upstairs.
The table somehow grew longer.
Nobody seemed remotely concerned that lunch was now happening at a time most British people would be wondering about dinner.
The first course arrived.
A simple salad with tuna, olives and tomatoes that actually tasted of something.
The second course followed.
Then the third.
At some point I lost count.
Albert had started the day in a good mood, but long family meals can be complicated.
The challenge is rarely the food itself.
It’s everything around it.
The changing timetable.
The extra noise.
The uncertainty.
The fact that what was supposed to happen next suddenly doesn’t.
A lot of people think autism is only about sensory issues.
For Albert, timing can be just as important.
If he expects lunch at two-thirty and lunch happens at three-thirty, that’s not a small change.
That’s a completely different version of the day.
A few years ago the whole afternoon might have unravelled.
Now we’re better at spotting the signs.
Sometimes that means taking a short walk outside.
Sometimes it means finding a quiet room for ten minutes.
Sometimes it means absolutely nothing except giving him space.
I’ve talked about some of those realities before in Autism Routines and the Myth of the Peaceful Morning.
What I’ve learned is that flexibility doesn’t arrive overnight.
For children like Albert, flexibility is often something that has to be built slowly, one uncomfortable situation at a time.
Meanwhile, the lunch carried on.
And on.
And on.
The thing that still surprises me about Catalan family meals is that nobody seems interested in finishing them.
In Britain there is often a sense that a meal has a destination.
You eat.
You clear up.
You have a cup of tea.
You go home.
Here the meal itself seems to be the destination.
People stay at the table.
Stories are told.
Arguments begin and disappear again.
Coffee appears.
Someone remembers another story.
Someone else opens another bottle.
Children vanish and return.
Hours pass.
Nobody checks the time.
At one point I looked out of the window and realised the afternoon light had changed completely.
We had been sitting there for hours.
The strange thing is that somewhere during all this I stopped waiting for lunch to end.
I stopped wondering when we could leave.
I stopped mentally calculating how much washing up there would be waiting for us at home.
Instead, I found myself listening.
Really listening.
JC’s father telling stories about Barcelona in the 1970s.
His mother explaining why one particular family recipe can never be written down because she changes it every single time.
A cousin talking about work.
An uncle complaining about football.
The sort of conversations that don’t happen when everyone is trying to get somewhere else.
By the time we finally stood up from the table, it was after six.
Lunch had consumed most of the afternoon.
The children were tired.
The adults were still talking.
There was somehow still food left on the table.
As we drove home, Albert was quiet.
Not upset.
Just exhausted.
The kind of tired that comes from navigating a day that demanded more flexibility than usual.
I understood the feeling.
When we first moved here, these endless family lunches felt impossible to understand.
Now they feel like one of the things I’d probably miss if they disappeared.
I still don’t know exactly when lunch starts.
I still don’t understand how a meal can last half a day.
I still secretly pack emergency snacks in my handbag just in case.
Some habits survive any move.
But somewhere between the vermouth, the salad, the conversations and the coffee, I’ve started to understand that for many Catalan families the food is only part of the meal.
The real feast is everything that happens around it.