Sometimes I look at my family and wonder how we're all related.

My dad has the metabolism of a teenager and eats cookies for breakfast. My mom can sit and watch golf on TV for hours. My older brother is brilliant but can't spell. And my younger sister, well, she's strangely good at Dance Dance Revolution.

So I find it amazing — if not a miracle — that we come together on Sunday nights at my parents' house and get along.

And remarkably well.

We all have such different interests — from surfing to Photoshop to kneading bread — and yet on Sundays we can sit around the kitchen table, sans TV, and talk.

Sometimes about work, recently about back pain, too often about politics and almost always about something embarrassing I've done in my lifetime. (The favorite ones involve either a backyard swing or a couple of missing eggs. Long story.)

For years I thought this — and the fact that we all sleep on futons on the floor — was normal. Didn't all families do that?

Apparently not.

According to a study by the National Case on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, while nearly half of 12-year-olds in the survey said they have dinner with a parent, only a quarter of 17-year-olds did.

And the less families eat together, the less they talk — and the more likely these kids will use drugs, feel depressed, develop eating disorders or let their grades slip, according to the study.

I don't know for sure if our nightly family dinners growing up made a significant impact on me. (I still won't eat peas.) But I do think there's something important about connecting with people through even the simplest, most superficial conversations over hamburger steak and fried rice.

Even if we don't agree — on the war in Iraq, on Mac versus PC, on whether the "Lethal Weapon" series was better than "Indiana Jones" — we've fostered an understanding for other viewpoints and opinions that extend beyond the kitchen table.

And best of all, I feel a stronger connection and sense of belonging to a family, even one as diverse — and, well, odd — as mine.

Those nightly dinners — and that peculiar discussion among an engineer, a computer programmer, an English major, an anime fan and the world's greatest cook — are what I miss most about living at home.

And now six years living on my own, that's one thing that keeps me coming back most Sunday nights.

Well, that and the free food.

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.