Okay, it’s time for a friendly neighbourhood survey from the Messy Table. Let’s talk tables.
I have recently moved into a furnished flat and so have fallen heir, at least temporarily, to an extendable table. It’s a nice wooden one – a bit loved and bashed in places, but with a nice colour to it, and two large leaves that you can pull out to make more surface space available. It took a little sorting out, but we’ve developed a routine of extending one leaf for meals when it’s Spouse, the kids and me, two for extra guests. When it’s not meal time, the leaves are both left pushed in to save space in our narrow kitchen. That system seems to be working, though I feel a little like we’re living in an Ikea catalogue. I’ll need to light some candles and get some colourful guests to stop by.
But wiping it down every morning makes me think about tables in general, and I have been wondering about other people. Which is a nice thing to do while writing for other people, don’t you think?
So, tell me, how does it work at your home? What’s your table like?
Is it wooden? New? Hand-me-down and loved?
Do you have kids around your table? What was it like when you did?
Does your family eat at the table? Together or catch-as-catch-can? Are you a viewing and chewing family, keen to watch the tube while consuming your supper?
And what’s your ideal dinner table like?
I played this table game in the park a few years ago with another mum. Her kids are each exactly four months older than each of mine, and we shared a fondness for downtown park spaces, so we spent many afternoons pushing swings and chatting about anything that came to mind. She described her ideal table as one that she’d seen in a film once, but she couldn’t remember the name. That ideal table was outside, of course, and it was summer. There was a table cloth, and bread and wine, and a lot of people gathered around, sitting close it together like family, but – and this was important – they weren’t family. There was the hostess, her daughter and granddaughter, and then a collection of friends and neighbours of all ages, all close and familial, all looking like they belonged. That was an ideal table – where everyone was family.
(The film was Antonia’s Line – a favourites I stumbled across as a studentand then recommended one night to my mum when we were looking for something good to watch together. One of those humiliating intergenerational time, when you go all fiery red and silent, having forgotten some of the naughtier bits… But my mother laughed. Though whether at the film or at me, I am not quite sure.)
But what about you? What is your table like? What’s your ideal and what’s your reality?
Maybe it’s this one?
Katie
What an awesome question(s). Our kitchen table is the dining room table from Glenn’s Grandparents via Glenn’s sister. The table has a lot of Christmas Dinner and big family flavour history not only from Glenn’s family but also from our twenty five years of marriage. And this was the table that now comes complete with iron scorch marks and pin marks. In Port Carling twenty four years ago we were hosting Dr and Mrs. Klempa and Dr Peg Milton-Blair. The table cloth looked horrid so instead of taking the table cloth OFF the table, I ironed the cloth on the table. Who knew that steam irons could be so vicious
In my old age, I got smarter and now throw a quilt over the table instead of a linen table cloth (no ironing needed). Pin marks litter this table as this is the table I lay all the quilts for charity.
This is a table that has many memories and many more memories to be made. The laminate is falling off in spots but we keep gluing it back together. When we were downsizing to move to Brandon, this table was one of the “must keep” items. This table is a lot like our family, is comes with a lot of history, lots of bumps and bruises, lots of laughter, but special in our eyes. When our family looks at this table we think how it is an everyday ordinary thing that we place before God as an offering so that we can use this table to help others come into the kingdom of God.
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My table growing up was round. Befit a family of four – cardinal points, no feeling of supremacy. No “head” of the table, which may be counter-cultural, or at least counter-cultural in the traditional Christian North American nuclear family of the 1980s. One of many subtle expressions of a non-hierarchical viewpoint that informed my growing up. Despite there being no obvious head, we all had our assigned seating as far back as I can remember – it felt like bad mojo to not sit in the seat I always sat at, across from my brother, with Mom at my left and Dad at my right. It, too, was extendable, but not from underneath. So for feast meals or when company was coming, the ritual involved one of us – whoever was feeling spriest – grabbing one or both leaves from a remote cupboard and holding it whilst two others pulled the table apart, then sliding it in place and shoving the ends back in. Swedish, as I recall. The ultimate in usefulness. And heavy/solid, in a way that Swedish furniture is not reputed to be any longer. As such, it lasted in a way that Swedish furniture is not reputed to be any longer. We almost always ate together and seldom befronst the television. My ideal table now would also be round, also be extendable, also be sturdy, and also have all of my family around it for meals most of the time. I know, I know – call me conservative.
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