Reflections on my kitchen table

I really want a new kitchen table.

The table we have now is about 17 years old.  It is an ordinary table bought from a furniture chain store, for not too much money, after we decided that our old yard sale table (which seated 4) just would not do any longer.  The top is solid pine, and it is nicked and scratched, and the extension leaf has never really fit properly.  The apron underneath the table is starting to shift, so the two pieces of the table top don’t quite meet in the middle any more.  There are rings where people have left their mugs and cups, and a stain from when someone spilled water on the tablecloth and I didn’t discover it was wet until the next morning.  It’s a mess.

I really do want a new kitchen table.  I even have one picked out.

And yet...

I am a sentimental idiot.  I look at that beat up table, and I can remember when most of those marks were made.  I think of all the people who have sat around that table, all the meals that have been eaten, the cups of tea shared, games played, conversations, homework and projects completed at that table.

At various times, we have had seated around our table an off-Broadway actor, professional football players and amateur athletes, award-winning authors, musicians, a television and movie actor, University presidents, RCMP officers, politicians, teachers, doctors.  We’ve shared meals with university students, friends, neighbours, and family.  My children have grown up around that table.

That table has held staggering amounts of food at Thanksgiving dinners and birthday bashes.  We’ve taught students how to play Dutch Blitz at that table, and it has the scars to prove it – despite the fact that it is a card game invented by the peaceful Amish!  Friends have unburdened their souls at that table, young people have shared their hopes and dreams, and more than one teardrop has landed on its surface.  People who have sat around that table have shared good news, and bad news.  We have laughed and cried, learned and taught, talked and argued, and of course, eaten.

In the Maritimes, the kitchen is the centre of the house.  Here, the Gaelic tradition of ceilidhs (which usually include music, dancing, food and drink) has evolved into the Maritime kitchen party, where the party always ends up in the kitchen (also with music, dancing, food and drink).  Great Big Sea’s song “Goin’ Up”captures the spirit of a Maritime kitchen party.  There’s a line in it: “There’s thirty people in the kitchen and there’s always room for more.”   That’s what a kitchen table should represent, a place where there is always room, where people are welcomed and treasured and fed.

It’s just a table.  I know that.  And yet, it is so much more.  That battered table represents the connectedness we have experienced with so many people.  It represents friendship, family, warmth, love.  It represents home. 

At some point, we will have to get our new kitchen table.  It will start out blemish-free, a clean slate.  New memories will be created around it, and eventually, it will get banged up and scarred, too.  And although the experiences around the table will be different from the old table, I hope that what those experiences represent will continue to inspire me, and that there will always be room for more. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uECyM7H4Ors