A Crowded Table
It was a 12 foot table. A slab of wood my husband saved from his mother’s ancestral home. Its former life was a library table which only made me wonder how massive was that library? It also confirmed my suspicion that my husband’s lineage was way classier than mine. Whereas we had to walk to our library down the street, he apparently hailed from a family who lived in a game of Clue, with billiard and ballrooms, and a library big enough for a four-yard piece of furniture.
This erstwhile table lingered in our shed for years, legless, under a tarp. Quite undignified for a surface that once hosted the works of Shakespeare, Byron and Keats. When we finally moved into a house big enough for that table, my husband attached millwork legs, painstakingly stained to match the wood’s historied patina. We added an assortment of mismatched antique chairs, enough to pack 14 people around its perimeter. That library table was ready for reincarnation, not simply as a dining table, but as a heralded gathering space for years to come. Birthdays, holidays, and frankly any day featured a circle of people at that table, elbow to elbow, passing food, stories and time in the simplest but most divine way.
As a table is wont to do, this one served honorably as our home’s hub. It was where we played endless games - from cards to dominoes, dictionary to Pictionary - competitive and epic tournaments. It was where we deliberated with our daughter about going away to college at 16. Where we annually celebrated my niece's most miraculous recovery. It was at this table where my unconventional brother-in-law gave an impromptu lecture on tantric sex to unsuspecting guests. Where we toasted one high school or college graduation after another. It was where my 80-year-old mother-in-law revealed her new five-inch mermaid tattoo. And where I calendarized my seven weeks of radiation treatment. It was at this table my sister wept the Easter after her daughter died. And where we plotted our future and decided to move. It was at this table we signed our wills. We all have these stories. You know, the stuff of family that happens for most of us around our table.
A good friend recently sent me the song “Crowded Table” by The Highwomen. It’s lyrics, “I want a house with a crowded table,” made me cry. I long for the ease and affinity of sitting side by side, the comfort of feeding those I love, and the boon of sharing that seems to only happen when candles are burning down to their nubs.
Gathering at a table is the optimum habitat for connection. It does more than give sustenance to our bodies, it feeds our souls. And it’s the table, itself, that upholds this communion. An expectation that we sit, stay a while and, if we’re lucky, with phones put away, look at each other to listen. Give one a table with chairs and you have the first ingredients of fellowship.
There will be a day, once gathering is safe, when we will be together again at the table. Of course, it won’t be the same as before. Only because I believe it will be better. That when we pull out our chairs and sit nestled among loved ones, there will be reverence. An inward honoring of the simplest thing that is by far the most profound.
The Highwomen sing about their crowded table, “And everyone belongs.” That’s how I envision my table. I hope to see you there.