Can a kitchen table tell a story?
It is, after all, just a table -- an inanimate object that takes up a lot of space. Let’s face it, it’s something else around the house, like your kids and your bathroom sink, that needs to be cleaned, scoured, disinfected and wiped down on a regular basis.
It can’t talk, dispense advice, or pay the bills. It just sits there.
My kitchen table happens to be sixty inches round on a pedestal base. Since there are no corners, this means we can all sit as close as humanly possible to one another and still be able to breathe . . . sort of.
Sometimes, this is a bad thing. It’s hard to drink your first cup of coffee before it gets cold with a seven year old leaning all over you, demanding to know the capital of Egypt, while your eyes haven’t even fully adjusted to the sunlight yet.
Sometimes this is a good thing. It’s easier to hug them over a pile of textbooks if they’ve had a bad day at school. You’re close enough to wipe their tears from their cheeks and tell them that even if they don’t know it yet, everything will be okay.
My kitchen table is seven years old and was bought because it had lots of growing room. When it first came home, it had a high chair pulled up next to it and booster seats bumped up under its edges. The legs of the children who sit under it now are considerably longer and ganglier and, no matter how many times I ask them to stop, keep kicking its pineapple-shaped base over and over again with the toes of their shoes.
My kitchen table is made of solid oak. It’s sturdy, safe and practically indestructible. It holds things up: the things we use everyday like laptops, books, papers and pencils, food and drink. Sometimes, it even holds up things I’d rather it not, like cats, dogs, and pet caterpillars, smelly sneakers and chewed-up gum.
Over time, it’s weathered a bit. All right, to be fair, it’s weathered a lot -- there’s a big water stain in the middle from a science experiment gone awry; but at least now, my youngest knows how water condenses. There are a few burns on its side from a hot glue gun, but the Giant Squid made out of a 2 liter 7 up bottle and Saran Wrap actually made it to school on time.
Its surface is peppered with permanent ink stains, paint chips, glitter, glue, sticker remnants and pencil marks. It looks like one of those Rorschach tests I studied about in a college Psychology course. A Rorschach is really nothing but ink stains on a piece of paper. Its purpose is to not look like anything. It’s the interpretation of what the viewer thinks they see that tells the most about that person.
If someone looked at my table, I doubt they’d see anything particularly interesting: maybe a cluster of glitter clumps and paint stains in the shape of a donkey or of Ronald Reagan’s head. Whose knows? But when I look at my table, the picture I see is crystal clear. I see the seven-year span of a growing family.
It’s where my baby held herself up to learn how to walk, and where my oldest one lost her first tooth. It’s the place where both of my girls learned to spell their own names. It’s where they both learned to read. Sure, it has seen its fair share of drama, fights and tears, but it has also seen a whole lot more. If a home is where the heart is and the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the kitchen table is its pulsating center: the place where the heart beats the loudest and keeps it strong.
The other night my husband sat down to dinner and started trying to dig up a glob of glue with a paper clip while he waited. I was about to tell him to stop, to leave it the way it is, but one of my girls beat me to it.
“Forget it Dad,” she told him from across the table. “The table is as old as I am. There’s really nothing you can do to it to make any better.”
She’s right. It’s perfect the way it is.
I’m glad we all love it this way. When I look at all of its scratches, divots, and dents, I don’t see flaws or defects, stains or spots. I don’t really even see a slab of 60 inch round wood on a pedestal base either. When I look at my kitchen table, I see a story. I see the story of us – of a family, imperfections and all, growing more resilient, like our oak table, every day.
When you look at your kitchen table, what story does it tell you? I’m betting, like mine, it’s a pretty darn good one.
