The Table
What memories could a simple dining room table have?
From December 2010—My maternal grandparents purchased a mahogany Duncan Phyfe table in the 1930s. As I used it today to wrap the last presents, I wondered if furniture has memories.
What if this table absorbed the conversations around it during its 80 years of serving our family?
Now, the table's top is marred by places where hot things should not have been, scratched by children who should not have scratched, and darkened by time to a rich reddish brown.
My grandmother purchased the table when her husband and two daughters returned from city life to her legacy farm when her mother became ill in 1936.
After my grandfather died and my grandmother entered a nursing home, the grandchildren got to select pieces of furniture. I was allowed to go first as the only girl among five grandsons. I picked the old table and the six wobbly chairs with maroon velveteen seat covers. My oldest cousin laughed at me. He couldn't understand why I didn't choose the sturdier kitchen table with cane-back chairs.
My husband and I moved the table and chairs back to our little townhouse into a dining room so small that the table couldn't even be opened fully, let alone the multiple leaves put in. But that changed in 1990 when we moved into our first house. Our son was born a month after we moved.
On Christmas Eve of our first year in the house, the snow fell, at first gently and then in big clumps. Like most neighbors, we lined the short driveway of our home with luminary candles in paper bags, lighting the way for the Christ child. My parents arrived from their 300-mile trek. Within the hour, my brother, his wife, and their six-month-old baby boy arrived from Iowa.
That Christmas burns into my memory as brightly as the luminary flame. . We put the leaves on the table and used my grandmother's good lace tablecloth. Six wobbly vintage wooden chairs and two highchairs faced the table.
Later, we put the cousins in Santa suits, and they "raced" on the floor as babies do: my son in his K-Mart too-tight cheap Santa suit and his cousin in a more expensive version. I had purchased our son’s suit in October, and now his roly-poly tummy stuck out between the snaps on the front.
Does the table remember the two little Santas, the green bean casserole, the Ossian ham, and piles of half-eaten Cheerios on the floor?
* * *
Does the table remember when I was seven? Go back to 1964, and the table is set in a large dining room with a huge glass window showcasing the family farm's expanse to the north, now fallow after harvest. The fields are covered with a coating of snow, and our family of four drove the seven miles from "town" over the river and through the woods to the proverbial grandmother's house.
My grandmother liked purple, so everything in the dining room was purple: purple wallpaper, a large white and lavender buffet, and purple glass dishes. My mother and I helped her set the table with 1930s wedding china from a Chicago store.
I know a time is coming when I will no longer host family events that take three days to prepare and are over in an hour. My mother, who carefully hand-washed the silverware she gave me when she stopped hosting family events, has gone from dementia.
I know the junior-high-aged cousins who gave us a 2002 Christmas morning concert with saxophone and baritone while clad in their plaid bathrobes will grow up and move away. Hopefully, they will shed any dreams of a musical career.
The table was once a mahogany tree, a living entity. Does it contain this joy at its cellular level? I would like to believe that a bit of the joy witnessed by this inanimate object stays contained in its fibers, holding onto the joy it fostered for family celebrations.
-30-
Postscript: the table resides with another family, gaining new memories. Neither boy chose a musical career.
NOTE TO READERS:
I write to be read. Please share on social media or restack. I would love your comments and memories of your own special holidays. Merry Christmas.