Oh, the Stories the Table Could Tell…
Now, before you start thinking that I’m totally losing the plot, I’ll explain the title. I received a writing prompt: “Write about a table where you have eaten meals.” The table I’m using is our kitchen table. It is one quarter of 2-drop leaf and 2-“D” end tavern table from the late 1700. During the Revolutionary War it resided in a tavern in the Fort Edward/Hudson Falls area. 1-D end and 1-drop leaf section was passed down through my mother’s family. I have no idea where the other two parts went. The D end is up in our bedroom (which still has some of our Christmas villages on it…but that’s a story for another time).
The drop leaf section of the table is in our kitchen. It is made from cherry wood, which is one of my absolute favorite woods. Since our dining room is carpeted (who puts wall-to-wall carpeting in a dining room?) we rarely ever used that room.
When we moved into the house we had two little girls. A 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. I had no desire to have fits over spillage, so, the kitchen was where we would eat the majority of our meals. Spills are a way of life with young children, food, and drinks. Tile is very easy to clean up; carpeting is not.
We had our third baby in this house. A third baby only meant the years of spills just got longer. But who cares? The kitchen table was well-used, well-loved and it would only mean there would be more stories to tell. So many stories that I have no clue where to start.
Sheila liked being helpful and she would watch what the rest of us were doing. One morning when I was trying to do three things at once, Sheila climbed up onto the chair I had just vacated, and she started feeding Colleen. I had removed the bowl from the highchair tray. Sheila would turn towards the table, scoop some cereal onto the spoon and turn back towards Colleen. Yes, some cereal ended up on the floor (exhibit A for why we ate in the kitchen). Oh well… Sheila was so proud of herself and Colleen? She was bewildered.
There was the evening we were using chopsticks and Sheila was upset because she was given a spoon. She was still non-verbal at the time. But if really upset and she didn’t want to do something she could get the word, “No,” out. Or if she was upset and wanted to do something she could manage, “IDODAT.”
We had little girl birthday parties around that table, where there would be anticipation and giggling. Lots of giggling.
There would be crinkled noses because someone was in a rush for the food to arrive and didn’t like being told to wait patiently.
Does anyone remember the Black Pearl Olive fingers commercial? Well, Colleen loved to do a reenactment of it.
There was Sheila being impatient, “Moooommm”
Or thinking it was time to show off her flexibility.
There was the time Colleen was assisting the director of Old Songs as her right-hand woman—literally. The director had been in an accident and her right arm was in a cast. She needed someone to help with typing and other physical tasks she couldn’t do. In the rush up to an Old Songs Festival. She also knew Colleen was thinking about a career in folk or traditional arts so she felt it would provide real life experience.
Colleen knew the color of that year’s tee-shirts. She was sitting thinking about it, but not sharing the information. An arc of light/energy passed from Colleen to Andrea. Colleen looked shocked as this was happening. Andrea then blurts out the color. We are so busy laughing, exclaiming and being chatty, when I realized that there was an unusual stillness about Forrest. I looked at him and his head is tilted back, he’s unresponsive and I can see no rise and fall of his chest.
The abruptness of laughter to horror was shockingly fast. I’m shifted Forrest out of the chair down to the floor, at the same time I told one of the girls, probably Colleen to call 911 as she was closest to the phone. I’m a pediatric nurse first thing we do when a baby is not breathing is a sternal rub. So, Forrest is an adult, but muscle memory had me doing a sternal rub, then tilting his head back as I checked for a pulse. He had a pulse and the rise and fall of his chest told me he was breathing again.
The two times we have ever called 911 to our home they have arrived fairly quickly. For a rural area with a volunteer EMS that is not necessarily the norm. Since Forrest was awake and alert by the time EMS arrived, he allowed them to ask questions, and get vital signs, but he refused transporting to hospital.
That table has been witness to laughter, tears, fears and occasional anger whilst in our household. But most of all companionship and love.
And then there is the historical piece.
There is a burn/scorch scar on one of the leaves that is in the shape of an old-fashion non-electrified flat iron. The kind you heat up on the wood powered stove. That leaf is a bit thinner as someone, lost to the annuls of time, had tried sanding out the burned area. All the surface finish on the drop-leaf table had been stripped and refinished so the patina is slightly different from the “D” end table. There are other nicks and gouges that must have occurred before the last time it was refinished, there stories are lost to us. As a child I used to make up stories about how they all got there. So, many others sat at this table. Did they plot revolution or side with the King? Were they freemen, indentured servants or slaves working in the tavern? Who in our ancestry received the two halves we now own and where are the two other halves of this table. There are so many unknown and untold stories involving this table.
Our somewhat neglected dining room table has its own unique stories. It has unknown stories from Forrest’s family. In our house, it was used primarily for Thanksgiving dinners. For three months of every year it gives up its purpose as a place for eating to hold one small section of our Christmas Village houses. That’s an entirely different story to tell.
The other tables that have stories to tell: the game table, the dining room table and the picnic table. All have their own stories of laughter and tears.
I love that table, too, but I am glad you have it as it wouldn’t have fit in to my apartment.