Table Rasa

I'm thankful for tables. Like the round one in the kitchen where I grew up. It was big enough for four of us and a highchair: three boys, mom and dad. Later we grew into an oval, and the circular one we had sat at for so many moons moved downstairs to become the basis of a great many forts. That oval served us long and well. It gave us an extra place in addition to the five of us. A place for a guest. Friends and eventually girlfriends who came to share a brunch or a dinner with us. On Sunday nights a great many of us would crowd around to savor my father's hot fudge sundaes.
A couple times a year we would drag ourselves into the dining room for a family dinner, the kind with real silver and cloth napkins. My mother wanted us to behave differently around the big wooden table with a leaf in the middle, but when our cousins showed up it usually disintegrated into the same raucous chatfest that the five of us enjoyed with an additional seven voices. When the kids disappeared downstairs to watch TV, the grownups spread out and the Cold Duck flowed. I remember the sound of my mom and her cousin Gail snorting and cackling into the night. That was one fun table. And at the end of all those tables sat our dog, Rupert, waiting for his turn to eat. If he felt that we were running a little long, he would get up from his spot next to my mother's chair and give her what-for until she surrendered to his hunger pangs.
When I moved out and lived in a series of apartments, I tended to skip the dining room and head straight to the coffee table. That was the best surface for TV dinners and frozen pizza. I spent my bachelor years hunched over plastic trays, forgetting any of the manners I was taught but avoided at my parents' tables.
When I moved out to California, I was introduced to another oval, smaller than the one that kept my brothers and I fed. This one was just big enough for a young couple starting out, and when we had a few extra guests, we moved them to the living room where we ate buffet style. That table was where we served our first turkey together. It's where we had romantic dinners and not-so-romantic ones. It's the table we moved into our new house and made room for our own high chair. We have crowded a great many boys around that table for sleepover late-night snacks and morning-after breakfasts. At the end of this table we found our dog, Maddie. She waited just a little more patiently than Rupert did, but she knew when we were done it was her turn to feast.
This year we upgraded to a larger table, more of a rectangle, with high back chairs. It's our "grown-up table." It's big enough to get even more hungry mouths crowded around it, and as the years go by I suppose we can look forward to a new generation of high chairs and chatty children. And I'll be thankful for the chance to sit down with them and listen to the laughter.