Chapter Two: Living life as a senior

La Table: Family traditions old and new

Sometimes a table is just a table, sometimes it is so much more.

I remember a round, dark wood table that sat on a big pedestal, where three young girls — their hair rolled up in pink, spongy rollers or empty juice cans — sat on ladderback chairs with wicker seats, along with their mom and dad. There was food — meat, potatoes, chicken — always salad, and always dessert! There was laughter, giggling, tears, problem making, problem solving, serious discussion — often about why the girls were coming to the table with curlers in their hair, which actually prompted a surprise dinner arrival complete with prom dresses and dazzling costume jewelry — albeit hair still in rollers. A lot of laughter that night.

Flash forward to me as a young wife and new mom of three tiny children, furnishing a new home for my family of five. My most difficult decision became finding the perfect breakfast room table, something that could replicate that place in my memories and blossom along with my brood.

Pouring through magazines and combing furniture showrooms brought me to the elements that would construct the piece of furniture that I somehow must have known, even then, would become a family heirloom. The consummate combination for a Francophile, I paired an absolutely enormous piece of round, grey marble with a base of ornate French steel — it took five sweating and grunting, dagger-staring people to bring it into what had to be the ideal spot in our home because I wouldn’t dare have asked them — or anyone else — to move it (until I became much braver, many, many years later).

That table became exactly what I had anticipated over the years — initially a gorgeous, shining piece of ooh la la furniture — over the years becoming a little duller, bearing concentric rings from juice glasses, and occasional crusty spots of spaghetti sauce or dried up Play-Doh that we missed at clean up. It didn’t always pass the white glove test, but it was always a place of refuge and family.

One more flash forward — 30 years later — the tiny children grown and flown and our time to leave our home for a new adventure in South Carolina. As hard as I tried to plan, there was just no way my beloved, enormous table was going to work in our new home. Our sentimental youngest child and his wife were thrilled to rescue it.

Déjà-vu with the grunting people, and our table was on the way to a new home, far away.

Last weekend we had a “Zoom” birthday party for our littlest grandchild (to date). Balloons, presents, a piñata, as well as grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles — all smiling adoringly in proper little “Brady Bunch” squares as the candles on the cake were being lit. And there it was — another precious family of (almost) five, making yet another memory at the family table. It was smudged with icing and cake crumbs. Mom and dad were laughing, one child slamming the table with a toy guitar, one child crying and one child waiting to soon join with the rest.

My eyes became teary as this new tableau, noisily and messily unfolded and I looked at what was now their table, all settled into her new home. The dulling finish was something that fine steel wool and marble cleaner would work magic on, but in my heart I hoped that would never happen.

Somehow that table has never looked more proud.

Daniel Island Publishing

225 Seven Farms Drive
Unit 108
Daniel Island, SC 29492 

Office Number: 843-856-1999
Fax Number: 843-856-8555

 

Breaking News Alerts

To sign up for breaking news email alerts, Click on the email address below and put "email alerts" in the subject line: sdetar@thedanielislandnews.com

Comment Here