During most of our married life one of the things Jennifer
and I have never really had was a good dining room table. Both of us brought
small tables in to the marriage but neither was very serviceable. Jennifer even
took the table I had, stained it and it’s chairs in order to give it new life.
And for a time, it was neat and interesting, speckled and green. Ultimately
though, it was the same old table that wobbled and had to have screws tightened
on it every week.
Earlier this year we determined it was time to go shopping
for a new table. Surprise! I do not enjoy shopping. And I mean, for anything.
It is just something I do not find any pleasure in pursuing. I get too easily
flustrated-that’s the merging of flustered and frustrated-with myself for not
really knowing what I want or not knowing more about what I want and then I get
further flustrated with others for well, mostly, just getting in my way while I
wander around a store totally clueless.
Jennifer is a patient wife. She is also a persistent wife.
She knew all along that the thought of me coming along for the search for just
the right table would be something of an ordeal for her. But she reasoned since
I would be sitting at this table night after night, I should have some say in
what the table we would purchase should be. This despite the fact that she knew the
recipe for me being along for the ride was potentially disastrous.
After all, we would be visiting several different stores.
Each store would have plenty of things to look over and then to determine
whether it was nice enough or pretty enough or matched the color scheme of the
room it would reside in or would be practical enough for what we need. Just the
thought of beginning this search for just the perfect table with these
parameters in mind began to make my temples throb from the forthcoming
adventure.
Of course, once the search started other factors crept into
the equation. It is wonderful, isn’t it, to be met at the front door of a
business by a high pressure salesperson that senses certain desperation when
you enter the store and determines to make you the next notch in his sales
ledger? In reality, the desperation he senses may be from missing his own commission
from another missed sale while the desperation I sense is the effort I will
need to use to get away from another high pressure salesperson.
Once we are settled and shake off the salespeople and begin
looking beyond colors and table height and chair backs, we are faced with
another test of the table buying process. Cost. After all, that will be a
factor. And with me along on this search, everything I look at is just too high
priced. Everything.
Jennifer’s patient and persistent manner guide me through
this as well. Soon, we have narrowed down our list. One store has two tables we
find interesting. Other questions pop up though such as space and number of
chairs and table height. So, despite all the good work we had done, this day
would not be the day we would resolve the table issue completely. We grabbed a
bite of lunch and went home to further ponder our choices and to take some
measurements and plot the set-up of the room with two imaginary tables.
Once home, we discovered both tables would work in the room
where we needed. Both would add a distinctive flair to the room. And honestly,
either table would have been fine with me. They both had advantages for our
family. One sat square and tall and had tall chairs to match. The other was a longer farmhouse-style
table in the shape of a rectangle and sat lower to the ground than the other table. Despite all that it took for me to go through this process; I knew the
final call on which table would become part of the fabric of our world would be
up to Jennifer. And, I felt that was as it should be.
Here is why: years ago, before we were married, Jennifer and
I discussed many things. One of the things she often mentioned was how
important it was to her when we had a family to have that family have at least
one meal a day together at that table. When it was just me and her, those meals
were special but now with Hannah, these meals become even more special, and
more important.
We want Hannah to understand how sitting at that table with
us, together, as a family, is something that means something. It’s important.
It’s meaningful. It’s who we are. It is a place where we each belong. It is
sitting there after a draining day of work or school hoping these few minutes charge
up the batteries some. It is sitting there with family celebrating a birthday.
It is sitting there laughing and cutting up with friends. It is sitting there
discussing a problem we are facing knowing that talking it out can help find a
solution. It is sitting there laughing at a lame joke between bites of green
beans and grilled chicken. It is sitting there with no distracting television
in the background. It is sitting there with every cell phone tucked away in the
next room.
The table we purchased is a long farmhouse-style table,
designed to look a bit weathered and worn. It has four chairs, two for the ends
and two for one side plus a bench for the other side. In many ways, it reminds
me of the table that sat in my Dad’s parent’s house for as long as I can
recall. That is probably why, secretly, I was hoping this would become our
table. It reminded me of my Dad’s family. My Dad is one of seven children. They
grew up poor but always had enough to eat. Beyond that when they were around that table they always had each other. Even now, when I close my eyes, I can still see that table in my mind.
Several months removed from the table-buying adventure, I
find the cost of the table isn’t important. The trouble of locating that table
has faded away into a rather distant memory now. Even the thought that this table reminds me some of my own childhood memories isn't why this table has become as important to me as it has. What remains is how I now cherish
sitting at that table every night with my two girls, my wife and my daughter. I love the few moments we take to thank God for what we have and bringing us together for a few minutes. I
love the clanging of the silverware on the plates. I love the way the chair I
sit in feels. I love listening to and participating in our conversations, no
matter how mundane or how dramatic or how exciting each one is. I love the base this
table provides for helping make each one of us feel more like family, like we belong here and that the moments we share here matter. From
where I sit the table and the memories we have made and will make around it are priceless and worth every bit of effort it took to make it part
of our home.
