Sometimes narrow, sometimes grand and majestic, sometimes just holding together on a few screws and pushed into a corner, sometimes cluttered, sometimes nicely decorated. The dining table is probably the most important piece of furniture in the entire house.
In my family, life was evolving around the dining table. Lunch, dinner, sometimes one person sitting alone, sometimes in company, sometimes the entire family gathered.
The dining table is where a family unites, where strangers become friends, where we have a space to talk and share our lives with each other. Family does not mean you are compatible human beings, that you have shared interests or even know how to communicate with each other. However, at the dining table, all of this doesn’t matter. What matters is that we all find the time to sit down, to share a meal and take the opportunity to get to know each other better. We all have busy lives but finding those 20 minutes a day to sit down together will make all the difference.
This is when the most unique memories are made. When I think of celebrations, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, I think of my most beloved humans gathering around the dining table. The laughter, the stories, the food, the smiles, the perfect little moments that last a second but will stay with you for a lifetime.
Maybe this is why I am so offended when people watch TV, look on their phones, or distract themselves otherwise during meals. Do you not see how precious those moments are?
Maybe I am romanticising a day-to-day experience but with everything going on in the world, I miss those meals where everything seemed ok and made sense. I usually don’t feel alone, unless I am sitting at the dining table, by myself having dinner. That’s when I think about my family living in another country, about the friends abroad whom I have not seen in years and the dining tables I chose not to sit at anymore. In those moments, I am looking forward to all those memories I have yet to make around my own dining table.
A table tells the stories of generations. If there is one thing that I want to inherit, it is my grandma's dining table. The scratches, the marks, the little imperfections that were left from the decades of family gatherings. It tells the stories of all the people who sat at that table.
Isn’t that beautiful?