From the Redneck Diva:
I’m trying to remember the first dining room table we owned as a couple. My husband lived alone for 12 years prior to our marriage, but he lived in a bachelor cabin and his table was an awful, metal-legged, Formica-topped, probably-rescued-from-the-dump piece of furniture. It went nicely with the gigantic wire spool he used as an end table in the living room. No, I’m not even kidding.
When we moved into our first house together, there was a table already there, so that’s what we used. It wasn’t until we moved into an apartment in town that we bought a table that was ours. To be honest, I don’t remember what it looked like. It was probably the wooden cousin of Paul’s previous metal-legged, rescued-from-the-dump table. However, I do remember sitting at it with an insurance agent when we bought our first life insurance policy. We ate many a plate of Hamburger Helper at that table. It was on that table that my repentant husband set the first and only dozen roses he ever gave me after a fight that prompted me to pack a bag and declare I was going back to my mother. I have no idea what we did with that table. It probably ended up in a garage sale. Or the dump where it had previously been headed before its brief sojourn at our place.
It wasn’t until we had our first child that we got a real table. It was a used table, but it was a grown-up table. It was the table that had been in my mom and father’s house when I was growing up. It was understated, definitely nothing fancy. Most of the time it was round until Mom sent Sis and I back to drag a leaf or two from under my bed when we were expecting company. It was wooden with a wood-grain Formica top so it was safe to set a sweaty glass on, color on (with markers!), slide the salt shaker across trying to imitate the bartender in the Western we’d just seen who had sent a mug of beer sailing down to a thirsty cowboy, and it was where the portable typewriter sat when it was time to write a report for school. It was a sturdy, virtually indestructible table, and it was perfect for our little family. It was the table where we set Abby to open presents during her first birthday party. It was the table where my daycare babies ate macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly and colored countless pictures. It was where I balanced our checkbook—or at least tried to balance a checkbook that stayed perilously close to “in the red” in those early days. It was where a group of my friends sat and laughed while we painted sweatshirts, made soap, and crafted handmade Christmas ornaments the year we all desperately needed to find ourselves again when we all had toddlers and young-married stress.
When we moved into the house we live in now, the table came with us. It was the table I set Sam on when I was doctoring a scraped up knee. It was where I set Kady’s car seat while she snoozed and I cleaned the kitchen. It was occasionally draped in quilts and magically transformed into a cave for my kids’ imaginative pleasure. It was the table where I one day found my barely one-year-old youngest child standing proudly after she had fashioned a set of steps out of a box, the step-stool, and a chair and practiced being a mountain goat.
Eventually the legs got wobbly, and we decided to send the table back to Mom.
The next table at our house was a small butcher-block topped table. I think they call them farmhouse tables. It was abused as only a family with three small children, a Brownie troop who sold 47,000,000 boxes of cookies, and who-knows-how-many birthday parties can do. The top was water-stained and had crayon marks galore. It had nicks and dents, and the legs had boot scuffs from our son’s stint as a budding cowboy. It was eventually sold in a garage sale.
Then we bought a table from one of Mom’s friends. The top resembled paneling—as in, there were grooves running from one end to the other. It made for holes in papers, crumbs that would stick and stay and it was so gigantic I felt like we were preparing for the Last Supper every time I set it. I’m pretty sure we all gained weight while we owned that table because I was compelled to fill it with food, and the area was so spacious. We didn’t have that one long—my husband started threatening to fill those grooves with Gorilla glue.
The table we have now is a special table. It was actually used as a desk in one of the mines in Picher and weighs approximately 90,000 pounds. Seriously, it took five people to move it into my dining room and we all needed chiropractic intervention afterward. It is a furniture force to be reckoned with. I don’t dare attempt to move it when I mop. I just mop around it. Wait. I don’t mop. But if I did, I wouldn’t attempt to move it. Not only did the table come from the mines in the town where I spent many a day as a child, but it was also my Papa and Memaw’s table from the farm up the road where I grew up. I ate many a slice of butter bread (Roman Meal bread with hard squares of real butter laid on it because you couldn’t attempt to spread that stuff) at that table . I spilled Ovaltine on it on a weekly basis. I sat there and colored or played with my Colorforms while Mom did Papa’s laundry or took care of Memaw when she was sick. My cousins and I played Old Maid at that table. I would sit at the far end and gaze out the window at the cows or the garden or Papa on the tractor. I ate many meals with my Papa at that table, him quietly listening to me rattle on about nothing in particular, nodding or grunting when he felt I needed a response. Memaw’s oatmeal cookies tasted better at that table.
Now the table sits in my dining room, covered in a red tablecloth. Nightly my family of five gathers around it for dinner. It’s the table where I first heard my husband pray and ask the blessing for our meal. I have painted our daughters’ fingernails there, decorated Valentine’s boxes, helped our oldest with Algebra, practiced the third-grader’s spelling words. I gave the puberty talk to my two youngest at that table. We played a game of Spoons there once that resulted in property damage, bloodshed, and much, much laughter. At Thanksgiving and Christmas it is covered from end to end with food. The groceries are dumped there after a trip to Walmart. I eat there. I pay bills there. I counsel there. I pray there.
We’ve gone through many pieces of dining room furniture over the past 18 years, but one thing has stayed the same regardless of the size, the condition, the color, or the shape—the fact that we are a family. The dining room table is the hub of our home. We use it for gathering, for discussing, nourishing, loving, laughing and being who we are. I doubt we ever get a different table than the one we have now. For one thing, it’s too heavy to move again and has probably settled into the very foundation, but in all honesty, the one we have is perfect. It’s old, weathered, nicked, and dented, but oh, the memories housed in that giant piece of wood.
Diva
Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her online at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.
