If there is a single piece of furniture or appliance in your home that is more important than the family table, I would like to know about it. I think you would be hard pressed to convince me and a lot of other people that anything else is more important.
No matter how big or small, if the family is one person or 12 people, the table is the most important piece of furniture in the house. No matter what kind of house.
From the outset this is where a Realtor sits to present documents when the owners are buying or selling a property.
In this country, when the evening meal is done a dinner table is often converted into a homework table where children do school assignments.
A table is used for many other things as well. Here is where family decisions are made. Bills are all laid out in a way that people around the table can understand them.
Tears are shed at the table. Confessions are made at the table. Love is professed at the table. Heart wrenching arguments take place. Great passionate promises are declared. Hands are extended and held. All at the table.
People talk about potential at their table. Plans are thought of and written on pads of paper. Money is calculated on spread sheets with notes scribbled in the margins. Ideas are talked about openly and dreams are described in excited voices of hope. All at the table.
Newspapers are unfurled and straightened out flat every morning, on the table.
A table can take many forms and shapes. It could be made of elegant marble imported from overseas or it could be a piece of plywood that sits on some old milk cartons. A table can be any size and made of every kind of material imaginable. Many homes have two tables, a dining room table and a kitchen table. One of them is always the main one. The important one. Where a heart is poured out the same as a cup of tea.
Some might say there is a risk when people buy a house that has many rooms with tables that there will not be a main table. That is never the case. No matter how opulent the house, more often than not, there is almost always one important table. Most don’t even realize it.
People say that personalities are not shaped by money or a person’s house. They are correct. Personality is developed at home around the table.
Some homes have everything going on at the table. One person doing homework, another having dinner, still another shift worker having the first coffee of the day. All at the same time and all in good spirits with ebullient conversation going on all sides.
Some households are silent. A Happy Meal is picked up from the take-out window and given to a child who is told to go their room and be quiet. An adult collapses on a couch in front of the TV. No one sits at the table.
In each home, what happens at the table plays a role in creating personality. The wealth of the household is meaningless. Whether that house is a mansion or a small overcrowded apartment, character is shaped at the table.
For all the specialty stores I see advertised, from mattress warehouses to carpet factories to appliance stores where nobody beats the price, I cannot figure why there aren’t any stores that specialize only in tables. It is the most important thing in the house!
It is no fun having a house without a TV but some manage. It is tragic to not have electric appliances. It is wrong to not have a comfortable bed. It is impossible to get through life without a table.
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].
