A Patient Maple Table

 

        

My son, at 2 years old, sitting at the Maple Table. He is 8 now. 

The smooth maple table with two leaves belonged first to my great-grandmother, who passed it on to my mother, who gave it to me.

                My father’s mother found the solid wood maple chairs at a thrift store. (It took a lot of family members to furnish the home of my mother and father, a single-income pastor’s family.)

                Now the table and chairs, refinished several times, sit patiently in my dining room.

                It is my children’s turn to squeak in the chairs and to learn the rules- “Don’t leave spilled water sitting on the top of a wooden table. Don’t scratch your name into the table.” It is difficult to get too angry with them, because every infraction reminds me of the times I did exactly the same thing. The scratches and scars I left upon the table bear witness to that.

                Easter meals, family dinners, children growing from high chairs to big chairs, to only visiting a few times a month. The table waits, ready to hold the plates of our multiplying families.

                My mother asks sometimes about the old table. They have something more expensive now- a mahogany dining room table that looks more formal and elegant. I am not sure she ever really wanted to give up the old table, any more than she ever really wanted us to grow up and move away.