A Kitchen Table

The kitchen table. Just those three words brings am image to everyone's mind.

Our kitchen table growing up was a white rectangular oval with a chocolate brown border on which each corner (as if an oval can have a corner!) had an emblem of sorts. Very mid-century modern looking. I wonder where it is now?

As newlyweds in our Springs apartment, we used a table that had belonged to my parents. Again, it had the look of the 1970ies, straight lines with a laminate top. We didn't own kitchen chairs at first and we sat on two coolers, but it worked, and we didn't care. Once, as Leo was trying to impress me with a manly pose in the kitchen, he leaned on the table and the metal legs collapsed leaving my man in a pile on the floor. I will admit to laughing (somewhat hysterically), but only after making sure he was okay. Ah, the memories.

When we moved to the trailer with two small children, I think we had the oval, brown-edged table. When we redid the kitchen there, we put in a table/bar and the oval heirloom went...away...I still wish I knew where.

In Louisville, we had a kitchen table and a dining room table. The kitchen table was another throwback from the 1960-1970ies. What I remember about that table is the metal legs that were at such an angle that you were always catching your toes on them, Not just stubbing them, but STUBBING them with vengeance. There were a few choice words yelled at that table during the time we lived there! The dining room table was huge and could seat 600 easily. Well, okay 12-15 easily. It was heavy and wooden and had probably lived in the house at Bonnycastle Avenue since it was built. A lot of different people have eaten around that table and if it could talk, oh the stories it could tell!

Then we moved to the Farm. The first time I saw the house and got to go in, we sat around this oval, wooden kitchen table covered with a red checkered tablecloth and talked to the owner of the house. The table just fit the house, and I hoped that he would leave it for us to use.

Fifteen years later, that oval table is still in use at our house. Daily.
It is made to seat six, but we manage to get all 7 of us around it. A part of me wants a new table that seats eight, but I am reluctant to part with an old friend. Despite the wobbles, and the fact that it needs refinished, I love it; it. is a member of the family.

Lots of laughter and teasing have gone on around it's edges as well as arguments and a few tears.
Quite a few of us have laid our heads on its surface after a long day and fallen asleep.
Through the years, it has been used to eat on, do homework on, cut fabric for a pattern out on, paint, scrapbook and color on (not literally on the table, but you know what I mean!). Lately it has been a racetrack for Ryan and his Cars.

This is my table this morning. I could've cleared it off so it would look pretty, but that would've been cheating. So this is it. I am painting a desk so there is painting stuff on it, as well as Ryan's homework that he forgot to put in his backpack, other misc. papers, my Pampered Chef order, Heather's gym bag, and there is almost always a coat on the back of a chair or two.

For now, I'll keep the table. I know her and her quirks. Definitely not perfect, but a perfect fit for us.

Love,
Dianne