A Tale Two Tables - What the World Gained and Then Lost Again

“Grandma always gathered her family for Sunday dinner, transforming the old scratched oak table into a royal banquet… Those times are long since past, and the old oak table now sits in our sister’s kitchen…but when she places a crocheted doily on the table and spreads an array of desserts and wines upon it, we go back in time to the days of our youth and a longing for a time so precious, so dear, that only in our minds can we go” (“Family Sustenance,” Country Home Magazine, December 1994). 

Great-Grandma's Family Table

Those words were written by my mother and referred to the family dinner table that once sat in her grandmother’s kitchen. That same table now sits in my aunt’s living room where many of our family gatherings take place. It’s been lovingly handed down and cared for, used and adorned, for three generations. Oh, if that table could talk…

That table is the guardian of many family secrets. Its oak surface was christened with joyous as well as sorrowful tears. It holds the marks and indentations that bear witness to homework assignments, home repair jobs, and objects dropped in the hustle and bustle of family life.

It was around that table that engagements were announced, babies were fed, and funeral dinners were served. Most important, it was the place where everyone gathered, where everyone talked, where everyone was welcomed and nourished and lived. That table was the heart of the home.

The Importance of the Family Table

Numerous studies over the past ten or so years have shown the benefits of family mealtime. They found that teens who frequently ate dinner with their families reported having higher quality relationships with their parents. Children who eat dinner with their parents eat healthier meals, including the consumption of more vegetables. Kids who eat family dinners are twice as likely to get high marks in school. Children who eat with their parents on a regular basis are emotionally stronger and have better mental health. They are less likely to be obese.

In addition to the many physical and emotional benefits of eating together, there are cultural and worldly benefits as well. There’s an old saying that the family who prays together, stays together. I firmly believe that the family who eats together is the family that listens better, understands and tolerates better, and loves others more deeply (and I bet they often pray more as well). 

Recently, a friend and I had a conversation about the demise of the family meal. Until that unprecedented time in our recent history known as the COVID-19 Pandemic, most families I know rarely sat down for a home-cooked meal together. Instead, dinner was a piece of fruit grabbed on the way out the door, a paper bag stuffed with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to be gobbled in the car, or a drive-through at McDonald’s. I’ve long been a believer that the absence of family mealtime is one of the biggest contributors to the problems our nation faces today, problems which drug abuse, suicide, broken families, and the lack of the ability to engage in discussion and listen to each other.

Our pastor often reminisces about his family dinner table. It was where they said goodbye to his brother going off to war as well as where they shed tears at the news of that his death in Vietnam. Father tells of birthday parties and wedding plans and his sharing of his call to the priesthood at that family table.

Mom's Family Table

Looking back over the course of my lifetime, some of my fondest memories took place around the family dinner table. My father would come home from work and keep us in stitches with the jokes he heard that day. Even when he told the same ones over and over, we would all laugh. Did we tire of hearing his favorite one dozens of times? “Nope… I’m a frayed knot.”

When we weren’t laughing at dad’s jokes, we were talking about school or Campfire Girls or marching band or baseball practice. On rare occasions, the living room television was wheeled into the kitchen, and we ate in silence as we watched the ambulance take Elvis to the hospital or the press conference telling us the condition of President of Reagan and then Pope John II after having been shot in separate incidents in 1981. Those scenes are imprinted in my mind as are the reactions of my parents and siblings as we watched, our food barely touched, our hearts heavy.

One day, the table was a witness to joy, and the very next a witness to sorrow or worry or pain. All those things added to the weight borne on those wooden legs and the memories etched in its wood.

Our Family Table

Our own kitchen table has been the place where the girls did homework, planned science fair projects, put together puzzles, played games, and dyed Easter eggs. It’s where we’ve done craft projects with friends and gained knowledge from older generations. It’s where we’ve eaten Christmas and Easter feasts, held cookie swap dinners, and cracked many a crab claw. The table has been spread with food for graduations, and community gatherings, and my oldest daughter’s wedding brunch. 

Everyone who comes to our home knows they have a place at the kitchen table. Sometimes I warn the girls, when a last-minute dinner guest arrives, we may not have enough food for everyone. Somehow, be it loaves and fishes or chili and cornbread, there always seems to be more than enough for everyone. Yet, looking back…
There was never enough time.

Sports practices and games, Mock Trial, piano lessons, school plays, and other activities robbed us of many nights around that table as they do for many families across the country. In addition to time, we are robbed of important lessons, conversations, and togetherness.

When my girls were involved in all kinds of after-school activities, and the 30-minute drive back to the house just wasn’t possible, we tried as often as we could to find time to eat together. Often while I was running the girls around, my husband would drive into town to meet us at Applebee’s or Panera or Chick-Fil-A. It didn’t matter where we ate. We just wanted to make sure that we kept dinnertime as sacred as possible. Of course, no place was ever the same as the famiiy table. 

Holding onto the Family Table

When we remodeled our kitchen three years ago, I insisted that we enlarge our kitchen table. I wanted it to seat at least ten people. We found someone on Etsy who made the table to our specifications and delivered it to us. If needed, it can seat fourteen, and an expansion piece Ken made extends it to twenty-four!

From the moment the table was in place, I began dreaming of family diners on Sunday afternoons, the kind my great-grandmother held–the table adorned with a family heirloom tablecloth and spread with homemade pies and my much-loved and requested ice cream cake. It’s my biggest hope that my children will not only live close enough to join us as often as possible for those dinners but that they will come to love and appreciate that time as much as their grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents did.

I pray that something good came from the pandemic. I hope that those days of lockdowns and distance and uncertainty brought about a change in us all. I optimistically believe that we have become more aware of the time lost to the world’s demands and the time gained by those months of being at home with loved ones, of all we lost when we were unable to be with those we love, to say goodbye to those we lost.

I pray that the citizens of our country realize that so many of the world’s problems could be solved if we just did this one thing–have dinner together each night as a family. For you see, it’s not about the mealtime or the food or even the table at which it takes place. It’s about the conversation, and the sharing, and most of all, the love. For those are the things this world is lacking. 

Looking around, I’m not sure that we learned anything. I fear that many kitchen tables stand empty and unused. Those things we longed for—family celebrations, in-person Mass, hugs and closeness—are once again taken for granted or skipped altogether. How sad it is that a table can remain etched with memories for generations, but our human brains cannot recall the peace and quiet of that time just a couple short years ago. All those pictures and videos of family meals, game nights, and outdoor barbecues that flooded social media are but a snapshot in the busy lives we so quickly resumed.

I hope that this day God grants to you a pleasant evening, gathered around your table, enjoying the food, but enjoying even more the words, the touches, the feelings, and all that make up that precious time together. Whether your children are toddlers tugging at your skirt or adults still tugging at your heartstrings, may you all make the time, as often as possible, to share meals together and reap the rewards that those times are sure to bring–to you, your family, and our world.