So let’s get to it. I like big dining tables. Really big, like, ginormous big.
The dining table is the heart of the home, I think, and the bigger, the better. I like to sit at a giant dining table at night and slump over my supper so I can pretend that I have a rich and pretentious family that prefers not to dine with me because of my clearly immoral ethical standards. Even in a small house, a giant dining table is inviting and friendly and will generally end up being the central hub of all the activity.
As a kid, we had this humongoid drop leaf table that only fit in our tiny dining room after my father knocked down the wall between the house proper and the garage. I remember doing homework at that table, dying Easter eggs, drawing, making Lego spaceships, reading the paper and, later, going online. I remember my mother rolling out bedsheet sized hunks of dough that she would turn into a dozen pies. I remember eating every holiday meal for a thousand years at that table, as well as lunches, and even the modern breakfast (five minutes of coffee and pop tarts and some veggie bacon or cold pizza, if you were lucky.) I also remember a dozen discussions, arguments, knock-down drag-outs, jokes, stories, plans, meetings, and even a few bring-the-girl-home-to-meet-the-family type affairs.
There is a nick in the top of that table, I mean there are a thousand nicks, let’s be honest; but there is one in particular that I run my finger over every time I visit my folks. It’s the dent that was left when I accidentally smashed the lighting fixture above and it clunked down into the oak planks and left a little divot. I am firmly of the opinion that, because of that little dent, that table is worth, oh, four, maybe five million dollars.
So get a big table, kid, seriously. Get a big one that can take a little abuse from a falling lighting fixture and more than a few thrown mashed potatoes and even a handfull of tears and angry oaths. ‘Cause that’s where the heart is, right there where the wall used to be.
Daniel
