What is the one room in your home that is used the most by the people who live there? I think you will say what I am going to say…but, no, it’s not the bathroom. (That was a joke.)
The most used room in my home, when we were a young family and our kids were growing up, was the kitchen. Cooking and eating is important, but in my kids' younger days the kitchen was used for so much more than that. My kids did not go to their rooms to do homework. That was done on the kitchen table where help (and oversight) was nearby and readily available. Today, it seems that parents want so much privacy for their kids. I wonder if they are becoming little independent beings too soon.
Realtors always mention updating the kitchen if you are planning to sell your home, but the reason does not necessarily involve providing a place for the family. It’s more cooking oriented which may or may not be important to people. Sleek expensive appliances and the latest in countertops and floors and lighting are a must-have to potential buyers. Not so in my day.
We’re always talking about how much better it was back in the day, and I think this is one thing that was much better. I bought my kitchen table from a little furniture store near our home that specialized in unfinished wood furniture. It’s one of those picnic-type pine tables that originally came with two unfinished wood benches suitable for two or three people on each side. Together, my husband and I stained it a rich walnut color and then gave it a couple of coats of polyurethane to seal the wood and give it a shine. But remember the table was pine, a soft wood.
That table traveled with us from home to home and if it could write a book, it would tell the story of my early married life. In fact, the tabletop does tell a story to anyone who looks closely. If you write with a pencil or pen on notebook paper on a pine table, you get indentations in the soft wood, and an embossed history of my children’s homework appears to those who look. If I peer closely, I can see math problems, spelling words, and history answers, and there’s even a heart with a couple of names inside and an arrow slicing through. Just about every time my kids come to visit nowadays, there’s some mention of something new they’ve found on that old table. It’s a great storyteller and memory enhancer, written down for posterity.
And, yes, it was used for eating, too, for our family meals as well as for large family gatherings, it was the table where the small children ate while the grownups had the dining room to themselves. I have many photos involving this lowly table with family and friends gathered round.
And I’ll never forget the father and son hurricane class project, but that one was beyond my level of understanding so I won’t go there. I’ll just say it was a success.
And it was a how-to-dust teacher to one of my granddaughters. The table is actually called a trestle table and has a bar that extends from one trestle leg to the other. I was forever bumping my head when I had to dust or wipe off the top of that bar so I did the next best thing. I taught my granddaughter to dust it, which did not take much teaching. She was a natural and so proud of herself. Horrified, it was the first thing out of her mouth when her mom picked her up that day. “G-mom made me dust.” Thankfully, her mom thought it was cute, but I was “treated” to that story numerous times and still am.
We’ve used the kitchen table for playing many games, scrabble, cards, Yatzee, Chinese Checkers, dominoes, and of course putting together puzzles. It’s a great place for snacking while playing. And I always feel more comfortable in the kitchen than anywhere else in my home. It’s where I make my grocery lists and sometimes do a quick iron with a towel rather than drag out the ironing board. The table is great for cutting out a sewing pattern and opening a big box and wrapping presents for birthdays and Christmas. I can’t think of any piece of furniture that has gotten as much use as that table.
As we aged and our children made their own homes, we outgrew the long benches and replaced them with more comfortable padded chairs, but the benches continue to serve a current purpose at the foot of beds.
There is no way I could ever part with anything pertaining to the memories of that old kitchen table. Some of you may have seen it. I’ll bet you wondered what all that graffiti was!
