Around the Kitchen Table

Note: I started this post several weeks ago. Before I got very far on it, life intervened in the form of my broken wrist. While I continue to figure out ways to incorporate more writing into my daily life (and that means dictation), I decided I would return to this post and finish it. My observation about the state of our living room is still true today.  Thanks to the wrist fracture, as well as some other recent issues involving my left knee, the living room still reflects a lot of medical trauma. It is what it is!

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I have never hidden or shied away from revealing my working class background. Or, to be more truthful, my working class poor background when I was a young child. And, as this is a divider, still, in this town, my hometown, I have never hidden the fact that I come from the East side of town, which still, all too often, immediately translates into poor, uneducated, and worse. We are "those people," as if those of us from that side of town are some strange aliens (in the extraterrestrial sense) who somehow were plunked into this community. 

And sometimes, even without anyone talking about origins, there are things that I do or say that immediately reveal my background and upbringing. 

Which brings us to the kitchen table. 

In my family when I was growing up, and in the families of friends in my youth, the kitchen table was a gathering point. (Oh, additional note: there was no dining room table in either of my childhood homes. Or dining room, for that matter.) The kitchen table was where my parents and their friends would socialize with pots of coffee and endless games of euchre. The kitchen table was where, if there was a serious discussion to be had, you sat and talked. 

That is where life happened.

I was a young adult before I learned that other people, and that includes "nicer" (more refined, more educated, more whatever) people, socialized and talked in the living room. Not around a kitchen table, but sitting on sofas and in upholstered chairs, with coffee tables on which to set down food and drink and such. 

Huh.

And that learning experience has stuck with me to this very day. Friends or family come over and we visit in the living room. Yes, we use the kitchen table for eating (I got rid of my dining room table years ago), including with others, but the talk, unless it is during or immediately after a meal, is almost always in the living room.

How other people live...okay.

So recently I had two friends, sisters in fact, come over for tea and talk. I made sure the living room was picked up (it is still showing signs of recovering from my lengthy medical catastrophe; even a little bit of picking up makes it look better) because I knew we would likely put some food on the kitchen table (to then put on a plate and carry into the living room), I made sure it was clean too.

Kell arrived first. She came to the door carrying a box of goodies, made a beeline for the kitchen (which you can see from our front door), and asked, without even a pause, "Does it make a difference where I sit?" 

I almost fell over.

Someone just automatically assumed we were going to sit at the kitchen table? Be still, my heart!

Kell’s sister, Shell, arrived soon after and didn’t even blink when she found herself sitting next to the City recycling tub tucked away on the back side of the table. 

“What a great idea! I am always wondering what to do with mine!”

For the next two hours, the three of us sat at the kitchen table and talked, laughed, cried, shared. It was a heartwarming visit with good friends. And it all took place around the kitchen table.

So here's to kitchen tables. Here's to life.