The kitchen table.
Oh the tales it could tell.
Keep holy the kitchen table.
The elbows on it.
The voices raised above it.
The meals reheated,
The stories repeated,
the arguments never quite cleared away.
.
This is where family happens -
not always kindly,
not always clean.
But here.
Where someone shows up
with takeaway and tired eyes,
and calls that love.
.
The table has heard confessions
between spoonfuls.
Held grief
beside the salt.
Witnessed silence
as fierce as faith.
.
So if you’re looking for
a sacred place -
try the table.
Where we keep coming back.
Where we try again.
Where grace
is passed like bread.
.
My family kitchen table was huge, purpose made to accommodate a family of 9 and growing, plus guests, with matching benches and the matriarch’s chair at one end. It was topped with dark blue, heavy duty formica which grew worn, dinted and familiar. I don’t know what the wood it was made from but I do know it was solid and could more than handle all of us - the little one’s (that’s me) awful suppers of mince made by our ‘mother’s help’, the lovely, cuddly Eileen, the Sunday suppers with candles and chocolate mousse made with Carnation milk (so delicious), the sewing marathons, the ironing (we didn’t have an ironing board), the crafts (enamelecraft, plasticraft… children handling hot metal and inhaling toxic fumes - that’s how we rolled in the 60s), the tempers, tears and laughter. It is somewhere else now, in a different kitchen in Yorkshire. The table that holds all our early stories will be gathering new ones from a whole new family; or maybe it’s a work table, or in a little school - I love to think of it’s possibilities. It was also a climbing frame, perfect for practicing the art of the tummy spin.
I have my own, smaller, kitchen table now, one that was made for me when I moved in to ‘my own’ house in Bristol with my son in November 2001. It is made from American walnut, a beautiful, heavy, dark hard wood. My brother Luke made it in his signature style, so heavy you always break or squash something when moving it. The work tops in the kitchen were the same wood, as was the matching bench. It all felt very grown up.
I would move it from kitchen to sitting room, back and forth, my penchant for furniture moving being at its peak then, and also depending on how many people it needed to seat. It’s an office, a table for crafts, for writing, a sewing table, a meeting place, a storage place, a cat’s perch.
This table is sun faded, scratched, dented and in need of some serious loving attention, which more than likely it won’t get. It has witnessed all and more of the things in the poem. It holds the memories of my family, small though it was in its essence, just me and my son.
It had capacity too, to welcome wider family, new loves, old loves, friends, neighbours, strangers. Coffee was drunk there, tea, beer, wine and sometimes champagne. Pyjamas were worn at it, glad rags and school uniforms.
It could be, and often was, extended using ill fitting extra side tables, covering them with cloths in an attempt to hide the very obvious join (just be careful not to put your glass there), with candelabras, patterned china, glasses sparkling and heaps of food.
It was contracted to accommodate single dinners, the books, papers and accumulated detritus of life pushed aside to make room for a bowl and a plate.
It held a vigil for a dying lover upstairs, cigarettes rolled in bulk for him (because why not, now?) as we, his family and friends, sat and talked, smoked, made toast, remembered and mourned in readiness for the inevitable.
It held arguments and vicious words, slams of glasses and smashing of plates. Tears and recriminations, blame, anger, bafflement, love. Love, and forgiveness.
So many tears at that table, so much laughter. So much food. Gifts delivered in times of anxiety, hastily thrown together fridge forages, takeaways, American style cooked breakfasts, grand feasts, toast. How many slices of toast have been eaten off this table? How much bread shared?
Now this table sits in my kitchen in Wales. It still hosts solitary meals, mostly my breakfasts after Russ has gone to work at crack of sparrow fart. The most common meals at it now are dinners-a-deux where me and he pick apart our days, moan about various ailments, rant about politics, plan and dream for our third age future. Often too the table still welcomes small dinner parties, and occasionally large and fabulous feasts where my ridiculous collection of tiny mismatched glasses get to show off and sparkle in all their jewel colours.
It will absorb the rest of my life I expect, whatever it brings. It will offer space and a willingness to be the one that hears it all and silently accepts whatever happens on it and around it. One day it will be my son’s, if he wants it. And it will remember the times he sat at it as a child, flicking peas or blowing out birthday candles, as he serves meals to his friends and maybe his own family. And always with candles, even at breakfast time.
There is no single recipe today, but instead a free pdf copy of this sought after tome, much of it written at this table.
Written in 2009 by me and the Folk House Cafe team, then cobbled together into a printable form in one evening with the talented Mr Daniel Penfold (also known for his theatrical forays) in his little studio, with some wine. There are typos, only I know how many. Illustrations are by Olly White (of the infamous Dagger Brothers - “they’re not brothers but they’re not far off. The absurdist art pop duo that were always on the verge of getting slapped by an angry man at whatever pub they got duped into playing in”). I had 500 copies printed and sold all of them.
Loved this...I'll be re-stacking! I recently wrote a post, 'Unhappy? The answer is simple: share a meal' The table is everything.
I live at my kitchen table so this really resonated! Lovely piece and so generous of you to give away the Folk House recipe book. Shall look forward to diving into that