The Kitchen Table

Don't even know what got me thinking about it, but early this morning, long before the sun was up and long before I wanted to climb out from under the covers, I started thinking about Kitchen Tables and how they have lost their place of honor in the modern home. To get you started thinking about it, visualize "Little House on The Prairie" Table in front of the fireplace, meals served there, homework done there, pies made there, bread dough kneaded there, Pa read from the Scriptures from the head of the table while the children sat there. Even on "Leave It To Beaver", the kitchen table was the hub on the activity for the house. June Cleaver mixed her cookie dough at that table, set out milk and cookies for the boys when they came home from school on that table, meals were served at that table and some very deep questions were talked about right there. Even Aunt Bea on Andy Mayberry spent a good portion of her time right at her kitchen table, creating more than just food to put on it, but memories...pickles were made there and tea was served there. Same for the "Waltons" So much of life was around the kitchen table. It was a work surface, for baking, canning, sewing, home work, prayer and board games. Now, we have countertops for work surfaces and this new thing of baking centers, my how singular, no one can sit down next to you and chat while you work. You back is to everyone.

I so well remember my mother rolling out pie dough for the holidays at our kitchen table and I sat across from her and watched and learned. As children we always got a piece of the dough to form into some sort of tiny pie, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, folded in half and we learned to crimp dough with a fork that way. Baking the tiny creation and deciding we were "good" pie bakers. We watched our mothers and grandmothers faces as they prepared meals, saw their words come out of their mouths like golden bits of instruction. I could tell if they were teaching me something and I wasn't quite doing it right... their expressions would change or you could notice that stifled grin when it was really silly what I was doing.

Our kitchen table was the hub of our house....breakfast, lunch and supper was eaten there. We didn't have a dinning room until the children were grown. The kitchen was it. I rolled out gingerbread men with the girls there, kneaded bread dough, and sewed there too. Machine at one end and the cutting board at the other. We had school there and did crafts there. We sliced bushels of peaches there and sat down after they were canned, exhausted, sipping iced meadow tea. That table hosted lots of laughter when games were played and it was the place were many lessons were taught, life lessons where a tear might even have been shed. It was the place where friends of mine sat as we sipped coffee and talked, eating some doughnuts perhaps that were made at this very same table. We might even shell peas together as we sipped our coffee. It was that kind of table, busy, full of life. One time a friend of the childrens was over for a visit and someone came to the door asking for me, this little girl told them I was in my room. I laughed a bit at hearing that and she said, "well you are always there, so I figured it was your room ! Her house was not one with a kitchen table.

How did we get away from this wonder of the home ? Is it too hard to have a multipurpose item like a table ? Did women just want their own space ? I am glad we kept our kitchen table and didn't put in some Island. Remember, no man/woman is an island unto himself/herself : )

I say, bring back the kitchen table and I bet families would just be a bit more together.