Monday, February 14, 2005
Table Manners
I’ve had a lovely weekend, much to the credit of our new bed. I can’t say I slept well every night, because I didn’t, but that’s as much a function of my own misfiring circadian metabolism as anything else. Even while I lay awake in the bed, or on those occasions I awoke from amazingly disturbing dreams that continue to creep me out, I was comfortable. Super-comfortable. In part this may have been due to our having bought some amazing linens made entirely out of bamboo fibers, silky and soft and filmy and warm and fun to have cradling me, but a big part was due to the wonderful advances of mattress technology. We don’t even have a new space-age mattress, it’s just a normal continuous-spring version - but damn, that is one comfy spot to crash out. Thanks for asking.
The introduction of the new bed into our little household reminds me of when we got the new dining table. It, too, represented a significant advance for us. But over time it has also taught me a lesson or two. Pedagogic furniture story, therefore, coming right up.
When we got the dining table it represented a significant step for us, as it replaced a clumsy makeshift table I’d bought off the sidewalk from a young woman who’d been, at the time, visibly elated finally to have something sturdy with which to replace her own prandial furniture. Even so, her $25 cast-off was bigger than the little pressboard dealie we had been using as a dining table up till then; its thick turned legs, though clumsy and grafted from some other long-defunct table, lent gravity and solidity to its dark shining bulk.
But over the years the basic inadequacy of my sidewalk-bought table became more and more obvious - impossible, eventually, to ignore. It was still too small, much too dark, not actually flat, and manifestly unsteady - it shuddered and shook on those edemic legs till we were nervous to have a sit-down supper at all for fear that an errant knee would knock glass over teakettles. So I knew that long-lost stranger’s joy when we, in our turn, got rid of the clunky old table. We got something better and it felt good.
The new table was no work of art, but it sure worked as a table. Blonde wood with graceful tapering legs and a spacious apron, six could sit aroud it comfortably to dine in something approximating elegance. It looked good with our other furniture, and in the summer sunset light that streamed seasonally through the adjacent window. It was cool, smooth to the hand and easy on the eye, and it stood firmly without the shimmying palsy that afflicted our prior hand-me-down. If I set a glass on it, it was with confidence that it would not accidentally be sent smashing down by a stray knee tapping a tableleg. This table stood steady, and to me that felt the best of all.
It was not terribly long ago that Kel’s family visited for a rollicking family vacation. These folk, as I may have mentioned here before, know how to enjoy themselves - and they take all the practice they can get. It was an absolute pleasure to cook for them, to serve them my favorite wines and sweets, and to float around on the sea of their laughter. But after a time I started to feel as if things were getting out of control.
It was evening and the six of us were in the dining room. Kel’s dad, Big Frank, was at the head of the table, and he was having the time of his life. Wine flowed freely and he’d had his share; he’s an effusive man of sigificant girth and he had a lot to tell us, a lot to share and expound and exclaim upon. He kept leaning forward into the edge of the table to make a point or to punctuate a story, or just to ground himself as his eyes teared with laughter and joy. And as he did this, as he leaned his broad solid belly up into the edge of the table, time and again, the table began in complain a little - then, a little more. A modest creak began to emanate from its joints as he jostled it with the vigor of a big man in a full-blown gigglefit. I tred to ask him to scoot back but my request went unheeded, if not totally unheard. Rather, he just leaned even further forward, pounding the inoffending surface of the pretty little table with a meaty fist as he insisted on something or other. Glasses began to sway. Each time he pressed in, the table shuddered a little more poignantly.
The evening barreled forward with much voguing and poker and cheerleading formations and additional wine, until we were all tired and sore from laughing. The next morning I gently tested the table, the table that had been my icon of mature solidity, to find that it had gone wobbly on me. Not dangerously so, certainly not as much as the old one had been, but it was clearly more responsive to small contacts and gentle pressures. It still looked good, was well-proportioned and a comfortable place to set my plate. It was just a little less sturdy, a little less stiff.
Part of me was disappointed, almost irritated. But I couldn’t let myself feel like that for real. The damage was minimal, meaningless, and had been perpetrated out of nothing more than an excess of enthusiasm, jollity and love. Maybe it was okay that the table wasn’t so rigid anymore. Maybe it gave me permission to loosen up a little bit myself.
