Dear Eddie: We have a wonderful dining table. We have probably spent years of our lives at the table. We discovered the table in your parents’ basement the summer we married. It was dusty and covered with Contac Paper. We were told it was a hand-me-down from the Puffer’s parsonage. We later determined that it was a product of the Robbins Table Company, founded in 1873 in Owosso, Michigan, and was fashioned of oak with an ash top. For us, the table was not an antique but the beginning of “our” furniture. We loaded it on our U-Haul trailer with Aunt Nellie’s rollaway bed and the barrel backed chair from my home. In years to come, the table traveled from Minnesota to Alberta, to Texas, then to Michigan and back to Texas and Oklahoma, moving finally to Georgia over 30 years ago.

At the table, you and I learned about cherishing and appreciating each other. We learned about sharing each other’s days in evening conversations. We had a few memorable “Hair in my Soup” fights at the table and learned how to repair those fights and even how to avoid some of them. We made “family” around the table for holidays when we lived far from our biological families. We welcomed high chairs and, very quickly it seemed, high schoolers. Around the table, we have hosted family birthdays and Christmas Eves, youth groups, church picnics, and countless college student gatherings. In the last few years, there are six or seven very much loved people at the table. On most days, our multigenerational family begins its days with vitamins, allergy meds and breakfast at the table. We enjoy the less busy evenings when we all can gather for supper together.

I had been puzzled and a little annoyed by your insistence on downsizing the table when the kids left for the weekends or school breaks. I somehow thought it was a bother or felt devaluing of the larger family. Because you were adamant, I kept pretty much quiet and thought that at least it made a good excuse to vacuum between the table legs. But, now, I get it. You value our larger family group, but you want to honor our twosome as well. You clarified for me, and I can hear you. I can get excited about setting our space as we did for the years before and between kids. We eat at the table together, corner-corner with me to your left. We don’t default to eating in front of the TV. And, when the gang is expected, we happily anticipate by adding the two leaves that have been hidden inside our special table.  I love you, Eddie Bert. See you at the table.

Love, Sylvia