Knock on Wood by Barbara Quinn

When my husband and I sit down to dinner at night, we eat in our kitchen with all its modern trappings. There’s an indoor grill and pretty pendent lighting. Large windows look out to a deck and woods beyond. The double ovens come in very handy at the holidays.

In the middle of this new kitchen sits an old oak table and four chairs. I've never seen another set like it. It is the heart of my kitchen. I’ve been eating at that table since I was a child. My parents bought the table after WW2. In fact, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t eat at that table. It moved with my family from our two bedroom apartment in the Bronx to our three bedroom one bath ranch in Yonkers, where when I went to college it was replaced by a larger table, and was relegated to the basement for extra seating at the holidays. For some reason my parents painted the lovely oak white and green. That poor table.

After I married, the table and its four chairs came to me. My husband and I worked hard for weeks stripping off the paint and restoring the wood, then staining it dark. We grew to know every inch of that table with its carvings of flowers on the sides, and its self-storing leaf that pops up when you pull on the ends. There’s one spot that we didn’t finish quite right, and I’ve grown to love that imperfection. Each sturdy chair has three elongated 0’s that make up the seat backs. The seats themselves are fabric and I’ve covered them with dozens of different patterns over the years. All it takes is a staple gun and I have four new chairs.

Many nights when I sit down to eat, the parade of the past moves by: my brother and myself as kids, my son and his friends playing, my dog roaming beneath looking for treats, the guinea pigs racing round its legs. It’s good to have something solid like this in my life, something that anchors me to more than the daily routines of life, something that shares the tears and joys. I am thankful for all the time I’ve spent at my old table and glad that my family still gathers in the kitchen on the holidays and surrounds it. Life goes on. My kitchen smells of home and safety. And I am grateful.