POTLUCK FROM THE TABLE

It seemed like only a few months ago I was working on restoring my great grandparents' dining room table and chairs, but the reality is that 7 years have flown by quickly! Looking back, I remember moving the dining room set, via U-Haul across the PA turnpike to the Lehigh Valley, all the while wondering what I was going to do with it once I brought it into my home. My brothers each thought I was nutty as a fruitcake to want the shabby, antique furniture, and truth be told, I wondered the same thing. The table was badly scratched and rickety and the chairs, covered in 1970’s Naugahyde, were discolored from years of my mom’s 2 pack-a-day smoking addiction. But despite the time-worn condition, my heart wasn’t ready to part with the foundation of our family life—the dining room. Fifty-five years of memories are just too difficult to sell or give away.  And of course, there are the other 70 years of silent memories that I know little of as they were buried along with my grandparents.

I have limited knowledge of my great and grandparents’ life, but history tells me in the 100 years between them many stories and conversations took place gathered around the dinner table. WWI, WWII, and the Great Depression all transpired during their lifetime. A spouse was lost, and then another. A family business was conceived. Birthdays and holidays brought out the damask table cloth and silverware that I lovingly polish yet again for today. But this is only revealed to me through black and white snapshots that captured these moments in time or stories passed down through my dad as he reveled telling hilarious stories of his youth.

As an only child, my dad often tried to persuade us that he wasn’t wanted by his parents, that they were elderly when he came along and was just an oopsy-daisy. According to him, they sent him away each summer to camp and at 15 to attend the prestigious Mercersburg Academy where his father was also an alumnus. But not love him? Nothing could have been further from the truth. To appraise the multitudes of pictures I have in boxes that were taken of him and his parents painted a very different story. He was indeed the butter to their bread. And he was a stinker.

His parents were prominent Pittsburgh socialites during the 1920-70’s who hosted many elegant dinner and cocktail parties along with all the proper etiquette and decorum. And so, it was that Sunday afternoon when guests came to visit at my grandparents’ home for a lovely dinner. As the grownups chatted away, my father thought they would be distracted for hours and decided to go for a little drive to the bowling alley. The only problem was he was only 12. Unfortunately for him, their guests decided to leave early only to find that there wasn’t a car in the garage for my grandfather to drive them home. I remember my dad said it all ended badly with the “board of education”, a lesson learned and a dinner table conversation he would never forget. But not all table memories are instructive.

When the family gathers to share food and laughter, the dining table stands at the center of it all. Handmade, purchased, or inherited like mine, the table holds special significance. In the life of my father, the dining table saw him through grade school to college and early morning breakfasts before his paper route where he got hives from the cold and chapped hands that cracked.  There were bucked teeth and braces  and toys of all sorts, but never a silver toy gun and holster that he always wished for Christmas. Through summer camp and boot camp, Forbes Avenue and Squirrel Hill, and the 5 colleges he claimed to have attended, it witnessed it all. And after dating, engagement and marriage, my dad and his new bride brought the heirloom table and chairs to 245 Elias Drive to witness their new life, which would be shared together for just over 50 golden years.

Life on Elias Drive showed no mercy to the wood as four active children banged toys on the table, spilled drinks and tilted back on the legs of the chairs making my mother crazy. Four on the floor she’d often bellow after paying hundreds of dollars having the chair legs re-glued. Our life was lived in the dining room and each night after we ate dinner, my dad would sit at the table and read the paper often while having a beer. Beside him, my mom corrected her students’ homework and test papers while my brothers cleared the table and I loaded the dishwasher. Wednesdays we ate spaghetti and on Sunday, pot roast. Some Saturdays we played cards at the table and ate pizza with our cousins while our parents downed a few beers all the while the black and white TV blared in the background the sound of Chiller Theater which scared the bajeezus out of us. But the best memories were of Christmas Eve that brought our entire family together for dinner where Sutter Home flowed and Eat 'n Park cookies were dunked in milk. Play-do which my father hated was squeezed and often ground into the carpet,  Oreos, Pepsi, chips and dip all consumed, while babies aired out diaper free on the table top. 

Through the years, hundreds of friends and family gathered at the Kirk dining room table in friendship and love and all were welcome with a simple knock at the front door and a hearty hello. And then the days came when they all came to say their goodbyes.

In 2012, I locked the door to 245 Elias Drive for the last time and as I drove away with my U-Haul in tow, I took with me all the happy thoughts of everyone my family loved through the years and wonderful, long-lasting memories made gathered around the Kirk table. It was going to have a new life and along with it, the memories of our family would be preserved.

Like many of you, in just a few days I will gather with those I love to celebrate life and family once again. As I prepare for our feast, I nostalgically feel my parents and grandparents’ presence as I plan the meal and set their table.  Like my grandmother, I seemed to have inherited her heart steeped in tradition with the joy of entertaining while creating a festive table.  And while I polish the antique silver and dust off the refinished table, I know I will have a few tearful moments reminiscing about all the love and memories shared through the years with my parents, brothers and our simple and happy life in the 'Burgh. I’m so glad I decided to keep our family table with all of its' bumps, nicks and bruises.  Like families, with  all of their imperfections, it's the rich character the dings bring that make it worth restoring and keeping.

As we gather together around the Kirk table once again, the old tales will still be re-told but new stories are yet to be written with plot twists and new characters that only life can only bring.  And woven into the paragraphs, the old sentiments will remain because in just a few days the turkeys will fly, Sutter Home will flow, and the table will once again become the hub of my home and a testament of family, new memories and those whom I love so much.