The Gift of the Kitchen Table
By Janet Peterson
I recently toured a remodeled kitchen that had everything new and beautiful – gorgeous wood cabinets, sleek granite countertops, and shiny state-of-the art appliances. However, one significant part of the kitchen was missing. There was no longer a kitchen table! The owners had opted for a bar and got rid of their kitchen table. I couldn’t imagine functioning in a kitchen without a table.
Several years ago I heard a report on National Public Radio that many couples setting up housekeeping skip buying a kitchen table, opting instead for state-of-the-art entertainment centers and other household furnishings.
If there isn’t a table in a home or apartment, how can family members gather around it? Eating at the bar or on a couch in front of the TV is not the same. Family members are not looking at each other – they’re either lined up or looking at the screen.
Our kitchen table has changed with the years from a rectangular white Formica table in our graduate school days to our now oval light oak table. The size of our table has changed with leaves put in or taken out as our family has grown and then shrunk. On Sundays and special occasions we have set the more elegant dining room table. But for thirty-seven years, our family has eaten dinner around a table.
Making Memories
Some of my fondest family memories have been formed around those tables: watching our six cute toddlers, each, in turn, learning to feed themselves and looking as if he or she – and the floor – had been finger-painted with mashed potatoes or applesauce; hearing the heartfelt blessings on the food of three-and four-year-olds; laughing as one of the kids said something funny, like an 8-year-old”s “these cookies are as hard as the ice on Pluto”; having “Miss Manners” try to teach table etiquette to five sons; preparing favorite dinners for each of our departing missionaries, then on their return trying out new cuisine from Brazil, Japan, Hungary, and Slovenia; getting to know our children’s future spouses during their first dinner at our home; marveling as our three-year-old grandson says he loves green beans because they make him strong (our own boys did not like vegetables); thrilling as our six-year-old granddaughter exclaims that dinner that night was “just delicious!”; sharing countless meals with the love of my life who thanks me for cooking dinner for him.
Elder LeGrand Curtis, a former member of the Seventy, said, “One of the most important furnishings found in most homes is the kitchen table. Now, it may be small, it may be large, or in the form of a little counter with barely room to put the food and utensils. Its major function seems to be a place for the different members of the family to receive nourishment .
“My plea . is that each of us will look carefully at our homes and at the kitchen table and continually strive to bring heaven into our homes.”
A Multitude of Purposes
Pampered Chef president Doris Christopher in her wonderful book Come to the Table: A Celebration of Family Life aptly describes the purpose of the kitchen table:
“Round or square, mahogany or oak, the table is the heart of every home, the nucleus of domestic life, where we pay bills and wrap presents, fold laundry and toss mail. When the chores are done and daylight is fading, the work table becomes the dinner table, and as we gather around it, we, too, are transformed. No longer separate and solitary, we regain our identities as part of a much greater whole: We become a family, sharing not just our suppers but also ourselves.
“It is here, at the table, that we rejoin the pack, in a timeless ritual. Surrounded by the people who matter, gazing into the faces we love, we count our blessings and share our burdens, reliving the daily dramas of missed buses and skinned knees. We raise jelly glasses and champagne flutes, toasting accomplishments in classrooms and board rooms. And over homemade casseroles or haute cuisine, relatives become loved ones and acquaintances become friends.
“The table is where we mark milestones, divulge dreams, bury hatchets, make deals, give thanks, plan vacations, and tell jokes. It’s also where children learn the lessons that families teach: manners, cooperation, communication, self-control, values. Following directions. Sitting still. Taking turns. It’s where we make up and make merry. It’s where we live, between bites.”
Office Space
Elaine L. Jack served as the general Relief Society president from 1990 to 1997. She and her husband, Joe, are parents of four sons. The kitchen table has been a gathering place for the Jack family and was for Elaine the most familiar and comfortable place for her to do her “homework.” She wrote:
“When I was serving as Relief Society president, I brought home work from the office nightly. In those days dinner was never elaborate. If it took more than fifteen minutes to prepare, we didn’t have it, and Joe never complained. Although there were two rooms in our home fitted with desk and workplace, my work was always done at one end of the kitchen table, right after dinner. That was my ‘place.’
“The kitchen, with a washable floor, was a natural spot to feed grandchildren. Somehow, even with a dining room set formally, the kitchen remained the gathering place. Even after the children had left to play elsewhere, the adults conversed freely, more comfortably and humorously around the kitchen table, discussing passionately world, political, and professional problems.”
Nightly Interrogation
Marianne Jennings’ reminiscences of her childhood kitchen table and the legacy she is endeavoring to pass on to her own children convincingly describe “the gift of the kitchen table.” A law professor at Arizona State University, she wrote in her syndicated newspaper column:
“Much of what I have learned and hold dear is inextricably intertwined with the kitchen table. This 4-by-6 scratched and worn piece of furniture was a small physical part of my home. Yet as I look back on what we did there, I realize that it was a key to the life I now have.
“Each night during my youth it was the kitchen table where I was held accountable for the day’s events. ‘When is the next report card?’ ‘Did you clean up the mess in the basement?’ ‘Did you practice your piano today?’
“If you wanted dinner, you had to accept the accompanying interrogation that would have violated my Miranda rights if I had done something more than attempt to bathe the neighbor’s parakeet. There was no escaping the nightly confrontation with accountability.
“But that kitchen table was not just a source of fear, it was my security blanket. No matter how rough the day’s tauntings had been and no matter how discouraged I was over long division, the kitchen table and its adult caretakers were there every night to comfort and support . Regardless of the day’s schedule or demands, the kitchen table brought us back together for roll call at 6:00 p.m. every night .
“That kitchen table nurtured. It was my constancy amid the insecurities of crooked teeth, more freckles than skin, and geography bees on state capitals .
“As I struggle each night to get dinner on my kitchen table and round up my children from the four corners of our neighborhood, I wonder why I just don’t send them to their rooms with a chicken pot pie and ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ I don’t because I am giving them the gift of the kitchen table.
“In all of the treatises on parenting, in all of the psychological studies on child development, and in all of the data on self-esteem, this humble key to rearing children is overlooked.”
Gathering the family often for dinner around the table provides a priceless opportunity to talk, laugh, discuss the day, and strengthen family ties. This Christmas, why not give your family a lasting gift – “the gift of the kitchen table”?
1 “A Table Encircled with Love,” Ensign, May 1995, 82, 83
2 Doris Christopher, Come to the Table: A Celebration of Family Life, New York: Warner Books, 1999, 2-3.
3 Elaine L. Jack, letter to Janet Peterson, Aug. 23, 2000.
4 Marianne M. Jennings, “Kitchen Table Vital to Family Life,” Deseret News, Feb. 9, 1997, AA4.
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