Margie Schaps

When I was seven-years-old, my folks got a new cherry dining room table. It came with an interior decorator who did a do over of our comfy home into a bit more formal, but still pretty comfortable house for my two brothers, my folks and me. I didn’t much like some of the new glazed mirrors, yellow and green floral wallpaper and furniture fabrics, but I loved that table.

It was a solid rectangle that could, with all of its leaves, seat 14 people. Though my mother wasn’t much of a cook, she’d go all out for a Friday night meal with the family, grandparents and cousins around that table. There were weekly nights with take out food and holidays with friends or relatives at that table. Good food and great conversations, arguments, negotiations over allowances and curfew, listening to Yiddish and trying to imitate it and more.  That table was the center of our home.

When my parents moved to a smaller house, they took the table with them. Not long after, they decided it was time for a new table. With joy, my husband Jack and I accepted the old, scratched up, wobbly table into our new home where we continued the traditions of good meals, conversation, arguments, negotiations and even a little Yiddish now and then with the next generation of family and friends.

My folks died last year, and we had the opportunity to inherit their beautiful replacement table.  We thought long and hard about it; after all, it was beautiful and we all had created memories at that table, too.  We almost took it, but in the end we decided to refinish the old one.

It’s part of the fabric of our family.