My Favorite Things - II

The Kitchen Table

Our kitchen table has, both literally and figuratively, been the centerpiece of our lives almost since the beginning. I'm pretty sure that it is the one object Katherine and I have jointly owned that has been with us the longest.

We bought it to put into our first married residence at Kimberly Woods. Again, I might be wrong about that, but I don't think so. It was a butcher block table we purchased from FB Design. That was back in the days when Fashion Bar was a mercantile powerhouse in Denver and window shopping at the Stage, or Hannah's , or FB Design was one of our favorite pastimes.

On weekends when Chris and Nate came home, we sat together at that table to eat, or play cards, or plan the next day's events. And just as that table has moved from Kimberly Woods, to W. Dakota on Green Mountain, to 3510 Teller in Wheat Ridge, to finally end up in Littleton, so have our family dinners, discussions, arguments, and revelations (both happy and sad).

The table in its current location sits on a hardwood floor in the kitchen. In the past this provided an excellent vantage point from which to watch Chris practice tap dancing, or hear Nate do impressions.

I sat at the kitchen table talking hockey with Alex Depta as we waited for Franny to come down the stairs for her first prom. I remember being in the middle of Alex's explanation when I heard her at the top of the stairs. I bolted up in the middle of the conversation to watch her entrance. I still don't completely understand icing.

The table has always been situated under the two windows in our kitchen, a perfect arrangement for sitting by one of them with a cup of coffee and a newspaper while the kids played outside. If they needed something, or had a question, all they had to do was walk up to the window and ask. Kind of like a drive-up window at the bank, or Dairy Queen.

After opening nights of musical or plays, Kathie and I would wait for the kids to come home for our "notes." I loved sitting at the table, rehashing the performance(s), just reveling in the whole thing: Chris as Grandpa in YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, Nate as the father in CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, Franny in CRAZY FOR YOU.

I remember an afternoon stretching to evening long ago when C. Fite and I, both involved to a ridiculous level with North Central, had a long and intense argument/discussion about politics, education, and the way one should ethically approach both, or something like that. I've had students come by and sit at the table for long meandering explorations into the meaning of life.

One year on the traffic cone that my seniors used to sign as a farewell, I noticed a note from one kid thanking me for the great year and adding, "Sorry about your kitchen table." Franny explained. At one of her famous July Fourth parties, Kevin Kroh was beating on the kitchen table with a couple of forks, keeping time to whatever wild and debauched music our daughter had chosen to play. After the song had finished, the group at the table noticed scratches, lots of them, on the table. There was no getting rid of them. When Katherine and I returned that summer from the Tetons, I noticed the marks, but the prospect of an explanation I didn't necessarily want to hear had me ignoring them. I finally got my explanation on a traffic cone.

I make pasta and gnocchi and peirogis on the table now that Katherine and I, with no children and few students in need of table side talk, have moved into our foodie period. As with all other activities in our lives, the kichen table provides the perfect venue for this latest phase.