The table that seats six and feeds nine
By Lorna Beckwith, Editor · · 3 min read
The table is oak, bought in 1988 for a family of five, and it seats six with the leaf in, and on the first Sunday of most months there are nine people in the room, which means that somebody is at the card table by the window and two children are on the bench that used to be in the hall.
Nobody has proposed buying a bigger table. I have asked why, in three houses with the same problem, and the answer in all three was a version of "it fits the room," which is true, and which is also not the reason.
The leaf
The leaf lives in the hall closet behind the vacuum. Getting it out is a two-person job, and the two people are usually the hostess and whichever grown child arrives first, and the fitting of it, the lining up of the pins, the discovery that the table has to be pulled a foot from the wall, is the first thing that happens at the gathering and is, I have come to think, the gathering's actual opening. The leaf says: more people are coming than this table was built for. It says it every month, and nobody has to.
It also says, more quietly, that the hostess has been counting since Wednesday, because the leaf comes out of the closet on Saturday night in every house I know, and never on the morning itself, and I have never been told why and have never needed to be.
The card table
Being at the card table is a demotion or a promotion depending on your age. At nine it is exile. At fourteen it is freedom. At thirty-one, in one house I know, it is where the daughter-in-law was seated the first three years and where she is now, by her own choice, every time, because the card table is near the kitchen and she has learned that the kitchen is where the conversation that matters happens, during the dishes, while the oak table is still arguing about the game.
The arithmetic
Six chairs, nine people, one leaf, one card table, one bench. The hostess runs this sum in her head every month and never writes it down, and it changes: a boyfriend, a divorce, a baby who is suddenly a person who needs a chair, a father who cannot manage the bench anymore and is moved, without comment, to the chair with arms. The table is the one fixed quantity. Everything that sits at it is variable.
I think that is why nobody buys the bigger table. The bigger table would be a statement that the number is settled, and the number is not settled, and a family that has nine this year may have seven next year for reasons nobody wants to furnish for. The oak table seats six. The room holds whoever comes. The leaf is behind the vacuum, and it will come out again on the first Sunday, and somebody will help.