Table talk

With more money and house, we would have a gaming room, business conference center, craft headquarters, sewing room, repair bench, framing shop and gift wrapping center.
Instead, we have a dining room table.
First and foremost, it is a communal dining table where we share our days, thoughts and plans over dinner. All else bows to that time around the table – sometimes with a tablecloth and napkins – all too frequently of late with the minimal accessories and left-overs straight from the microwave.
But the rest of the day – between family meals, the table morphs.
Sometimes it morphs into a business hub with piles of papers, pencils, calculators and envelopes. Once a month, my husband sits there to balance the check book and pay bills. Once a year, we arrange stacks of receipts and make it our tax preparation center, and of late it fills in as a conference room table as a couple college men consider sales territories, sales receipts and cover the table with papers and samples.
Several nights last month the business conferences deferred to a sewing project for the baby’s room as I coached my daughter through making a coordinated set of accessories for her expected baby’s room.
No business conferences tonight, guys. We have some serious sewing to do.
The portable sewing machine took a front and center position with light on and the needle punching out 12 stitches per inch at 10 feet per minute.
The guys quietly moved to the back bedroom to talk and plan.
I do not yield so graciously when I come home to nuts, bolts, hammers, screw drivers, screws and nails littering the table. My husband never quite understands my consternation. For small repair jobs, the dining room table looks like a workbench to him. I try to not say too much. I know how frequently I hand him a picture, matting material and frame and expect him to prepare it – even if it means using the dining room table as a workbench.
Hints of a third generation of projects appear during visits from grandchildren who convert the table into a craft arena with paint, glue, scissors and paper.
Sometimes visitors morph it into a gaming table. Choosing between Monopoly, Sorry, UNO or Dutch Blitz, we re-arrange the chairs, add a dish of popcorn, a fruit smoothie or quart jar of ice water each. The gaming table hums late into the night over a friendly game of ‘Sorry’.
I’ve heard of homes with ‘gift wrapping rooms.’ We have one – it emerges before holidays, birthdays, baby showers and such as I haul out ribbon, wrapping paper, scissors, scotch tape and greeting cards and put them on the table with the gifts.
Several years ago – after too many meals, too many game nights, too many sewing and work bench projects, the table top’s original finish wore thin. For a couple weeks it became the project for our handyman who stripped varnish off the top of the table, sanded out the rough spots and refinished it with a couple layers of water-proof varnish – thus guaranteeing durability for diverse uses for the table.
When I know company is coming, I cover scratches with a tablecloth and silk floral arrangement, to prove we do live graciously – we have flowers on the table – at least until the next time I need a picture matted and framed.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. She can be reached at joanh@everybody.org.)