A kitchen table is a magnet for memories. Especially a table that's grown old while the family grows up. Our family's maple table served us for many years. I remember it first in our kitchen at the Callahan House. It was huge, oval, long enough for a big man to lay on top and still not have his feet dangle. It was a table that made a room seem small. It was the table where the family gathered for thousands of meals.
I saw that table in at my parent’s house in Running Springs today. The drop leaf sides are folded to fit against the stairwell. The table is too big for your little house in the mountains, and you are thinking about getting rid of it.
I run my hand over the surface. Like everything, the top is clean and well waxed. The window light catches the surface just right and I can see through the polish to the dents and dips that speak of a lifetime's use.
Our family grew up around this table. Here are the thousand nicks and gouges of growing up, dropped plates, pencils pushed through homework papers.
Perhaps these two dents were caused by my baby brother’s kiddy seat. Paul reigned from the center of the table. Enthroned and fussy. If you looked directly at him he’d scream and wail. We would joke that he looked like Sidney Greenstreet and say, “You can’t talk to the fat man direct.”
This is the spot on the table where I wrote my times tables. I see the tracings of my pencil, faint veins sketched forever in the surface. It's easy to remember sitting at this table, 10 years old, copying over the awful 9 tables. 9x1=9, 9x2=18, 9x3=27, over and over again, drilling and drilling.
I'm preparing for the quiz that dad will give me when he gets home from work. Mom's cooking fills the kitchen with dinner's almost ready aromas.
I'm trying to lock the numbers into my mind. The times tables are a sing-song chant. I think I know them, then they fade.
Dad drills me on the times tables endlessly. We use flash cards bought in a teacher's supply store.
He prompts and I recite.
We quiz out of sequence and in order.
Up the ladder, "9x1=9, 9x2=18, 9x3=27"
Down the ladder, "9x9=81, 9x8=72, 9x7=63"
The next day I'd pass my math test, usually missing one or two, and promptly forget everything until the next drill session. Dad is very patient, explaining the importance of having the times tables down pat.
The table is where we set up the electric trains on Christmas morning at the Callahan house. The layout was fastened to a half sheet of plywood, placed in center of the table. We made snow topped mountain with tunnels. We glued down flock grass, and painted a mirror blue to create a pond. The H/O gauge track was pinned to the board with small brass nails. We gluded spongy green lichens in clumps near the tracks. There were houses and a train station with tiny people waiting for their rides. Some of the houses had lights that worked.
The railroad was powered by a heavy black transformer with red handles. Cranking the red handles on the heavy black transformer cause evoked a vibrating hum as electrons surge and the sweat of ozone stung the nose.
I had a red and silver diesel, the Santa Fe Express, with a head light that flashed through the mountain tunnels. John squeezed a few drops of mystery liquid into the smoke stack of his black locomotive. It huffed down the tracks, belching tiny puffs of gray smoke, giving the air an oily tinge.
The essence of Christmas, the layout stayed on the kitchen table all through Christmas vacation. We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner seated at the edges of our miniature universe. I'd have my bacon, peanut butter toast, and milk not far from the tracks. I sat there chewing, swallowing, and watching the trains go round and round.
There was lots of room at the big maple table for a special guest the night Mr. Brown, my 6h grade teacher, came to dinner. I was proud and amazed that my teacher was going to come to my house and have dinner.
The kids at school didn't really believe that the teacher would actually be there.
"No way, you're making it up!"
Maybe inviting the teacher to dinner was old fashioned even then.
Mr. Brown was a tall, lean man. He always had a dark tan. I was sure it had something to do with his name. He looked a little like Gary Cooper did in Sergeant York. Mr. Brown wore a corduroy coat with leather arm patches to dinner that night. He even had on a tie. He was honoring my family by wearing a tie, he never did that in class. It seemed fantastic, unreal, to see teacher out of school and in my house.
But there he was sitting at the big maple table with me, Mom and Dad and my little brother John. Mr. Brown was smiling and making polite conversation. I was mostly quiet, just listening. I worked hard at my manners, taking small bites, using the napkin, trying to be mature. I wasn't adolescent enough yet to be embarrassed by my family, I just felt proud.
It was a great night. Even John the 3rd grader was good. Mr. Brown talked about his summer job as a Park Ranger. It was easy to imagine him in a ranger's uniform. It explained the origin of that tan. Mr. Brown got sunburnt every summer and his tan lasted the whole school year.
For the rest of the 6th grade Mr. Brown had a special smile for me when ever our eyes met.
Understanding a little piece of Mr. Brown's life gave me my first thought of becoming a teacher. Summers off to be in the woods, and free meals. It looked pretty good from my side of the table.
Twenty years later Gavin, one of my 6th grade students, stood at my desk, and looked me in the eye "My Mom and I would like you to come to our house for dinner."
Now, I sit at Gavin’s table with his parents and. I'm wearing a corduroy coat with elbow patches. I have a tie on. The Gavin and his siblings stare at me with big eyes, amazed I'm at their table, in their house. I smile, make polite conversation, watch my table manners and enjoy this rare evening. I had a special smile for Gavin for the rest of the school year.
In 15 years of teaching this was the only time I'd been invited to dinner. That invitation was very special to me. It made me think of Mr. Brown. Was our dinner invitation the only one Mr. Brown ever received?
Turning the tables helps me remember that little kids don't believe teachers are real people, with lives outside the classroom. No, teachers are different than other adults. They live at school and only think about the subjects they teach. Kids believe that teachers spend every evening preparing tests and grading papers. They are sure that teachers have impeccable recall of times tables, and a perfect knowledge of the parts of speech; and they never misspell a word. It is too high a standard.
My parents live in the mountains near Big Bear in Southern California. We live at Lake Tahoe. Visits are rare. The marks, dents, gouges and chips have been polished smooth. But I still can read the big maple table like a map. It hasn't changed that much, but we have.
It must be lonely, just the two of you, having a meal at the vast, well worn table. The marks, dents, gouges and chips on the big maple are still there. I know the table really doesn't fit your small house now. You could find something half the size that would serve better. It makes perfect sense to get rid of it.
But I hope you don't. I hope you keep the table. Put a fresh coat of wax on it and make some more memories. It hasn't changed that much, but we have. ~Written 1990
Now the table is in our house in the hills of San Marcos. Both my parents are gone, but the memories scribed in the table remain. It's almost Christmas, and most of my family will sit around the big maple table in just a few days. ~ December 2008
I write this as I sit at the big table after re-reading this piece. I resonate in the heritage as I take my daily breaths remembering the sweet freedom that come at end of the school year. ~ June 2024