The Dining Table
I have this recent obsession with dining tables. Not the physical thing, but what it represents. The connection between people. The conversations that it brings. The laughter, the joy. The sadness, the grief. We do them all centred around dining tables.
My last week was full of dining tables. Home cooked meals made spontaneous when your schedules with friends align. Hot pot dinners with good company. With laughter, stories of childhood and culture. Late night dinners surrounded by friends as we say farewell. Quick dinners standing behind a curtain at work. Or late night bowls of ramen after a late night shift. There is just something about dinner tables for me that I have been fixated on.
I wrote a bunch of words about it last week. It seems like a bit of a jumbled mess. But the words are felt all the same.
From her eyes, seated at the dining room table. Surrounded by poets and physicist alike.
having the conversations that require strength. Require a little bit of stretch, both of the mind and the heart.
watching the magic unfold. watching as the thread of connections start to wrap and wind their way around each person.
Maybe you leave agreeing on a new perspective, maybe you leave realising why you believe what you do.
maybe someone challenges you, pushes you, forces you to think and accept different realities.
Or maybe you do that to someone. Maybe you teach them how to soften. maybe you teach them how to accept gentleness.
to quieten down so that those who are softer can speak.
it’s a favourite thing of mine. the dining table.
the vastness of a dining table. the way it can bring people together. the way good food always does. the way it allows space for people to bring themselves to it.
the dining table, something I have been thinking about in recent days.
the magic of it. But how it is also my favourite meal of the day. Because you can take your time.
You can pour the wine, press play on the movie, turn on the record player and let the music flow.
You can sip as you stir, have friends sitting by the island chatting as you chop.
Or two roommates cooking something completely different at the same time but both being in the kitchen at the same time. You chat about your day, you catch each other up on the work gossip. Someone is stirring their pasta as the other pours you both a glass of wine.
Or maybe it’s a lavish dining table. Round and full. Long and Wide. Its a special occasion and you have set the table accordingly. You are hosting this year, or you decided that dinner parties was going to be what you did in 2024. You’re stress sweating in the kitchen making sure the potatoes are ready and the wine is chilled. that the cheese you bought is acceptable to everyone.
How about a restaurant dinner? the settings are intimate, romantic and strangely voyeristic as people watch you and you watch them. You make up stories about couples and hope that they are true.
I found that my love of dining tables and dinner comes from my own childhood. Breakfast were seperate because everyone was everywhere. Trying to get to school, heading to work. We would sit in the early morning light have a slice of bread. Lunches were at school. Using your allowance and carefully deciding what you were going to have that day. But dinner? Dinner was always at the table. It was before the time of iPhones and social media. But what little Nokia phones we had, they were put away in favour of talking about our day.
Everyone sat down for dinner. In the sweet designated familiar places and we would eat. Even if I was too young to understand what my mum and dad were talking about I knew that we were all a part of this conversation. It made me feel like a grown up.
Dinners in our household look different now. But unless you have some prior commitment, dinner is done with family. Seated on stools around the coffee table, watching our new show or movie. Still a priority, just around a different kind of dining table.
