posted on November 22, 2007 10:38:31 AM new
At the Grown-Up Table
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: November 22, 2007
I am sitting at the northwest corner of my grandmother’s table in a house on the edge of a small Iowa town. I’m young enough to feel that my presence at the table is a promotion. There’s something bewildering in the passing of plates, the coming and going of serving dishes, and I can see — looking into this memory from a long ways away — that the adults at the table find my presence a little comical. It makes them speak to each other in asides and to me in a language that seems both ironic and slightly formal, as if I were an ambassador from the everyday planet of children to the special planet of Thanksgiving, where dinner is eaten at three.
With the turkey comes teasing. Here come the mashed potatoes, and teasing. Cranberry sauce, more teasing. It’s the condiment of choice at this Thanksgiving table, and I’m very fond of it, in part because these adults are so busy teasing each other, too. I really have no idea what they’re saying, but I can sense the pleasure in how they’re saying it. I don’t understand the way they make each other laugh, but I end up laughing. Even now I can almost taste that laughter, the way I can still smell an overcooked undertone in the turkey gravy.
The women orbit the table, never sitting for long. Their responsibilities are clearly superior to the men’s, and more immediate. Back and forth to the kitchen they go, always with an air of preoccupation, as though some secret is hidden there, in the oven, behind the sink, out on the porch. This is fussing, which is not entirely unrelated to teasing. It, too, is a kind of attention, a language that, in one aunt, is puzzling and anxiously self-referential while in another it is the soul of generosity.
Soon we are all so busy eating that my presence at this table of adults is no longer something separate or special. It’s as though they all forget at once that I am here. Somehow, that makes them specially visible to me. I can watch them without being watched myself. And what I notice isn’t one adult or another. It isn’t the place-settings or the table decorations or the hands and elbows and napkins and mouths. It’s the way it all comes together, the clearing created by sitting round a table and facing each other over a feast.
I was young enough then to be getting down from the table after pumpkin pie rather than getting up, the way the grown-ups did. And I’m surprised to realize that I remember the feeling of doing so. It seemed to me that something was missing, and thinking back on it, I have an idea what it was. Grace was said at the start of the meal, but we should have said a second grace before we all left the table. All these years later, I haven’t turned out to be a grace-saying man. But I’m still grateful for the people around me and for their coming together. The thanks we say as we sit down together today is also the thanks we should say before we separate, before we’re hurried away into life.
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posted on November 22, 2007 04:36:54 PM new
That is incredible and a memory I think most of us share. Thanks for posting this and jogging my memory. The times families spend together sharing a meal - laughing - teasing and just being families should never be forgotten.
posted on November 22, 2007 04:45:56 PM new
tell everyone you love them today - because there might not be a tomorrow.
We were awakened Friday morning in the wee hours to that phone call you never want to receive. My husband's middle son had died in a car crash during the night. Our granddaughter who lives with her mother and his ex-wife said that she had talked with him briefly a few days before but because it was such a hurried phone call she didn't tell him she loved him as she usually does and regretted that.
I know - it's sad but it's part of life. Once again we were reminded of how precious life is and how important it is to tell others how much we care about them.
Stay safe everyone and reach out and touch the ones that you care about.
I agree Roadie - that was a great column! That children's table was the pits when we were growing up!
posted on November 22, 2007 06:41:16 PM new
Now you wish some peoples kid was in a cage in the other room instead of at the table.
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posted on November 22, 2007 09:30:03 PM new
The writer is a prize-winning columnist who also teaches at Pomona or Claremont (I forget which). He writes beautifully about common things. I'd love to meet him.
I'm glad you enjoyed the column!
I'm so full from Thanksgiving dinner that I may never eat again. . . . Why do we DO this?!
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posted on November 23, 2007 04:25:56 PM new
Wonderful column I shared with my family. Glass Girl, I am so sorry for your loss. We always say "Love you" when we end a call, (sometimes it's a habit that backfires when I forget and end a call with an acquaintance that way). When my nieces and nephews were small and the adult table was crammed with family and my parent's close friends, my brother and I would fight over whose turn it was to sit at the kid's table to supervise, usually deciding it would take two of us to manage.
Edited to add: our tummies ached, too. Neither my son nor I ate much (compared to my marathon years). I had requested baked acorn squash and was the only one who ate it, so I consumed 3/4 of a squash. Other than that, tiny portions - I skipped the pie and had cinnamon/clove apricot spiced diet Jello for dessert. Why the tummy ache?
[ edited by pixiamom on Nov 23, 2007 04:43 PM ]
