A Crowded Table: Sunday musings…6/23/2024
“I want a house with a crowded table and a place by the fire for everyone.”*
To be honest I’m a little bit surprised at how difficult is has been to mourn and to move on. Perhaps it’s because my Mom was the last, at least the last for Beth and for me. It seems as if there is still a bit more to say about our parents, the four people who were responsible for bringing us into this world and charting our earliest paths. A torch was passed many, many years ago. It’s funny, now, only now to really be fully aware of the legacy that two couples who on the surface simply could not be more different left to all who would come after them.
Beth and I grew up with a seat at a crowded table. Our happiest memories together have been sitting side by side at a crowded table.
After my Mom’s wake our entire family gathered together at a restaurant across the street from the hotel where most of us were staying. Literally everyone. My siblings and our spouses. All 10 or our collective children, three spouses and two betrothed. We even snuck in an aunt, an uncle and a lone cousin. It looked a bit like a Thanksgiving gathering; all of the young people sitting together at the “kid’s table” while my generation filled up the “adult table”. It was funny; everyone referred to the set-up using the same vocabulary even though the youngest “kid” was 22 or 23. It was a room built by families brought up around crowded tables.
“If we want a garden we’re gonna have to sow the seed. Plant a little happiness. Let the roots run deep. If it’s love that we give then it’s love that we reap. If we want a garden we’re gonna have to sow the seed.”*
My typical MO when I speak is to sorta kinda have a vague idea about where I’m gonna go and how I might get there, and so it was when I got up to give the toast to Mom and set the stage for the next day’s funeral. On the way to the airport the day before Beth and I had been listening to a group of female country singers, superstars in their own rights, who formed the band “The Highwomen”. I was moved by their song “Crowded Table” and this is what I was thinking about as I rose and gazed over our two tables set back to back, each filled to overflowing.
This family was built around the kitchen table. Crowded each night with everyone who was home. After we’d all fledged that table would become more and more crowded as we returned as couples, ever more so when we arrived with kids in tow. But it was more than that, more just those times when we gathered for Thanksgiving weekends or Cape Week. The crowded table was a feeling, a way of life. Even when we were in different locations we felt the urge to be together in some way. Our Moms didn’t get along very well at all until much, much later in life. I like to think that maybe a part of their too long in coming connection is the fact that they eventually saw each other’s crowded table.
“The door is always open. Your picture’s on my wall. Everyone’s a little broken, and everyone belongs.”*
At dinner that night I talked to our children about the legacy of the crowded table. How it begins with family but also extends to friendships both old and new. Mom’s wake and funeral were attended by countless people in my generation who were our friends when we were growing up. To a person they all talked about how our house was a refuge. Warm and welcoming. I talked to our kids about how the baton had been passed from their grandparents to their parents when we started our families and began to build our own crowded tables. My own house has been blessed with what folks have come to call “Beth White’s Extras”. Kids who maybe didn’t have the greatest place to call home who came to find a kind of home around our table. I heard the same things at my Dad’s services and at the memorials for Beth’s parents.
Did you grow up around a crowded table? I concluded my “toast” with an exhortation to both my generation seated at the “adult table” and to young people sitting at the “kid’s table”. We have been left a legacy, one that by and large was a part of the upbringing and early life of everyone in that room. Every grandparent to every one of the kids believed in the crowded table; Mom was just one of the few left. Any and all of us who have been so blessed are left to honor that legacy by crowding our own tables with family and friends. Include everyone as often as possible, especially those parents and grandparents who bequeathed their table to you; once a chair becomes empty the table becomes a little less crowded. There’s joy to be had in finding the room for another seat at every table, joy that each of us can bring now and forever.
“Yeah, I want a house with a crowded table, and a place by the fire for everyone. Let us take on the world while we’re young and able, and bring us back together when the day is done.” –The Highwomen
It’s always going to be tough to see the empty chairs at our tables. Thanks for bringing us back together Mom.
I’ll see you next week…
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