table food

I love Pier 1! When I moved from my 15th floor studio to my 7th floor one bedroom back in New York, I could not find a table anywhere that I liked and could afford that would fit into that miniature patch of real estate called the dining room. One dreary afternoon I happened into Pier 1 and there it was -- a 36” x 36” square of glass relief. Finally, I thought, folks would be able to sit down to a table for a meal at my place instead of performing lap dances on the couch with their plates. I imagined all the fabulous feasts for the eye composed of mixed matched stemware, dishes and fabrics that would grace my new purchase. It was a moment! Eleven years later, I have prepared a countless number of feasts; I can count the number of times they were set on that table on the prongs of five forks.

As a child we rarely ate at the dining room table. We did a fly by as we passed it on the way to the kitchen table in one house; saw it standing stoically alone in a room flanked by hallways in another. Maybe the true purpose of a “dining room” table was lost on me because my glass find became a conference center where I could meet with clients while managing my own business in Manhattan. When I needed a second source of income, I started designing hand-made cards at that table. All the papers, art supplies, books, and who knows what else spread themselves across the surface like no tablecloth I had ever seen. I vowed to revert back to eating sur la table after I moved to DC and had a slightly more spacious dining area. I did manage to have dinner on it, entertain guests at it, even used it as a serving station for a party. When my DC space was featured in a magazine story, the glass table with just a bowl of fruit in the center looked so serene against the backdrop of artwork that fills the room. It was a moment! Really, a moment because as soon as I began creating collage goddesses the table top turned into an abstract collage I don’t always understand. Not one inch of that table is free for a bowl of any sort especially if it has food in it.

I was on the phone with one of my close friends talking about my past due need for studio space. Somehow we started talking about eating on the table and she, who has known me since I lived in NY and has had numerous meals at my home, remarked that she didn’t remember ever sharing a meal with me at that table. What she did recollect was sitting with her feet up on the long vintage yellow and orange bench style couch in my upper west side apartment as I served Sal’s pizza on oversized stoneware accompanied by a crisp glass of ice cold champagne or perching comfortably in the plump brown chair in DC with piping hot freshly baked by me blueberry lemon ginger scones dripping with butter in front of her. She recalled hours of lively conversation, plate and napkin resting easy on her lap legs curled beneath her, around another table. I am never without a coffee table of generous proportion, a blond wood two tier in NY, a sumptuous ebony with slatted bottom in DC. When my space was featured in that article I mentioned, one of the things profiled was the use of my coffee table as the preferred place to dine. This is the table that has been decked out in elaborate or simplistic combinations of tableware as my guests feasted on snacks or a full meal. My friend reminded me that coming into my home was so warm and embracing that sitting formally at the dining room table was counter to what the body wants to do, which is gravitate to the seating areas and become one with the furniture for as long as possible. Both females and males seem to notice my masculine pieces with such feminine grace that beckon them to gather round, take their shoes off and nosh in comfort and joy.

Tomorrow I will not have to travel over the river just through my hood with homemade stuffing and a corn dish in hand. I will place them on a dining room table to mingle with all the other thanksgiving goodies in a dining room with people I love as we prepare to give thanks. It is not where or what you eat but who you eat it with. Gobble, gobble and…

keep your peepers open! ®