Table
Crissie and I got into an argument recently.
It was after dinner.
The topic was what to call the table in our living room that we eat on.
*
The first floor of our house has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and one main room.
We call the main room our living room.
It has books in it.
An easy chair.
A rug.
Our couch.
It’s where we read, hang out, and watch Netflix.
But there’s also another smaller, narrower part of the room.
We eat there.
At a wooden table.
And I’ve never known what to call that table.
*
It’s not a “kitchen table.”
Because it’s not in the kitchen.
(Our kitchen is way too small.)
It’s not a “living room table.“
Because there’s no such thing as a living room table.
Only end tables.
Or coffee tables.
And you don’t eat at either of those.
*
Is it a dining room table?
For a while, I tried to think so.
I mean, it doesn’t have leaves and shit.
But it’s definitely where we have Thanksgiving dinner.
It’s where we have every dinner.
Can you have a dining room table if you don’t have a dining room, though?
*
“Can’t we call it ‘the table’?” Crissie suggested.
We have other tables, I said.
“Not that we eat on,” said Crissie.
I thought of the backyard picnic table.
The folding tables we sometimes bring up from the basement when we host potlucks.
What if I said to her or Rasa: “We need to fix the table”?
Would they know what I meant?
*
“It’s a ‘dining table,’” Crissie offered next.
“That’s what we do, right?”
“Dine on it?”
“No ‘room’ necessary.”
She leaned back and smiled.
*
I typed “dining table” into my phone.
“Great solution,” I said.
“One problem.”
“No search results.”
(Well, there were 108 million.
But if you followed the links, they all said “dining room table” or were weird little fancy folding tables for TV dinners.)
*
Crissie frowned.
I was being too literal, she said.
“People know you don’t have to have coffee on a coffee table,” she observed.
Sure, I acknowledged.
But everyone knows what a coffee table is.
“It might be a weird name, but there’s a common definition.”
*
At this point, Crissie tried to leave the discussion.
Why was she even talking to me about this? she mused.
She didn’t care what the table was called!
She got up to clear the dishes.
*
I beckoned Crissie back.
I appealed to nostalgia.
I’d gotten the table before she and I met.
In those days, I didn’t know what I was doing in life.
I didn’t know where I was going.
All I knew was I needed a place to eat.
Now the table and I had shared so many meals together.
Thousands.
18,000 actually, by my best guess.
It deserved an accurate and uniquely-identifiable label commensurate with that term of service.
*
Crissie sighed.
Yet she sat back down at the table with me.
We’d shared at least 10,000 meals ourselves, after all.
What was one more after-dinner conversation?
*
“Maybe ‘the table in our living room that we eat on’ really is the best name for it,” I said.
Crissie thought about that.
“‘The table that we eat on in our living room,’” she countered.
“Hm,” I said.
It was a little edit.
But I liked it.
*
“Remember after we got married,” Crissie said.
“We didn’t know what to call one another.”
“Husband and wife?”
“Partner?”
“Spouse?”
“And then when Rasa was born, deciding what her last name should be was just as tricky.”
“It would be great if we always had the exact right word for everything,” said Crissie.
“But sometimes, with the best things, you don’t.”