Grandma’s Dining Table

Twenty five years ago my first husband and I bought a new home with four bedrooms and three baths, but my favorite part of the house was the enormous room you walked into from the front door. It had no dividing wall but the design was to use half of it as a formal living and the other half as a formal dining.

From the beginning I decided to make it into one huge dining room that would catch the eye when everyone walked in through the front door of my home.

My three children were very young, but I envisioned them grown and married. We counted five at the time, but one day we would grow to eight, maybe more if we factored in grandchildren, so I bought a table that sat a family of twelve. My husband thought it silly to look that far ahead and convinced me to buy only ten chairs.

The room looked magnificent – the long, majestic table, the ten chairs, the buffet, a couple of real ficus, and a few other nice pieces of furniture – I was pleased.

The table lasted longer than the marriage, and it has gone with me to every house since then. There were homes where it didn’t fit and times when it would be more economical to just get rid of it, but I refused to surrender my dream of family.

It has been used for homework by two generations and survived an unfortunate homework accident long ago. Every time I change the tablecloth, I run my hand over the scar and smile at the memory.

My grandsons use it in their play, hiding underneath it by lying on the chairs or pretending it is a cave. They help me set the table and hunt throughout the house to find extra chairs. I love that the chairs don’t match.

It has served many holiday and birthday meals and has witnessed a lot of laughter and heartwarming conversation. That table embraces my hopes and dreams.

This Christmas, it will sit fifteen people. Fifteen of my most favorite people. We’ll sit five, elbow to elbow on each long side, and two at each end. The baby will be in his new high chair, banging on the tray with a spoon or a rattle.

Four others will be too far away to join us, and one will be in heaven watching down, but if they were here, we would just put the kitchen trestle table to use. It can sit another eight. The more family, the merrier. All are welcome at my dining table.

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit. I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease. Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought. I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt diffe

Teenagers: Stinky Little Extraterrestrials

Years ago, a skunk sprayed our yard during the night and the next morning I trekked out to my car to drive to work and unknowingly stepped into the oily residue. I tracked skunk stink into my Jeep and onto the carpet in my office, a room I shared with a kind and forgiving co-worker. It took a week or two and several large cans of Lysol and air freshener to get rid of the smell. Ever since my profound Close Encounter of a Second Kind (I never saw the skunk but it left evidence of its presence), I became a skunk expert. I learned the way of the skunk. My experience imprinted itself into my hippocampus and I acquired a heightened sense of smell. I can detect a skunk several miles away, outperforming a normal human nose that can only start to do the same at one mile. I have the same uncanny sense about adolescents. After 30-plus years of teaching teenagers and having raised three of my own, you might say, I have reached the Close Encounter level of a Fifth Kind: I have actually

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have. I sputter. I hyperventilate. I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties. I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back. While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several). Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married. (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.” I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less. You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting. Me

Raquel Martina Martinez

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