THE TABLE

"Embracing the Light. Collected bits of truth. Shimmering sparks. Shards of light.  Merge. Healing. Restoring. Bursting bright. Rising in divine ecstatic flame.." - Leonard Nimoy 

The table. It has been beside me forever. Like an old friend. That Jacobean table. One hundred years old. If it could talk. But it never had to. The hundreds. Possibly thousands of people who  have gathered round its sides.  They talked and the table listened.

Some it knew well.  Painted dark, like fig jam. My mother first got the entire set  from good friends. It was the 1930's. My parents were newly married . It once used to be a kitchen table. My mother thought it would make a good ironing board.  She ironed on it for years.

 So much so, for years you could see white scorch patches in the damaged surface. She'd  leave her antique flat iron on the surface. It would burn.

At Christmas, it always  was the center of attention. My mother would cover it in lace and  glass balls and cover the burn patches. 

Lace and streamers, delicate cut glass.  It bore the weight of years of shortbreads, cakes, candles and weathered spills of  champagne, birthdays, parties....

And in between  those years, my mother ironed curtains,  and underwear . She sewed , cut out patterns, kneaded  bread, stirred fruitcakes, arranged jars of jam.

And ironed . Mostly underwear and tea towels. At midnight, watching Perry Mason,  labelling Christmas cards, scalding  the table surface with  bubbling teapots. 

She ironed on the table for fifty years, till her last moment on earth.  Then it got a makeover. Long overdue. The table waited with bated breath. So did I.

It went from black paint to it's original Jacobean golden oak. The burn marks disappeared. It glowed warm and vivid like copper. The table felt new again.

Each Christmas it  glimmers and glows and shines. My old friend. New again.

And company  still  gathers. When the lights are low and the candles waver, in their sweet wisdom.

There have been hundreds. Possibly thousands come to this table.  All across this country they have sat here in the magical light.

And the table welcomes them. And it remembers.

 All who have been, who have gone on before.  And those who still sit within it's beautiful face.

 My old friend. Hearing their voices soft and low, in the still quiet of the night.

“They made their way to the dining room, where the air was blossom-scented and gilded with candlelight. The mammoth Jacobean table, with its legs and support rails carved like twisted rope, had been covered with pristine white linen. A row of broad silver baskets filled with billows of June roses rested on a long runner of frothy green maidenhair ferns. The walls had been lined with lush arrangements of palms, hydrangeas, azaleas and peonies, turning the room into an evening garden. Each place at the table had been set with glittering Irish crystal, Sèvres porcelain, and no fewer than twenty-four pieces of antique Georgian silver flatware per guest.”
― Lisa Kleypas

 Photographs 2023