Like most people in the days before a major holiday, I am preparing to embrace the reason for the season by completely freaking out. Will there be enough food? Chairs? Spaces so tidy it’s more “Pottery Barn” catalog and less “we actually live here.”
I pride myself on keeping a fairly clean home, but something about having visitors convinces me that I have to clean everything from top to bottom like there will be a white glove inspection. Perhaps I need to not only clean the baseboards but also clean behind them? I mean, obviously, all these people aren’t coming for the kinship in turkey. No, they’re coming to inspect under the sofa. They won’t catch me and my dust bunnies slacking. About 360 or so days per year, I play princess and ask Mr. Wonderful to carry anything heavier than a watermelon (small) in from the car for me. Then when he’s gone, I move all the furniture in the house amid a holiday cleaning frenzy. It’s similar to mothers lifting cars off their children, but in this case, I’m lifting an armoire off a stash of cat toys.
We live in an old house. An old Victorian-era house. It seems that the architects must have said more than once “There are not nearly enough nooks and crannies and cobweb areas! Back to the drawing board. We can do better.”
Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love this house. But after almost three decades, you would think I would know every single spot that a cobweb can sprout seemingly overnight. You would be wrong. Generally, I clean and buff and shine, and yet, the moment a guest’s foot crosses the threshold into our home, I look up to see a fresh cobweb. I can almost hear the applause from the house itself. “Nice work! I knew I had it in me.”
Still, this old beauty has seen a lot of holidays. I like to imagine all the recipes that have been made here. All the tables that have been set to host family and friends. On that note, as I wrestled the leaf back into my great grandparent’s table — easily 100 years old — I think of all the family Thanksgivings it has seen for us. Over five generations only the upholstery on the chairs has changed. It’s wild to me to think that my great-grandfather sat at the head of the table where my husband now sits.
This is why I struggle to understand the trend of not having or using dining rooms these days. Where do people sit? Where do they hold family meetings? Homework? Set their laptop? Test out their inner Martha Stewart with an elaborate table setting that will actually get in the way of the food.
I may be showing my age, or more likely the age of my house, but I don’t want to eat perched on a stool in the kitchen. I mean, it’s fine for munching a piece of toast or grabbing an apple, but I don’t want to be in the kitchen when I eat a full meal. I want to spread out and relax. As Girlwonder is house hunting, we go to what feels like a dozen open houses every weekend. I’m seeing a strange trend.
We have toured lovely, large homes. They offer multiple bedrooms. I’m assuming these are family homes and yet there is no place to put a table. Not in the kitchen. No space. Nor is there a dining room.
The only way to set the table up anywhere else would be to essentially rearrange the living room and have the table smack in the center of it. I guess I’m just struggling to understand the thought process in a five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home that has exactly three stools at the kitchen island and absolutely nowhere else to sit. Does the entire family just eat standing up? Take turns at the island? I’m just confused.
Sure, I love to eat on the sofa too, but not with toddlers and infants. I feel like a dining room is where table manners really come into their own.
I’m writing this from the thick of it. The final tally is, thus far, two weeks of grocery shopping, two days of cooking and cleaning and what will likely culminate in gathering around the dining room table that has seen hundreds of holidays and spending roughly 20 minutes eating.
We wouldn’t want it any other way.