The Table Matters: Dinner or Kitchen
Back in Honolulu “on the road” always meant a plane ride for us. So, for the long flight home after meetings in L.A. or San Diego I sometimes picked up a little book from one of those circular racks that you see in airport lobbies. Often what I read got me more pumped than any happenings in the meetings from which I was unwinding. Such was the case with How to Get to the Top. I quote: The kitchen table is … where boys and girls learn, get ambition, get confidence, get ready, get spunk. So wrote Jeffrey Fox — best-selling author with a Harvard Business School MBA. I knew the truth of those words and they got me thinking.
Around My Childhood Table
No learned person has said it more clearly, nor could the truism have been more decisively imprinted on my brain than the quote shared by my lawyer dad at our breakfast table. He cited an unlearned client’s words to the courtroom: Don’t nobody never be’s perfect! And I can’t forget my mom’s deeply spoken words at our dinner table concerning another’s misfortune. Steeped in her beloved second language, Latin, her words sunt lacrimae rarum were to be heard more than once by my brother and me. (I was urged to take Latin but that phrase, these are the tears of things from the Roman Poet Virgil, may be my only take away from three years of it!). But there was more, much more. Like ultra-clean Quail bones on my Dad’s dinner plate — a bird he had bagged while hunting the day before. I can still envision those bones reminding me of my Dad’s unspoken integrity — i.e. You don’t kill just for sport. Waste is wrong. It’s food on the table — every morsel.
Table Notables and Table No-Nos
The “why” I’ll leave to the psychologists (or to your wise musings).
The “what” is a given: Good things often happen around the meal table — things that can change us, our children, or even history. Case in point: Sitting together over lunch, the three discussed how a plane could be designed and built with one purpose in mind — fly around the world, non-stop, with no aerial refueling… The year was 1981 and with little more than a restaurant napkin, Burt Rutan sketched out the essential design…. As the three left lunch, Burt pocketed the sketch and went to work. On December 23, 1986, exactly nine days after it took off from Edwards Air Force Base, the Voyager (they had named it) limped home to Edwards AFB and into the annals of history. It was the first ever around the world, non-stop, non-refueled flight (HistoricWings.com).
A Different Outcome for a Different Trio.
Sometime back three men (one was myself) went to lunch together. None will ever know what wonders might have come from that lunch (smile)? Because, alas, a smarter than they spoiled the hour — the phone. I had jumped when the two asked me to join them — two of my favorite people. As we left our offices they were talking on their cell phones. As we got into the car they were on their cell phones (no car phone law then). As we ordered food, ate, and returned to work, they were on their cell phones. Except to our server I never said one word the entire time — nor did they (except to their phones). Need I inscribe here the obvious? It’s a rule that’s even more important at the family table.
Some Table No-Nos are Unavoidable.
Our family, along with Dr. Brandt, our church’s guest speaker, had just sat down at the dinner table in our pet-friendly home when our daughter (whose face barely cleared the table) eagerly voiced an observation: “Look mom! There’s a flea right in the middle of Dr. Brandt’s plate!”
The Bible Weighs in Big Time
We’re told to teach God’s words to your children, talking about them when you sit at the table. And a crucial moment in the life of Christ and his disciples was a meal we know as The Lord’s supper. Later, it wasn’t until the risen Christ was at the table with them that the two of Emmaus knew who he was. Again, after his resurrection Jesus said to his awestruck disciples to come and have breakfast. And my favorite: I [Jesus] stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you. Then there are these words at the end of the Bible that declare the greatest banquet table ever: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The rest of the Jeffrey Fox quote (above).
It is at dinner where blessings are offered, toasts made, manners learned, issues discussed. It is at the dinner table where business and life lessons are learned. It is during dinner that wisdom, experience, and the history of elders is passed. I hope our children have soaked up much good around our table. But one thing is sure: Our children would never have been around our table or anywhere else if it hadn’t been for my mom’s statement — after she and I had spoken earlier concerning my indecision about biting the marriage bullet — to our gathered family (and a jolted me) around a dinner table 64½ years ago: “Let me have everybody’s attention! Sim has an important announcement to make!”
