The Shared Table

The shared table – it’s a powerful image, a symbolic motif, which exists in many cultures and has persisted through time. It speaks of welcome, generosity, camaraderie, peace and plenty – a veritable wealth of ‘feel good’ qualities. Depicted in paintings (Bruegel’s ‘The Peasant Wedding’ or Renoir’s ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’), or described in meticulous detail (who can forget ‘An Unexpected Party’ that opens the narrative of Tolkein’s ‘The Hobbit’?), even celebrated as an exemplar of community building through the current trend for ‘long table’ events to reunite disparate, though neighbouring, resident groups and reinvigorate urban streetscapes – increasingly abandoned in this era of online shopping and virtual social interaction.

But where, in truth, does the power of this image reside? Is it in the table itself (an inanimate, utilitarian item of furniture); or the assembled company of family and friends (or foes); or is it perhaps in the arrayed food and drink (especially the drink!); the particular environs (a private home, a village longhouse, a city laneway, an outback campfire); the overlapping, interwoven or contradictory topics of conversation (or argument); or perhaps all of these and more, in combination – the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts? Maybe it is the very notion of ‘the shared table’; the idea itself, particularly in the afterglow of a full stomach and an alcohol hazed mind or the special, elevated glory of reminiscence?

Surely the mere table seems barely worthy of serious consideration? In 1963 my family arrived in Australia as ‘Ten Pound Poms’ under a government immigration scheme. After a short interval in a hostel and some rental properties we moved into our newly constructed project home in the suburbs and the very first item of furniture my father made was a simple, small, circular, Formica-covered, kitchen-come-dining table. For the ensuing fifteen-plus years the vast majority of our family meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) were consumed around this unremarkable creation. Initially we sat upon some of the upturned plywood tea-chests that had carried our worldly goods on the ship from England. These were replaced in time with a vinyl-upholstered banquette and three of the ubiquitous 1960s, mustard-coloured plastic Sebel stacking chairs. The food was common fare – Corn Flakes or Weet Bix breakfasts, sandwich or soup lunches, meat and three veg or Friday treats of take-away fish and chips for dinner – but always eaten together and pretty much always accompanied by chat, banter, discussion, debate, questions, answers, laughter or perhaps even occasional tears? Still, nothing remarkable, just a stereotypical mid-century picture of nuclear family ‘normality’.

So should we look next at the gathered diners? In a world which has increasingly embraced the notion of the supremacy and inviolate sanctity of the individual, it is only too easy to lose sight of the simple reality that we all, the entire human species, owe the greater part of our success (if indeed our current global predicaments can be classed as success?) to collaborative and cooperative behaviours. Is it this union of effort that we unwittingly evoke on those occasions we come together to dine? A raising of glasses and tearing of loaves to celebrate our combined, continued survival in ever-changing circumstances? WS Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) is oft quoted as uttering ‘it isn’t so much what’s on the table that matters, as what’s on the chairs’, though it remains unclear if his praise is for the individuals or the group. A less generous observer, with a Darwinian bent, would suggest we are simply happy if the company is comprised at least in part of one or more of our subsequent generations – children and grandchildren successfully carrying our genetic makeup into an unknown future.

Moving on to the, hopefully, bounteous feast piled upon platters and spilling from jugs (and therefore disregarding Gilbert’s contemptuous dismissal of the victuals as contributing true significance), any contemporary observer would be forgiven for thinking we seem currently to have a preoccupation with food bordering on obsession. Our popular media (be it film, television, books, newspapers and periodicals, or the truly immense online universe of blogs, archives or ‘foodie’ sharing sites) is full to bursting with recipes, reviews, recommendations and constant reminders that delicious food can be delivered to our door in minutes at the mere tap of an icon. Certainly, a delectable offering can provide its own myriad delights but for many of my personal recollections of joyous occasions around a laden table, the food has been relatively plain fare – simple sausages and salads, beer and bread. These are not the kind of dishes one imagines would elevate the repast, imbuing it with beneficent significance or indelibly imprinting a memory.

So perhaps we should consider the environs? Foundational to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs are both food and shelter, so clearly a conducive environment, a welcoming space, can contribute significantly to our comfort and happiness. But is it the critical element that converts simple consumption and chat into community and human flourishing – the ‘eudaimonia’ of the ancient Greeks? That we still recall with fondness, gatherings hampered by such as the draughtiness of a large wedding reception marquee; the relentless burning sun of a summer afternoon’s beach-side barbecue; the assault of sound within a busy trattoria or the too-small-to-swing-a-cat confines of a share-house eat-in kitchen, suggests that we can overlook most inconveniences in the right circumstances. So pleasant environs seem perhaps more desirable, than critical?

Which finally brings us to examine the conversation. David Greenberger proposes (Smith Journal, Volume 12) ‘the purpose of most conversation is to allow two people to be in the same place and time together’ which suggests that discussion is merely the glue for the assembled company. A proposition reinforced by Roman Krznaric’s observations (The Wonderbox) that conversation ‘is the unseen thread that binds [communities] together and it is time we took it more seriously.’ It is ‘a dialogue that creates mutual understanding’ and ‘has the potential … to inspire new ways of thinking and living together.’ Heady and, yes, empowering stuff but permission, binding, dialogue, and inspiration do not exist in glorious isolation but act as agents upon the participants. Participants, no less, that are relieved from immediate concerns of hunger and whose minds and tongues are relaxed perhaps with alcohol. So then maybe it is indeed the aggregate of diners, feast, comfort and conversation that creates the magic?

But here’s the thing – being in the kitchen, the centre of the home, our family table was also utilised for so many other activities; communal stirrings of the Christmas puddings; cranking the spirit-printer handle for each year’s ‘Newsletter’ to relatives in England; sitting reading with head enshrouded by the plastic bonnet of the Sunbeam hairdryer. Also, I was not a particularly voracious eater as a child and my parents insisted that our plates be scraped clean before we might leave the dinner table. Many an evening I waited, pushing the food dispiritedly around the plate until all the other family members had grown weary of my tardiness and departed to other activities (homework perhaps or the lure of the television) –  only then to move, quietly and unobserved, to open the cupboard under the kitchen sink and deposit any unwanted morsels in the bin. So the table had, for me, both positive and negative associations.

And then, just yesterday, my mother decided that after over fifty years of continued daily use, she no longer had need of this table in her recently acquired, retirement village, one-bedroom apartment. ‘Could you please take it away and either sell it for cash or donate it to charity?’ Could I? In truth, I could not. I dismantled and removed it but, despite having no immediate use for it at all and little space to store it, I have it stashed in a corner of the garage – awaiting who knows what future fate? To simply dispose of it seems somehow a betrayal or denial of all that has occurred upon and around its silent surface.

Because you see, a table is an anchor; a point of insensate stability around which all the other elements, participants and activities can find calm waters and a secure mooring. It is the enabler; it carries the trenchers of food and forgives the spills of liquor; it places the diners in visual, verbal and physical proximity whilst providing a rest for their elbows (or foreheads!); it proudly proclaims the purpose of the space it occupies, be it small suburban room, grand municipal hall or the infinite besparkled dome of the heavens; it passes no judgement on all that might be said – good or bad, calm or heated, reflective or inspirational; it is the facilitator of all that occurs in its small realm of influence. The table, in essence, embodies the very notion of sharing. It is the idea. For all its apparent simplicity, we should respect and celebrate its power and significance in our lives. I propose a toast – ‘To the shared table!’

Finalist for New Philosopher Writers’ Award XVI: Food