What do you say to someone who is heartbroken?
If the heartbreak is related to a relationship breakdown or perhaps the death of a loved one, it's difficult enough, but what do you say if the significant other in this scenario is a four-legged 'Dane' with ridiculously good looks and functionality that changes lives for the better? That's right; I'm heartbroken about potentially being separated from what has quickly become one of the greatest loves of my life: our family dining table.
Of course, you can't make a claim like that without providing some sort of context and here's mine: I grew up in a family where the 24/7 consumption of good food was important, but with little thought given as to how and where we ate. Space in my childhood home was at a premium and being of Ottoman descent, we were much more comfortable sitting on the floor around the coffee table as we ate. If Neighbours or some other show we enjoyed was on, we would upgrade to sitting on the sofa with our plates in our laps. No talking, just mass shovelling and viewing. Suffice to say it became so much a habit that by the time I had my own family (not to mention a succession of cheap dining tables I had no real feelings for), we continued to eat in much the same way, albeit with the television turned off. Our only real concessions? If we had company, I had prepared a weekend Turkish breakfast, or if there was a formal feast of some description.
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Right before the pandemic hit, we rented out our home and moved into another place that had a dining room so large it begged to be filled with joy, laughter - and a large six-to-eight seat dining table set of beauty. For the first time in my life, I began to dream of dinner parties that ran into the early hours of the morning and leisurely Sunday roasts with my extended family. I searched high and low until I happened on the perfect piece: a sleek Scandinavian rosewood table with room to seat six. Watching the delivery guys position it just so, I remember only thinking it was beautiful. There is no way I could have anticipated the perfect timing of its arrival, or the role it was about to take on in our lives.
The first lockdown hit us as hard as it did everyone else. With two primary school-aged children to homeschool and two careers that needed plenty of attention to prevent what was looking like a very likely derailment, the dining table quickly became the heart of our home. We worked and taught from it, covered it with dough to make cookies and cakes - and come late at night- we unrolled my puzzle mat and worked on jigsaws to the sounds of Pink Floyd.
The table is where it all happens. Source: Getty Images
Our dining table changed our lives for the better over the last two years.
Three times a day (sometimes more) we came together to eat, discuss the day's highs and lows, and more often than not, finish meal time with a board game or two - just like in those syrup sweet American sitcoms I used to love as a kid. Believe me, it's no exaggeration when I say our dining table changed our lives for the better over the last two years. And then came the notice to vacate.
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For the last two weeks, I have morosely walked through inspection after inspection searching not for the perfect home, but for the perfect dining space in which to place our table. "Well, this one's got everything we need: plenty of room for the kids and the cats, heaps of storage, your all-important good bathtub…" my husband begins before realising I've already checked out. If a home doesn't have the dining space for our table, I will not move there. It sounds silly, all this fuss about a piece of furniture, I know, but in a world that's in free fall, the table feels like an anchor for our family and I cannot let it go. And so the search continues; me considering places that tick few of our requirements because the dining room will fit our table, and my poor husband, hugging me after each viewing with his reassuring words in my ear: "Don't worry, honey, even if we have to move back to our own home, for now, we won't stop looking until you can have your table."
It isn't the love like you know it from Hollywood romcoms, but it's love, as real and dependable as my rosewood table and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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