I like to think that my home is a place where my friends and family likes to gather. The first year we moved into our neighborhood, we hosted a few parties on the patio and joined a dinner group. But eventually, our socializing slowed down a bit. We developed a core group of friends. Nowadays, these friends enjoy casual time together, and we sit around one another's kitchen tables.
My first neighborhood friendships involved organizing a fair for the elementary school. Rather than trying to find an empty room at the school, I invited the parent volunteers to my house to organize the event. Other parents hosted meetings, too, and the work we did around our dining tables was productive for our schools and for our friendships.
Some of the women in the new neighborhood decided we'd like to get together one evening a month. Playing bunko was a new concept for me, but the rules were easy, and we got to visit a different home once a month. We played bunko at card tables, dining room tables, and kitchen tables. Once a month, under the guise of bunko, we ate dinner, drank glasses of Chablis, and shared wisdom, laughter, and tears with one another.
The middle school years were challenging for my family, and we decided to homeschool our older daughter. Each day we met at one or more tables-at our own, to read newspapers and discuss current events, or with our neighbor down the block who tutored math for the three years our daughter learned at home. We visited the homes of friends who were born in foreign countries, sat at their tables, and heard stories of their lives before they became our neighbors. And at the end of each year, we visited the homes of different teachers who were friends and neighbors, brought them some of our favorite projects to review, and had them sign off on our accomplishments while we talked to them at our "school year."
I eventually determined that it was time to return to work, and I spent a great deal of time at the tables of a few friends of mine-to update their resumes, edit a book or two, and review college essays written by high school seniors. I wrote lessons for online courses, figured out how to teach a college class, and wrote numerous online articles. I was being paid to be a writer and editor again. Getting to do that at my favorite kitchen tables was like getting paid to breathe.
Our kitchen tables are the places where we share meals with our families, but we also use them as places to share life stories. It is at the kitchen tables of friends that we talk about aging parents, maturing children, failing marriages, finding jobs, and planning vacations together.
It's always an honor to be invited to the home of new friends, and even more of an honor to be part of those places where they live their lives. When the conversations around their kitchen tables turn to their lives, you have to appreciate that they are taking you into their confidence and making you part of their lives. Kitchen tables don't just hold our cereal bowls and pizza boxes; they hold our memories and dreams for the future, too.
My favorite neighbor recently talked about replacing her 20-year-old table, and I thought about swapping out my clearance center set with something more sophisticated. But it makes me a little nostalgic when I glance at our tables. Can we create memories just as fine at our new kitchen tables? I bet we can.
Author Jennifer Akre is an owner of a wide variety of online specialty shops including that offer both items and information on how you can easily furnish, decorate your space and how to purchase best furnitures in Ulhasnagar furniture market
