About a month ago, just pre-holiday-rush, I was spending the evening with my writers’ group—hard workers and patient folk, who listen to others’ words with the same care and concern with which they shape their own.
They listened as I told them that I was struggling with what’s next.
It germinated this past fall—my seed of worry—soon after my dad’s death and the completion of a manuscript I’ve been working on for several years. The seed was tight and gnarled, a little fisted thing with deep roots in the dark.
Aka writer’s block.
I’d never really experienced it before, but now I have, and it’s not pretty.
That night, one of the women present generously suggested that I write about tables. Earlier, I’d said that I felt something along the lines of: “You can go almost anywhere with someone once you’ve sat at her kitchen table.” And I’d talked about tables before that at another time as well—the import of an inherited dining room table, I believe.
Tables. Hmmm. Nice idea, but not mine, so much, I thought.
Then the just pre-holiday-rush became the holiday rush. And I realized that I couldn’t shake this idea. Originally mine or not, it took root and, for some moments at least, displaced the other, darker seed. I considered the places I’ve set, as a daughter, friend, wife, mother, and writer, and those who have let me be their guest. I thought about the communion table, and communion of all kinds—the rituals that bind us together, the ruptures and upsets that can come, the cleansing sweep that sometimes needs to happen.
I thought: I want to write about this.
And now at table—at my kitchen counter, to be more precise, cool green beneath arms on this cold January night, only hours before my birthday—I’m setting a place.
