The Parable of the Wooden Table
The Wooden Table awoke slowly, as if from a long, deep sleep. It felt achy and stiff, but not tired, even though it dreamed of a journey. In the dream’s beginning, the Wooden Table was cool and bathed in light from the Sun and shadows from trees and leaves. It saw sky above and earth below and heard birds and snakes and lizards and toads and ants and bees. Their music was melodious. But the serenity was broken by screaming saws and screaming birds and ants; the Wooden Table screamed, too, and the sky disappeared. Then came a place of loud noises, of saws — more saws — that sliced, screws that bored, planes that scraped. The Wooden Table screamed again, but this time it screamed alone.
All was dark, quiet.
“What am I?” it called to the dark.
“You are of me,” the Mother answered. “I raised the pine trees that give you form. I birthed the metals that hold your form together.”
The Wooden Table remembered the sky, the birds, the screams. It was not a dream, it was a memory of a time before.
“Who am I?”
“You are the Wooden Table.”
“Where am I?”
“The People brought you here where they live.”
“Who are the People and why am I here?”
“You will learn.”
The Wooden Table paused. This was a lot of information to consider after a long, deep sleep.
As it was considering this information, the Sun rose. The Wooden Table could not see the Sun, but its light felt familiar. Everything else was ... not familiar. The Wooden Table was in a space enclosed on all sides and above and below by flat, hard surfaces. The Sun’s light came through two holes in one of the surfaces. The Wooden Table did not understand this concept of space with boundaries; in the time before, it knew only the soft earth.
A man and a woman entered the space. The Wooden Table recognized what they were because it remembered, in the time before, seeing men and women walking on a path between the trees, or sitting with their eyes closed and their backs against a tree. The man and woman placed plates and cups on the Wooden Table, sat down, and ate from the plates and drank from the cups. They talked while they ate, sometimes making a sound like a burbling stream. Then they left with the plates and cups. They returned when the Sun’s light was waning and ate and talked and burbled. Sometimes they held hands. As before, they left with the plates and cups. But this time they returned. The woman spread papers in front of her and made marks on them with a red pencil and the man put his legs up on the Wooden Table and opened a newspaper. After a while, which included a little bit of talking and an occasional burble, they left.
“What are the sounds the woman and the man make, like a burbling stream?” the Wooden Table asked the Mother when it was alone.
“Those are the sounds they make when they feel Happy,” the Mother replied.
“What does Happy feel like?”
“It is not for you to know, only for you to remember.”
Days passed, and months, and years. Sometimes other men and women came to the Wooden Table and talked and ate and burbled, but they left before the Sun’s light disappeared. The Woman with the Red Pencil and the Man with the Newspaper stayed. These are the People, the Wooden Table thought.
On days when others came, the People brought more plates and cups and much more food and drink, and the Wooden Table bore it all. The space was filled with even more burbling, like many streams running side by side.
Is this why I am here, it wondered, to bear the weight of the food?
One day, the People came with a baby to the Wooden Table. And then a short time later with another baby. And then another. Each time they brought a baby, the People also brought others, and everyone talked and burbled louder than usual. Each time a baby grew a little bigger, the People gathered with others around the Wooden Table. When the babies became men and women, some of them had babies, and the talking and burbling increased in intensity and frequency.
The Wooden Table did not understand what it was about the babies growing that caused the People to burble louder than usual, just as it did not understand why the People burbled that way even when they stopped growing, just as it did not understand why the People burbled when they brought others to it. But it remembered each time the People burbled.
“The People are now many and they often feel Happy,” the Wooden Table reported to the Mother when it was alone.
But not always. The Wooden Table began to notice sounds that were not like a burbling stream. Once, when the light of the Sun was waning and the People gathered to eat and drink, they interrupted their talking with brittle sounds, sounds with edges. Soon the People were making only brittle sounds, until one of the People left quickly and the space became silent.
“What are the brittle sounds the People make?” the Wooden Table asked the Mother when it was alone.
“Those are the sounds they make when they feel Angry,” the Mother said.
“What does Angry feel like?”
“It is not for you to know....”
“But for me to remember?”
“Yes.”
The Wooden Table did not understand what caused the People to make brittle sounds, and sometimes stop burbling and make brittle sounds, and even sometimes make brittle sounds and then burble. But it remembered each time the People made brittle sounds.
Days passed, and months, and years, and still the Wooden Table did not know why it was.
One day the Old Man with the Newspaper didn’t come back. The Wooden Table waited. And waited. Then the People gathered around the Wooden Table and made sounds. The Wooden Table did not understand these sounds, which rose and fell and rose again, and shattered into other sounds that spun around each other and fused briefly before flying apart. The sounds lingered, even when the People paused before making more such sounds.
“Why didn’t the Old Man with the Newspaper come back to me?” the Wooden Table asked the Mother when it was alone.
“Because,” said the Mother, “he came back to me.”
“What does that mean?”
“All the People come back to me, and from me they will come.”
“Will I come back to you?”
“Yes.”
The Wooden Table considered this information.
“What are those sounds the People make?”
“Those are the sounds they make when they feel Sad.”
“And I suppose it is not for me to know, but to remember.”
“Yes.”
“Will I ever feel Happy or Angry or Sad?”
“Perhaps you will feel Content.”
“What does Content feel like?”
“That is for you to know.”
The Wooden Table was to hear those sounds again over the coming years. When a young man did not come back, when the Old Woman with the Red Pencil did not come back, when a young woman did not come back, the People gathered around the Wooden Table and made those sounds.
The Wooden Table did not understand why the Old Man with the Newspaper and the others decided to come back to the Mother. But it remembered each time the People made those sounds.
Days passed, and months, and years, and still the Wooden Table did not know why it was. The Wooden Table’s joints now groaned when they moved — wood against wood, metal against metal — and its legs were wobbly. So many People, so many others, so many elbows and plates of food, so many sounds.
One night when the Wooden Table was alone, it said to the Mother, “You see where a child carved its name into my leg? It hurt, but not as bad as the screws from the time before. And here, on my crossbars, where the People rested their feet, you see the scuffs and the missing pieces? The People were comfortable. And here, on my top, look at these scratches and worn areas, where so many plates and elbows and babies and the legs of the Old Man with the Newspaper came to rest. They came to rest on me. The People come back to me.”
“Why?” asked the Mother.
The Wooden Table did not expect this question. “I don’t understand.”
“Why do the People come back to you?”
The Wooden Table understood this was an important question, and not one that should be answered hastily. So it thought back to all that it had witnessed since it awoke from the long, deep sleep — the first time the Woman with the Red Pencil and the Man with the Newspaper held hands, the first time they burbled, the first baby, the tenth baby, the day the Old Man with the Newspaper did not come back....
“I remember! I remember everything,” the Wooden Table said, more to itself than to the Mother. “The Happy times, the Angry times, the Sad times, the just-talking times, the quiet times. The babies who grew up, the men and women who grew old. The People who came back to me. The People who came back to you. The others, so many others, who gathered with the People.”
“I am filled with memories, and the People need these memories because….,” the Wooden Table stumbled, searching for the meaning, “because the People are the memories they keep,” it continued, almost out of breath, “and when the People gather around me, the memories remind them of who they are.”
The Wooden Table paused in wonder. “I am … Home.”
The words hung in the air.
“You have learned,” said the Mother.
The Wooden Table felt Content, and as it gathered the memories in its embrace, it quietly repeated to itself, “I am Home. I am Home.” Then, for the first time since the dream of the journey, the Wooden Table slept.
Postscript
When my mom and dad married in 1952, they bought a wooden table with three extension leaves and six chairs from a thrift shop. It sat in our apartment on St. James Place in Brooklyn for more than 10 years, in our house on Clermont Avenue in Brooklyn for 30 years, then in their house in Miami for a decade, and finally in my house in Miami, where it lives today, 70 years later. Mom was, among other things, an editor (the Woman with the Red Pencil). After dinner, Dad would put his legs up on the table and read the newspaper (the Man with the Newspaper). The story is a meditation on what family means. It is dedicated to those who keep the memories.
Photographs selected and arranged by Daniela Spector.