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I’m sure you’ve heard people say that the kitchen is the heart of a home. Actually, I think the kitchen table or dining table is the real heart.
Whenever family visits, we don’t sit in the aptly named family room. We sit around the dining table. We aren’t sitting there to eat. We are sitting there to chat, to drink, to play cards and to visit. We look at old photos. We tell tales of relatives long past. We laugh at silly stories. Many a happy memory has been shared and made at the dining table.
Sitting at the table is comforting. Sure sometimes the TV is on, but mostly, we just want to hang out with each other and not stand around.
No one ever falls asleep at the table. The same cannot be said of the couch in the family room. It’s comfort overwhelms even the most caffeinated of the bunch.
Of course, since my table is small and visitors are few, congregation tends to occur in my living room whenever I have the rare guest. But, if I had a larger house with more people in it on a regular basis, I would probably follow the pattern of my family and we would all gather ’round the table.