Setting the Table
What is it about setting the table? I have no childhood memories of my mother setting the table or that we kids were given the chore. Perhaps for me it dates back to the shutdown and to having my life shut down in so many ways. But at least I could count on the meals and the cooking and the setting and the sitting at the table. Was it then that Robert and I took the places we still occupy each evening we are home to sit, arranging ourselves habitually. I have a view to the garden. The one he rarely goes out to unless throwing a ball for Asher, down the breezeway with not much glance to my pots of perennials or the blooms on the Hellebores or the lemon tree which refuses to lemon or even to the wall of Jasmine he helped to create. His place is in view of the kitchen and Asher’s bed so he can note if the dog is napping or chewing on the soft corners.
Some time ago, maybe even predating Covid, a time which is sometimes hard to remember, I started purchasing cloth napkins. In person, while traveling or at a local crafts fair or at my favorite store on 4th street in Berkeley. Nothing very expensive, cotton or linen and machine washable. Maybe to pick up the orange in the one dining room wall, maybe to set off the placemats I bought in Italy or the woven ones from my childhood. Or the ones from our trip to Madagascar, many years before Covid.
I set the table every night. Though Robert would volunteer, I think for me it is a chance to control my environment and to make something peaceful and coordinated and colorful when so much of the world is not. I stand back and evaluate my choices, occasionally making some last-minute change. When Nico comes to visit, or Nathaniel or both of them I set 4 places at the table. And I distinguish their napkins so they return to the same place for the next meal. I have never thought of myself as any kind of germaphobe, but it settles me to see that each of us returns to the same place. Robert still faces the kitchen and me the garden, so the kids – as I still call them at 29 and 30 – take what is left.
Last night I took out the tablecloth my grandmother embroidered which I will use for tomorrow night’s Seder. And her elegant, cut crystal wine glasses that I rarely use. I always combine that tablecloth with white, linen napkins of the Crate and Barrel variety. But this year I decided instead to use a mix of linen ones, fringed. Half are a pale grey and half a mustard yellow. It has been hard to think about Passover this year. I recently said to a friend that I am equally proud and ashamed to be Jewish these days. I have wondered if and how to interject some relevance into tomorrow’s service.
A friend sent a suggestion from an action network. My Quaker guest was wondering about mixing in politics. I want to read an editorial by Jose Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, about the unspeakable horror of denying food…to anyone. Like recipes, I have a collection of clippings from the New York times. The editorials I admired during the early days. By Nicholas Kristof and Charles Blow. I have stopped clipping, there are too many.
Next year in Jerusalem. I think not. But next year I imagine I will still be setting the table. Each night for Robert and me and hopefully, often, for the kids , the boys, and the lovely Dasha. Nico teases me sometimes. ”Mom, are these new napkins? When did you get these?” He notices everything!
The shelf on which I keep the napkins, in orderly stacks on top of the placemat collection, is full. The last set from my trip to Italy last year. Before Oct. 7 when Passover only meant who would cook what. I wonder if this ritual of setting the table, purchasing napkins and changing the layout - which I do weekly – for another pair of napkins to couple with two different placemats is a wish for peace, control and order. Something predictable that I can rely on to change only in appearance from floral to solid and back again.