The Importance of the Family Table

The table was the place for family business and for family quarrels as much as a place for eating. but most important, it was where we shared stories and learned lessons. I remember one night when the subject of managing money came up. Daddy took ten dimes out of his pocket and laid them out on the tablecloth. He said, "You give the first dime to the church. The second dime goes in your savings account. And you live on the rest." That, he said, was called tithing, and is how we should manage our money and our lives.

At that small white table in our hot kitchen, we learned the values and traditions that I later tried to teach — to recommend to — my own children.

Robert Khayat, quoted in A Gracious Plenty

This was my own experience too in raising our own children. The dinner table is where you catch up on everyone's day, hear about interesting things people have read or heard that you wouldn't have come across otherwise, and generally enjoy each other's company. Years later, with a grown daughter and my mother living with us, the dinner table serves the same function. It's a social time that I enjoy greatly and benefits us in ways we wouldn't otherwise experience.