Lindsey Nair

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In my dining room, I have a beautiful drop-leaf cherry table. I inherited it from my grandparents.

My family heirloom is loved much and polished often, but it's also a bit of a pain.

The table only seats one on each end, unless two people conspire to open it, getting on their hands and knees, lifting the heavy leaves, crawling underneath them and sliding out two wooden braces shaped like upside-down Ls. Then, it seats 10.

It also then has eight legs, so folks along the sides sometimes have to sit in a bizarre split-stance or bang a knee or two to get everyone crowded in.

Of course, when I was a child and it was time for the whole family to get together, that didn't really matter. Grandma would say, "Can someone open the table, please?" and we'd be right there, ready to drop to our knees.

Paw-Paw, as we called my grandfather, held court at one end. Dad sat on the other end. Along the sides went Great-Uncle Bill and Great-Aunt Billie, Grandma, Mom, my two aunts, my sister and me.

Around the holidays, many things would be certain: Uncle Bill would eat "catheads," or biscuits, with gravy while we all ate dessert. Billie, my tiny, birdlike great-aunt, would request a piece of pie or cake so thin she could "read through it." Paw-Paw would declare his dislike for broccoli but scarf my mother's cheese-laden broccoli casserole. And my sister would pull the mashed potatoes her way and ask what everybody else was going to eat.

They were rituals, to be sure. But they were feel-good rituals, and we laughed hard and earnestly every single time.

Over the years, as family tables are wont to do, the drop leaf's seating ebbed and flowed. Great-Uncle Bill succumbed to a heart attack on his daily walk (after 86 years of great catheads) more than a decade ago. Billie shortly went to find him.

There were three marriages and one divorce. My grandparents ailed, and the anguish of caregiver stress invaded the cracks of my family. Paw-Paw and Grandma died, and the table that brought us all together turned up empty.

And then it turned up at my house.

There, it dominates the dining room but is seldom used. Sure, it gets broken out for dinner parties on occasion, but the group is always smaller than it used to be. Nobody bangs a knee; everyone sits in his or her proper space.

Last Thanksgiving, the leaves came up for the biggest celebration since the old days. My dad and my father-in-law came, as did my sister and her hubby. We crawled underneath and opened up the table, then covered it with a lace tablecloth from my grandmother's collection and piled it high with food.

There was brined, roasted local turkey, homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls and pie. We washed it all down with hard cider and caught up on chatter and laughter.

But nobody ate catheads with gravy. Nobody asked for a paper-thin slice of dessert, declared a hatred of broccoli or threatened to eat all the mashed potatoes. We were gathered around the same table, but little else was the same.

That's when I realized I'll never be able to re-create those holiday dinners of my youth. Life changes, and so do the people around the table -- whatever table that may be.

This year, I'll be at my in-laws' house at the beach, watching the November wind rip the sound outside their kitchen windows. Some of my family will gather at Dad's new house in the forest of Bath County, where deer sneak into the backyard for the corn he throws out.

Wherever we are, we will eat too much, laugh just enough and start new rituals.

We won't be around the cherry drop-leaf table, at least not physically. But in our memories, we will always be there -- banging our knees and sitting in a bizarre split-stance.