MADE POSSIBLE BY A TABLE

Our house came with a picnic table.

It stood innocuously on the curious little deck that adjoins the garage in the farthest reaches of the backyard, and for a while we hardly noticed it.  We were in the market for a house, not a picnic table, and for all we knew, the table would be gone by the time we moved in.  Later we talked about getting rid of it.  We remarked offhandedly that we would probably never use it.

That was last year.  Last night we moved the table that we never asked for out into the yard and thirteen people shared a meal squeezed onto its long benches.  We had always imagined hosting parties in our home, but the picnic table hadn't figured into our plans because we hadn't planned on having a picnic table.

It's a hefty thing.  It might have been homemade, and we can only guess how long it's graced the premises.  Mark had to enlist the help of the men in our company to move it; we've accomplished it before with just the two of us, but it was probably ill-advised.

The evening was the kind you pray for when you're planning a party, and all along I'd been expecting the worst.  I had given a lot of thought to the best way to fit everyone into our house, but as it happened, it would have been a travesty to stay inside.  I don't know what we'd have done if we didn't have a huge picnic table just lying around.  Three toddlers played in the grass while a small dog belonging to one of our friends ran in and out of legs, and around the table people sat elbow to elbow eating and talking as though it were a large, lively family dinner.

And as we were setting it up, someone asked me, "Where can you find a table like this?"

I said, "I don't know.  It came with the house."

And we are glad now that it did.