The table is the first institution

Before there was a school, a market or a state, there was a table. Every household had one. It was where food was shared, where the old spoke and the young listened, where news was weighed and quarrels were settled before bed.

Horace, writing about the good life, describes a small table and a salt cellar that belonged to the father. The object mattered because it had been used before. It carried the family’s habits from one generation to the next without anyone having to explain them.

We keep the table for the same reason. It is the cheapest institution a family can run, and the hardest to replace. A meal shared every evening teaches more than most courses. Children learn how adults disagree. Adults learn what the children are worried about. Grandparents have a place to say what they know. Nobody has to plan any of it. It happens because the chairs are there and the food is warm.

It is the cheapest institution a family can run, and the hardest to replace.

Much of modern life takes the chairs away. Work runs late. Meals arrive in boxes and are eaten in separate rooms, in front of separate screens. Each change looks small and sensible. Together they dissolve the one daily meeting a family used to have.

This was common knowledge until recently. Our grandparents needed no study to know that a family that eats together holds together. They simply did it, as their parents had.

Our practice is plain. One meal a day at the same table, with the phones in another room. Food a great-grandmother would recognize. A place for whoever is oldest and a task for whoever is youngest. On Sundays, the long table and the extra chairs.

Set the table. The rest follows.