What is a table of belonging? Quite simply it's a place where we can sit, relax and be ourselves; as we share good food, conversation and memories we find nourishment not just for the body, but also for heart and spirit, and that is something we need, now more than ever. ‘Please come to the table,’ my mother used to say when we had guests. And when they did, it was to feast, and to remember that life can be ‘so endlessly delicious’, to quote the American food writer, Ruth Reichl.
There were two tables we ate at in the house of my childhood, a home in the eastern suburbs of Pretoria. The first table was in the ‘proper’ dining room, a heavy, dark table with extendable leaves at each…