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Growing up in a family with five children, household maintenance was always an issue for us. The furniture we lived on had to wear hard, hide grime, and stay sturdy. We ate dinner every night around a laminate-topped kitchen table-you know, the kind with photo-engraved wood, surrounded by a set of vinyl chairs that only required an occasional wipe-down.

I may have been a too sophisticated for my age and the time, but I knew this décor was not one that I would emulate when I had my own home. I used to walk past the dinette store in our neighborhood and peek in the window. I saw more tables and chairs inside than I did at even the biggest restaurant I had ever visited. But the dinette sets that always caught my eye had one thing in common – they all had a glass table. But I knew – never, never would I see one in my childhood house!

Decades later, the time came to buy my first dinette set. I walked into a dinette store not unlike the one in my childhood neighborhood. I walked in the door, and the very first set I saw spoke to me – it had a white wrought iron base and upholstered chairs (much more comfortable than they looked), and a 48-inch rolled-edge glass table. I casually walked around the store, looking for something I loved as much, but at a more moderate price. It did no good. I would only be happy with the glass table and upholstered chairs. It fit perfectly in my breakfast nook, and the morning sun shone right down to my brand-new hardwood floors. When I put my glass table and chairs in place, my kitchen looked like a page from a magazine.

At the time, I lived in a house with grown-ups – my husband and his parents, who were snowbirds in winter. We designed our house with a bedroom, den and galley kitchen just for them, and when they went furniture shopping, they came home with a dinette set of their own – four high-backed chairs, and yes, a glass table.

When the first baby came along, I suspect my mother and mother-in-law thought, “That table will never be clean again.” But baby food wipes off, and a little glass cleaner a couple of times a day kept my favorite glass table looking great.

Within a few years, we moved to another state and built another house. Although it wasn’t the top priority when I was looking for a new house, I was happy to find a house with another great breakfast nook that fit my glass table and chairs perfectly. Another baby added another set of tiny handprints, but the glass table remained just as easy to keep clean.

We had yet another move, and this time, we were renovating an old house. When you’re working with an existing structure, you need to take what you get, but we were able to rework the kitchen to give us just the right amount of space in the eat-in kitchen for our favorite glass table and chairs.

Eventually, my luck ran out. Years after I bought the dinette set of my dreams, I moved into a house that called for a different size table. I wanted to rule out the house on the grounds that the glass table – where we had so many meals, birthday cakes, Brownie meetings, and homework assignments – would no longer fit. I acquiesced.

But as I toured the rest of the house, I did notice a fine place for my reliable friend, the glass table, on the covered patio.

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