Crushed or Folded – How Do You Leave Yours?

Let’s start by saying I’m not a napkin girl. I’m not a kitchen roll girl. I don’t have that dinnertime etiquette. I might wipe fingers on a tea towel but nothing really designated for the job.

Let’s continue by saying I am not a slow eater. My husband puts it all down to being a member of a large family and if you don’t eat things quickly they will be snaffled by a hungry sibling. This is not true. Big family, yes. Snaffling off another’s plate, not done. My only occasion of snaffling was done by the husband. I like my last mouthful to be my favourite part of the meal. A curl of bacon from a savoury quiche, lovingly singled out to be my last mouthful. His fork swoops in. He says the thought I was leaving it, not as a last loving mouthful, but just leaving it with ‘full-belly-can’t-eat-another-mouthful’ message. He has admitted that he knew that wasn’t the case. He knew me well enough to know my habits by then.

Let me also say that my husband is a slow eater. His was a smaller family, he says, without the need to snaffle. He stops, rests knife and fork on the edge of the plate and takes a breather. To the untutored waiting staff in the restaurant, they don’t know about the pauses and sweep in to take the plate away. They see that I am finished and presume that he is too. He swiftly snatches his plate back, scattering peas across the table. He is not fond of peas anyway.

I was reading this morning about table manners in ancient times. It appears that what you do with the napkin is important. If the napkin in crushed and dumped on a plate, not an empty plate, the diner is sending a clear ’full-belly-can’t-eat-another-mouthful’ message. The waiting staff can pick up the plate and dust crumbs off the table with confidence. If, however, the napkin is folded neatly and placed beside the plate, the message is ‘I’m-not-done-I’m-coming-back-to-it’.

It’s Easter. I had been reading about that Sunday morning resurrection event and about people arriving at an empty tomb, and angels telling them to look for Jesus elsewhere – the living are not found among the dead. There are grave clothes tossed away, but the cloth that was around Jesus’ head was folded

neatly. Not crushed and abandoned like the other things but folded.

And what is the message behind a folded head cloth? I’m-not-done-I’m-coming-back-to-it’.

I got to thinking about the napkin, about the crushed or th

e folded napkin and the ’full-belly-can’t-eat-another-mouthful’ or the ‘I’m-not-done-I’m-coming-back-to-it’ messages. I think I have got it wrong on numerous occasions. There are times when I should have crushed the napkin, and other times when I should have folded. There are times when I have said that I am done with something when I’m not done at all. I’m just taking a pause. Difficult relationships. We all have them. Something is said, or done, that sinks a boat. We crush the napkin and say we are done with it, or them. We mentally scribble across the page. It is over. Maybe we block or defriend them on social media. Maybe we change the lock on the front door. And there are times when I folded and should have crushed. Things were really over and done with, and yet I clung on, looking for a change that would never come. We wait and we wait and we tell ourselves it will happen and it doesn’t. Or we persuade ourselves of the ‘if’s we think can change things. Going through fertility treatment and miscarriages, there were a lot of things I thought I could do to bring a child to birth. I gave up knitting baby cardigans because I thought I would jinx it. Silly looking back to think that I had any control at all. There came a time when the napkin needed to be crushed rather than folded. On my fortieth birthday I did that.

I don’t know about the crushed or folded napkins in your life, but you know them. It is perhaps time to take a closer look and smooth out some of the crushed ones and crush some of those folded ones.