WAILUKU, Maui >> If you invite Monsignor Terrence Watanabe to a dinner party and he offers to bring something, don’t be shy: Ask him to bring the china.
“I call this a feast for the eyes,” said Watanabe while looking over two tables he had lavishly dressed for Easter brunch. “This brings people together to talk story and share our lives with one another.”
Although it might seem odd that a monsignor would find such satisfaction in designing ornate place settings for holidays, weddings or any old meal, his secular hobby dovetails perfectly with his religious duties of setting the spiritual table whenever he leads Mass for his flock at St. Theresa’s Church in Kihei.
“With the Eucharist we’re at the Lord’s table sharing a meal together,” said Watanabe, known as Father Terry to his parishioners. “The dinner table at home should be as sacred as the altar at church.”
Watanabe has long understood the importance of a daily sit-down dinner for families. As a child his job was to set the table for the evening meal at home with plates that were simple and napkins made of paper.
“Our meals were never catch-as-catch-can,” said Watanabe. “Food was always brought to the table, family style. We always sat down to dinner together. The dining experience was not just about filling our bodies, but filling our minds, our souls, our hearts.”
When large family events were planned, young Terry was tapped to turn the tables into artistic conversation starters.
“I think the key word here is family,” said Leona Rocha Wilson, Watanabe’s effervescent aunt, who remembers those happy reunions and now benefits from her nephew’s table settings at her Wailuku Heights estate, named Lona Ridge.
Watanabe grew up in a creative home where his mother (Wilson’s sister), the late Eleanor Watanabe, not only insisted on family dinners, but decided that Christmas should be a part of daily life. She became known as Maui’s “Christmas Tree Lady” because of the forest of exquisitely decorated trees she had in their home year-round. She even tore down a wall to make more space for her beloved trees.
“We’re probably the only family that went from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom,” said Watanabe with a smile.
What tree decorating was to his mother, table decorating is to him. His artistic pastime now requires a storage unit to hold his growing collection of elegant dishes (sets of eight preferred), stemware, cutlery and linens along with centerpieces, ornaments and trimmings.
For Easter at his aunt’s stately home, Watanabe chose a pink and pale-purple scheme complete with Champagne flutes filled with jelly beans and napkins folded in the shape of rabbit ears. A sprinkling of green grass perhaps borrowed from an Easter basket covers the tablecloth, with a flowering tree in the middle.
Even with so much froufrou and fun, the reason for the season is not forgotten.
“We need to understand what the feast is about,” he said.
Before he was setting tables, Watanabe was already on his path to serving the Lord. He was influenced by the strong faith of his maternal grandmother, Mary Rocha, and the kind devotion of the Sisters of St. Joseph at Christ the King School, where he was in the third graduating class. He joined St. Stephen’s Seminary when he was just 13.
That was more than 50 years ago. Watanabe has seen the significance of the nightly family meal dwindle, affecting the essence of the household.
“It’s the conversation that takes place which is so important. The food is really secondary,” he said. “The human experiences we have are so important to move us to the spiritual level of understanding God and the gifts He has given to us, such as the Eucharist.”
It’s difficult to convey the meaning of Jesus’ Last Supper with young people in the church, he explained, if they don’t know what meaningful family dinners are all about, whether the napkins are of paper or combed cotton.
With the decorations in place at his Aunt Leona’s house, Monsignor Watanabe can now concentrate on setting a more important table: the altar for Easter Sunday Eucharist.
