Tables Serve up Memories

The old table pictured above has seen better days, I'm sure. Now it is in someone's yard instead of a dining room. 

When I was a child, my family gathered around a table exactly like this one in the dining room of the house on the farm in south Georgia. Looking at this picture, I can see my four brothers sitting around that table along with my father at the head and my mother sitting to his right. I see a high chair between Mother and Daddy with my baby sister sitting in it. I know I am on Mother's right side. My brother Hal sat to my right. If Gay was one year old, I was two and a half years older. Mother helped my plate with small helpings of vegetables and meat and always one of her freshly baked biscuits.

My setting is the dining room of the farmhouse on Fleming Road in south Georgia. My characters are all my family members. We never run out of stories as long as we know our family including our ancestors. My aunts and uncles are also characters in my stories. 

I can think about other tables in my life and other stories come to mind. In our first home, my husband and I had a small rectangular table in the kitchen. Later in our dream house where we spent 25 years together our dining table was a long parsons table, laminated and built for us. It was a conversation piece. We had many interesting people sit at that table. Each of them is a memory for me with their story I can tell. 

Writers circle around the table in my studio. Wonderful memories. Wonderful people gathered here.

Tables are known for bringing people together. My brother Max always asked for a round table when he went to a restaurant. They are much more conducive to conversation, especially for storytellers and he was a good one.

In my home in the mountains, I insisted we buy a round table for our dining area. So many new friends, writers, and poets have sat with me at that table. Meetings for our Netwest group have gathered there to discuss the future of our organization. 

After my husband died, I seldom sat alone at the table for meals. I ate on a tray in front of the television set. My lovely round table has recently become an extension of my computer desk.

 As I continue to downsize in preparation for the future, I wonder what will become of my round table. That table could be enlarged with a leaf in the middle of it. Many times six or eight people have gathered there, family and friends. My round table that we bought on sale in Atlanta and hauled home in segments in our car, is one of my favorite things. Maybe I will be able to keep it if or when I leave that house. But I will always have the memories of the good times and the dear people who sat there with me.

Do you have some tables in your life or in your past life that stir memories of times and people and places? Maybe you can write about them. I do and will continue to write poems and stories that are centered around a table. 

Lunar Eclipse Tonight - Will I see it?

Tonight I hope to go somewhere I can see the lunar eclipse. With all the trees around my house, I can't see the moon until it is straight overhead. In south Georgia where I used to live, the land was flat and I could just walk a little way to an open pasture, lie on a blanket and see all of the sky from east to west. Here, I will drive to the lake, park up on the dam level, and see it, I'm sure.

Life in the mountains is much different from life on my beloved farm where I grew up. I don't remember hardship as a child although we had little money. I had my sister to play with every day and my sweet and loving mother always near. I didn't miss what I didn't know others had, like fancy dolls or toys. I used my imagination, as did my sister, Gay. We played farm using Daddy's tobacco bags with their string ties as wagons for our horses which were Daddy's empty match boxes. Sometimes we played farm under the big oak tree. I would be the horse pulling the plow (a long tooth rake) while Gay handled the reins, a long hay string that reached from my mouth to her hands. 

When I think about playing farm, I realize that was what we saw day in and day out--my father and my brothers working on the farm. When we weren't playing farm, we played with my sister June's cosmetic bottles and her high heel shoes. The bottles were all sizes, and they made fine families of grown ups with children. The bottles fit into the shiny shoes, and we pretended the family was going for a ride in the car.

The two of us lived in our imagination. 

When we went to bed at night, we composed stories in our head until we fell asleep. I learned in later years that my father did the same thing. He read western novels by  Louis L'Amour. Before he fell asleep, he made up his own western stories. I wish he had written them down. I'd love to know what he thought about. 

Tonight's Moon

When I go out tonight to see the moon, I'll think about all the moons I've seen in my life, who I was with when I gazed up at the night, where I was at the time and why I remember them. We remember things for a reason. If there is no reason, we don't remember. Maybe I'll take a notepad and jot down my thoughts as I watch what happens in the sky.

Do you have any moon-watching memories? I hope you will share them in the comments.