Week 23 - A Place That Matters - Table

 

Growing up in a large family (five daughters and Mom and Dad), we filled every spot at the dining room table. Right down to the youngest in a highchair placed at the corner next to Mom. You learned to eat what was served, say please and thank you and always asked to be excused when you were finished. And don't forget to take your empty plate to the kitchen to be scraped and where you and your sisters would wash and dry it when everyone was finished.

When I got up in the morning, I would find my mom sitting at her place at the table with a cup of black coffee and often a cigarette smoking in a square turquoise colored ashtray. She always smiled; made you feel like you were the most important person at that point in time. 

During the day it was a gathering place. Aunt Aggie would come for lunch while working at the local A&P grocery. There would be no knowing she was coming, she would just pull up out front and mom would find something to eat.  When friends came to call, everyone found a seat. If there was a craft project being worked on it was done at the table. Reading through a Hollywood gossip magazine or the latest TV Guide and dunking Chips Ahoy cookies in a glass of milk was done at that spot. Homework was a frequent visitor also.

(l-r) Carolyn, friends Madge & Lloyd, Dad, Mom, Barbie

There were secrets shared there, planning dates and what to wear, the excitement of organizing weddings and baby showers, and the sadness of funerals. When sisters would come home to visit, it was where we gathered. To laugh and talk about the happenings in our everyday lives. Where we would gather to play cards and my brother-in-law Dick would break out in his big booming laugh. 

That white and gray swirled Formica table was where I listened to Mom, Aunt Aggie and Auntie Al talk about their lives growing up, where I asked questions about my grandparents and where I caught 'the genealogy bug' back about 1970.

Whether you call it a dining room table or kitchen table that is the one place in the house that carried the most memories and where those that mattered the most would gather.  And come 6:00 pm dinner would again be put on that table, and those that weren't working or at a school gathering would quickly find their seat.

Barbie

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