A Look Through The Glass: A Chair Is Still A Chair Even When There's No One Sitting There...

While watching Lainey playing with play-doh on the kitchen table the other day, I was reminded about my mom coming over and seeing a paint stain on that same table from Madeline and I doing a project for school. She asked what grandma would think if she saw it.......

How long the table has been in the family is a mystery, I'm sure only Memaw could clear that one up. I do, however, know when it came to be placed in my care.

After my grandparent's house burned, what was salvageable was put in the shed behind their house until it was cleaned up and needed. Once their house was rebuilt, with it came new furniture, including a new table, leaving this one in the shed.

Fast Forward many years later, after dating Dallas for awhile we decided to move in together, needing a table, I asked Memaw and Papaw if we could have it and they said yes.

I'm sure to most of you this table doesn't look like much. It's old, very outdated, torn, been through a fire, clipped, stained, dinged up and wobbly. But to me, this table and chairs holds more memories than a picture book could ever hold.

We addressed our wedding invitations on this table, Madeline's first birthday cake sat here, even Lainey sat on this table while we fed her, it has moved from city to city with us, from Sikeston to East Prairie, Bertrand, an apartment in Kansas City to our first house there, and back to Sikeston.

The story of this table goes back so much further than that. This was also the table where my mom and uncle sat to eat their supper along with Memaw and Papaw.

I remember watching Memaw and Papaw play cards through all hours of the night with their sisters, brothers and friends blowing cigarette smoke in the air, drinking coffee, telling story after story while they laughed, and me going around from guest to guest giving back massages for change from their winnings.

These chairs have held some of the greatest people in them, family that we all love and cherish, most of which have passed on now, but are always in our thoughts. I can simply glance at a chair and see Dorothy laughing that enormous laugh, Myrt smiling with her always perfect lip stick applied mouth, Virgil and Mildred, Madderson and Bru, K D and Clell, Nevada, Anderson, FeFe in Memaws lap under the table, James and Maggie, stealing pickles from Bill during lunch, Bob, Orville, Harold, beautiful Mattie, Mayme, Recee, Uncle Terry playing guitar, the list can go on and on. But how comforting a thought to know that they all sat in the same chairs that my kids now sit on and that I used to spin Jeremy around and around on.

I see Memaw the most. The way she was before she was so sick. Her smile that could light up a room and her personalty that could decorate it, the sound her long finger nails made when she tapped them on the table, the countless hours she played games with us, and the thousands of calories of food we ate at the table while she sang to entertain us, and anyone that knew her knows that that lovely women could not carry a tune for nothing! The love she gave us is hard to compare to anything else. She still unites us each time we sit at this table.