pieces and ponderings

An unusual thing happened this morning…five people in our family, the five people in our house at the time,  all sat down at the table in our dining room for breakfast.  Well…technically I wasn’t eating breakfast…just drinking a cup of coffee…but my youngest three sons and their dad were all eating breakfast.  That doesn’t happen too often on school days.  It’s usually more a kids-sitting-down-briefly-to-eat and the mom (me) is works on lunches to send off with them to school and the dad is walking around doing dad-getting-ready-in-the-morning stuff.

So when I realized that we were all sitting down together and taking slow, easy breaths and my boys were eating their food and actually taking time to chew it…it was a nice feeling.

I looked at my men and then looked at the table we were all sitting around.  It’s a beautiful table…handed down to me…once belonging to my paternal grandparents.  Other furniture in our dining room was theirs also…a buffet that matches the table…the chairs around the table…a roll-top desk in the corner.  When my family gathers around that table, I’m reminded of my family…past generations…Thanksgiving meals spent around the same table when my two sisters and I were kids, seated with my mom and dad and grandparents and aunt…and then I can almost smell smells from my grandparents home…good smells of my grandmother’s cooking…of her perfume.  I love it that my grandparents’ table now sits in my dining room.

On the back side of our home…just off the kitchen…in a breakfast nook area stands another table.  This table belonged to my mom and dad.  On this table my family ate most of our meals all the years I was growing up.  On this table I did my homework a lot of the time.  On this table, my mom set birthday cakes and Christmas dinners and meat grilled in the summertime.

This table has many, many memories of my growing up years…and now of my kids’ growing up years.  My husband and our five children have sat down to many a meal at this table…and lingered after the food is eaten to talk and laugh.  An extra place is set when my mom visits and we gather around the table again.

Now my own kids do homework at this table…and I am blessed with so many memories of those I love…gathered around tables.