The Table

And now for a little something different– just because I wouldn’t want my writing to become too predictable. 

I would guess that to some writers, it’s not as important to them where they write as what they write. But to me, where I write is important, too. I want to be comfortable and in a well-lit place. And for the time I’ve lived in this house, it never seemed like I found the right place until The Table arrived.

I’m sure that to many people’s eyes, My Table isn’t all that beautiful or special. It isn’t carved or in a fancy shape. It isn’t extraordinarily large or shiny. It has no matching chairs. And although it has been refinished at least a couple of times, it has a number of easily-spotted scars, dings, and scorches from years and years of use. It has never been a museum piece and probably never will be. And even in my own house—with as much as I cherish The Table—I can’t bring myself to treat it like the antiquity it is. Instead, it became that perfect well-lit, comfortable, roomy spot for me write.

I inherited The Table. It was passed to me by a cousin—but it started out being used by my great-grandparents. This wooden, peg-built Table has seen more life than all of the other furniture in my house combined.  And I suppose that is why I love to write on it. The life that it has seen is my muse. As I write, the past experiences of This Table seem to rise up through my oh-so-modern laptop and into my fingertips and onto my screen…

This Table has lived through the canning of thousands of fruits and vegetables… the mixing and kneading and rolling out of hundreds of pie crusts and bread… the bathing of dozens of babies in washtubs full of water that had been heated on the stove…the tears of the women of my family when their men went to war or went to the whiskey or went to their mistresses or went to their graves…

And now, a hundred years later, God has seen fit to let this table come to me so that I can live on it, too…  So I can read on it, write on it, and wash it with my tears.  And so I can soothe it with my prayers—a just reward for a Table that has been so faithful.