My Kitchen Table

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During the preparation for our recent move, one of the pieces of furniture we chose not to bring with us was this table.  We were moving to share a home with our youngest son and his family. We would be using their furniture in our new dining room, and in the kitchen would be the table long used as our dining table, Grandma Terrell's oak table.  The butcher block parson's table that had graced our kitchens in 9 different homes over more than 40 years would need to go. It was sagging in the middle - showing its age and the number of times it had been moved, not to mention the markings acquired during cooking preparations, meals, snacks, art and sewing productions worked on by our growing family of little boys, and in most recent years, their daughters. There were even spots where glue and glitter and the paint from model airplanes seemed to be ingrained in the wood.  But my oldest son wanted the table. Sean remembered the table as a fixture of his growing up years, a leaning place later.  He was 6 years old when my parents gave us the money to buy a new table because our family had outgrown a table for 4.

So, the table would go to Sean.  But first, I wanted to give it a little help. Joe and I bought the table from Storehouse, a company at the time with a reputation for quality natural wood furniture. We had it made from pecan wood.  The butcher block wood and parson's style made it perfect for a succession of chairs to go around it.  I knew of a local craftsman who makes things from old wood. His artistry is beyond recycling or repurposing. So we loaded the table into my truck, took it to Mr. Hawkins in Rosenberg, and asked him what he could do with it. He loved the table and in spite of the cost he quoted for its restoration, I left it in his hands.  I liked that he loved the table too. Nearly 3 months later, our family table is in another kitchen, and it is still our family table.  we recently had breakfast with Sean and Teion and Skye, along with Ben, Nora, plus Tim and Debi, family friends. It felt right.  On the table, along with the breakfast casserole, they placed a framed poem I wrote many years ago. The following is the copy of the poem I posted once on my "kitchen" blog.                                www.kitchenkeepers.wordpress.com 

It would be a mistake to indicate that the only ingredients in my kitchen required for successfully and joyfully feeding my family were found in my pantry or simmering on the stove.  I will occasionally include table blessings, some “table talk”, and important for the keeper of this kitchen, prayers.  I wrote this one as a prayer poem in 1998.

                                              My Kitchen Table

                      As I open your Word and lean here one more time,

                  Make my table a holy place with your presence, Lord…

                     This table of pecan wood, not hand crafted acacia.

              This table scratched and stained with family years and family tears.

             This table that has been a family gathering place in so many places,

                 A place of offering and receiving nourishment of many kinds.

                     A place of joy and jelly, high chairs, and holding hands.

                   Birthday cakes and boy talks, spilled milk and spilled hearts.

            A place where I have put my head down and wet the wood with tears.

                         A place where your care and feeding of my soul

                            Joined the care and feeding of my family.

                              My heart is seated at this table, Lord.

                                You make this a holy place.

                                   I worship you.

                                                      Mary Ann Parker, March 1, 1998

Greening Continued

A new coat of paint can do wonders for old stuff.  Our outdoor furniture was way beyond shabby chic.  Nearly 20 years of Texas sun and wind had almost stripped it of any orginal finish.  It was clear something needed to be done if we were going to be able to keep using it for outdoor dining and sitting.  Several cans of spray paint gave it renewed approval from everyone.  In the process, I wore a good deal of the paint myself!  On one trip to get more paint, I remembered on the way in that I had forgotten to write the name of the paint down.  By this time all I could remember was the paint I had used on the porch swing a week earlier.  The mission was accomplished when I proudly held up my arm and pointed to the splotch of green there.  Spruce Green, that was it!  Sometimes being messy is not a bad thing.

before

                                                                             after

Now all we need to do is pour some lemonade and enjoy our "new" furniture.  By the way, the paint did wear off - no one has asked me about my green feet in days.

Rescued

In 1982, our family lived for a time in a three story Victorian house with halls and nooks and crannies as well as rooms that swallowed the furniture we brought with us when we moved from a suburban home back to the small town where both Joe and I grew up.  Living there and working on the home's restoration was both fascinating and flabbergasting.  Part of the hard work and happy times we had there was giving myself an occasional afternoon for prowling in second hand and junk shops for pieces to restore and use in the house.  One day I found this rocker stuck in the middle of a pile of discarded tables and chairs.  The fanciful curlicues and swirls drew me to look closer at the wicker weaving on the back of the chair but when I looked down I saw straight through.  There was no seat, only some tattered strips of rotting burlap hanging to the frame by the tenacity of dozens of tiny rusted nails.  A few pieces of trim curls were missing, the color was best described as dirty, and mud dauber nests clung to the underside of the arms. I believe the shop owner laughed as he watched me load the chair into my truck as he stuffed the $20 bill he had required as payment into his pocket!

My youngest son, Ben, was game to help me pry out over 200 nails from the seat of the chair and scrub it down to get rid of the insect homes and cobwebs. I had never done caning, but   I ordered a piece of cane webbing, spline, chisels and glue which cost more than the chair had.  We soaked the webbing,  pounded the spline into the groove of the shaped seat and watched in amazement as it all dried and began to tighten to make a new seat.  We got more white paint on us than on the chair, but began to feel a sense of pride as this beautiful Victorian rocker emerged to take its place in our new old home.  When I rock a grandchild in it or tuck a pillow in its seat, I still have a sense of all the stories it could tell me.  One story would be that of a rescue.

                                                        

Home

Eudora Welty said that “One place understood helps us understand all places better.” and “There may come to be new places in our lives that are second spiritual homes closer to us in some ways, perhaps, than our original homes. But the home tie is the blood tie. And had it meant nothing to us, any other place thereafter would have meant less, and we would carry no compass inside ourselves to find home ever, anywhere at all. We would not even guess what we had missed.”


I am grateful for my growing up place, within a family helping me understand people will always be more important than place. Odd, because that family of origin mostly stayed in one place: rural and small town East Texas. Important, because after I left home at 17 for college, so many places would take their turns in becoming the place of home. One brief passage of time the leaving and the return intersected to be called home. I do believe we make our homes where we are, but there are times when we have a more intimate connection with the place of home. My favorite place happened to be at that intersection,one which my family occupied for only slightly more than a year. But I still have pictures of it hanging on my wall and a doll house replica that my grandchildren love. I think each of us would vote it our favorite house.


When my sons were 13, 10, and 8, we bought a 100 year old Victorian house on 3 acres of oaks and magnolias and pecan trees in East Texas. It was in the hometown where both my husband and I grew up, so both his mother and my parents still lived there at that time. There had been some renovation to the house in the 1940's, but not much since, so there was much that was necessary to live there safely and comfortably. We restored, repaired, renovated, and resuscitated in ways we never knew we had any skill for. We stripped the staircases to find tiger oak, pulled up carpet to find lovely wood floors, added wood burning heaters, updated plumbing and electricity and found ways that old houses need you that amazed us. It was a wonderful adventure.

During the time we were there, I did the research and writing necessary to acquire state historical landmark designation for the house, which was built for John Wesley Love in 1904, to house his wife and 13 children. He had 700 acres of peach orchards adjacent to the house, which was built near the railroad tracks. We discovered that my father and uncle had picked peaches in the orchards, and that Joe's Daddy had painted and wallpapered there in the 40's. It has been 26 years since we lived there, but I can still feel the sway of the porch swing and smell the fragrance of the wisteria dripping from the trees. It was work to live there, but it was magic.

The planned changes in my husband's job did not happen, and we knew our boys needed a father at home more than they needed a certain house, but oh, we loved it. Since we went back there for visits to relatives, we went by the house every time, and I cried every time for years!

Strangely, it took another turn of events in our family life for me to honestly say goodbye to it. Over 15 years after we left it, with the house having gone through several owners, it was very expensively refurbished and opened as a venue for receptions and weddings and other events. When my son and his fiancée planned their small wedding, we arranged to have it there. The bride’s dressing room was Sean's old bedroom! The gathering room for guests was our master bedroom. The ceremony was held in front of the fireplace in the parlor where we had celebrated my parents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1982. The wedding was wonderful; the house was grand in her new finery. She didn't need me anymore, and I felt a closure I had been unable to achieve before. Neither Joe nor I have any living relatives there anymore, but I still say hello to the house when go back to our hometown. I can almost see the 3rd story cupola window wink back at me.

I am glad that although a sign now marks it as commercial offices, that place speaks home to me. I am even more glad that after many years and many moves, I am rooted (not root bound) in my present place. I love being at home.