TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
TALK TUESDAY IN PRINT IF THESE TABLES COULD TALK BY TAMMY LUMMUS
The living room, the very words denote the place in a home where life is lived, and families come together. This may be true in most homes, but not in mine. Earlier this year, I was given a table that holds a very sentimental place in my heart (more about that later). It made me realize that my whole life, and each of its many chapters, has taken place around a table.
S ure, there have been some good meals shared, but when the food is all cleared away, it’s the conversation around these tables that has been invaluable. From childhood to my teenage years and now, raising my own family, the table still stands as the focal point in my home and my heart. Memories have been made, lessons have been learned, and family has come together—all around the table. I grew up next door to my grandparents. It is a blessing that I wouldn’t trade for anything. To add to that blessing, I had two cousins who lived on the other side of my grandparents, and three more cousins lived a whopping two and a half miles away on the other side of our small town. Because of our proximity, those five cousins, my two sisters, and I grew up spending lots of time at my grandparents’ house. The eight of us ate many Sunday lunches there. I can remember the food being spread from one end of the dining table to the other. My whole family would surround that table and listen to my Pawpaw thank the Lord for the food and for the ones standing there. During those prayers, I vividly
remember staring intently at that long, dark wooden table. I’m hoping God gave me a pass for keeping my eyes open during some of those sacred Sunday moments. I felt it was survival of the fittest and had to make sure my cousins hadn’t made strategic moves to get ahead of me in line. After plates were filled, the cousins would spread out to eat because the dining room table was also the grown-up table. It was a place where only the VIPs (parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents) could sit. However, a couple of times a year, my grandparents would invite just their grandchildren over, and the eight of us would get to eat a meal (usually pizza) at the table like we were the VIPs. We would talk about what was going on in our lives and watch my grandparents laugh and smile, not understanding that they were soaking up every minute with all of us. Our childish minds also got to listen to the two people we still refer to as “Mawmaw” and “Pawpaw” tell us stories of the way they grew up. Even though one cousin is gone now, and the rest of us are separated by life and distance, I can still hear those
young voices talking and laughing around that long dining room table. The table in the dining room was one thing, but the kitchen table at my grandparent’s home was quite another. As my teenage years approached, it was there I spent more of my time. As teenagers often do, a few bad decisions were made on my part, and my dad would always take my sisters and me over to my grandparents’ house to confess our wrongs. My Pawpaw would sit at one end of the table, and I would sit at the other. Usually, through tears, I would recount what I had done. Please understand that my Pawpaw is the epitome of a family patriarch. I would rather have stood in the church pulpit and confessed my sins to the entire congregation. After staring at the dull finish on that kitchen table for the duration of my confession, I’d lift my head only to see Pawpaw looking at me. He rarely said anything to me in a disciplinary tone. He didn’t have to. The “look” was punishment enough. All he would ever say was, “We love you.” So, as a teenager, the most important lessons I learned at my grandparents’
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LIFE & STYLE
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