MAM-MAWS TABLE

Mmmmmmm.....I can smell the fried chicken as I am typing this post.  Every Sunday afternoon, about 19 people would gather in a tiny, white, East Texas house home, around this very table, for some of the best southern food you ever did put in yo mouth.  Oh lord, help me shut up in heeyah.

I was Mam-maw's ANGEL, so I was blessed to be there everyday of my life.  One of the most miserable  days of my life was my first day of Kindergarten. I hated being away from her because up to that point, we were inseparable. Until the day she died (last year), she would remind me of how I would get the stool, drag it up beside her and wait to lick the bowl and beaters when she was making cookies.  Then we would spread the cooling racks all over the table and put the cookies on them to cool. 

This table was a very special table because Mam-maw used it for everything.  She cut out baby dresses, prom dresses, wedding dresses and clothes of all shapes and sizes.  She did people's taxes and had counseling sessions with hurting souls (not without some homemade pie and coffee to make it better of course).  She and my grandpa played 42 with friends around it.  There was no end to what would take place around Mam-maw's table.

You can imagine our surprise when one afternoon my dad called and said he had received a call from a  Sheriff's deputy telling him her house had been broken into and was in shambles.  They had caught a man leaving her house with her dishwasher in the back of his car.  They arrested him but found that, over the course of a few weeks, he had been stealing things a little at a time. Now, the house we all spent so much  time in was totally trashed, destroyed and emptied of all the precious things we remembered.  For some reason though, he decided not to steal the table.  

Which was weird because it's an antique, mahogany table, complete with rollers on the legs so you can roll it all over the place.  Maybe the formica top with the big silver trim around it threw him for a loop.  Mam-maw had someone put a formica top on the table because she wanted to protect it from all the damage it could have received from all the stuff that took place around it.  I'm sure she had the idea she would take it off once everything slowed down a bit, but it never did and so the white formica top still remained.  Good thing, huh?  It tricked him. 

Since hubby turned our living room into a school room when he built the family room, I needed a table to go with these adorable rainbow colored chairs he got me.  What better table?  He and the boys went and waded through the mess (and I do mean mess)  in Mam-maw's house and got her table for me.  They brought it home, cleaned it up and I couldn't be happier.  It's a great game table.  The kids and their friends play it all, nertz, checkers, play-doh, fiddlestixs, spoons, you name it.


 A priceless gift of sweet memories from a grandma that gave me a magical childhood.  Praying I can do the same for my children.  Blessings from Texas y'all.

Mam-maw