Table Stories

A table usually means nothing to anyone. My great grandmother willed me her tabled when she was put into the nursing home. I never got that table. My mother who had never been to my apartment gave me the table that was in her house because the other table wouldn’t fit, according to her. This table was from her second marriage, was scratched and stained from a decade of use. It would have fit. I never saw that table ever again. The table my mom gave me I got rid of. The table I do have in storage is the one I got from a tinder date. He cleans out houses for a living and brought over this beautiful solid table and the best part; it was from someone dead great aunt. Man, I love that table. It’s just so wonderful, maybe so because it’s not my mother’s old table. To this day, that table is one of the reasons I don’t talk to my mother. We never ate at the table except on special occasions. So, for my mom to take the beautiful walnut table away from me so she can have her catalogue house almost broke me. Then something clicked and that is a table was the most important place at my dad’s house. Everything we did was at the table, hobbies, homework, game night, eating, and hard discussions. It doesn’t matter where the table comes from right? I know this. To my mother, like a catalogue, life had to give the illusion of perfection. Nothing in advertisements is real. The houses that are displayed are not even real; they are studios and some of them are just miniatures. I wanted that table because it was the only thing that I could get that belonged to my great grandmother, and rightfully it was mine. The table that I have now is from an old lady. This table folds and slides away. Eventually I will have a table that seats my friends and we can have a party and tell stories, laugh and cry. We can have hobby night where we talk or chill. I want to have comfy spaces for my friends to come over and read a book. I want the safe house that everyone knows they can come to for a place to sleep, a place to eat, or a place to just collect themselves. A table that isn’t perfect, that holds many stories, carried many dinners, game nights, birthday parties, celebrations. I wanted my table in my kitchen to reflect that. I want my home to host all of that. Filled with music, parties, laughter, tears, all of the things I never had but watched my mom beg for in her adult world. I moved into this tiny home where a table doesn’t fit and I eat  at the coffee table at the couch. I hate it, because it reminds me of growing up. At moms we always ate at the couch. TV on, devices out, there was no conversation. I sit and eat at my couch, TV off, staring at myself in the black mirror. I realize that I am alone. I have my dog, I am alone. When I need a place to cry, I have myself. most of my friends have moved all over the world and I am left with my thoughts to snuggle me at night. Not that it matters, its hard to not have a table to gather people. Even if I wanted to I don’t think I could.