A Seat at the Table

This is a love story.

Extraordinary events are often hidden within very ordinary moments, and more often than not go unnoticed. We have forgotten the tenderness, the love, and the effort that has gone into making that seemingly ordinary moment. We have become so used to the shock and drama of the world that we expect nothing less.

Summertime, Kansas. The hay fields are ready to release their bounty to serve as food for the livestock when they can no longer graze the snow covered pastures. My grandparents lived on a farm that was at the end of a pecan tree lined lane in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t a TV and to be honest, I don’t even remember them having a radio, there was no need.

What there was, was hard work, good food around a wooden farm table with miss-matched chairs, the smell of freshly baked bread and fresh creamery butter that just that morning was being milked from one of the cows….and conversation.

As I write these words the memories of spending summers there flood my mind, the tire swing that we mounted as it was being propelled out over the pond one by one plunging into the water with a gigantic splash. Neighbors dropping by to visit after supper. We would go outside to watch the lightening bugs and my grandfather as he sat on a small retaining wall churning the homemade ice cream with the peaches that we had just plucked a few hours before from their shady spot in the orchard.

These are memories of my summer as a kid.

What are your childhood memories? Do you look back fondly over the years that you’ll never be able to visit again for youth is but a fleeting moment in our lives.

It’s not too late.

As long as there is breath in our bodies we can make connections, we can make moments special, we can invite others to have a seat at the table, we can make memories together.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I’ve lived." George Bernard Shaw.