Write 4 Ten: At the breakfast table

At the breakfast table was this weeks prompt for Write 4 Ten (see side bar)and I decided to write for it. I went slightly off topic of 'at the breakfast table'. I was prompted by it though, so I guess that still counts.

The wooden table filled the dining room leaving barely enough space to walk around it whilst people were seated. There was pulling out space but that was it. It ocupied the whole room, owning it, and people had to fit in where they could. It had orginally been her great grandmothers, and then her grandmothers, her mothers and eventually on her wedding day it became hers.

It had plenty of dents in it from over the years; the time it had fallen off the cart that had carried it from the flea market to her great grandmothers house, some scratches; when the children were learning to use cutlery, a partial saw ridge; her brother and cousin had it in their heads that they were going to make a pirate ship out of it, her grandfather had rescued it just in time, a wobbly leg; the number of times it had been dropped or bashed during house moves but oddly it was always the same leg, and cup rings and other hot dish related burns from carelessness. It carried the scars of having been a part of the family for over a hundred years.

Everyday without fail they would eat at least one meal at the table whether it was a breakfast table, a lunch table or a dinner table it would be used, and everyday someone would say 'Anyone fancy a shimmy?' and they would all laugh as they went to the dining room to shimmy around the table to get to their seats. No-one got bored of hearing it said each day and no-one got bored of saying it.

Making the decision to get rid of the table had been a difficult one. Her neighbour may look at it and only see a table but she saw all the birthdays and family gatherings, all the games they had played on it, and she remembered all the people that sat around it who were no longer alive. It had been a silent observer, a keeper of secrets and a teller of tales.The house fire had damaged it beyond repair and all she had left were the memories that the table had been a part of and a solitary nail that had once been holding it together.