The Family Table

There was a table at Dave's Place that belonged to us.

Not officially. There was no sign on it, no reservation card, no rope keeping anyone away, but the regulars knew. The staff knew. After a while, even the first-time customers seemed to know. That table was ours, and whoever was sitting at it was family.

My grandmother, Mamie Ruth, claimed it first.

We called her Memaw. She was quite the lady. A storyteller and an entertainer in the truest sense, the kind of person who could make a stranger feel like a long-lost relative before they'd finished reading the menu. She was educated and well-traveled and had more friends than most people could imagine. They came to visit her daily.

She had a gift for listening that I didn't fully understand until I got older. Not the polite kind of listening, where you nod and wait for your turn to speak. The real kind. She was genuinely interested in people. Where they were from. What they did. What mattered to them. A traveling businessman stopping in on a Tuesday afternoon could sit down near our table and within ten minutes find himself telling Memaw things he hadn't thought about in years, laughing at something she said, and leaving with the specific feeling that he had been seen by someone who meant it.

She always introduced us. Laura and me. Every time. She didn't let a single person walk through that room without knowing that her son was the owner and the chef, and that these were her grandchildren. She said it with a pride that wasn't boastful. It was just true, and she wanted you to know it. We were hers, and she wanted the world to be aware.

That table was where Laura and I grew up between school and bedtime. Homework spread out across the surface during the school year. Afternoon snacks appearing without asking. Memaw holding court, pulling everyone into whatever conversation was already happening.

When she passed, and Laura's kids came along, my mom was right there. Then Christy and I had Trey and Parker, and ours moved in right alongside them.

The same customers who watched my sister and me grow up watched our children grow up. They watched us become parents. They watched us become teachers, in our own ways. Laura went into early childhood education, pouring herself into the littlest learners. I went the music route. Different paths out of the same place.

On Friday nights, when Brandon and I would set up in the corner and the jam session would start pulling people in, the kids would disappear into the back office and come out with handfuls of printer paper to draw and color on. Nobody minded. That was just how it was.

I remember a baby walker that made its way through multiple kids and multiple years. Whoever was in it at the time would roll through the dining room with complete confidence, pulling up alongside customers' tables as if stopping by to check in. Not afraid. Not shy. Just present in the way children are when they've never been made to feel unwelcome anywhere.

Trey would walk up to my bassist and point at a string. Every time, they let him pluck it. Parker would drift toward my drummer, and he would pick her up and hand her the sticks and let her hit the cymbals. The musicians were patient and generous and completely unfazed, because that was the kind of room it was. Children were part of it. The music was part of it. The food and the laughter and the late conversations and Memaw introducing strangers to each other across tables were all part of the same thing.

Everybody was welcome at the family table because everyone was family.