Welcome to our weekly blog link-up here at Five Minute Friday!
This week is special because we’re in the middle of a 10-Day Writing Challenge, with more than 200 people participating!
Today is Day 5 of the challenge. Read more about it here.
If you’re new to FMF, you can click here to learn more about the link-up and how it all works.
Our writing prompt is: TABLE
Setting my timer for five minutes, and . . . GO.
If this table could talk, oh, the stories it would tell.
Stories of the elaborate dining room in the big blue house on Lakeshore Drive, and the last day my dad ever ate there.
Stories of moving to the tiny pumphouse, family members shimmying into the high-back chairs with just enough space between the piano on the left, the china cabinet on the right, and the living room wall pressed up against the far end. Singing “Happy Birthday,” and blowing out candles and eating cake with vanilla ice cream.
Stories of spilled nail polish remover and spilled tears. Of wedding plans and funeral plans. Of board games and belly laughs and broken hearts.
Stories of the house on Eighth Street, of homework and college applications and overseas travel plans. Of the condo where Mom would write one last card and bake chocolate chip cookies one more time before being wheeled out to a Hospice facility, never to return.
Stories of a dark storage garage for more months than expected, and then a church parsonage and now instead of children doing homework, it’s grandchildren spilling drinks, rolling dice, writing essays, growing up.
STOP.
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The words used for the 10-Day Writing Prompt Challenge are the first ten prompts
from The 90-Day Writing Prompt Journal, available on Amazon:
Affiliate links used in this post
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Join the link-up with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, TABLE, using the blue “Add your link” button below:
A tale of not so long ago…
There is no gracious living here,
no sign of that which came before,
no trace of what was once held dear,
and the furniture is turned to war.
There are maps upon the walls
and cots placed where we’re able,
ammunition boxes in the hall
and LSA now stains the table
where once, perhaps there was a feast
to celebrate new hope, and life,
but here and now has come the beast
and point-to-wood stands up a knife
slammed down in anger and in pain
for a friend I’ll never see again.
LSA is lubricant, small arms
We have a table full of stories, too :). It bears battle scares of Pit games, and an underside full of banana stickers. Tables have such a sense of place and belonging, don’t they?
i have our old (very old) family table sitting in our basement. The stories it could tell oh my! Animals, and laughter, tears and anger, all mixed together from a family of six kids. Good and bad, it’s all somehow there.
Excited to have found this community of writers! I just started a blog just to share so it’s a bit err… dreadful at the moment! But I had fun writing it & have enjoyed reading the other posts as well!
There a beautiful stories in the every day events of our lives. I’ll never look at my dining room table the same way again. Thanks, Kate.
Yes! We made our current table and it holds memories of togetherness.
This post made me feel sad. Love you, Kate.
…..belly laughs and broken hearts…
among some poignant places here… felt like a visit!
Thank you, too for incredible writing. Loved it.🌻
beautiful memories. My table hasn’t been in my family as long, but it certainly has some tales to tell.
I love “most” of the memories around our old table, too and when we moved and I was looking for a new one, I imagined us all sitting around it making new memories and we have! Love this post Kate!
Table: When I was growing up me my oldest sister, my youngest brother and my mom and dad sat around the table and had are meals together. We made memoirs around my mom and dad table. They are memories I will not forget. When we ate with are grandparents around there table they always pray before we ate. We talked about family and realitive that love in different state that we haven’t seen for awhile. My grandmother would always tell us that they all accept Christ in there life and living for God. My grandparents had a big long table. My grandmother always kept placemats and the table and sometimes flowers.