The remembrance of the righteous is a blessing…(Proverbs 10:7)

When I was growing up, our home had an old-fashioned dining room where we ate our Sunday suppers and where any family gathering was held.  It was relatively small, with an expandable, four-chair table, a hutch and a desk where my parents worked on the family budget and made phone calls on our black, bakelite, rotary phone.  There were two windows, one facing west and one facing north.  Three doors led to the kitchen, living room and laundry-cum-bedroom (mine).  My mom’s coat/dress closet also opened into the room.

One of my earliest memories was of that coat closet.  I couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old at the time–just old enough to realize that Santa was not going to come down our closed up chimney sometime between Christmas Eve and when I woke up Christmas morning.  So, a few days before the big day, I began to secretly search the house.  The last place I looked was Mom’s closet.  Bingo!  There were the gifts all wrapped and stacked for Christmas morning.  I was so proud of myself for my detecting skills and prouder that I never let on to anyone that I had found the present stash.  Now I wish I would have told her.  She would have gotten quite a kick out of it.

An even earlier memory was not such a pleasant one–at least at that time.  My mom was preparing to bake something in the kitchen by greasing the cake pan with butter.  I was so impressed with the idea of spreading butter like it was a crayon that I decided to use it like one to draw on the dining room wallpaper.  I had pretty much finished a creative 3×4 foot “canvas” when Mom walked into check on me.  Considering how much work and how long it took to get the grease out of wallpaper and the plaster behind it,  I’m amazed that I didn’t get more than a stern talking to.  In fact, with time, it became one of her favorite stories–right after the one about me taking my baths in the kitchen sink.  At least I was able to confiscate all of the photos of those.

It may not have been very fancy or sophisticated, but that little dining room held a lot of great memories.  It was what family was all about.