🌻 The Table That Holds Us
- Marissa Villescas
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Why the heart of home is sometimes just a place to gather
In my I Draw Home series, I explore the quiet places where home truly lives. Sometimes it is a window, sometimes a garden, sometimes a well-loved chair. This month I’ve been thinking about tables — the ones we gather around and the memories they quietly hold.
The Table That Holds Us
There are tables that belong to houses, and then there are tables that belong to memory. I have sat at both.
Kitchen tables in rentals where the chairs didn’t match. Folding tables borrowed for holidays. Small café tables where I sat waiting for news. No matter where they stood, those tables held something steady. A cup of tea. A tired elbow. A conversation that stitched me back together.
When I think of home, I do not first picture walls.
I picture a table.
The table my family has gathered around for more than thirty years now sits quietly in storage, waiting for the next place to call home. It was the first thing I bought after getting engaged to my husband. An Amish man was traveling through town selling furniture, and I had saved money from working at a daycare. I remember wanting the biggest table I could afford. I imagined family dinners and crowded chairs, and the more people it could hold, the better.
It isn’t anything fancy. Just a thick, solid wood table. But I have loved every inch of it.
Over the years that table has traveled across the West with us. From our first home in Colorado, across the ocean to Hawaii, and then through Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and New Mexico. Now it waits quietly in storage back here in Colorado again, like a patient old friend.
Wherever we went, the table went too. It held homemade pizza every Friday night, after-school cookies and long conversations, and the careful talks about college with each of my children. There were quiet dinners for two after the babies were finally asleep, and the joyful welcome-home conversation with our middle son after his time working in England.
It has seen Saturday night game nights stretch late into the evening, and it carries the worn spots and small scars that come from years of living. On cold mornings, resting my hands on its surface still feels like comfort.
So when I think about how our family has stayed close, how we have weathered the storms life inevitably brings, I think about that table. It has been the quiet center of our home. The place where we gather in gratitude and grace.
Maybe that is why I keep drawing tables in my Tiny World. Long ones and narrow ones. Tables made from tree stumps and tables built from simple planks. Because a table does not ask who owns the house. It simply holds what is placed upon it.
Bread.
Elbows.
Laughter.
Tears.
In seasons when walls felt temporary, the table was not. It became the place where stories were shared, prayers whispered, plans made, and courage gathered.
Perhaps that is what home often is.
Not the structure around us, but the surface that steadies us long enough to begin again.
If you were to pull up a chair today, what would you bring to the table?
In seasons when walls felt temporary, the table was not. It became the place where stories were shared, prayers whispered, plans made, and courage gathered. And perhaps that is what home often is — not the structure around us, but the surface that steadies us long enough to begin again.
If you were to pull up a chair today, what would you bring to the table?
Wherever you are today, I hope there is a place waiting for you at the table.
Warmly,
Marissa
This Month’s Lunchbox Note
“Gathered around the table, stories are told, memories are created, and love is abundantly grown.”
Print it, tuck it into a lunchbox, or leave it on a kitchen table.
This Month’s Quilt Square — Gathering
Each essay in the I Draw Home series is paired with a small illustrated quilt square. At the end of the year these pieces will come together to form one quilt — a reminder that home is made one small moment at a time.
A year of small stories about home, stitched together one essay, one illustration, and one quilt square at a time.
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