this little table o’ mine.

Back in the days when these girls were just teeny toddlers together, my mother saw a little oak table and thought our family just had to have it.

And we did, of course.

The girls have shared many a snack on that table.  They have learned to use scissors there and played card games and have learned to sew and draw and create.

It’s a table that Otto and Piper love to play on and under and around now too.

And it’s been looking a little rough around the edges after all these years and all these sticky little hands.

After our Georgia trip at the end of summer, the kids have been loving games of checkers and chess.

So we taped off the table in completely uneven strips – because that’s just how I roll.

And we painted the squares red and black.

(Even though I suggested some funk-a-delic checkerboard colors.  I was out voted, however, by my children and their desire for the checkerboard to look “normal”.)

I even allowed every kid to takes turns and paint the squares.

Which was hard since I like to do the crafts myself.  But then I remembered that I would like them to love crafts too and how will they love something if they only watch and never join in?

And in the end, after we peeled away the tape from the dry painted squares,

we had a slightly askew, completely sweet, checkerboard oak table.

Yes, the lines are really too wide for a “normal” checkerboard.

A fact that bothers my perfectionist husband but does not faze my easy-to-please offspring.

And if you make a homemade checkerboard yourself then you can cut your painter’s tape in half and probably have a much more appropriate width.

But I’m not re-doing this guy.

One, because I’m lazy.

Two, because I don’t have extra time.

Three, because close enough is good enough for me.

And so our little oak table has been re-born to what I imagine will be the first of many re-births for the small square memory as I hope this piece of wood becomes a treasured part of our family’s collection.

Not because it’s a perfect work of art, but instead, because it’s a history of us – from days of toddlerhood, from days of my mother holding my daughters’ hands, from memories so painful and so tender that even a token of her affection – a square assembled from wood and screws – is still precious and worth passing down.