Lisa Bauman, a member of Grace Polaris Church, a Grace Brethren congregation on the north side of Columbus, Ohio (Mike Yoder, lead pastor), is the guest columnist for today’s First Person column in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. A portion of the article appears below. Read the complete column here.
First Person: Days, years pass where family gathers
When I was a toddler, my parents bought a table — an ordinary kitchen table with green legs and matching metal chairs, leaves to add for a larger crowd and an absolutely indestructible Formica top.
The top was white.
Some years later, the chairs and legs were replaced, but the top endured.
That table, set with my parents’ Pfaltzgraff dishes with the Yorktowne pattern, is included in every memory of family dinners, homework and difficult conversations — the fabric of my childhood.
We moved often. My parents had met in the Navy and started their married life in Adak, Alaska — thousands of miles from anyone who knew them.
Home was a transient idea to me — in terms of the structure, at least.
Read the complete column here.