Here is a story of how a picnic table sitting out in an empty, snow covered backyard on cold winter’s day got me to reach out to relatives I haven’t spoken to for years. It was a remarkable incident to me so I decided to put the story into written words. It is rather short so give it a read if you have a minute to spare.

My job takes me on short trips out of town at times. I enjoy these trips because I usually ride the train and sitting by the window watching the scene going by in the middle of a work week is a welcomed change from the cubicle I work in. Anyway my story started with me on one of these train trips looking out the window as we made a station stop.

The item that sparked my family reunion was a brightly colored child’s sized picnic table looking rather lonely and abandoned in someone’s yard. It was as if it started communicating with me. It started to let me hear the sounds of summer in the middle of winter. I could clearly hear the laughter of the children that used this special place during the much warmer summer days. I started to see them through an eerie glow from the snow sitting around and on top of this lonesome table. Soon I could even see little bikes on the grass along with toys and paper plates loaded with summer type foods.

Am I losing my mind, of course not? I know everything else besides the picnic table, the tree it sits under and the snow all around only exist in my mind. All else are my own memories of summers past when I was much younger sharing good time with family members that now I have not seen or herd from in years. We all are now grown some with families of our own and lives that tend to separate us further from those days that are now coming back to me.

Thing about this vision, illusion or whatever it was that lonely table chose to share with me is it wasn’t sad. In fact it flooded me with joy, happiness and an urge to get back in touch. I was just happy that as a kid I had a picnic table in my backyard to foster those early memories. I was happy too that that picnic table reached out to me from its isolation to gently shake me from mine. I knew it was going to be a happy moment when I again got to hear the voices and laughter of my childhood playmates. Yep I am giving them all a call. Thank you lonely picnic table.