A Wooden Table
Lois Wagner - Motivational Speaker, TEDx Speaker, Coach, Mentor
Guiding you to manage change, adversities, and traumatic or fearful emotions, to develop resilience, grit, and a growth mindset, helping you overcome challenges, and finding peace and freedom through forgiveness.
A short story from my memoir "Walking Within - Memories and Musings - Stories from an incredible life.
It includes life and business lessons.
Let me know what other lessons you can take from this story.
Life Lesson
“Carve your memories in your mind, not on the tree or the table”.
Lois Wagner
?Business Lesson
?"Cherish every moment, even the small ones. Just as my family created lasting memories around an ordinary table, businesses that focus on meaningful interactions, no matter how simple, create enduring customer and employee loyalty”.
“They prowl the empty streets at night, waiting in fast cars, on foot! Living with crime and violence... These are the men of Squad Cars.”[1]
“We bring you the top in spine thrillers—The Creaking Door.”[2]
“Time—the silent herald of life and death, success or failure. The unseen force that measures man’s destiny, reaching its most fateful moments as it slowly strikes the eleventh hour.”[3]
These are the echoes of my childhood entertainment.
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I can still picture us huddled around the large wooden dining room table, listening to Springbok Radio[4] on the radiogram. Mark Saxon, No Place to Hide, Taxi, The Pip Friedman Show, Three Wise Men, and countless other programmes filled our evenings with excitement and adventure. It was a time before television, which only made its way to South Africa when I was 22, in 1976.
This wooden table wasn’t just a piece of furniture—it was the heartbeat of our home. A place of community, laughter, learning, and the stage for many of life’s simple pleasures. We ate our Sunday roasts there, played cards late into the night, and shared stories that bonded us as a family. It wasn’t just a table; it was a witness to our lives.
My parents often hosted friends for a hand or two of bridge. Those nights were loud, filled with heated arguments and animated drunken shouts when someone misplayed a bid. I swore never to play bridge and kept that vow to this day. We stuck to games like rummy, and later in life when I was married, I added whist, cribbage, poker, chase the lady, and canasta to the mix.
The meals served on that table were largely thanks to my dad’s vegetable garden. Meat was a rarity—usually reserved for mince, but Sundays were special. We had roast chicken, and I remember the three of us kids laughing as we fought over the chicken legs, wishing all the while that chickens had four legs. My mom, in her usual selfless way, would claim the pope’s nose[5] as her favourite part, though I’m certain she was just being generous so that we could enjoy the better cuts.
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At that table, you ate everything on your plate—no exceptions. Dad would say that your plate should be so clean that you could take it straight from the table and put it back in the cupboard. We would scrape the gem squash shell down to the last bit, leaving no trace that a vegetable had even been there. I dreaded vegetables and would shape them into cakes on my plate, pretending I was eating slices of something far more appetising.
For my mom, feeding us wasn’t just about nourishment. It was her way of showing love. The moment someone pulled into the driveway, she’d be off to the kitchen, preparing a meal, eager to welcome guests around her wooden table. It was her ritual, her way of saying, “I’m so glad you’re here, and I care about you.”
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Mom believed that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. I, on the other hand, hated cooking. When I started dating my soon-to-be husband, my mother would prepare a special meal and tell him I had cooked it! Now THAT is another story.
I can still see my dad sitting at that table, a cigarette smouldering in the ashtray, one hand holding a drink, the other scribbling away at his crossword puzzle or studying the horse racing guide.
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He passed away when I was 30. After his death, his second wife stayed on in the house for another seventeen years. When she died, her children took the table. They carted it off to their own homes, and with it went all the memories etched into its worn wood. I was heartbroken, not just because of the table itself, but because it had been the silent witness to the most precious moments of our family’s life.
[1] Listen to episodes-? https://archive.org/details/SquadCars/SquadCarssa-1968-00-00Pilot-TheBirdSanctuary-NotBroadcast.mp3