Once a thing of some beauty and certainly functionality, it still retains a facet or two of its former glory – some brass handles here, an intact hinge there. It still holds that dark red-brown of its youth beneath the time-scored surface. It’s a Sauder and its equal today would run $500 or more, assembly required.
The desk has been my base of operations for the larger portion of my adult life. I can remember sitting at it on a folding chair as I discovered the world of AOL, of chat rooms, navigating my way in early forages on the internet, surviving countless coffee spills, cigarette burns, stacks and scratches. It stood in mute witness to the rise and fall of relationships, serving as touchstone and safe haven when the outside world would get to be too much. The collection of small items in the top drawer holds over ten years’ worth of odd bric-a-brac, a motley assortment of souvenirs that could be tiny pushpins on a roadmap of my life.
I hid from the world huddled behind this wall of wood. I created and destroyed characters and storylines here, navigated fantasy worlds to the (unfortunate) exclusion of all else for a time here. I made and lost friends while sitting here. Lost and re-connected with family, realized personal accomplishments while curled up in the dark here. I worked on material for my wedding and the birth announcements of my children comfortably tucked in here. Cats long since passed on used to curl up on it, or under it, warming my feet. More recently this is where I wrote the first meager things that will get published. Even today this is where you will find me – at my desk.
My husband hates it, with good reason. Like all good things it’s heavy and I mean damn heavy. Since I am a packrat who develops attachments to furniture, I’ve refused to move without MY desk. So we dragged the beast from Belleville and crammed it into the back room of the Cape Cod. We hauled the monster to my parent’s house where we forced it up to the second floor (let me tell you THAT didn’t go over well, and now my father hated it too). Finally we hauled it here to the Compound, where it has spent the last eight years at the hub of our life.
With our last attempt at moving it to accommodate a new phone jack, the base finally gave way and it is officially structurally unsound. I’ve managed to procure what will likely be an adequate replacement, but it doesn’t have this configuration – this layout that I am so in-tune to and have been for well over a decade. I will have to re-learn where I put things and decide what stays and what goes. For with the new the old must go, which means cleaning out the cobwebs and seeing what I can get rid of without risking losing some mojo.
Yes it’s a bunch of prefabricated wood slabs held together with little more than gravity at this point. But even as I sit here and run my eyes over the ravaged surfaces … there is such a story here. The one missing handle because James learned to pick a lock at 16 months (wonder who he takes after). The now faded sticker on the cabinet that says “Dogs Love You No Matter What” that Heidi put on there at the age of 5. The construction paper rocket that James made for me in pre-school, his first gift. The gangster tags Meredith put on the side in Sharpie. Even the tired little betta swimming in his half-full tank. They aren’t scars … they are a topographical map of my life and all the things in it I love. This desk was well-used and well-loved and now like all things, its time is done.
One more night together, my old and dear friend.
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