While friends and I were moving furniture last week, I was quite excited to be able to take my dining room table and chairs out of storage and took a relatively new male friend of mine to the storage unit with me to retrieve it. The dining set is nothing special but is in new condition compared to the beat up table and chairs that he helped move the day before. When we returned with the dining set, my Egomaniac and my Clown were already here moving stuff for me and met us outside to help unload. While NewFriend and Ego carried the table upstairs and my Clown and I followed with chairs, NewFriend suggested that I ‘get rid of the crappy kitchen table and replace it with something newer’.
Ego and Clown’s jaws dropped. Outside, flocks of birds left in a mass exodus. Dogs and small children hid under beds and in closets. Silence descended over the land.
“Never” was all I could say at the time, but later, over beers at that beat up kitchen table, we explained to NewFriend the significance of that particular piece of furniture.
In March 1988, my mother died of lung cancer. I had temporarily quit high school to take care of her during the last year of her life and was 17 when she died. Clown, being about 6 years older than the rest of us, took me in afterwards so that I could return to school and graduate. My group of friends rallied around me and lent all the help I needed. I worked a part-time job, crammed a missed year of high school into three months and graduated on time the following June. Right after graduation, I found a full time job and set about getting my first apartment.
I found a cute studio apartment in the center of town. It wasn’t anything to write home about…just a kitchen and a livingroom/bedroom combo, but it was all MINE. I had absolutely no furniture except for my waterbed, so the guys all chipped in and bought me this massive kitchen table and chair set. It was a beautiful thing. The 6 chairs were fabric covered and on wheels. Yes, they went overboard a bit. I didn’t need anything that big in an apartment, but little did I know that my place would become THE place for us all to hang out.
Over the years, that table has been home to weekend-long Poker, Risk and Dungeons and Dragons games (yeah, we have a few geek-ish tendencies). When Ego and TheEx were in a band together, their best songs were written on that table and breakfasts were served over it every Sunday morning after driving all night to get home from one weekend gig or another. Love was found, fought for and lost over that table. Weddings have been planned on that table. Tears have been wiped away over that table. Friendships have been forged and solidified and truths have been spoken over that table. Dreams have been shared and lives planned over that table. Beer and blood have been spilled at that table. Mourning through the loss of several beloved friends has been done over that table. Children have been raised and boo-boos kissed over that table. A house burned down around that table. My most famous cooking mistakes have been served on that table. Laughter and camaraderie has been shared, problems worked out, birthdays and holidays have been celebrated on that table. Dragons and demons, both fictional and figurative, have been slain over that table.
The battle for one of our souls was fought over that table.
The chairs were lost when the house burned down and it has a ton of scratches and dings, but it is SO much more than just a crappy kitchen table.
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