I am a collector of Amish tables given to me by men with the last gasp of their lingering affection.
One stands at the end of a loveseat in my tiny sitting area gathering dust. It holds a vase from my neighbor, which itself holds the silk rose bought for me by my son at Disney World in 1996. Beside the vase, I have placed a touch-light lamp that I never use. In its shadow nestles the last existing ceramic box made by my friend Alan during a summer three or four decades ago. I don’t know what lies inside its hidden compartment.
The other table arrives on Monday by way of UPS. My ex-husband Dennis asked his friend and caretaker to give it to me upon his death. She has done that. I don’t think she knows the extent to which my heart contracted when she disclosed its bestowal.
That table factored in a tit-for-tat, this-for-that conversation that Dennis and I quietly undertook a year or so after he had moved out of my house but before we officially divorced. He wanted the stand mixer and traded it to me for his two cast-iron pans and his set of aluminum mixing bowls. I have always thought I got the better end of that deal. We quickly dispatched of the other flotsam and jetsam. The Navajo rug that we bought on our honeymoon, him. The print of the Buffalo River that I gave my first husband, who left it with me, and which Dennis greatly admired, also went to him. Martini glasses that we acquired at Target, I gladly relinquished. And so on, and so forth, yadayadayada.
When we got to the Amish table, I pointed out that he had brought it with him from North Carolina. Ah, but you’ve always wanted it, he reminded me. True enough, I had laughingly said on more than one occasion that I married him for his Amish cherry table. It occupied place of pride in our small entry area from his arrival in Kansas City until that moment more than a decade later. It held our key bowl, a photo of my parents, and whatever notebook I dumped on it each night as I entered the house. But I couldn’t keep it. I helped him carry it to the van without hesitation.
Two years later, my new romantic partner moved into the house, bringing with him, as fate would have it, a cherry Amish table. I do not recall whether I told him about Dennis’s one. But I might have, for upon the failure of our marriage, in half the time, he left that table for me. It stood in the same place, the entry way to the Holmes house, until I moved to California.
I have been looking for a reason to completely rearrange the over-abundance of furnishings in the 198 square-feet of my tiny house. When that parcel arrives on Monday, with Dennis’s Amish table shrink-wrapped in its cardboard confines, I will finally have the perfect motivation. I will open Spotify on my laptop, load a playlist of falling-out-of-love songs, and start cleaning.
It’s the twenty-fourth day of the one-hundred and twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
Taylor Swift: “All Too Well” Taylor’s Version
The sweetness of Dennis (when he wasn’t fighting his demons) lives on not just in this special table but in the love you still hold for him that shows in your writing. I was surprised that his death affected me strongly.
I guess its because if I were the creator I would have granted both you and Dennis a do over in life without all the physical challenges and have never been able to wrap my head around the unfairness of living with so much pain and loss of mobility. I don’t know for sure where he is or how he is doing now and it bothers me. I’m not talking heaven vs. hell which is a debate I never get into with anyone. I’m just saying I’m convinced there is more after we leave these earthly bodies and I wish those that leave us could get a message back just to say, “I’m in the most beautiful, creative place now and feel so loved and loving.”