It is 1994. She’s shopping at Pottery Barn with her boyfriend.
He needs help furnishing his apartment — she has deemed him hopeless at all things decor, and besides, the furniture she picks today will soon be theirs, so she is careful. Meticulous. Precise. She pictures each piece in their future home. She guides him with a gentle hand.
Her hair is short, dark and cropped just above her shoulders: how she wears it now but different from how she wore it for most of your childhood. You imagine her in a cream-colored sweater and loose Levi’s. She points to a kitchen table, her fingers long and thin and manicured.
That one.
The table she’s selected is the color of sand, the color of tree bark in the summer, the color of your father’s hair when it starts to gray.
Are you sure? he replies. The table is adorned with a navy tablecloth and porcelain plates that look a little too classy, a little too easy to break. Napkins are wrapped in napkin rings at this table, display wine glasses collect dust at this table and are polished and collect dust again. It looks... expensive.
This one. It has to be. It’s a good table.
When they buy the table, it is given to them in a box so large it barely fits in the trunk. It shakes with every speed bump, every turn. “American Pie” plays on the radio as they drive back to his apartment. She hums along quietly. Someday, she will sing you that same song as you fall asleep.
He assembles the table while she cooks them dinner, one pasta dish or another — something fit for such a beautiful, shiny-penny table. She insists on using placemats. They don’t have chairs yet, so they sit on stools from the kitchen.
Soon after, she moves in. He proposes. They get married and move to Virginia, to Knoxville, and back to California, and the table follows. She studies for her business school exams at that table. He reads the paper at that table. They drink iced tea at that table in the summer with the windows open.
They have a baby, and this table-buying, “American Pie”-singing, iced-tea-drinking couple become your parents.
You grow up at that table: you eat your first meal, you learn to hold a glass without spilling it after a few dozen tries. You sit on that table with a jigsaw puzzle in front of you, day after day, your tiny socked feet sliding on the finished wood that is the color of a winter morning. You learn to talk, you learn the rules for dinner table conversation, you learn to eat your vegetables.
When your parents split up, your mom takes the table with her in all of its sunshine kitchen glory, and when it doesn’t fit quite right in your new apartment, it lives in the garage for a few years. Spiders make their webs, have their children, live and die under that table. Boxes pile up on that table — baby clothes, old books, toys to donate. It holds life in its arms.
When your mom gets engaged, you move into a house that is bigger than your old one. You are nine years old. All you want is a baby sister and a backyard where you can play soccer.
The wedding takes place in that backyard you wished for, with chairs lined up in rows along the grass and the bride and groom standing under an old cherry tree.
There’s no coffee table for the outdoor furniture, and the kitchen table doesn’t fit quite right in this new and shiny kitchen, but your mom can’t say goodbye. On the eve of their wedding, the groom-to-be saws the legs short and paints on a deep, coffee-brown stain. Someday, you’ll get that baby sister you wished for, and the table will be the color of her eyes.
The wedding commences and the table stands strong and proud. It holds the guests’ wine glasses and a centerpiece, and when “American Pie” comes on, you dance on that table — all nine years of you, your feet bare, your flower girl dress swishing poofy and white at your ankles.
The seasons change and the table fades. You get lucky — you get two baby sisters, not just one. The three of you eat quesadillas and sliced strawberries together under a summer sky. They grow up on that table, too.
You’re talking about your future house and you tell your mom she can’t get rid of your childhood plates or the boxes in the garage or your bassinet because you want it all; you want to run your hands over those memories, you want it tangible between your fingers. Then, she points out to that table in the backyard. “I keep everything,” she says.
“See that table? I’ve had that since before you were born, since before I married your dad, even.”
In her words lives a lifetime. The two of you look out at that table, cracked and patched, stained and sanded and stained again, the center sagging and sloping down from holding the world — a family.
Molly Green is a senior from Orange County, Calif. majoring in Writing Seminars. Her column centers around beautiful moments and things in her life.
