I imagined it was made by
a skilled 19th-century craftsman in
a sawdust-filled workshop
near the Amish country of Pennsylvania.
It stood eighteen inches tall
in my grandparent's Victorian-era house
for eighty years,
home to a hand-painted hurricane lamp
and brass ashtray.
Visitors came and went, sipping
drinks, flicking ashes,
reading books by lamp light.

By 1962, it was home to my elbow.
I was a six-year-old,
fingers tapping out my rage on its smooth surface -
keeping time with the mantle clock.
My father was dead at thirty-one
leaving me in exile
with a distant mother and
broken brother,
watched over by my grandmother.
The table seemed to know its place,
had claimed its space in the world.
I was sent adrift.

In 1972, a flood raged and
the table was also adrift,
bobbing in muddy waters -
striking walls and other furniture
until it split down the center of its
lovely oakiness.
Like me, it was rescued by my grandmother,
whose weary hands
covered its waterlogged wood
in Vaseline
and it, too, survived.

Passed on to me, I eyed its loveliness
one day and thought of you -
assailed by a cancer diagnosis.
I filled in its water-torn cracks
and wounds
with wood putty,
refinished it with sanding
and a new oak stain.
Reborn, I gave it to you on your birthday.
It sat in your living room for five years,
hearing our laughter, listening in on
conversations, friend-secrets,
dreams and struggles.

The disease had its way and you were gone
and so the table came back to me -
a companion in both death and life.
Its smooth, shiny oak memories
now anchoring the corner where I read and write -
steadying my lamp, a Bible and
a tissue box.
Still absorbing my anxious, tapping fingers,
it waits patiently for a new journey -
its next place in the history of people.

© Laura DeHart Young