The furniture in my house is something of a collection of stories. Almost every piece I have has been handed down, mostly from my parents--my mother seems to enjoy the excuse to upgrade her stuff by handing off her old pieces to me. There's my dad's old chair from the sunroom, the pile of cushions from the bench my mom built, the music hutch, one couch that passed through multiple generations, and another that took a tour as a film prop before being bestowed upon me. Even my coffee table and lamp stand have the artistic touch of friends.
But today I received a piece that was a fixture in my memory from the day I was born--my parents' butcherblock. This was my dad's first gift to my mom and the house. The board that pulls out where I ate breakfast for at least ten years. The scar on the side from the rocking chair that knocked into the block if (when) the rocker became a little over-zealous. I pulled open the draw and still expected to find an assortment of corkscrews (turns out my dad remembered to keep those). It even came with the stool that I had to climb up in order to reach my breakfast (and, if turned over, the stool became a spaceship blasting of into outerspace).
The butcherblock fits me; it's taller than normal counter height, and the warm wood shows the marks of use, but those only prove that it is hardy, wise. What thousand flavors have graced its surface? What stories could it tell?
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Small moments can be easily overlooked. Grand phenomena disregarded without being fully understood. So here I am, reflecting, wondering, rambling, hopefully amusing, and unwinding to the world.
2 comments:
Hurrah, for the butcher block! What good stories (although I'm not sure I want to imagine all of the cumulative tastes it has held over the years ;))
Herring. There was definitely herring. :-)
I forgot to also mention that the spaceship/stool was also a common sawhorse, and part of the reason that I learned to use a circular saw when I was somewhere around 10.
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