Desk

I’m not a big “stuff” person. I have my journals from years and years of writing and that’s about it. They are precious to me even though the many years of writing are mostly self indulgent and, at times, annoying to glance through.

But, I finally decided it was time to invest in a real, beautiful desk. Something that might inspire me more in my writing room than the random wobbly legged desk my husband found on Craigslist. At the time I didn’t want to invest too much money in myself and in a piece of furniture that might be used only sporadically.

Now I write more often. I think about writing. I have a tiny bit more time to invest in writing (not this week, good gracious, not this week).

I walked with my husband into a real store and as we walked around I touched the wood, the metal, the plastic of every desk. I sat in front of the desks. I contemplated whether or not this could be a desk I could spend hours in front of and be inspired by.

Then I spotted the one. They call it a sugar berry wood but it is the wood of a Mulberry tree that had to be chopped down because it was diseased. It’s environmental, they said. Using the wood of a tree that had no choice but be turned into something else. This one became a desk. Others might have become paper. This one is a desk and a piece of art.

We bought it.

We had to wait months for it to be delivered. Each day I sat in front of my wobbling desk I daydreamed about the sugar berry desk. The veins in the wood, the disease creating a unique beauty carved throughout.

It reminded me of my own writing. Some pages and lines are terrible. Some chapters need to be redone over and over again. Some are deleted altogether because they add nothing to the main story. Some areas need work but eventually result in a line or paragraph that I want to read again and again, disbelieving I wrote such a thing when it started off so poorly.

It reminded me of life. How all of us struggle to fight a disease of our own. Maybe poor self image, economic conditions, dysfunctional families, or yes – actual disease. But when we rise again, we are something new, something beautiful because of what we’ve gone through.

It is just a desk. But to me, it is much more.

When the sugar berry desk arrived I spent a long time admiring the wood. I danced my fingers along the top of it, beside the edges. I told everyone who stumbled into my writing room – it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Today my middle drew on the desk with permanent marker. He didn’t mean too. He was drawing on a paper and it bled through. He loves to create and design and he was bored when I left him. A part of me took solace in the fact that he found a lovely way to entertain himself (you know, drawing a picture of war scene).

But initially all I could see was my piece of art, splattered. Ruined.

How could you…

Tears leapt to my eyes.

It’s just stuff.

I left to pick up the littlest of the three and because I didn’t want to say anything to my middle I might regret.

When I returned my fumes were still burning. I couldn’t shake the anger.

Can’t I have ANYTHING??

“No one. No one is allowed to use my desk. Understand?” I said.

The three nodded. The littlest one raised his hand.

“Even me?”

“Even you,” I said, “this desk is Mama’s.”

My throat choked with tears. All the things that were once mine are now theirs. My foam roller with punctures in it. The yoga block with finger nail impressions. The glasses that shattered. The peach chair with ink stains on it. The couch with a sunken area due to too much jumping. All of it I let go. It’s just stuff, I’d shrug. But this. This was beautiful, and now there are blue and red smudges in between the wood veins.

We’ve had the desk a month.

I will move on. It will become part of the background of the desk. It will be a memory someday we will share and laugh about.

But right now, I get a moment, a long moment, to grieve what it once was.