It's been a while since I wrote anything on here, but yesterday, something happened that was small and momentous for me. I assembled a desk. I know - the act itself is nothing the speak of, nothing to add to a resume, nothing important at all. Except, of course, that this desk has a history, both in my family and in my life, personally.
The term "desk" is even loosely applied. You see, it's an old drafting table that my grandfather used to have. Where he got it, I have no idea, and I doubt that he built it. It's a sturdy trestle-style table, two shallow drawers on it and of course, a large, tilting surface for creating all kinds of drawings, from architectural to...well, whatever you wanted, I suppose. My first encounter/ experience with this desk was when my father fbrought it home with us on a trip to Connecticut. We assembled it in the den, and I remembered thinking how professional it looked. It used to have a sliding "T-square" bar on it, but the cables for that piece have long since broken. The pad that made it easy to draw on has also since been discarded.
When my parents moved from NY, the desk got a new home, with my brother. He used it as a computer workstation, and the top was laid flat. He had it for several years before it finally came to me, as he no longer needed it, and I finally had some space of my own where it would fit. It made the move from a townhouse to a small house that I lived in for a while, where it was primarily used as a crafting space for card-making, scrapbooking, etc. Then, my life sorta fell apart. One of the few pieces that I wanted from that house were the drafting tables, this one and another, smaller one. They were disassembled and put into storage. Unused. Unloved.
Recently, the smaller one was able to be resurrected from the storage and assembled - but this one, the larger and certainly more impressive of the two, was still in pieces. Until last night, that is. A new place saw me able to put it together for the first time in roughly two years, and yet again, the desk can serve a new purpose, in a new space. This will be the 7th home that I know it's been assembled in, starting a new life once more.
And I thought, "How like this am I? Starting over, putting the pieces back together, moving on and going forward once more - like a simple drafting table, ready to find a new existence. The old, being remade into the new.
Thanks for reading.
The Fat Kid
