Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Graf # 9 object

My white chest of drawers. It's my favorite piece of furniture I own. Actually, it's more than that. If I was moving across country and could only bring one thing, I would bring my white chest of drawers. Currently, it resides in my dining room. In all honesty my dining room is just big enough for our table and six chairs. There really isn't any better place in our house to put it, so it just stays where it is despite the smirks my husband gives me whenever someone has to pull their chair in to allow walking room. Needless to say, we don't have a lot of dinner guests. I wouldn't have it any other way because this piece of furniture has a story to it and I love being reminded of it everyday. When I look at this chest I think of friendship. My best friend and I made this chest together. The story of her and I began about three years ago when we met at church one Sunday. Both of our families had just moved into Brewer, Maine about a week apart from each other. Both of our families had moved from Gilbert Arizona. Both of our families had three kids, who happened to all be just the same ages. We became instant friends, our husbands became instant friends, and our kids became instant friends. We weren't just friends who would see each other every Sunday at church and that's it, we decided to rent a set of side by side town homes and live next to each other. This arrangement could defiantly have ruined our friendship, but it only grew stronger. Our kids would play together outside every day from the time they got home from school to the time we called them in at night. We were lucky if they would take a break to eat dinner. When our kids would be playing outside, her and I would spend time together in either her side of the house or mine. We decided to make a list of things we had always wanted to do but needed a little help getting accomplished. One of these goals was to refurbish a piece of furniture. We went out to goodwill and purchased a old wooden dresser. We spent days outside in the garage working on that thing. It was soon finished and we fell in love with it. Our husbands hated it. I didn't really have the room for it so she kept it. I was just impressed with what we accomplished with our dream and hard work. We found out in May of this year that her husband would be finishing up his residency in another state, they had to leave when the school year ended. Now while our kids played after school we would pack her stuff. The day before they left our husbands packed up their u-haul. The day they left we all said our goodbyes and took a  quick walk through of their house to check for anything left behind. It was empty except for the white dresser which sat alone in her dining room. I knew right away that she was giving it to me to have as a reminder of her and of our friendship. Her husband smiled and my husband sighed, but her and I cried our eyes out.

1 comment:

  1. Gotta break a piece like this into shorter grafs for the sake of the reader and to help the writer organize and separate thoughts as she goes along.

    This is really topnotch--we get the story and the story is a thousand times more important than a detailed description.

    But! Where does this piece really begin? I would argue that this ought to be the first sentence and everything before it could be dropped: "When I look at this chest I think of friendship. "

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