Coming Home To My Pine Table
I recently spent a weekend in Big Sur with lots of people in a busy lodge crawling over people to sit down, gather my food, find space, get situated and immerse in the busy bustle of a busy community table. This morning I returned to my house of belonging and my little pine table that has been my friend for over 25 years. To a life well lived and a table that held me up and served as a bridge to a memorable friend who brought it home in his truck.
I have had this pine table for 25 years. I bought it when I was in my first solo apartment and my friend Mark, a young surfer who lived in my building in Santa Monica drove me in his truck to fetch it at The Pine Mine on Melrose. He had a very jacked up blue Toyota truck where surfboards, motorcycles, wetsuits, dogs and his little brother hung out. He offered to help me out after I bought this table which I loved at first sight. We drove to Hollywood to pick it up and I took him for a long lunch to thank him. We became good friends and he was a little younger than me. He was in remission from a rare cancer that he seemed to overcome and we talked about it a lot and he was all good and all strong. I'll never forget that day because only a year later, I lost him. We carried the table up the stairs to my apartment and he was strong and proud to help, getting his strength, being useful to a girl who needed his help. This table has a piece of his heart and has always been the soul of my kitchen and many a house, cottage, bungalow and meal.
I knew when I bought that table that I would always keep it no matter what. It served as a family table for me and my husband and then my other significant others in the homes we lived in together. It traveled to San Francisco, Santa Monica, Larkspur, Mill Valley and now my grown up home in Los Angeles. I have a grand dining room and a simple kitchen. My friends and guests always tell me they like my little pine table the best. I feel the same and find the simple things in life, like this table to be the most comforting and inspiring.
It got me through writing assignments
School Papers & Short Stories
Boyfriends hanging out for a coffee or a meal
in the 80's!!!
tired law school student now solving humanitarian water issues at Harvard (yay)
Or The 90's
volleyball player now prominent architect
Reminders of Greece | Greek Gods
Other Countries
Greece, Morocco, Provence
A Pine Table
My Obsession with the Mediterranean
Old Architecture
New Spins
Public Relations
HQ for thoughtful ideas and whipping up story recipes for my clients
I spill coffee, wine, gravy, tears, stories, water, ideas all over this table and it absorbs and reinvents itself welcoming me home when I am far away or lost in thought.
To the simple things and the people, meals, ideas and appreciation of this simple little table. Thank you Mark for bringing it home wherever you are.
In Loving Memory And Present Gratitude
Dear Wendy,
I love your string on the pine table.
I lost my home in a short sale in Ukiah. I have my old kitchen table and old Irish pine hutch and other homey stuff in a storage unit up there. I make pilgrimages to get things as I need them and I always spend a few minutes just to sit peacefully in the storage unit surrounded by my stuff. It's not fancy stuff. It's just my stuff and, like you wrote so beautifully, I've spilled a lot of my life on that furniture.
A year of chemo. (1999)
Lovers
Dogs and cats
Friends, some still around and some long gone.
Nightmare jobs
Moves from Silicon Valley to west Sonoma to Mendocino and back to Sonoma.
Now in Healdsburg, I'm getting back on my feet – three years since the short sale. I live in a tiny granny unit with a low ceiling, a garage, (and my storage unit.)
Someday maybe I'll have a kitchen again. But I'm keeping that table – I've thought of down sizing. But now, since I read your blog, I won't. I can't get another table that remembers all this.
Warmly,
Annie
Posted by: On Slow Life | 01/17/2014 at 08:59 AM