For many years, a glass-topped mahogany coffee table sat in the center of my mother's living room. I remember running my hands across the dark, 150-year-old wood, following the grooves around the wooden edges of the glass. Sometimes I would carefully slide the glass cover off part way so I could touch the American Eagle carved deep into the recessed center of the table. The eagle sat squarely in the center, a brown eye watching me as I smoothed it's mahogany wings.
My mother got the table from my father's father. The table was living in my grandparent's moldy, musty, unattended, Minnesota basement. My mother must have spied it on some trip down to the washer while helping my grandmother. The glass on the top was cracked and dusty, and the wood of the table dry with cracked veins that contained gray mold. I am sure she saw promise, the beauty of it even there. She asked if she could work on it, and since no one was interested that it even existed, we took it home with us. She brought it down to her workshop in our dry, new, clean basement, and then lovingly sanded and stained the 150-year-old wood back to health.
I remember my mom's workshop, with a table made of plyboards dominating the center of the room. On the metal shelves flanking the walls there were both rusted and new coffee cans full of strange, violent smelling concoctions she used to strip, tone, stain, and varnish the wood. Sometimes I would take one of the rags that lounged on the shelf near the cans and take a big whiff, one that would cause me to gag because it was so strong. In a way, though, I liked it, because that smell reminded me of my mom. There was a power sander, sitting useless on a corner shelf. All the little pieces of sanding paper my mom used on this table, she used by hand. Very carefully.
I can imagine her looking at that forlorn table, and taking in a breath of determination to bring it back to life. She was not going to let this table be left to languish.
Sadly, as soon as the coffee table was brought back to health, it became a bone of contention between my mother and my grandfather. Everybody wanted it, particularly grandpa Ashton. In the end, he got it when my father passed away. He proudly placed it in the center of his 10x10 living room, just beneath a poster-size photo of my deceased father.
The table seemed so out of place after living in my mother's genteel living room of period Ethan Allen furniture. My mother's living room seemed to be created for the table, yet my grandfather's seemed barely able to accommodate the table's strangely brash splendor. I am sure he could appreciate the value of it, but probably could never understand the sheer beauty of it the way she could. The mahogany wood came alive again by her hands, carefully sanding, staining, and varnishing each intimate crease.
The table never fails to be the centerpiece for conversation. During my last visit home, my cousin's girlfriend informed me that she was in line to have the table next.
My older cousin hissed
into my ear, "Tell her! That's your coffee table next and you know
it!"
I smiled, but didn't say a word. That table means nothing without knowing
the work my mother put into it. And there's no way she could ever know.
Of course it belongs to me.