Coffee Table

I've been practicing the art of non-attachment, though I'm not sure it's the best idea. Sure, not feeling tied to anything can fill you with a sense of freedom. I guess, at its essence, it would make sense that non-attachment is the true measure of freedom.

But I'm not sure I want it or if I can subscribe to it completely. Why prevent pain, or heartache? Because really, these sentiments are just part of life, part of what makes us human.

A few months ago I took my grandmother's coffee table to a consignment shop. Surely, someone in my family will read this and get pissed. But hey, I wasn't attached to anything, right? It's one thing to feel some sort of attachment to people or relationships, but material objects? Pheh. Whatever. Who needs 'em?

The thing is, this morning, I learned that the table sold. There was that possibility...

Now, this table had attachments. It was my grandmother's on my mother's side... The woman had so much style and class, and took pride in her environment. As my sister, so astute in the modes of interior design would say, the table was Danish Modern. Long and lean, built a little like a surfboard out of pieces of checkered wood, I'm sure the table was worth a lot.

And now it's gone.

After my grandmother's death, the table sat for a time at my sister's house. My mother and I used to get angry when Sis would let her kids use it as a coloring surface—complete with all the vibrant waxy debris. Later, when it was cleaner, the table sat in my living room, the one I shared with my ex-boyfriend in Baltimore. The one I was supposed to marry (or so we all thought).

Later he married someone else and the table moved to his basement—in Wisconsin, no less, before it suffered damage at the watery hands of a bathroom flood. And later, my ex used his own hands to try to pick up the pieces, and refinish the table back to a semblance of its former self, and ship it to me in Utah (where I had absolutely no room for it).

Forget the fact that it was long and lean, I had no space for it in my life, no room for such attachments to memories so saturated with pain and bittersweet nostalgia. I offered the table up to the Universe. If it sold, it sold.

And it did.

The news made me feel sad. Could this sadness be born of attachment? And the fact that another ribbon connecting me to my past has been sliced away? Perhaps.

I guess it's good to be free and clear. The road is open—though only for one-way traffic. There's no going back.

StarsFly

It’s amazing the things that can wake you up to life
I just saw the stars fly
And until tonight,
My mood was sour

The world was bleak
All against me
And I fought the tears lining up behind
My eyes
But then
All it took
Was streaming light
Sparkles
Shining
Across the sky
And the homeslice moon
Sat perfect in silhouette
All the points punctuating
The blackness