Yesterday, my friend Nan bequeathed her parents’ dining room set to me. It’s a Danish teak, mid-century modern table from the sixties with leaves that fold up and slide inside the table. On occasion, I’ve seen tables like this at antique fairs and vintage shops.
The table is in beautiful condition. It’s worth what you’d spend on a nice vacation.
But the table is worth so much more.
I met Nan during my first day in the dorms. She lived in the quad down the hall. The girl with the wild hair that fell past her waist. In her granny-style glasses and bikini top paired with ovealls, she clashed with her perfectly coiffed, Chanel-suited mother.
My first thoughts were…who is THAT girl?
We became fast friends. After college, during our broke-but-not-quite-hopeless years in L.A., we commiserated over bad dates, trolled clubs, ate a lot of instant mashed potatoes and stayed up all night watching old romantic comedies on her black and white television.
I introduced her to an intelligent and witty Englishman, who after two months, asked her to marry him. I was her maid of honor.
And on every visit to her parents’ home, I sat at their dining room table, either enjoying a meal or nursing a cup of coffee. I don’t know why we never sat in the living room.
Her mother, one of the most elegant and gracious women I’ve ever known, would serve lemon cake from a favorite bakery on Heath ceramic plates and ask me if the coffee was too strong.
I’m honored and touched that Nan gave me the table. Its real worth…thirty-plus years of close friendship, conversation and laughter. And so much more I can’t put into words.
Has someone given you something that holds a special meaning?
